extracts from the book blue sky mining – “blue sky mining is written for government,...

EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK BLUE SKY MINING – WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM

“Blue Sky Mining is written for government, universities, financiers, entrepreneurs, established business owners looking to expand into new markets and anyone interested in understanding why Silicon Valley has been so successful

in creating new industries and commercialising innovation over decades.”


QUOTES FOR BLUE SKY MINING

Jim Bidzos – Founder, Chairman and CEO, Verisign, Inc.

“Entrepreneurs, especially founder-CEO’s, are driven by a vision that compels them forward, through obstacles, challenges, and adversity. The bigger the vision, the stronger the drive—often becoming an obsession that lets nothing stop them from realizing their dream. That’s what it takes to build a company from little more than vision and desire, into a lasting global enterprise or great brand. In his book Blue Sky Mining, Adrian nails the importance of this mindset that truly successful entrepreneurs have from day one. They constantly aim higher when defining success, they find ways to work with others that can help them get were they’re going, and they never give up, no matter how bleak things may look or how many set backs they may experience. And that focused, relentless drive to fulfilling a vision always plays a larger part in long-term value creation than any other factor.”



Doug Elix – Chair, Global Advisory Board, Advance. Retired Executive Vice President and Group Executive, IBM.

“Many people are passionate about Australia’s future, but few are as committed to doing something about it, as Adrian Turner. This book oozes with insight and knowledge about the disciplined process of commercializing innovation. More importantly it lays out for all to see, what Australia must do to invest in it’s greatest sustainable asset—the ingenuity of its people. Here is an entrepreneur who has lived this for more than 12 years, and now he demystifies the process of innovation and the value Australia, and Australians, can get from commercializing it.

We should all read and take note. If we Australians are to have a great future and be a competitive force in this globalised world, we need to get on board with what Adrian is saying. Australia is fortunate to be blessed with natural resources. But, being innovative is our long term future, and that comes not from good luck, but hard work. This book tells us how.”



Foreword by Ron Conway, Angel Investor

“…It’s this same dissatisfaction with the status quo in Australia that drove Adrian to write this book. A frustration that Australia’s commercialisation ecosystem was in crisis, and no one was addressing the issue head on. After years of investing, in hundreds of startups I know that having the right ecosystem conditions for new venture creation is crucial to stacking the odds of success in favor of the entrepreneur and the new venture. They’re essential for providing good investor returns that drive new investments. I've worked hard and been fortunate to have a front row seat for the birth and scaling of many globally defining companies. I have invested in Google, Facebook and Twitter. There is no doubt that Silicon Valley is the global innovation commercialisation hotspot and I am privileged to be a part of it. But don’t think for a minute that the ecosystem conditions that drive success here have been left to chance…”


“Ask 10 people to define innovation and you’ll get 10 different answers. People confuse it with entrepreneurship and, just as often, invention…invention is just one

type of innovation and it’s often not the most critical.”

STRONG RESEARCH DRIVEN UNIVERSITIES WITH ENDOWMENTS


“Google was started at Stanford. The intellectual property that was the initial foundation was spun out and the university kept a relatively small percentage of the resulting company. No onerous restrictions were placed on the IP that would hinder Google’s ability to raise additional capital. No onerous restrictions either on what could and couldn’t be done with the intellectual property, and no onerous managerial or business controls on the resulting entity. The result was epic. According to the Wall Street Journal, at time of IPO the university’s stake in Google was worth $179.5 million. Since that time the value of Google stock has increased almost 10-fold.”

HIGH TOLERANCE FOR RISK


“The tolerance for risk taking is a huge contributor to the success of Silicon Valley, and not just for entrepreneurs. Employees in the Valley understand the value of risk taking. They know if a company is successful, their stock options will be worth a lot of money. Specialised banks show a willingness to offer venture debt and lines of credit to new ventures with little or no operating history and unproven revenue models. Attorneys are willing to work pro bono until a new venture secures venture funding. Landlords are willing to rent or lease space to new ventures with no operating history. Residential landlords and personal banks are willing to take risks and support people who may have only just started working with a new venture.”

