Category: product-market fit
July 21, 2017 World Economic Forum : A computer was asked to predict which start-ups would be successful. The results were astonishing
- Augmented reality will be far more significant than virtual reality because it will shape the way we look at and interact with the world around us.
- Image recognition and mapping technologies will be deployed across the auto industry as traditional car manufacturers adapt to self-driving vehicles.
- The problems associated with online security and fraud detection will continue to deepen, with major implications for government and enterprises, and mobile and e-commerce.
- The digitization of education is happening via practical applications that integrate into the existing system, including teaching and training applications as well as gaming.
- Drones are gaining adoption in commercial environments and companies at the forefront will be well placed to expand into consumer applications in the future.
- The smart home is developing through a range of affordable consumer products including lightbulb speakers, smart lighting, flexible security sensors and garden sensors.
- As computing becomes more closely integrated into the human experience, new applications of smart sensors are possible, including sweat analysis, earbuds, eye authentication and holograms.
- There continue to be major market opportunities in e-commerce as fashion becomes increasingly mobile and social.
- Artificial intelligence is supporting greater efficiency in knowledge work, which involves handling data or information, including bots and within sales and marketing.
- Space technology continues to advance in areas such as space satellite propulsion and mining.
CATEGORY: product-market fit, VC
June 1, 2017 Bryce Roberts via Medium : Real Businesses
I assure you there are founders out raising money right now in the hopes of building a business so they can flip it, make millions, and fund their own comfortable “post financial” lifestyle. Of course, they would never frame it that way; so let’s be clear, if your pitch deck has an “exit strategy” slide you are pitching a lifestyle business. (read more…)
CATEGORY: bootstrap, product-market fit, profitability, resilience
May 16, 2017 Tech Crunch : There’s no shame in a $100M startup
Ideas that look like billion-dollar businesses at the seed stage can run into unexpected barriers. For modestly funded startups, these mistakes don’t need to be fatal. Unfortunately, most VCs are sized such that they can only succeed if they have several companies in their portfolio exit for more than a billion dollars. So VCs overfund startups with decent but uninspired progress, which cuts off realistic and enriching exit opportunities. (read more…)
CATEGORY: product-market fit, valuation, VC
December 1, 2014 Small Business Economics : Who Become Serial and Portfolio Entrepreneurs?
“Serial entrepreneurs” run multiple businesses in sequence while “portfolio entrepreneurs” run multiple businesses in parallel; they differ from “novice entrepreneurs” who have so far operated only one venture. The present paper is the first to model occupational choices between all three entrepreneurial types: It goes on to discuss its theoretical predictions in the light of independent evidence about serial and portfolio entrepreneurship from the extant literature. (read more…)
CATEGORY: leadership, product-market fit
July 21, 2014 Andreessen Horowitz : 12 Things I Learned From Marc Andreessen
#1 “The key characteristic of venture capital is that returns are a power-law distribution. So, the basic math component is that there are about 4,000 startups a year that are founded in the technology industry which would like to raise venture capital and we can invest in about 20.” “We see about 3,000 inbound referred opportunities per year we narrow that down to a couple hundred that are taken particularly seriously… There are about 200 of these startups a year that are fundable by top VCs. … about 15 of those will generate 95% of all the economic returns … even the top VCs write off half their deals.” #10 “There’s a new generation of entrepreneurs in the Valley who have arrived since 2000, after the dotcom bust. They’re completely fearless.”… “Founders today are very technical, very product centric, and they are building great technology and they just don’t have a clue about sales and marketing…it’s almost like they have an aversion to learning about it.” “Many entrepreneurs who build great products simply don’t have a good distribution strategy. Even worse is when they insist that they don’t need one, or call no distribution strategy a ‘viral marketing strategy’ … a16z is a sucker for people who have sales and marketing figured out.” (read more…)
CATEGORY: leadership, product-market fit, VC