entrepreneurship Archives - Page 104 of 235

Will they find us?

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Once upon a time all the cool stuff on the web bubbled to the top. It found it’s way to our inbox, our twitter feed or our facebook page. That was before 4 hours of youtube video was uploaded every minute.

What we need to understand is if our web activities are long lead or short lead. The long lead stuff, frequent blog posts, twitter output and the content deep, still finds it’s way to the top. It’s the short lead stuff that is getting lost. Stuff like our videos, launches and events. For any startup this gaining traction is getting harder. The clutter is so deep we need people on the inside, helping us to cut through the clutter – our supporters and evangelists. So before we launch the next cool thing to our people, we should invest an equal amount of time thinking about how we’ll seed it.

Great creativity that doesn’t get seen, didn’t happen.

Startup typologies

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

There are three main types of startups:

Each of which has its advantages and disadvantages.

Trophy Ideas – The prize here is generally pretty big. If we nail it we get our face on the cover of magazines and get lots of free media. This is the idea we are waiting our whole life. And when it finally does come, we realise why it’s still new – it’s very hard to pull off. It usually takes lots of money, venture capital and maybe even a life time. It’s very hard because we need to create the market and or invent demand. it takes strong charismatic leadership for it to be sold to the world. Which is why it pays so high when it becomes a reality.

Idea Borrowing – The prize is smaller, but the probability of success is much higher. Demand of the actual product or some variation of it already exists, so we just have to be a bit better than the substitutes. It doesn’t build kudos in launch phase, but it’s how most fortunes are made. (Microsoft Windows)

Renovation – Can be as lucrative as the ‘trophy idea’, but can also be gold dust. In this situation we take an existing startup which is struggling and make it better. Do it right and turn demand into profit, or turn high margin into big demand. It can be dangerous as it’s hard to know what we’re really buying and the business might be struggling because demand isn’t there or the model just can’t be worked out.

The real question for startups is to understand which one suits our personality and risk tolerance. And knowing this choose the right type for us.

I don't…

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

I don’t have a rich Father

I wasn’t left a sum of money from my Grandma

I didn’t go to Harvard

I don’t live in Silicon valley

I wasn’t funded at Techcrunch 50 or Y combinator

I’m not technical genius

I can’t code the latest killer app

I guess I’ll just have to build my startup the old fashioned way. Work my ass off, invent my own revenue, build a team and improve what I have to offer as I learn from the mistakes I’m bound to make. If you’re still around in 10 years, look me up.

How to decide

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

A colleague sent me this quote that I just had to share right here on startup blog. Henri Federic Albert said:

“The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.”

And that is what we must learn to deal with in growth businesses – uncertainty. Our ability to decide based on a intuition and our personal world view is becoming a rare asset. It’s what we must move towards in a world full of data, but very little meaning. The other benefit decisions give us is real world feedback. If we get it wrong we can cross it off the list and move onto the next idea.

The art of iteration – coffee

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Iterating in business is an art form. It’s how we grow and find a path to establish the features that matter. It’s not about more, it’s about finding what works, which means that as we morph and change, certain features must be sacrificed, left or or purposely cut off. Nature exemplifies this. Nature takes time to roll out new features, and is well prepared to sacrifice old ones which no longer pay their way. Nature takes years to develop the perfect mix, but is in a constant state of evolution.

The coffee market has been one of the most interesting category evolutions we’ve seen in the past decade or so. Especially given the drink has been around thousands of years. What’s most interesting is that it was a commodity market at brand and retail level for the largest part of the past 60 years. Granules in a tin which one mixes with boiling hot water. Large brands then competed on price with occasional soapie style advertising.

Enter coffee culture and in 15 short years everything has changed. Coffee isn’t coffee anymore. Coffee is latte, coffee is short machiato, coffee is espresso, coffee is arabica versus robusta. But it evolved slowly, and the latest trend in coffee drenched Melbourne is cold dripped coffee. The point for startups is simple: we can’t go from Nescafe blend 43 straight to cold drip coffee. We have to take people on a journey with us, chapter by chapter. Shown below is another photo essay of a coffee haunt on little Collins Street Melbourne called Sensory Lab.

The question for entrepreneurs is what industry can we invent a journey to take people on?

Amazing eco system

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being exposed to a great eco-system in someones backyard. And although it isn’t a startup business, it is one of the best startups I have ever seen. Let me explain.

After seeing an idea on television, Shane decided to build a food eco-system in his small suburban backyard. The concept is simple enough. Take tank water from the roof of the house. Build a two meter long 70cm deep fish pond in the backyard. Build a raised vegetable garden which doesn’t have soil, but gravel. Link all of them with some piping, and 12 volt pumps which are powered by some solar panels on the roof. In the fish pond Shane has placed 60 baby rainbow trout for winter. They’ll grow to harvest size by spring. They take freshwater from the roof and the vegetable garden beds. Water is then pumped back from the bottom of the pond with the fish poo in it to provide nutrients and water to the vegetables. Remember the vegetables are planted in a gravel bed. The vegetables then take all the nutrients from the poo, clean the water and aerate it and then it goes back into the fish pond to create clean water for the fish. It’s a wonderful system. It’s a self sustaining, edible example of what can be done with micro thinking. See the big picture photo easy below, and some closing comments under the pics:

I told Shane he should be selling this and start a business building it for other less scientific minds. But it also go me thinking about what the future looks like. Future solutions to energy provision and the food industry are not anchored in macro infrastructure, but selling micro infrastructure for self sustainability in home. Like what Shane has built; on roof wind generators, roof tiles made from solar panels, septic systems which clean and recycle the water we use from our tanks. This is the future entrepreneurs should be inventing.

Worldometers are great

Posted on August 14, 2010 by Steve Sammartino

I’m really loving the worldometers website. It’s a list of global statistics which are updated in real time

Not only is it a very interesting, but it is a terrific resource for entrepreneurs and marketers alike. No matter what your business you could grab some statistics from it to open the mind of your audience in a presentation. For example:

If in the distribution, health, food business we could present this statistic:

Undernourished people in the world = 1,026,904,563

Overweight people in the world = 1,153,103,026

Which shows that there ‘is’ enough food int he world, it’s just in the wrong places. It’s a distribution issue.

If in the eco energy, or environment industry we could share the following:

Energy used worldwide today = 422,173,999 (MWh)

Solor energy striking the earth today = 39,886,999,999 (MWh)

Showing that we have the 40x the natural resources needed, we just need to harness it.

In fact, the way we could use these statistics is limited only to our imagination. And when we are presenting to audiences, it’s their imagination that we should really be trying to inspire.