+

Commercialization Forum

Peter French - @pfrench99 / @freeflowsearch MSEC PhD Guest Lecture 2/28/14

+peter l french Plum Creek - Director of Operations

2,200 acre master-planned community @plumcreektx

LoomisBurton – Cofounder

Real estate consulting and development @loomisburton

French Oil Mill Machinery Co – Director

114 year-old family-owned machine manufacturer @frenchoil

FreeFlow Research – Founder

501c3 applied research organization @freeflowsearch

Peter L French Photography

www.peterlfrench.com @peterlfrench

+Perspective matters

+Things you already know

!  It has never been easier, or cheaper, to launch a company.

!  You are sitting in one of the most dynamic regions in the USA.

!  Social, search, capital, networks, and mentorship are all at your fingertips.

!  The community (Texas State, San Marcos, Hays County, the State of Texas, the USA) want you to succeed.

!  I want you to succeed, or to fail quickly. Which is o.k. too.

+Every company was a startup

+Most companies fail

+Your brain is lying to you.

+Your brain is lying to you.

+Survey I

!  Are you conscious of your bias?

!  How long have you been a student?

!  How many schools have you attended?

!  How many places have you created I.P.?

!  Where is that I.P. now?

!  Who owns it?

!  Does it have value?

!  Does it have value without you?

+Carol S. Dweck Ph. D. – mindset

Carol S. Dweck Ph. D. – mindset

!  A growth mindset enables you to build new habits, skills, and talents. It also empowers you to help those around you do the same.

!  “Creative achievement and resilience are products of a growth mindset do you or your organization have one?”

!  Build an organization that is open to constructive feedback that questions why and how things are done. Analyze your failures and your successes!

+Good things

http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/500-family

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StrengthsFinder 2.0

Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? Chances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.

Rule 1 Know thyself

http://strengths.gallup.com

+Practical application

!  Peter French is a seasoned strategist who excels at spotting patterns and finding creative ways to deploy resources to produce new results.

!  With a diverse background in manufacturing, real estate, and startups, he is uniquely qualified to lead this dynamic project.

!  Ideation: Fascinated by ideas, Peter is able to find connections between seemingly disparate ideas.

!  Input: With a craving to know more, Peter is ceaseless in his pursuit of diverse sources of information.

!  Futuristic: Inspired by the future and what could be, Peter inspires his team with his bold vision for the future.

!  Strategic: By constantly imagining alternative ways forward, Peter I can quickly spot relevant patterns, obstacles, and opportunities.

!  Learner: Peter burns with a great desire to learn and continuously improve. His passion for discovery is the foundation of this organization’s culture.

Assessment Tools

!  Good.Co’s proprietary psychometric algorithm assesses your Archetype blend and examines thousands of data points to find the best cultural fit between job seekers and job openings. It helps you identify positions, teams, companies, and categories that are a natural extension of who you are and what you have a knack for.

!  Smarterer was created to help anyone, anywhere, prove any skill. Using crowdsourced tests and a scoring method similar to the one used to rank chess masters, in as few as 10 questions and 60 seconds, we can provide a valid score to measure candidates' skills.

!  TrueAbility is a cloud-based technical assessment tool. TrueAbility built a platform to validate a tech’s skills on a real server—allowing them to demonstrate their abilities in technologies relevant to the job they are applying for.

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+pathbrite

!  “Increasingly, what matters most today is what you can do with what you know. Pathbrite is a great tool for individuals and institutions who want to collect and share evidence of real learning and proficiency.”

!  Dr. Tony Wagner

!  Harvard University Graduate School of Education

!  Author of The Global Achievement Gap and Creating Innovators

+Your personal brand

!  http://about.me/peterlfrench/#

!  https://www.vizify.com/peter-l-french

!  https://twitter.com/pfrench99

!  http://instagram.com/peterlfrench

!  http://www.linkedin.com/in/peterlfrenchsatx

!  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+peterlfrench/

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Access to Opportunity

!  SmartRecruiter’s social recruiting platform combines awesome free recruiting software with the best on-demand services to make hiring social, collaborative, enjoyable and, well…EASY!

!  Bright eliminates the noise in the hiring process by efficiently connecting job seekers to their best opportunities, and employers to their top prospects. Bright is not just an innovation in online job search, it's a mission to move the labor markets faster.

