Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

In 1995 I remember seeing a documentary where they interviewed Bill Gates. He was asked if he was fearing competition from other big software companies. His answer was that he didn’t fear any of the big companies around. He said that the threat to a big company is not in the other big companies, but in the smaller companies slowly undermining the foundations of the business that his big company was built upon. He pointed out the window at the lawn down below and said something like

“Up from here it is hard to see the really small companies down there who are slowly becoming a threat to us below our radar. Until it is too late”

It made a huge impression on me because I was planning on starting a small company myself and having Bill Gates telling me that I was a potential threat to him made me feel powerful.

I thought about this because Tessa started her own company last week: The Next Speaker

She manages and represents speakers and motivators and hires them to companies who need to be inspired or have an event where they want a knowledgeable person to talk about new media, new technology or innovation. She launched her company on Friday and got a lot of attention from blogs over the weekend. Then, yesterday, she found out that the biggest speaker bureau in the Netherlands contacted a large part of her speakers to ask them if they weren’t interested in joining them.

I thought it is a great compliment if the bigger company feels that your company poses a threat to them enough to do something silly like this.

So, congratulations Tessa!

UPDATE: while you are here, please vote for Tessa at Challenger50.nl: