Category Archives: Start-Ups

Four Rules for Capturing Hearts and Minds

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I have sometimes been asked how a new web venture can grow itself from zero street credibility to a point where it can gain a place in consumer consciousness and secure a meaningful share of the marketplace. Here’s four approaches that we have taken at ideegeo as we grow iWantMyName into a global brand and attempt to differentiate our first product offering in an already mature and highly competitive market:

1. Cultivate a community of trust. Demonstrating industry knowledge,  showing moral and ethical leadership and delivering on product promises are fundamental keys to success.

2. Offer an exceptional user/customer/reader experience. Consumers have a lot of choice already. Why would you aim for mediocrity when you can have excellence?

3. Network. Connect in both the real world and online. Think – what can I learn from this person and how can I help them in return? What can our company do to help build communities?

4. Enjoy the journey. If you are looking toward the sky, you are more likely to find a rainbow. So find a project that you will enjoy doing.

If you follow these four rules and build a good team around such philosophies, you will have substantially improved your chances of success in going global. These are not the only rules of course, but it is a good starting point. Are there any other rules you would like to add?

 

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Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

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seedlingI can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve attended recently where I was involved in explaining the importance of having an entrepreneurial ecosystem within which to grow high value technology ventures. Unfortunately it can be hard work explaining why social capital is important when people are focused solely on linear metrics.

Recently I was inspired by a great success story that powerfully underlined my long held belief that building healthy communities and networks is an essential aspect of cultivating an entrepreneurial ecosystem. This is especially so in New Zealand where we are disadvantaged by our distance from the major consumer and capital markets of the world. But that disadvantage can be overcome by leveraging the creative boundaries where local networks overlap with those offshore.

Networks have  multiplier effects, as witnessed by the density of economic activity found in Silicon Valley. By building and maintaining social capital in our local technology sector we are establishing the pre-conditions for new economic life and the basis for small seedlings to grow into very large Kauri trees. But it takes time, 5 to 7 years for a good idea to develop into a viable business and then emerge as a high growth venture. Unfortunately this timeframe can be a problem for sponsoring organisations which rely on political support for their existence.

Investors in technology start-ups typically take a 5 to 10 year view of how much time will be required to launch, grow and then exit a high value business. But securing investment in the entrepreneurial ecosystem that underpins such ventures can be highly problematic because social capital is intangible and cannot be transacted. However, building the ecosystem is about making the pie bigger for everyone. Please consider supporting initiatives such as Unlimited Potential and Global Entrepreneurship Week if we come knocking at your door.

Innovate at the Point of Pain

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I get a lot of ideas across my desk and I’ve learnt the hard way that you need to question everything before offering to back someone else’s idea with your own reputation. One of the first questions I ask aspiring technology entrepreneurs is – what is the problem you are trying to solve?

This may seem like an obvious question but you would be surprised how many projects are launched on the basis of a good idea rather than upon a soundly researched market. It pays to question the market data as well because, after spending hundreds of hours on development, an enthusiastic technologist will do just about anything to justify their emotional investment in a product.

Many great ventures began as a personal point of pain for the founder. But the ones that survived were those that actually identified a mass market and then went on to execute well. A good idea on its own is not enough and the fact that there is “no competition” is not a selling point either. You need competitors for benchmarking and to validate that a market really exists.

For example at ideegeo we made a conscious decision to build a domain registrar site that rejected traditional norms of presentation because we observed that a lot of people really disliked having to grapple with poor navigation and invasive advertising found on other sites. Although the product caters for a design-centric niche user base, it turned out to be a winner because other companies approached us to help them improve their own offering.

Before you write a line of code or partition off your first protein molecule, ask yourself – where is the point of pain? What is the problem that you are trying to solve and are there a million other consumers out there who are suffering the same pain? If you can answer that question objectively and in the affirmative, you might just have a successful product on your hands.