!  True North is a full-service recruiting and executive search firm in San Antonio, Texas specializing in delivering top talent. Our clients range in size from early-stage start-up to Fortune 50 and are located all over the country, with an emphasis in Texas.

+AngelList

+AngelList

+AngelList

+Survey II

!  Do you want to start a company? !  If yes, where?

!  Why?

!  Do you want to run a company? !  If yes, why?

!  Have you done either before?

!  What’s your dumb tax tolerance?

+What you make is important

+leancanvas

Product? Service? Process? B to C? B to B? MVP timeline?

Who can you ask? Who did you ask? Have you asked anyone?

+It looks real, doesn’t it

+5 Steps to the Best Year Ever

Step 1 – Understand the Possibility – Breakthroughs are possible

Where have you settled, how does this make you feel, what would a breakthrough feel like, what internal barriers need to be overcome?

Step 2 – Reflect on Last Year – Assess and move forward

Recurring themes, major accomplishments, regrets, what was missing, and major life lessons.

Step 3 – Look to the Future – What do I want in 2014?

Write down 7–10 goals, using the smart method — specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound. Identify a push goal. Are these goals tough/meaningful enough?

Step 4 – Identify your Motivation – Why do I want this?

For each of your goals, write out 5–7 motivations that answer the question, “Why is this goal important to me?” Go back through your list of motivations and order them in order of importance. Which ones do you find most compelling?

Step 5 – Make it Happen – Plan a step at a time & do it

Identify the “next action” for each of your goals. Schedule a month’s worth of appointments on your calendar to work on your goals. Schedule a regular time to review your progress If you’re progress is slower than you desire, evaluate what’s holding you back?

+ Results: products of success

Setting and achieving meaningful goals will produce the following results:

#1) Great Health – foundation of life

Health Metrics: increased energy, reduced stress, increasing fitness

#2) Clear Purpose – base motivation – the why that drives action

Purpose Metrics: clarity of why, increased confidence, increased ambition, improved productivity, improved patience

#3) Increasing Wealth – access to opportunity

Wealth Metrics: increasing income, increasing savings, reduction in debt, growth in investments, intentional spending

#4) Sustained Happiness – state of mind – opposite of stress, product of order

Happiness Metrics: greater resilience, increased generosity, more loving, more fun, more affectionate

#5) Regular Validation – external rewards – recognition of effort & expertise

Validation Metrics: more professional invitations, more press, more awards

My goals must support these metrics

+Clayton Christensen – The Innovator’s Dilemma

“Markets that don’t exist cannot be analyzed.”

“An Organization is defined by its resources (people), processes, and values (RPV). New organizations spawn new processes aligned to new requirements.”

“A goal for a successful organization should be to generate a steady stream of new ideas – regardless of industry or size.”

“Think what no one else is thinking & do what no one else is doing”

+ The five stages of disruptive thinking

1 craft a disruptive hypothesis

2 define a disruptive market opportunity

3 generate several disruptive ideas

4 shape them into a single disruptive solution

5 make a disruptive pitch

Cast your hypothesis as a “what if” question

Explore the least obvious market opportunities

Ideas add definition to your intent regarding the opportunity

Articulate your refined solution (it must be feasible)

Test your pitch then make your pitch

+Design thinking tools

!  A group of frogs came together and looked across our existing problem-solving practices, including how frogs collaborate in groups when working on client projects. We distilled what we learned into this toolkit.

+Basic series A vc math

!  $5,000,000 pre-money valuation

!  5,000,000 $1.00 shares

!  Founders 100%

!  Following Investment

!  Founders own 30%

!  VCs own 50%

!  Mgmt Pool holds 20%

!  $5,000,000 VC investment

!  $10,000,0000 post money valuation

!  VCs own 5,000,000 new shares

!  Founders put 2,000,000 shares into a management pool for future hires

!  Founders retain 3,000,000 shares

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case studies

Adventures in Real Estate

Photography: going pro

Becoming an authority

+It started with a blog post

+Resource assessment

!  What do you have?

!  What do you wish you had?

!  What don’t you have?

!  Are you sure you need it?

!  Who has it?

!  How do you reach them?

!  Where else might you get it?