entrepreneurs Archives - Page 10 of 80

The Silk Road Patron

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the Super Awesome Micro Project. And if you’re not aware I’m about to disclose some of the secret sauce. Mainly because between now and when we launch, it is physically impossible to be copied by anyone. For two reasons – the first is that no one else has Raul, and secondly it took us way more time and money than we would ever have imagined.

In fact, what we are doing has been on line for some time for those who wanted to seek it out – the secret, has been out a while on this Ignite talk I did at a global digital event as linked below:

A Stranger From Romania.

As you can tell from this super fast talk, we are building a world first piece of technology – a technology which at this point has no commercial goal – and no other reason for existing other than awesomeness. A pressure test of what is possible when the connected world aggregate small amounts of money with large amounts of thinking. To see what we can build using democratised digital factors of production and a teenage genius.

It was made possible by 40 people in Australia, also known as the Super Awesome Micro Project Patrons. Normal everyday people having a crack at creating part of the technology narrative. Our Modern Day Medici. The facilitators of the future.

What is it?

We are buildng a full size car, built entirely from lego, with an engine built from lego, and the engine runs on air. Actually, let me rephrase this. We have already built it. It is done. We have succeeded.

This is where the Silk Road Patron comes in:

We are at the point where we need to transfer the Super Awesome thing and the Super Awesome kid from Romania to Australia for the launch. The cost of transferring our adopted son and our fantastic plastic machine to our fair brown land rounds out to approx. $25K give or take. It is our plan to airfreight both artefacts human and construction – for time & safety reasons. The truth is, I can’t ask any of the patrons to put in any more money than they have already donated. Every single one of these people has already stretched themselves financially. I personally do not even want to talk about how much money I have put into this, other than to say it is 100+ times more than I thought it would be. This is no exageration. And so what we need is the Silk Road Patron.

The Silk Road Patron is the internet version of a silk road trader of antiquity. Someone who is intrigued by the possibilities of exchange from lands afar. Interested in new minds, methods and techniques. Inspired by and for the benefit of a populous wider than themselves. This Silk Road Patron has nothing to prove to anyone, because they’ve already done it – they’ve crossed the globe, trekked the path and already made bank with their own spice trade. They want to give back – be the final player who connects the possibilities of the #SAMP. The Silk Road Patron is a person, not a corproation. The Silk Road Patron’s gift of participation in this arduous project, is participation itself – a personal satisfaction.

This is something wider and deeper than the #SAMP – it is in fact the search for Australia’s most generous entrepreneur. A VC whose return on investment does not involve percentages or ROI. Their drive is ROH – return on humanity. (It is worth noting we can provide validation and proof of our achievements via private digital methods.)

And so our search for this person starts today. Please let us know if this person is someone you know, or maybe, just maybe it is you.

The linear hoax

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

There is currently no shortage of people talking about the change of the business environment from a linear model to an omni directional one. What we need to understand is that this isn’t limited to business, it’s a wider eco system change.

Last week I was helping a colleague with his transition into his next revenue phase. He was discussing the need to get his credentials and digital footprint in order before he met up with VC’s / recruiters and the like. He didn’t want to go in and meet people unprepared. And it sparked a thought in mind mind:

Why take a linear approach when lessons from each process can inform the other?

We both agreed it makes sense to do things simultaneously, when they interact with each other, as this case seemed to be. If we do them one by one, then the other there is a very good chance we’ll need to rework our effort once we get real ‘in market’ feedback.

The challenge for all of us is knowing which projects are isolated and which ones live in a feedback loop.

Inspiration or Knowledge?

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was talking today with a colleague who is involved in a consulting business. We discussed that people like us, are often providing is pure inspiration and motivation to our clients. Sometimes more often than we are providing actual knowledge. The all singing, all dancing outsourced inspiration division.

He was somewhat concerned that, the client might not be getting what they actually signed up for – specific domain information transfer.

After some discussion we agreed that it doesn’t really matter. We also agreed that inspiration has more value than knowledge in any case – even if our job is to provide the latter. The reason is simple. There are plenty of examples of people with great knowledge who never succeed, where as a person or organisation who is inspired will some how acquire the knowledge required.

The final allegory for people who help others as a business is this: Unless we have the knowledge in the first instance, we’ll never get hired or given the opportunity to provide the inspiration that is needed.

Scribbles from Startup Grind

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was recently at the Melbourne Startup Grind event down at Depo8. Another great example of people who are prepared to get off the couch in the evening to learn something and meet like minds.

The event had technology stalwart and all round good guy Alan Noble from Google in the house. Alan is the Head of Engineering for Google Aust / NZ and has been in and around computers since the early 1980’s. With serious time in the game he has some interesting stories. These are mostly not ‘verbatim’, but I took notes and thought some of the random soundbites were worth sharing here:

—

Alan originally coded in Cobol, C and C++. he says understanding the evolution of computer language is interesting and worth knowing.

