After being very disappointed at the Apple store, a bunch of the iLEADers 3 batch students decided that Apple has enjoyed enough customer loyalty, now is the time for the birth of Pineapple! So, Pineapple will be following the principles of what Mike Maples from Maples Investment told us about the best entrepreneurs in the world. The vision of the company is to Bring Apple products to every country (except US) for free after cracking all their codes. The mission is to disrupt the Apple Business in the world. Now, you might be laughing at this thought, but as Mike said that its only when people laugh at you that you are upto something, and we are definitely upto something - no good. Successful start ups are the ones which disrupt the norm.. So, here we are. The motto of the company is “A Pineapple a day keeps APPLE away”

According to Mike, the most important factor for the start ups’ success is the market. If you are a great team with a bad market, the market wins; if you are a lousy team with a great team, the market wins; if you are the best team with the best market, something special happens. Keeping in line with this rule, we have chosen India and China as our primary target markets. The market is so huge that even a lousy team (a.k.a. us) can be great.

Another important rule that Mike told us about is that to be successful you have to be different and not better. And yes, we are different. With our Pineapple Way being “Copy is right”, we will be the first of its kind in the world. There was another rule from Best Entrepreneurs is - Be Non-consensus and Right. Well, I believe that most of you will not have a consensus of how we are running the business. But being non-consensus definitely is a part of being entrepreneurial. About the latter half of being Right - I guess we will just pretend to be right.

Actually, I would like to thank Mike for his insightful presentation this morning. He inspired some of us so much that within a few hours we could come up with a business plan following his simple rules from the Best Entrepreneurs in the world. You all will be invited at the launch of Pineapple!

Disclaimer: The discussion is just a fun way of remembering all the wonderful teachings which Mike delivered to us today. Before visiting Maples Investments, we visited IDEO where they usually come up with an interesting story to convey an idea. This is just an attempt to remember all these rules in fun way. NUS need not worry about us. The iLEADers have their ethics right in place.

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