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To say <keyword id="2593417" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Fred-Mouawad">Fred Mouawad</keyword> is a serial entrepreneur is an understatement. Gems and jewelry. Pizza and coffee. Publishing. And, an online task management platform. One would struggle to imagine a more diverse collection of businesses. But, to Mouawad, a member of <a href="http://www.ypo.org/">Young Presidents’ Organization</a> in Thailand, it is simply his business: Synergia One Group of Companies. The Internet and technology industry is his favorite, with <keyword id="3302522" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="taskworld">Taskworld</keyword> being the brand where he currently focuses much of his attention. 
 
Mouawad’s start began with a diamond in the rough. Well, a sapphire to be more precise. 
 
“Our family business is in gems and jewelry,” he explains. “With my brothers Alain and Pascal (who joined <keyword id="852310" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="YPO">YPO</keyword> in 2014 in Beverly Hills), we are the fourth generation to manage the company.” 
 
In 1988, his father, based in Switzerland, set up a jewelry factory in Thailand as an expansion of the company. After attending Pepperdine University and earning a gemology degree from the Gemological Institute of America, Mouawad’s first assignment in the family business was to run that factory in Thailand. 
 
“I showed up there in 1990, and wanting to prove myself, I combed the markets and found and purchased a sapphire while on a trip to Sri Lanka,” he says. “My find so impressed a dealer I showed it to in Bangkok that they purchased it two days later for twice the price I had paid. That really gave me a taste for gemstone trading so I continued, and with the profits I earned I was able to start my other ventures.” 
 
Mouawad founded all of those other ventures, too. “Mouawad is the family jewelry business which is 125 years old now,” he says. “The other seven companies I founded by building upon those profits from gemstone trading.” 
 
The newest brand in the Synergia One portfolio, tech start-up Taskworld, was born out of an internal need to communicate better across the business. Upon reflection, Mouawad admits one of the biggest challenges he has faced in business is one that is ultimately inescapable. 
 
“I have faced a lot of different challenges, but one issue that remains the toughest for me is letting people go. Sometimes, someone is not the right fit, or maybe someone does not develop in a way that fulfills the organization’s need,” he says. “But the toughest calls involve people, and communication is the best way to handle those situations.” 
 
The Taskworld task management platform is actually a technological solution to that challenge, to some degree. Mouawad’s companies had a need for better collaboration and found that building their own product was the best method for achieving that goal. 
 
“I believe very strongly in regular communication. It is not fair to have people thinking everything is well, and then after a year you call them in and tell them otherwise. People deserve high-frequency feedback to better understand how they are doing so they can make adjustments and improve,” he says. “Taskworld provides that mechanism for everyone to give and receive evidence-based feedback to each other while managing tasks and projects.” 
 
Mouawad is also a serial learner, and he credits joining YPO 2010 with rekindling his appetite for learning. 
 
“I love being part of an organization of peers that care as much about their own growth and sharing ideas with others,” he says. “It has given me a huge incentive to further my education, as well as to give that education back to my peers.” 
 
(The article is written by Mark Scheer, YPO) 
 
YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) is a not-for-profit, global network of young chief executives connected through the shared mission of becoming Better Leaders Through Education and Idea Exchange™. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.ypo.org/">www.ypo.org</a>. 
 
(Image: Taskworld)

