This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Now Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage startups with content and traction called End Game.
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
I recently watched Griselda on Netflix and LOVED it. And apparently so did millions of other people around the world.
It shot up to the top of the Netflix charts in many countries around the world within days.
The six-part miniseries is based on the real-life story of Colombian drug trafficker Griselda Blanco, who ran a cocaine cartel in 1980s Miami.
Even though it was a short series I really loved the character of Griselda and thought it was very applicable to being an entrepreneur in tech.
So I figured i’d write up my top five lessons that I think apply:
Lesson 1: She just dove in without a plan
At the start of the series Griselda is forced by her husband in Columbia to sleep with her husband’s brother. She of course finds it degrading and horrible that her husband even asked her.
But she does it because they are desperate.
However when her husband then demeans her afterwards… she decides enough is enough and shoots him on the spot. Then she grabs her kids and flees to Miami with no plan and no money.
This to me reflects the mindset that entrepreneurs need to some degree. Just dive in and figure shit out along the way. If it’s not a model that scales you’ll find out pretty quickly.
But there isn’t much benefit to spending months doing research and planning. Because a lot of times the people that do this end up doing nothing.
Just get started.
Lesson 2: Griselda is tenacious
Soon after arriving in the US she tries to sell a kilo of coke that she smuggled into the country from Colombia to put food on her kids’ table.
Instead she gets robbed and beaten up by the guy that she asked to help sell it.
She did not give up however. Instead she beat him up and used the coke to open the doorway to a much bigger deal.
As entrepreneurs you will get punched in the face a lot. Especially early on.
If you let that deter you than you’re unlikely to make it. I heard a story told by AirBnB founder, Joe Gebbia, that the company was literally on the doorstep of failure not less than 4x. Now they’re a $100 billion company.
Lesson 3: Griselda thinks big
After growing her narco business in Miami to some level she gets invited by ‘Rafa’ to an island where he offers to buy her out. Rafa was a representative of the ‘Ochoa’ family, which were part of the huge Medellin Cartel, and thought to be worth billions of dollars.
They made her a good offer of $10 million to walk away and give the business to them. But she told them to get lost.
Instead she was going to make something much bigger out of it herself. And not let the big, scary incumbents (ie. the Ochoa family) scare her off.
As entrepreneurs you’re often trying to overtake incumbents too. They’ll have more money, know-how, etc. But you need to focus on the customer and your competitive differentiators to outmaneuver them.
Lesson 4: Griselda is resourceful as hell
At some point her rival Miami druglord, Papo, outmaneuvers her and takes over her drug business. He has a lot more muscle and so expects her to fold.
But instead she realizes that she can tap the frustrated, poor Cuban immigrants that had recently flooded Miami to become her private little army. And so she barricades herself in a fortress-like house with her army and then demolishes Papo and his crew. Thereby taking back what was hers.
Entrepreneurs need this kind of resourcefulness. Sometimes your great assets are things you don’t immediately think of, and so you need to be creative.
Jeff Bezos, for example, in the early days of Amazon got around the minimum buying requirements of book wholesalers by filling orders with books that he knew would be out of stock. Thus allowing him to essentially order a single book at a time and make dropshipping successful.
Lesson 5: Use your product
Griselda became a coke/crack addict at some point because she was using her own product. Not exactly something I recommend doing… hahaha
However you should be using your own tech product all the time. Ideally you even implement it within your team if possible.
For example… Karri Sarinen, CEO and Cofounder of the successful SaaS, Linear, tests all new major feature releases on his team first.
And since their product is essentially a tool for project managing the building of software, it is easy for his team to be their own guinea pig.
Wrapping up
So while you definitely do not want to get into the narco business… that is not to say that you cannot admire and perhaps learn a thing or two from Griselda’s character.
She came from nothing, built something big from scratch through guts and hard work, and didn’t let anyone or anything stop her.
And if you haven’t seen the mini-series… I highly recommend checking it out.
