Business School Lecture Notes: Thoughts for Disruptive Technology Entrepreneurs
What follows are notes for a business school lecture on entrepreneurship in today’s technologically driven world. Enjoy!
Where will the next iPhone come from?
Who will start the next Microsoft?
The world is ready for the next disruptive technology!
We are waiting for that next small set of entrepreneurs who are passionate about bringing something better into the world! And, we will consume that next great disruptive technology — perhaps making it the fastest market growth product ever!
Leadership starts with entrepreneurs. As entities, companies grow, their management teams have a responsibility to manage risk, to mitigate risk. This is why large companies buy rising stars. Buying technologies which are showing increasing demand enables larger entities to mitigate the initial risk associated with entrepreneurial efforts.
This is true.
And that is the entrepreneurs opportunity — that large entities cannot afford to, and will not take the risk.
Okay, so let’s say you have the entrepreneurial fever. Where might you start?
Some research resources:
How many of you have heard the story of Y Combinator? Paul Graham and a couple of friends were doing a lecture, and decided to host an incubator of sorts, for a summer. They turned it into an economic engine. Paul Graham has his own blog where he publishes his essay’s on startups, link below — well worth the time investment to read. Additionally, there are a number of interviews with him, just do a Google search.
Paul and his merry little band had one vision — to bring people together who could execute. They were much less concerned about technology or market segment as they were about bringing together the resources that could execute. What they meant by execute was that the resources had to work together to understand what they were building, and why. And this simple reason for being set them apart from every other incubator or early stage angel. And, it is the critical element to success — which is why no other entity has replicated the Y Combinator early days success. Today’s Y Combinator is not what it once was — but that’s another story. There are a couple of value points for mentioning Paul:
- Research this resource — it’s well worth the investment in your time
- The secret sauce — your investment in the right people to surround yourself with makes all the difference
- With that right set of resources, just start. Because you have the right set of resources, you will figure it out. To use Paul’s example, Microsoft isn’t selling what it set out to sell. It learned and pivoted, etc.
One other quick research must read is “Lucky or Smart?” by Bo Peabody. It’s an enjoyable quick read. The secret sauce — numbers. If you don’t try, and try again, then you will not get. The idea is to surround yourself with the team that has tenacity and perseverance, and then leverage the learning from your experience to drive improvements in your understanding of what you are doing — but never quit! You will meet a lot of people, and if nothing else, take away something learned from each encounter. All that learning will add up.
Be smart — take an assessment of what’s available to you today:
- Free environments to get started with, from AWS and Git to API’s and services
- Free development to some degree, leverage crowdsourcing to:
- Drive clarity into your idea
- Some degree of development
- Start, listen, learn, iterate! Leverage the power of data
So, let’s drill down a bit to see if we can get to anything specific — specific opportunities that might, well, meet with success.
- Smart phones have not changed much in the last 10+ years. That paradigm is ripe for disruptive change.
- Identity — the way we log in to identify who we are, again, hasn’t changed. Sites and services require a user id and a password, and lately with three-factor authentication, a string they will send to you for you to regurgitate back to them in their yet-another-form. Hello blockchain.
- Services. Seems like there will always be a service opportunity to provide just slightly better customer service — and that means everything to the consumer. Services are a high cost business, in many cases, so the use case for this vertical needs to be defined very well in order to set a clear customer expectation. We like our uniqueness acknowledged. We don’t much care for being treated like every other hamburger — and that is how you feel when treated like you are being processed. Individualized services are key.
Let’s take a look at the smart phone experience — just to see where the opportunity might live. Let’s generate a user experience flow.
- Gotta have a smart phone device
- The user experience is just like everyone else’s
- I have to do things to get it to work
Can we improve on any of the above? What if:
- No more device to carry around?
- The user experience was totally — and I mean totally and easily customizable?
- I really only had to start talking, and my personalized services would respond.
Really? Wow. How do we get from here to there? Apple isn’t going to stop selling the iPhone (which spells improvement opportunity for the entrepreneur).
And, let’s say you were able to create this new communication paradigm — why would anyone want it?
Great question — and the answer is in the messaging — think Apple’s first iPod commercial. Visit the adweek link below to learn about Steve Job’s and effective messaging — know your audience.
When the iPod came out, there was nothing new about either streaming music nor the MP3 player. How did Apple take over the market? Apple created and marketed a story about a fantastic experience! Something we all want! And now, how many of you even know what an MP3 player is?
And, that path led to “smart phones.”
So, let’s summarize by building a quick and dirty little disruptive technology business plan equation:
- Build an improved device — a better experience — aim for the three improvements noted above
- Tell a great story about that better experience — Message: Freedom — using Steve Jobs iPod campaign as the template (because it works — that campaign knows its target market)
- Just start, iterate, learn, etc.
See, today is time for that disruptive technology.
The point to this lecture is this:
- There are precious few who would even consider taking the risk of the entrepreneurial plunge. If I can be so bold as to extend the “Power Law” as it relates to crowdsourcing and the will to participate say’s that only roughly 10% of you fit this profile.
- Of those, there are even fewer who will have the understanding, the tenacity and perseverance to understand the importance of their team, and the criticality of pivoting. Again, let’s consider the Power Law to determine roughly 10% of the remaining availability pool. Wow, we are really getting down to one or two of you. Really? Yes.
- To those one or two in the audience, here’s to you! You will certainly earn your place in history.
A couple of notes for those thinking about the entrepreneur route:
- Your time is precious — invest wisely!
- Thank anyone who you decide to invest your time in and who responds with their time. Regardless of how they might behave. Yes, there are some real jerks out there, sometimes that investment is worth it.
- Someone is always watching (it’s true)!
Three students from a leading East Coast university will hear this lecture and decided to take on the challenge. They will go on to create a Kickstarter project to determine their audience appetite for a new disruptive tech which will result in huge outpouring of support from participants, inspired by the challenge that these three young students put forth, from across the globe, people who want to be part of making this new product happen, ranging from material engineers to software engineers. Shocked by the size of the response, they will call this entity the Zoo because of its diverse participant base. This diversity of passion and idea’s will lead to the seemingly impossible — the Mesh. In the spirit of Apple, their first marketing presentations will be to exploit personalization and transparent technology. They will present images of youth enjoying music, dance, outdoors, sports, without hardware or wires. The tagline, “freedom…” as youthful silhouettes dance, climb, and sport in various backdrops — without wires or a device in their hand.
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“I am what I said I am, a storyteller. But, you may be asking, from whence did I come and to where do I go? ‘Ten’ holds the key to where I go, and it’s to be determined from whence I came.”
References:
“Lucky or Smart?” by Bo Peabody
“The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries
“Everything we know about how to start a startup, for free, from some of the world experts” http://darwine.nl/weblog/files/Stanford-How_to_Start_a_Startup.pdf
It’s happening — added 3/31/17: DuoSkin rolls out on the runway https://medium.com/mit-media-lab/duoskin-rolls-out-on-the-runway-a016a899ab46
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