I had a Clover-brewed coffee this morning for the first time at the Starbucks attached to the Hyatt on Pine in downtown Seattle.  The Clover machine simulates the freshness of a French press coffee but shortens the brew time to 90 seconds instead of the 6 minutes typical of a French pressed cup of Joe. After a successful pilot in Seattle, these machines are being installed in all 5,000 small-format Starbucks locations in the US.

According to my barista this morning, Clover was conceived of by a Stanford grad who liked French pressed coffee but not the time and headache involved in making one.

They designed the $11,000 Clover machine and started selling them one unit at a time to small independent coffee shops keen for something new to differentiate themselves from Starbucks. Then along came Starbucks itself who said they’d like to install 5,000 units.

A $55 million order would have been many times the size of Clover’s annual sales so instead of placing the order, Schultz & Co. just bought the 11-person company outright.

Have you ever heard of a company getting a term sheet instead of a purchase order?

I hope you enjoy the articles below on selling a business with your brew of choice.

Buy business with emotion, justify with logic

~ published June 22, 2010 the Globe and Mail

On May 11, 2010, the NBA approved Mikhail Prokhorov’s bid to buy the New Jersey Nets. Mr. Prokhorov made his money mining nickel and gold in the wild-wild east of mid-’90s Russia.

By all accounts, Mr. Prokhorov is a hardscrabble entrepreneur who made the bulk of his fortune in the frozen Siberian tundra. But he reportedly has a soft spot for basketball. At six-foot-six, he is a competitive player himself. »more

Business can learn unity lessons from World Cup

~ published June 23, 2010 the Globe and Mail

It was fun to watch South Africa play soccer in the opening round of the World Cup.

The South Africans have never been a strong soccer nation, but their team was determined and unified around the common goal of winning. The stadium was packed to the gills, with tens of thousands of people all desperate to see their team win. And as the CBC cameras panned around the countryside and in the bars and on the streets, it seemed that all of South Africa shared a common goal.

It reminded me of the feeling you get when you’re in a company and everybody knows what the target is and everyone is motivated to achieve it. It also reminded me of the time I was misaligned with my general manager and how disruptive that was. »more

Would you sell out staff for an extra $1 million?

~ published June 24, 2010 the Globe and Mail

At the Vancouver airport not long ago, I bumped into an old friend I’ll call Melanie. She runs a successful marketing firm in Toronto, and we were both flying home.

I had come to know Melanie a decade earlier after I’d invited her to sit on the advisory board for one of my companies. At each meeting, Melanie would sit quietly and periodically ask questions — good questions. She didn’t grandstand or pound the table, she just listened and offered the occasional opinion based on her experience. »more