Project 2012: Day 362

Where will the hungry market be in 2013? Here’s my take –

1. Integrating Systems of Record with Systems of Engagement

It’s not just about automating paper based processes (like Shoeboxed) any longer, nor just about mediating engagement (like Instagram). There’s a huge market, mainly in enterprise, where integrating these two systems will accelerate in 2013. E.g. Bring up a record of a contact, and have the tools to communicate with them. Accept a call from a customer, see all of their records in the same view.

2. Trust engine

I first heard of this need back in 2011 from Rachel Botsman in one of her talks on Collaborative Consumption. But this is no less true today, if not more so.

In short there are an increasing number of applications that vet the trust factor of users. Think eBay. Buyers and Sellers are rated by Sellers and Buyers of their products. These ratings then influence your decision criteria as to whether to transact with them. Over time, trusted sellers can set higher prices, and trusted buyers can negotiate cheaper ones.

Except that you have another trust factor on LinkedIn for jobs. Yet another one at your bank. Plus a credit rating. And we haven’t even broached AirBnB, Couchsurfing, or Uber.

There is a huge opportunity for someone to solve this problem. To create a multi-faceted trust engine that works across all of the communities you work in.

This is probably something that is best incubated in a bank, a telco, or perhaps a government organisation – or perhaps in a coalition with such organisations.

3. Augmented Reality & Physical Driven Virtuality

From “Light by MooresCloud” & Philips Hue to Zappar & Aurasma the combination of smartphones, cheap cloud computing, and tagging technologies has created a massive opportunity for innovative ideas.

Start deconstructing platforms, e.g. put an Internet connected camera on your clothing, and image recognition can drive all sorts of applications. Like say, facial recognition that matches your Facebook friends, and tells you their name and latest status via a Bluetooth headset. Brilliant for conferences.

Also look not only at augmenting reality by putting a virtual item in your field of view, but look at physical driven virtuality, where the placement or telemetry of a physical object drives your online experience. Like say, where you are determining what music to play automatically: In the gym, play your gym play list, on the road in the morning, and play latest news podcasts.

4. Machine to Machine (M2M) – Automate Everything

This is still a burgeoning technology, and still very much in the enterprise domain. But there is a huge opportunity with affordable technologies for start-up businesses. Look at RFID, NFC, and IP controlled technologies here.

Note, very few of the ideas will be new. E.g. home automation is hardly new, but ubiquitous broadband, smartphone adoption, and integration of communications technologies into appliances will provide significant opportunities that were only in the domain of the geek until recently.

Systems to automatically order consumables or commodities. Systems to power down devices based on electricity consumption. Systems to water the garden depending on the weather.

5. Scaled Multimedia

The Khan Academy, and Udemy have proven the model. But there is still massive opportunities in online training and education. Think about everything you do each day, there are millions of opportunities to create training, or review, videos.

The opportunity here is to use the Cloud to scale this in untapped markets. From developing nations to organisations.

Hybrid models are available here too, think virtual training in a simulated environment, assessments, tours.

What Are You Waiting For?

This year will bring even more innovative technology (for my predictions, read tomorrow’s CTO post), more current technologies will become mainstream. This combined with the fall out of the GFC, pushing everyone on the planet to find ways to do more with less, provides the perfect storm of opportunity

"Do not seek to understand, just do. In the doing comes the understanding.”

Project 2012: Day 355

In his seminal work, the E-Myth, Michael Gerber presents an Entrepreneur as someone with 3 roles:

• Leader
• Manager
• Technician (producer)

I have a different take on that – an entrepreneur has to:

• Sell
• Market
• Raise capital
• Produce a product
• Partner

As well as lead and manage a team.

Whilst we all believe we can do many things well, the truth is we’re better at some things that others. In real terms that means you’ll partner, recruit, or outsource for your areas of weakness. Which is right. But my question is,

“What is your primary role as an entrepreneur?”

Or put another way:

“What wouldn’t you outsource?”

I reckon it’s “Sell”

If you’re not selling, if you’re not a salesman, you’re on a hiding to nothing. Get a day job, earn more, stress less.