Alan spoke about the first multi functional PC remembers is the Xerox Star Workstation – I found this promotional video for it on Youtube. I’m sure most of you already know this, but Steve Jobs was just as good at stealing ideas as Bill Gates was.

After University Alan moved to Japan for 2 reasons: He could speak the language, and he thought it would be a cool place to live. Sometimes the best advice is fun & functional.

In 1983 Alan worked on some of the first attempts at creating software which could translate human languages. Back then he thought, how hard can it be? Really hard. So hard it is only now becoming functional 30 years later.

NetMind: Alan was a cofounder of this startup, which he said never really made money. Though he had a successful exit from it. They made a trade sale in late 1999. When asked how one should value a company that doesn’t make any – he said the ‘Cisco Valuation Model’ is best. Which I am assuming is either a reference to them paying too much for acquisitions, or not making money for a long time themselves ?? [feel free to comment on this one]

2 quotes I did get verbatim:

“If you are working with great people that is what keeps you going.”

“The culture of a company is a special thing. You need to design it in the DNA because you can’t reinvent it later, it bubbles at birth.”

Alan also said the keys to what he thinks is a good culture are: Trust, Transparency & Openness.

Alan was then asked to give some startup advice:

– Don’t get caught up in startup hype. None of the philosophical ideas are new. A pivot used to be called adapting.

– Angel investors really look for entrepreneurs who want to build something, more than make money.

– Events can create innovation, but they are not sufficient for an innovative culture.

– Hire people who are innovative and passionate. This passion is usually transferrable. if person is passionate about one thing, there’s a good chance they’ll be passionate about another. The best ideas come from these people.

– 20% time is not good for a startup.

– How to value a company at an FFF round? – Keep bumping the value up. (I think it was said in jest)

– His core web mantra: keeping individually identifiable data confidential is a must.

– He believes in a mission. Not so much the statement, but the reason for being.

– On hiring good people: If you don’t hire well, you can’t leave the fort… go into the market.

– Valuation is a funny thing: You’ll get 12 different answers from 12 different investors. The truth is that the whole process is mainly bullshit.

– Think beyond Australia (or your home). if Google only developed products in Mountain View, it would have a very slanted view of the world & warped product output. Sydney has the 10th biggest Google engineering team in the world, yet it is the only the 28th biggest internet population.

Closing Thought When asked about AI.

Every time we solve a problem in AI, it is no longer AI. It just becomes a normal piece of technology. But most technology around us is in fact AI. So we shouldn’t get hung up on terminology and just solve problems instead.

10pm till 1am

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

My previous blog post has 12 random thoughts I came up with. A few people have commented on twitter wanting more information on some of the points including young gun Adam Jaffrey. His tweet below:

The point was this:

“What we do after 10pm has a bigger impact on our tomorrow than what we do during business hours.”

Admittedly it is a bit confusing. It could even be read as the need to get enough sleep for an energetic tomorrow. But what I was actually talking about was the ‘long term tomorrow’ and what we do late at night… the stuff we can only do once our daily tasks and family commitments are accounted for.

First of all, we must get our job done, earn our way, eat, cook, clean, be with family and friends, and generally live the tasks of life. This takes time, in fact it takes up most of it for most of us. So we know that in reality there may only be a few short hours left. But we also we know that education is a process and and not an event. And this statement is about that process. The only difference being that the most important educational process these days is not studying for an MBA at nights and weekends, it’s experimenting with the ideas, tools and technology which universities don’t have in their curriculum yet. Mind you it’s not their fault, the world just happens to be changing too quickly.

While others settle in for a night of TV, I prefer to get busy on projects. Read about technology, write an article, build a new presentation, help a startup, work on an upcoming lecture at Melbourne University, go to a hackers event… but most recently work on the Super Awesome Micro Project with Raul. We skype chat every night and plan our next steps. Not only is it inspiring, but it is building new skill sets which make me anti-fragile. More valued to the market and most importantly differentiated. The problem with traditional education is that most people have it. The problem with corporate experience is that most people have it. The problem with industry knowledge is that it ties us to a location and is probably going to become irrelevant. Technological disruption means we need to be wide in our skill base, not thin and vertical. And the best way to get a wide base of skills is the become a night time projecteer between the hours of 10pm -1am. (or whichever hours work for you). We need to be pyramids, not sky scrapers.

Not only are broad skilled business people now in greater demand, they are much harder to knock over.

The story of ice

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

Most everyday products we use and take for granted have a deep story of innovation underneath them. Once such product is that of simple household ice. What’s interesting about ice is that it went through a number of disruptions. New methods and players arrived to usurp yesterdays heroes. Much like the industries did in this post.

The original startup thinker and bootstrapper Guy Kawasaki tells the story of ice and how it pertains to curve jumping. I’ll do my best to remember how the story is told.