From Rough Idea to Polished Gem: Fred Mouawad Diversifies to Fund Tech Startups

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image">TaskworldFred Mouawad, founder Taskworld</div></div>Diamond billionaire Fred Mouawad could easily qualify for the title of Most Interesting Man in the World.
And the thing that interests him most these days is a brand new app he created called <a href="https://www.taskworld.com/">TaskWorld</a> that helps enterprises manage employees and projects.
Mouawad was born the eldest son and heir to the world-renown <a href="http://www.mouawad.com/">Mouawad diamond</a> jewelry company, founded in 1890. He grew up "traveling with my father to different places in the world," learning the diamond business, he told Business Insider during a phone interview while en route between Bangkok and the Maldives.
He studied business and gemology in college and assumed he would enter the family business straight from school and stay there.
That plan didn't work out when it became clear his dad wasn't ready to retire. Rather than spending decades in his dad's shadows, Mouawad left the diamond business and launched his own series of companies.
They didn't all succeed as planned, either, but one project always lead to another, he told us.
For instance, during the dotcom bubble, he launched a B2B Internet diamond exchange hoping to get retailers to conduct business online. It died when the Internet bubble burst in 2000. But the magazine, <a href="http://instoremag.com/">Instore</a>, intended to be a marketing vehicle for the B2B exchange, survived and thrived.
Mouawad also launched a bunch of restaurant chains, a commercial bakery, a construction company specializing in retail and a venture fund. All told, he runs eight international companies as part of a conglomerate called <a href="http://www.synergiaone.com/">Synergia One Group</a>.
"The number one advice I have is that it's all about people," he explains. "If you are building a venture, you need the right idea, sure, but you need to put the right people around the table," he says. That way, even if the original idea goes south the people will find a way to succeed.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:300px"><div class="image on-image">Victoria SecretCandice Swanepoel models the Victoria Secret Royal Fantasy Bra worth $10 million</div></div>In 2010, Mouawad's father retired and he and his two brothers took over the family diamond business, too. The Mouawad company is best-known for its watches. But it also garnered attention for creating seven diamond-studded bras for Victoria Secrets, ranging in price from $7 million to $12 million.
The bras grabbed four Guinness World Records as the most expensive pieces of lingerie ever made, Mouawad laughs, even as he admits, "No. We've not sold any of them. We've had people calling us and asking us if they are available in different sizes. And yes. You can get them in different sizes."
All of this is just to say that Mouawad is capable of investing in anything and everything. Yet it's the world of <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> apps that has grabbed his attention these days.
Taskworld is a project management, collaboration app that he created himself to help run his conglomorate of companies. He even went into Stanford's Executive MBA program to work on the project. (Stanford's MBA is the Valley's petri dish for tech startups, providing instant connections to everything from engineers to VCs.) Mind you, <a href="th.linkedin.com/in/fredmouawad">Mouawad already has a Harvard MBA. </a>
Taskworld lets managers assign tasks to employees and provide feedback during progress reports. Companies can monitor things like on-time completion rates for people and departments
"I wanted a way to make my divisions accountable and clarify expectations," Mouawad says.
The best part about the app is that it helps bosses figure out what tasks individual employees are good at so "organizations can use use people for their strengths," he says.
But it's entering a crowded market with dozens of competitors: Asana, Salesforce.com's Do, AtTask, Producteev, Trello, Teambox, HiTask, Basecamp, Huddle, and Evernote, just to name a few.
Mouawad says his app is a unique combination of project management and feedback. He's even applied for a patent.
The free version of Taskworld is available now, with premium and enterprise versions to arrive in early 2014.
Here's a screenshot:
<div class="KonaFilter image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Taskworld" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/52bdff396bb3f7bd53ce32ec-960/taskworld.png"></a>Taskworld</div></div>

The Billionaire Who Created Victoria Secret's $10 Million Diamond-Studded Bra Just Launched A Cool New Business App

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/35034362831@N01/2757536235/in/photolist-5cF6sc-674Sfu-6zxkPA-6Dofhz-aA5q4z">Flickr/Joi Ito</a>Marc Andreessen</div></div></div>A new business app created by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield is creating a ton of buzz in Silicon Valley right now.
<a href="https://slack.com/is/everything-in-one-place">It's called Slack</a>.
Like many other business apps, this one is all about collaboration, meaning it lets teams of coworkers chat, send private messages, or share files and pictures.
But it's going viral right now because it also lets them search. They can easily find snippets of conversations and files, and, more importantly, they can use it to search through a bunch of other popular cloud apps that the team might use together like Google Drive, Dropbox, GitHub, Twitter, Asana, and others.
Investor Marc Andreessen tweeted an image that shows Slack going from about 4,000 daily users in January to somewhere in the 15,000-user neighborhood today. The app, which works on phones and browsers, <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/say-hello-to-slack-the-newest-enterprise-social-network-and-the-latest-effort-from-flickr-co-founder-stewart-butterfields-tiny-speck/">officially launched in August.</a>
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><a href="https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/432675881434095617"></a><a href="https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/432675881434095617">Twitter/@pmarca</a></div></div>
Andreessen has good reason to praise Slack. He and his VC firm Andreessen Horowitz helped fund Butterfield's company, Tiny Speck, which has raised $17.2 million in three rounds so far, <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tiny-speck">according to Crunchbase</a>.
And Tiny Speck's first app failed. It was an online game called Glitch. Butterfield shut down Glitch in 2012 and laid off most of Tiny Speck's 30 employees, TechCrunch's <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/as-flickr-co-founder-butterfield-shuts-down-glitch-is-he-planning-a-new-photo-service-you-will-know-it-well-he-says/">Ingrid Lunden reported at the time. </a>
Slack is a reboot for the company.
To be sure, 15,000 users isn't bad considering that the company doesn't even have a Facebook page yet, <a href="https://twitter.com/SlackHQ">just a Twitter account</a>. It really hasn't done much marketing beyond posting the love tweets it gets from users like this one:
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><a href="https://Slack.com/love">Slack</a></div></div>But Slack also faces stiff competition. There are a ton of collaboration apps already out there, each with their own schtick: Yammer, Chatter, Work.com, Basecamp, Tibbr, Tomfoolery, and the list goes on. Even diamond billionaire Fred Mouawad launched a similar app <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fred-mouawad-launches-taskworld-2013-12">last year called TaskWorld.</a>
Plus, viral popularity doesn't always translate into commercial success. For instance, 37Signals, which makes a popular chat app called Campfire and a popular project management app, Basecamp, <a href="https://37signals.com/">said last week </a>it was dropping Campfire and its other apps to concentrate on Basecamp, its one real commercial success.