What do you think?

Project 2012: Day 348

The start-up dance is a difficult one. You have an “original” idea, you identify the correct market, and you’re develop like crazy to launch. Then your investors want you to have a monopoly, which guarantees the highest return, as well as competition, which highlights a real demand.

Wtf….

It’s interesting to see the poster children of innovation at the moment – Apple, and Amazon. Both have created an entirely new market (Tablets, Cloud Computing). They spent years integrating advances in technology to innovate something that has fundamentally changed the way we do something.

But both of those organisations have something else in common too. They have served present markets, and some of them extremely competitive, for years. For years Apple had the smallest share of the PC and laptop market. For years Amazon sold books online against the big players of the world. In other words, they followed the money.

Do you think then that to successfully innovate anything you need to follow the money first?

What sort of business are you starting up?

Project 2012: Day 341

I listened to a great TED talk this week by Ernesto Sirolli, that talks about how you can actually help people. The concept is simple, forget about your “idea,” shut up, and listen to them.

I think this is arguably one of the differences between working for a large corporate, and a start-up. The line between success and failure as a start-up is so fine that you have to constantly listen to your customers (and partners and suppliers). Whereas once you have “presence” in a market there are too many layers of abstraction between your employees and customers, too many business processes that become set in stone. It actually becomes hard to listen.

It’s actually hard to listen in the first place. Harder to actually hear what people are saying, than what you want to hear.

Are you trying to sell your great idea? Or are you providing what people want to buy?

How do you listen to your customers?

Project 2012: Day 334

I remember sitting at the opening evening of the Mobile/Media Enterprise Growth Alliance (MEGA) program in 2009 listening to the 1st speaker. Some famous serial entrepreneur. He said something along the lines of: “It will take you twice as long to start earning, cost you twice as much, and if you manage to raise any money, that will be half of what you expect, let alone need.”

As per the personality profile of an entrepreneur I looked out at the rest of the class thinking, “Perhaps for them, but I'm smart, passionate, and committed.”

What I didn't take into consideration was that everyone in that room was smart, passionate, and committed. Most of them had other benefits too, like not having to support 4 daughters and pay a mortgage.

Pascale Helyar-Moray. Photo (c) 2012 Pascale Helyar-Moray

Also what I didn't take into consideration was that the challenges you face in a start-up are never the ones you expect.

Take Pascale, a friend of mine, and graduate of the 2011 MEGA class. She started Style Rocks back in 2011, and shared her biggest challenges in a recent newspaper interview. Listen to those challenges:

• Poor quality of a suppliers work
• Supplier changing minimum orders
• Time taken to engage the right suppliers
• Feedback from customers to implement a Gift Voucher Scheme
• Childcare

Of those challenges, there's only one that would've come up in any start-up training, mentoring, or incubation. The feedback from customers to enhance your offering. But the others are critical.

• Critical to quality, hence to customer satisfaction
• Critical to operational cost, hence cashflow
• Critical to agility, hence runway, cashflow, and customer satisfaction
• Critical to your ability to focus on the business

What challenges have you faced that you couldn't analyse in a spreadsheet, or plan for?

Stylerocks is a great example of a home grown Aussie startup that is growing from strength to strength. Their product is top notch, and customer service second-to-none. Rather than focussing on profits, Pascale focusses on her customers.

The profits will come.

Posted from Rog42′s iPad with Blogsy

…then they should.

I had a Twitter conversation with a colleague who runs her own business. I’d recommended Shoeboxed to her to digitize her filing (not to mention automate her expenses) and her response was “have you seen how expensive Shoeboxed is?”

Yes. I’m a customer.

Frankly, $40, the classic monthly charge, is worth less than an hour of my time. But even if it was worth 4 hours of my time, automating my expenses (which feed directly into Saasu my accounts) easily gives me 4 hours back a month. By having my receipts scanned and catalogued, I was able to find an original receipt for a travel insurance claim, that replaced my $1800 camera.

Worth it.

In spades.

So are you holding onto something because you can do it, when that time could be better spent selling or servicing your clients?

