Founding Stories: The Moments and Sources of Inspiration
What inspires entrepreneurs to found their startups and how do they stay inspired? Some are driven by passion, such as with Stratoscale founder Ariel Maislos’ fascination with distributed systems. For others, moments of inspiration are usually the manifestation of many years of the mind thinking about something. Sometimes there are external forces at play, a flyer at the door, or a serendipitous moment that turns the idea into a company.
To find out more, I asked several CEOs of recently funded startups from the recent Intel Capital Global Summit. They include an electrical engineering professor, an entrepreneur now on her second startup, and a thirteen year-old middle school student. These entrepreneurs — making a dent in a range of industries from audio technologies, big data analytics, Braille printers to enterprise technologies — talk about their moments and sources of inspiration and how it all began.
1. It Began with Trying to Solve a Problem
Steve Dodson, the founder & CTO at Prelert, the anomaly detection company, got the idea for Prelert when he was solving a customer’s problem.
He was working on a customer site trying to identify and fix issues with a complex and critical IT system. The customer’s current tools weren’t giving any insight into the issues they were having, and manually analyzing the terabytes of data was tedious and error-prone. This led Dodson to start creating statistical analysis tools that use machine learning to help automate this process. These tools formed the basis for some of Prelert’s technology, which is used to detect problems in the system.
2. From the lab into the real world
As a professor of electrical engineering at USC, Chris Kyriakakis, dug into his academic experience for inspiration when founding Audyssey, an audio technologies company.
“University research is often perceived as difficult to get out of the lab into the real world. This gave me a strong determination to create something that can truly change the world of audio,” said Kyriakakis. “It’s one thing to write papers, but it’s quite another to walk into a major consumer electronics store with your young children and show them your life’s work in several products that people buy for their home entertainment.”
“My inspiration and motivation came from listening to endless presentations of “visionaries” in the .com era,” he said. “My research lab was part of a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center at USC in the area of immersive technologies. By the late 90’s I had seen several of these ideas receive venture funding with no real technology or IP to back them up. I remember thinking: We can do something here that makes a big difference to every music and movie listener.”
3. A Flyer Landed on his Doorstep
When a fundraising flyer for a blind charity landed on the doorsteps of middle schooler Shubham Banerjee, he wondered and asked his dad, “How do the blind read read?” His parents encouraged him to find out himself, so Banerjee went to Google to search for answers. He realized current Braille printers on the market could cost more than $2,000, so he wanted to create a cheaper one.
The first prototype was made with a 3D printer and Legos. But here at the Intel Capital Global Summit, Banerjee showed off the newer model, which looked more like a house-hold printer.
4. Turn Your Frustration Into Something
“With my first startup, it was the aura of wanting to do a startup,” said Sundari Mitra, CEO & co-founder at NetSpeed Systems, a chip design startup. “The second time around it was different.”
“NetSpeed was born out of my frustration with the antiquated process for designing and developing systems-on-chips and my desired to improve it,” she said. “I envisioned a solution that used advanced networking algorithms, like the ones that drive the Internet today. And I envisioned a much more automated way of designing chips, one that could intelligently compile the building blocks to synthesize a solution in an automated and correct by construction fashion.”
5. Create Space to Find Inspiration
Prelert’s Dodson recognizes how creating space can inspire new ways of thinking. “To innovate, I do find I need space away from the day-to-day operations of the company. Ironically, this often occurs when I have a block of travel where I’m bombarded with customer stories, discussions with peers and competitors,” Dodson said. “This tends to be intense, but is often interspersed with the dead periods that come with waiting for planes or sitting in traffic. These periods seem to give me clarity and focus on direction, as there’s often fewer distractions than in the office!”
6. Teach Others for Inspiration
Audyssey’s Kyriakakis continues to be inspired by his academic pursuits. “Continued inspiration comes from teaching. With each new class comes a new look at what’s relevant in the music and media consumption and this forces a constant rethinking of what the real technological problems are in audio,” he said.
Suggested story (Fourth story, part 1): How This 3D-Printed Prototype Raised More Than $12M in Funding
Full disclosure: This is the side bar to the fourth story of a five article series about startups and venture capital. This series received support from Intel, who sponsored and invited me to attend the Intel Capital Global Summit.
