Over the past month or two, I’ve been thinking, talking, and writing a bunch about what business will look like coming out of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Themes like authenticity, a return to basic values of quality, longevity, local employment and necessity rather than superfluity. A couple of conversations over the past day or two have focused my mind on this as I’ve seen so many people maintain naivety about the importance of their role, their business or whatever.

I was musing on this the other day as I had a note from someone who is a specialist “growth-hacker.” This person told me they’re available and looking for their new gig. I reflected that, only a decade or two ago, growth came from making a product, selling it for more than it cost to make and using the proceeds to make two products – continue that process over time and, voila, you have growth.

Not so anymore, it seems. Now we can “hack” growth and we can “pivot” our businesses and maintain the illusion that somehow pivoting is actually really sexy and not the maneuver we do when our enterprise is about to drive off a cliff.

Call me old fashioned, but life was simpler back in the days when all it took was an ethical approach towards business, a focus on making a good product and, as my colleague Gwilym Griffith-Jones says, “holding the line.”

So, in that vein, here is a 15-minute treatise on what one business considers the right way to go about things – not sexy, not fast, certainly not growth-hacked – but here for the long haul.

27 years and still going strong, here’s to the next decades…

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

1 Comment
  • What a great story of where Cactus came from and the ethical way you have built your business! I was a rock climber when I was younger so that part of the story really resonated with me. Thank you for sharing your video.

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