Disruption or Delusion
by Greg Topel
Hindsight is always 20/20 when it comes to successful ideas.
Uber’s dominance in ride sharing is well known but at its conception, most investors found the regulatory issues too large a hurdle to overcome and pushed the team to simply create an app for current cab drivers. Paypal was a similar story with moving money virtually being too big a task for a small startup. Both saw the enormous opportunity to build something truly disruptive while most initially saw their aspirations as delusional. Too many risks, large roadblocks to entry, bigger competition with the ability to crush such a small threat, and uncharted treacherous waters to navigate.
At the same time, there are exponentially more of startups with big plans only to fail and confirm the naysayers’ expectations with the inevitable “I told you so.” It’s a fine line to walk between the blind faith of changing the world and the difficulty of meeting those lofty expectations.
Startup CEOs have many tasks (plenty of articles out there on this subject so no reason to recycle those tired stories of sacrifice, long hours, etc, etc). But I believe the single most important task of a CEO is striking a balance between creating and believing in big, hairy audacious goals in the face of constant criticism while carefully listening for insights from others to find the path forward.
As a CEO of a company that allows users to touch digital objects on a display, I have heard it all. From trade shows and conferences to parties and family gatherings, I have been told we have the next must have technology that will change the world. But I have also been told the technology is unnecessary given that what exists today is good enough. The former feedback is what I want to hear as it confirms we are a disruptive technology and will not just be a feature but the must-have sensory experience going forward like HD displays or mobile connectivity. But the latter feedback points to being delusional and that failure is inevitable. So who is right? The answer is not straightforward as they both are right to varying degrees.
Every startup wants to challenge the norm. You aren’t able to watch any movie whenever you want? Enter Netflix. You don’t like going to the grocery store? Enter Peapod. You want to listen to a song the moment you think of it? You get the point. All successful companies have a fairly simple value proposition, but it is never that simple at the outset.
Being a disruptive technology means you are significantly changing something that is generally seen as good enough. By definition, disruption is synonymous with disturbance, commotion, and interruption. Consumers are happily living their lives without the next new thing, so the inevitable question is simple — why change anything? Why complicate life with another technology, another thing to learn, another thing to break or add a layer of complexity to what is already the most fractured attention span in human history? So you better have a good story or join the long list of startups with great tech but couldn’t figure out how to drive adoption.
The haptic touchscreen technology at Tanvas is absolutely disruptive. We replace today’s lifeless touchscreen with one that doesn’t just find where you fingers are but outputs the sense of touch to make the digital world lifelike, meaning OEMs will need to incorporate the Tanvas touchscreen in place of their current components. Operating systems, apps and websites will need to incorporate a layer of touch information like an extra graphical layer that you feel. Most importantly, consumers will need to learn what it means to truly interact with their devices and transform a desire to feel things to a need that they cannot do without. It’s far from a trivial exercise to align all three of these groups, but when we do it right, you won’t know how you lived without it.
The future will continue to produce new ideas to make our lives better. While I can’t predict when your car will drive itself, your phone will provide medical alerts before you experience symptoms, or when watching a movie requires VR goggles, I can tell you the future of touch has arrived.
We will be showcasing our technology at regional Hackathons, tradeshows, and select devices soon to usher in a new era of touch. Our goal of rediscovering touch in the digital world is absolutely delusional when only described in blog posts or articles, but once you get your hands on our screen it won’t take long for you to be a believer.