If you truly want to be an entrepreneur or an uber innovative intrapreneur, you have to jump curves. You can’t do things 10% better, you must do things 10 times better. Originally ice was sold through an ice harvesting business. In the ice harvesting business in the early 1900’s, this meant that Bubba and Junior would go to a frozen lake or a frozen pond during the winter time and physically cut out large blocks of ice. And in 1900 over 900 million pounds of ice was harvested in the USA. Then 33 years later was the beginning of the first curve jump in the ice industry. This was the start of the ice factory era. Operating on the ice factory curve then meant that ice harvesting didn’t have to happen in the winter and it also meant that you didn’t have to be in a cold climate. You could freeze water centrally any time of year and any place you decided to set up an ice factory. (In fact, ice factories for obvious reasons did a better trade in warmer climates – a counter intuitive shift) And then once the water was frozen in the factory, the ice man would deliver ice to your house or business. So imagine the advantage of going from ice harvester: a cold city in a cold time of year, labour intensive – to moving to an ice factory, any city, any time of year, with dramatically lower labour costs.

Fast forward another 30 years and we move into the second curve jump. The refrigerator ice curve. This becomes ice 3.0 where an ice factory becomes a legacy cost infrastructure. People started to have refrigerators in their own home that could create ice on demand in a matter of hours, with no wastage, at the cost of a small amount of electricity. No need for factories or deliveries to your home when you have a personalised ice factory.

So if we look at this closely, the great value that was achieved was because the new method jumped across to the next curve. Incremental innovation was entirely usurped. It didn’t matter if you improved your efficiency dramatically on the previous curve because the entire market moved. And very few (if any) producers went from ice harvester, to ice factory, to refrigerator manufacturer. As you can imagine most ice harvesters didn’t see the disruption coming. So too with the ice factories and their owners. And in all probability refrigerator companies are not looking at bio tech or what is likely to come next in freezing water or ‘things’.

So the lesson for entrepreneurs (and more so for business owners & industry stalwarts) is that we simply cannot and will not change the world on the business curve that we are on. We have to jump it, and if we don’t someone else will. Incremental improvement is just not enough. Sometimes we must jump curves to merely survive. Makes me think that car companies are playing a very incremental game with their hybrids… What I really want is a self driving electric car or personal transport drone!

Worth Noting: In many ways all industries move from the macro to the micro. We’ve seen it with computers, music, many forms of manufacturing. We can only assume that the future will be continue the current trajectory to ‘personal’. Most curve jumps involve taking the macro to the micro.

Startup blog says: Get out there and curve jump!

The evolution of marketing

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was asked by a respected colleague from the technology world this question: What is marketing? Mind you, this is a guy who is involved in, and gets marketing. As anyone who works in marketing knows, this is a difficult question to answer. But when I provided some thought on the question, I found that my answer is now longer than it used to be. Hence, I thought I would share it here.

I’ve broken it up into 3 parts. The first in order to provide a baseline definition and context.

General simplified thought: The development, distribution and promotion of products and services to suit a specific audience in order to achieve business objectives.

Unlike what many lay people believe it is neither about selling or advertising, and is much more about business management in totality. Or even more simply, marketing is a fancy word for business.

Marketing Then: The tools of marketing which flowed naturally from this were known as the 4 P’s.

Product – Solution
Price – Value equation
Place – Access
Promotion – Communication

Historically the job of the marketer has been to strategically organise the 4P’s of marketing (the marketing mix) in order to deliver a sustained commercial outcome between the brand and the audience. But it does feel like this is just not enough…. especially not when all of the factors we deal with are being disrupted via technological revolution.

Marketing Now: If we want to be a great marketer in 2013 then I feel like there is much more to it today. With the process being non-linear all the forces interact more strongly. Our interests need to be broader than that of the marketer from 1950-2000. I feel there are 4 areas we need to be interested in. And only when we are interested in these areas, will we have the intellectual arsenal to develop an effective marketing mix, regardless of which industry we are involved in.

Anthropology: A genuine interest in and study of modern day human movement and historical evolution. The ability to understand and spot patterns based on changing macro behaviour. Being able to see the movement of the collective sentience.

Technology: A solid understanding of where technology is taking us in the medium term. Not just understanding how to use what has already arrived, but knowing what is coming next. Knowing the implications of disposable technology, ambient computing and internet everywhere. Believing in this and integrating it into everything you market. In an age of exponential change there is no choice.

Finance: A solid understanding of what makes industries and the economy function. A financial brand which goes beyond COGS (Cost of goods sold) and marketing budget parameters. We need to be adept in raising capital, investing and ratio analysis…. all forms of finance are integral in what A grade marketers need to know.

Commerce: A true understanding in the art of connections. The why and how do certain parties transact with each other. How are they connecting now, and how will they connect tomorrow. It goes beyond distribution points and pricing models. It digs deep into need scopes and relative utility. It’s the real side of human interaction where commerce facilitates life goals and money is just the way we keep track of who is doing what.

A lot of this might sound meta physical, and it is. But like all forms of evolution, new layers get added – and these four elements are the layers which will define how the successful entrepreneurs and business people of tomorrow need to think.