Why?

Project 2012: Day 327

…isn’t!!

• Not if you want to wow
• Not if you want to learn
• Not if you want to really be different

Project 2012: Day  320

Project 2012: Day 313

I had to laugh. In the office yesterday one of the grads was asking the grad in my team how her website was coming on. Intrigued, I asked about the website (always interested in start-up ideas). “oh,” she said, “it’s a website where you can design jewellery.”

I pointed out that just such a web business already existed.

Quick as a wink, Kelly turned back to Chat and said: “That’s great, head over there and copy it, but do it better.”

There’s all sorts of lessons in this. From a website (or app) is not a business, to market segmentation, to the value of an idea. But what I want to draw out is that this is a valid approach.

Not only a valid approach, but one that heaps of entrepreneurs from Branson, to Zuckerberg, to Jobs, follow. Not the copying, far from it. But the entry into a busy market, rather than seeking an original idea.

Magazines, music stores, and airlines already abounded when Sir Richard started his versions (and Cola, Mobile Phones, Trains, Gyms). Similarly MySpace was a going concern before Facebook, personal computers before Apple, not to mention MP3 players, smartphones, and retail stores.

But each of these outlier entrepreneurs did something that disrupted the market. Perhaps it was a commercial innovation like Virgin did with pre-paid mobile phones rather than the standard lock-in contracts.

People copying your idea? Not a problem. Either they’ll provide good competition or they won’t find the secret sauce you have in execution.

What is MUCH harder is when you have that unique idea, that’s never been seen before. No competition to validate the market, no reference point for prospective customers to latch on to.

Galileo had it tough

So stop trying to find something brand new, just disrupt a current market. Do it better!

*Note: Don’t worry Pascale, Chat is nowhere near competing with StyleRocks

Project 2012: Day 306

I have a very good friend, and a number of industry friends (more than colleagues) who are involved in an interesting start-up called “Light by Moore’s Cloud.” The premise is an aesthetically designed, multi-colour light that you can control via the cloud. In essence, bringing intelligence to a technology that has remained unchanged for just over a century.

Check it out, it’s a great concept.

But what intrigues me is their funding model… …Crowd sourced pledges.

This is a fascinating new funding model for start-ups. Unlike other investors: VC, Angel, Partners/Co-Founders; there is no promise of equity of the ensuing company. Even government grants have onerous dilligence, reporting, and compliance requirements; and often have contractual obligations such as # employees, % business within jurisdiction, local partnerships etc.

So in essence crowd-funded pledges has to be the cheapest form of funding available. It’s all based on a promise. You promise a product, your potential customers promise a sale. No having to relinquish control or equity.

Then, if you generate enough interest, investors will take note and provide the capital necessary to take the business from idea to operational.

Down side

But what about the down side?

What about when you don’t raise enough pledges. The pledgers aren’t charged, your project is removed from Kickstarter. Now you have to raise funding, only it’s more difficult.

Where before your skill at pitching was the validation that influenced investors. Spreadsheeted speculation about a market, customers, and sales. Now you’re in a position where you’ve proved the market isn’t interested. No matter how good you thought your team, your idea, or the market was, the evidence shows otherwise.

There are other documented down sides to Kickstarter type funding when you get more than your ask as well. Inability to manufacture in time, or at scale etc.

When All is Said and Done

But at the end of the day, when all is said and done, if you’re successful at Kickstarter, wouldn’t you have been as successful without them? Isn’t this just a mediated approach to bootstrapping…

Personally, I don’t know.

I am intrigued though.

Project 2012: Day 299

I’ve seen a bunch of ways that start-ups wireframe their designs. From “Back of the Napkin” drawings, to Excel Spreadsheets, to Visio, to Powerpoint.

One of the better tools on the market is Balsamiq. It’s lightweight, inexpensive, and easy to use. The cloud version makes it easy to collaborate (although arguably no easier than any desktop tool combined with Dropbox) and the desktop version allows you to wireframe to your hearts content when you’re off the grid.

Clearly, I like Balsamiq. But how about you?