We will discuss
following success models.
•Geshe Roach’s experiences in a Wall Street diamond company as recounted in Diamond Cutter. •ezboard.com, a customizable Web-based communities developed in 1998 by Vanchau Nguyen, Founder and Chief Executive Officer. •Hewlett-Packard Company.
Two of these models were started by Buddhists. Hewlett-Packard, seed company of Silicon Valley, even though it was not started by Buddhists, has been, in past, noted for its generous and benevolent treatment of employees, “Hewlett-Packard Way.” All these success models reinforce concept that seed of success and must be watered with more generosity along way.
Success Models: Geshe Michael Roach and Diamond Cutter
Geshe Michael Roach is a Princeton graduate and a Buddhist monk. After graduation, he spent seven years studying wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism. At suggestion of his teacher, he joined a fledgling diamond business in New York to test his ideals in real life. He stayed with business as a member of core management team for seventeen years. The company grew from a start-up with two owners and two employees to $100 million in sales and five hundred employees in offices around world. The Diamond Cutter. The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life tells story of how Geshe Michael Roach built diamond division of this company, using principles culled from ancient Tibetan Buddhism as driving force behind his decision making.
Some of many insights in The Diamond Cutter are as follows:
•A business should be successful; it should make money. There is no conflict between spirituality and success in business. Successful business people have resources to do more good in world than those people without same resources do. In addition, very people who are attracted to business are same people who have strength to grasp and carry out deeper practices of spirit. •Money should be made honestly and with absolute integrity. How we make money matters more than anything else does. It determines our ability to keep making money as nobody can indefinitely run a business built on dishonesty or deception. It also significantly affects our ability to enjoy money we make. •Nothing is good or bad in and of itself; everything has a hidden potential. This is what Buddhists call emptiness. What is bad news for you may be good news for someone else, and vice versa. We must not leap to conclusions about events, but must stop to consider what potential they really have for us. Even competitors can be seen as fairy godmothers challenging us to find correct path to greater accomplishment. It is a matter of perception. With right state of mind, we can turn our problems into opportunities. •We should look ahead to inevitable end of our days in business, and put ourselves in a position where we can honestly say our years in business had some meaning. The idea here is to anticipate our future, and move in a direction that will allow us to look back on our past with total joy and satisfaction. Success Model: ezboard.com
San Francisco, Calif. -- August 1, 2002 -- ezboard, Inc., a subscriber-based online community based in San Mateo and founded in 1998 by Vanchau Nguyen, announced that it recently surpassed 10 million registered user level. At present, ezboard.com has over 400,000 active communities, covering everything and 40,000 communities are being added a month! In a 2000 interview about start of website Vanchau describes planting seeds of success and watching them grow.
How did you go about promoting your web site? Mostly by planting some seeds about ezboard in existing online gathering places and then watching them grow by word-of-mouth. Most of our new users are referred by an existing user, which is best way to attract loyal customers and a great testimonial about value and fun offered by ezboard.
His vision, even in beginning, was of expotential growth promised by Korwa cycle. In a 2001 interview with Judy Vorfield of Web Builder ezine(, Vanchu noted that
In recession, ezboard.com had some rough times, but its management was able to reverse trend and continuing growing. In a 2002 interview with Jim Cashell Vanchu remarks: ezboard came into existence during peak of Internet boom, a glorious but frivolous time. 18 months ago, we realized that we were on road to bankruptcy and we needed to change course. We did that. In a short year, we shifted our revenue model from purely advertising to almost entirely subscription. We also doubled our number of communities created to over 1 million and tripled our number of registered users, now over 8 million. Ezboard has a very strict Terms of Use but relies upon its user community to report violators and to enforce terms, thus freeing up its time and resources for more valuable community-building activities. As Vanchau notes: We do not actively go out and look for content that violates our TOS. We take a more passive stance, but if we are notified of violations, we then go and take a look. Usually, we'll send a warning to administrator. Now and then we have to remove a post, ban a user, or on very rare occasions (in fact, I believe only once so far), shut down community.