Marc Andreessen Praises An App Called Slack: 'I Have Never Seen' A Business App Go Viral Like This

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Fred Mouawad" title_caption="Fred Mouawad, an eight-time CEO and heir to the world-renowned Mouawad diamond jewelry company." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54467c556da811d66232a67e-960/fred-mouawad.jpg"></a>Fred MouawadFred Mouawad, an eight-time CEO and heir to the world-renowned Mouawad diamond jewelry company.</div></div>Earning the title of CEO is a huge accomplishment. Doing it eight times over is almost unheard of.
Almost.
Fred Mouawad, the French-Lebanese serial entrepreneur and heir to the world-renowned <a href="http://www.mouawad.com/">Mouawad diamond</a> jewelry company, has managed to do just that by the age of 45.
Mouawad, who is worth <a href="http://www.wealthx.com/articles/2013/cnbc-the-worlds-richest-diamond-owners/">an estimated $1.1 billion</a>, according to research firm Wealth-X, first became a chief executive just after graduating from Harvard Business School in 1994 when he founded <a href="http://www.synergiaone.com/">Synergia One Group</a>.
He has since founded and become CEO of six more companies - including tech, consulting, food, retail, and media businesses - and also runs the 125-year-old family business, Mouawad Jewelry (the only company of which he's chief executive that he didn't also found). 
Mouawad's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fred-mouawad-launches-taskworld-2013-12">most recent venture</a> is <a href="https://www.taskworld.com/">Taskworld</a>, an online task and project management platform that allows teams to collaborate while tracking individual performance.
"As a serial entrepreneur I have spent a lot of time building businesses from scratch," Mouawad tells Business Insider, "learning all there is to learn about the business, building a team, and slowly moving myself out of a job. As my portfolio is growing, I have the dual responsibility of incubating a new venture while also overseeing the other companies in the portfolio." 
Here are five of the most important things Mouawad says he's learned throughout his career as an eight-time CEO:
1. Know thyself.
Mouawad explains that it's extremely important for leaders to be self-aware, to constantly reflect, and to figure out how to improve their leadership. "We all have blind spots, so it's important to constantly seek and provide feedback in a respectful and safe environment to drive continuous improvements." Once leaders understand themselves, they can figure out what team to surround themselves with to maximize value. 
2. You are only as good as the people around you.
"The best teams usually win," he says. "It's all about having the right people, in the right positions, and with the right motivation to fulfill the organization's mission and goals." 
3. Connect the dots between the internal and external worlds. 
Too often leaders are either too internally or externally focused, Mouawad explains. "The art of balancing the two is critical in order to find the right alignment between the organization and the marketplace."
4. Developing a mental framework is crucial to success.
Mouawad says he has basically approached every business with the same mental framework - and at least some of his success can be attributed to it.
"I first define where the business should be in the future so it is customer-centric and competitive. I then focus on building the right team with the right attitude, skills, and will to succeed; I make sure we have the right capital; and then I focus on building the culture that's required to win at the game we choose to play."
5. Monitor your company's culture, and know it will change. 
Culture is the most difficult and dynamic aspect of building a business, he says. "It morphs all the time based on the people in leadership positions. It has to be constantly monitored, but once you get it right, it becomes a powerful driver of execution."
Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to tipoftheday@businessinsider.com. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.

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