Felix Wolf

“If I was running a startup and engaging with enterprise companies, one of the very first things I would do is ask ‘is the criteria for the evaluation of the PoC clearly defined’. I would want to know — do you want to bring my gear in and play around with it? Is there a specific problem you’re looking to solve, and is there a specific outcome you’re looking to get? The best example of a PoC I’ve ever seen was at Greylock company: Rajiv Gupta at SkyHigh Networks. There may have been 30 people in his company at the time and we were getting to know each other. I said ‘Huh. I didn’t know we had a problem to solve.’ He said ‘Most companies don’t know. But if you let us come in and do a PoC we’ll show it to you.’ I started thinking this is going to be months in the making. He said ‘We can do this in a week. These are the three things I need. If you grant them to me on one day, we’ll be out of there on day seven and have results a week later.’ And he did. Three months later we became a customer. Great example of how I think a PoC against predefined targets or goals once validated and done quickly turns into real business.” — Otto Chan, EVP Technology of Wells Fargo