the care and feeding of ideas

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The Care and Feeding of Ideas Gaurav Mathur, Gordon Chaffee [email protected], [email protected]

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The Care and Feeding of Ideas

Gaurav Mathur, Gordon [email protected], [email protected]

About Us

CEO & Co-founder, Defend7. Enterprise security startup.

CTO & Co-founder, 3LM. Mobile device mgmt company, deeply focused on Android. Acquired by Motorola Mobility/Google.

Partner Technology Manager, Android/Google. (Joined Android when there were 20k devices…)

Co-founder and VP of Engineering, Defend7. Enterprise security startup.

SVP Engineering at Riverbed. Scaled team from 15 to 330 over 9 years.

VP at netVMG, Director at Inktomi, Fast Forward networks, Valicert.

The recipe for a good startup

Idea +

Product +

Team +

Execution

Finding an Idea, AKALiterally your million $ question

Survey Domains Pick a Domain Learn Generate Idea

Survey Domains

Where are investment dollars flowing?

What are new startups focusing on?

Where is the overall market going?

Eat Techcrunch for breakfast.

Flow of Early venture dollars

Thanks Crunchbase. Grab my derived dataset.

2010-Q1

2010-Q2

2010-Q3

2010-Q4

2011-Q1

2011-Q2

2011-Q3

2011-Q4

2012-Q1

2012-Q2

2012-Q3

2012-Q4

2013-Q1

2013-Q2

2013-Q3

2013-Q4

2014-Q1

2014-Q2

0

1000000000

2000000000

3000000000

4000000000

5000000000

6000000000

7000000000

8000000000

9000000000 Social MediaStorageEducationSecurityHardware + SoftwareAnalyticsAdvertisingGamesCurated WebFinanceHealth and WellnessEnterprise SoftwareMobileHealth Care

The 2010 slump

The 2013 peak

Zooming in on a few domains

2010-Q1

2010-Q2

2010-Q3

2010-Q4

2011-Q1

2011-Q2

2011-Q3

2011-Q4

2012-Q1

2012-Q2

2012-Q3

2012-Q4

2013-Q1

2013-Q2

2013-Q3

2013-Q4

2014-Q1

2014-Q2

0

1000000000

2000000000

3000000000

4000000000

5000000000

6000000000

7000000000

8000000000

9000000000

Post Zynga Games dry up

Spurt in Finance – wealth mgmt & bitcoins

Security spurt

Verticalization of Mobile? Dollars moving to Health

Steady advertising

Thanks Crunchbase. Grab my derived dataset.

Pick a Domain

Start with your area of expertise

… Or the closest area that piques your interest.

Don’t be afraid of new domains

… Fresh eyes foster innovation in existing domains!

Learn

Spend at least 2 weeks trying to become an expert.

(Resources: Analyst reports, Expert blogs, Techcrunch)

Where is the industry now? Where is the wave going?

Who are the players & what products are they selling?

What are customer pain points?

Learn

Align with where the market is going, not where it is now.

Domain switching is expensive – avoid doing it frequently.

Photo credit

Lifecycle of an Idea

Seed Germinate Evaluate Design Validate Build

Photo credit

Survey Domains Pick a Domain Learn Generate Idea

Seed

Find a potential problem and a probable solution.

Germinate

Why Now? Does this improve things by 10x?

Why are you the right team to solve this?

Why would this product be “hired” by your customer?

Don’t try to “find a billion $ idea”. Things rarely start there.

Photo credit

Evaluate

Don’t get emotionally attached to an idea. Be objective.

But remember, all ideas have problems. Balance.

Eliminate bad ideas quickly.

Design

What is you customer facing product? Think Top down.

Product mgmt is making decisions with incomplete data.

Stay focused on the problem you are solving.

Resist the urge to write code (yes, seriously!).

Validate

Test your hypotheses with circle of trust & experts.

Validate with your customers. The more data points, the stronger the validation.

Make sure the problem you are solving exists!

Build

Building is not a substitute for customer feedback!

What can you build in 1 week? Get to customers ASAP!

Cut corners. Optimize for time to market.

Focus. Do little, but do it well.

And finally... The Leap of Faith

You will have to decide with incomplete

information.

BUT

I highly recommend it…

A Few Tips

Some Tips

Always be learning. “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” - Steve Jobs

Separate fact from hypothesis. Make data driven decisions.

Evolve fast based on customer feedback.

Build a great team – might be your only constant.

And Finally, a Good Mantra

Sell.

Design.

Build.

(Shamelessly taken from John Vrionis at Lightspeed)