ACCESS TO SOPHISTICATED RISK CAPITAL


“Ron Conway is one of the most prolific and well known angel investor in Silicon Valley. Ron is invested in my company, Mocana. He was an angel investor in Google, and is invested in Facebook, Twitter and hundreds of other startups. He brings not only money but connections, and is savvy in his investment methodology. Investors like Ron also understand and ensure that the early fundraising rounds are clean and not overly aggressive to ensure that the new venture can attract follow-on financing.”

KNOWLEDGE SHARING


“We see a wonderful dynamic in Silicon Valley around knowledge sharing. People are willing to share their experiences openly. I recall last year going to a local Churchill Club event where Larry Ellison, CEO and a founder of Oracle, was talking about what it was like to be CEO of a fast-growing company at different stages of its evolution. The Churchill Club, founded by Tony Perkins and Rich Karlgaard, personifies this culture of knowledge sharing with an annual calendar of high-caliber events that allow entrepreneurs to network and learn from each others’ experiences.”

CREATIVE DESTRUCTION


“A great example of this in action in Silicon Valley is Twitter. What few people know is that Twitter started out as a side project by the founder of a company called Odeo. Odeo was a blogging site that was going nowhere fast. The founder, Jack Dorsey gave back Odeo investors’ money and offered them the chance to invest in Twitter when it appeared Twitter had more potential, even though it was still unproven. There aren’t many places in the world where this would happen. On secondary market exchanges, Twitter has a value today that is approximately $4 billion, and some suggest as high as $8 billion.”

GLOBALLY EXPERIENCED REPEAT ENTREPRENEURS


“What most people don’t know is that the founder and CEO of SpaceX is Elon Musk. He is also the CEO and founder of the electric car company Tesla, a NASDAQ listed company with a market capitalisation of more than $3.5 billion(24). He is also Chairman and primary investor in the largest financier of solar installations in the U.S., a company called Solar Winds. According to Business Week Solar Winds is also preparing to file for an IPO and based on stock transactions in secondary exchanges in January 2012, the company had an implied valuation of $828 million. Before starting or becoming an investor in these companies, Elon was a founder of PayPal that was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion, and also Zip2 that was acquired by Lycos for $307 million. At the time of the publishing of this book, Elon Musk is 40 years old.”

CONSTRUCTIVE FAILURE


“Constructive failure means learning from the experience of failure in a constructive way that benefits the individuals involved as well as the ecosphere as a whole.…On the surface, Go was a $75 million failure. But the executive team learned an enormous amount working together through those turbulent times. In other non-financial ways it was not a failure at all: Bill Campbell went on to run Intuit (and mentor other CEOs), Stratton Sclavos went on to help start Verisign, Mike Homer went on to help start Netscape and Randy Komisar went on to run Lucas Entertainment.”

SUPPORTIVE GOVERNMENT POLICY


“Another example of supportive regulation is the ability to hire employees ‘at will’ in California and Silicon Valley, meaning they can also be let go at will and without cause. This labor flexibility is crucial to a new venture’s ability to adapt to the market and to the ecosphere as a whole. Counter intuitively it doesn’t lead to lower employment, it fosters new venture creation, and consequently additional employment. Still another example is the tax treatment of stock options.”

SOCIAL CAPITAL


“What you see below are the linkages between one venture capital firm, the companies it has invested in and the executives within those companies. It is this massive number of connections—the social capital—that also allows venture firms to add value beyond mere money. The firm shown here is Sequoia Capital, investors in Yahoo and Google among others. They also invested in YouTube, acquired by Google, as well as Cisco and a whole host of companies Sequoia helped grow that Cisco acquired over the years.”

POSITIVE AGGREGATE RETURNS


“In Silicon Valley the financial returns for winning investments are huge. They need to be, in order to compensate for the failures or losses. Silicon Valley has spawned iconic global businesses, providing stellar investor returns. Benchmark Capital put $6.7 million into eBay and two years later the stake was worth $5 billion. What good Silicon Valley investors do better than anyone else is help turn small companies into massively profitable, global companies.”


“Even if the commodities boom last decades, Australia is in trouble. In Silicon Valley it took 60 years to create the structural, cultural and financial infrastructure to

repeatedly create new billion dollar technology based industries.…”

WWW.BLUESKYMININGBOOK.COM

extracts from the book blue sky mining – “blue sky mining is written for government,...

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book blue sky mining

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