When to Raise VC

Great insights from one of the guys behind meebo.com.

Folks are fond of saying that VCs have so much money they need to invest that they’re just giving money away. This really isn’t what’s going on. It’s true that VCs have pretty sizable amounts of cash to invest in promising startups, but the result is that they’re very careful with their time. They want to believe that your company is really exciting, can become a big business, and that it’s therefore something they’d like to spend their time on.

Read more of this entry from the meebo blog.

Designing the Entrepreneurship Course

Note: Starting today, I will recommend the use of “Entrepreneurship” in place of “Technopreneurship” for a number of reasons. First is that I’ve come to realize that they are one and the same. Second is that there is a tendency for some individuals, especially the techie types (that includes me), to focus too much on the technology side and forget about the entrepreneurial aspects when the word “technopreneurship” is used.

First off, I need to acknowledge that an elective course on entrepreneurship (currently labeled technopreneurship) has been designed and integrated within computer science and I.T.(?) programs across a number of universities in Davao City. I’d like to clarify that this post is not intended as a criticism of those courses: I haven’t seen the design of those courses as of yet. Rather, I’d like to offer this post as a contribution as well as a means to start a discussion with the relevant individuals responsible for implementing this course.I’ll start by discussing some ideas that have been floating in my head since early last year.

Unique Principles of Technopreneurship

Over the past few months I have learned and collected a list of principles that make technopreneurship unique from entrepreneurship. Here is that list:

1. Nothing to see here.

I have learned that there are no special principles that make technopreneurship unique from entrepreneurship: Both regard innovation critical in remaining competitive in the marketplace, both regard management important to staying in control, and both view profitability as an important constraint that must always be satisfied lest the firm fall into oblivion.

The parameters of both technopreneurship and entrepreneurship are the same and the way I see it is that the term “technopreneurship” is redundant if not misleading (some people tend to only see the “technology” part and forget about the “entrepreneurship” part when the word technopreneurship is used). If a community wants to step up its technopreneurial know-how, what it needs to do first and foremost is learn and master the principles of entrepreneurship.

Recommended Reads:

• Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter F. Drucker
• The Essential Drucker (A compilation of Drucker’s work. Includes chapters from Innovation and Entrepreneurship)

On Customer Complaints

A dissatisfied customer who doesn’t complain won’t be a customer for long.

Think about it. What is the underlying reason behind customer complaints? Is it because the customer just wants to lash at you one last time before she goes to the competition? I doubt if that’s even true 1/3 of the time. If the customer can go straight to your competitor, what does she care about you? She’s not being paid to help you improve your product!

Remember, she’s the one paying you with the expectation that you’ll deliver as promised. When your customer complains, whether politely or with a vengeance, it’s usually because, at the back of her head, she expects to come back at least one more time in the future to purchase your product. Treat her with respect and, if possible, engage in a healthy communication process with her to learn about how you can improve your product offering. It’s the least you can do.

Uses and Caveats of Technology Roadmapping

This is part 3 of my first look in technology roadmapping. Part 1 and 2 are here and here respectively.

As mentioned earlier, technology roadmapping is not limited to a single product. Phaal et al. (2004) identified eight different types of roadmaps which may be used for different purposes. These eight types will not be discussed here and only a subset will be briefly described.

The Technology Roadmapping Process

For a brief introduction on technology roadmapping, see my earlier post.

While understanding the basic parts of a roadmap is important, it is just as critical to understand the process that produces such a roadmap. To elaborate on the technology roadmapping process, we refer to Bray and Garcia (1997) who depict the activity as being comprised of three phases: Preliminary Activity, Development of the Technology Roadmap, and Follow-up Activity.

A First Look at Technology Roadmapping

Technology roadmapping is an organisational process designed to align business objectives with available or yet-to-be available technologies. Bray and Garcia (1997) describe it as “a way to identify, evaluate and select technology alternatives that can be used to satisfy the need [of the market].” It is also a tool that should be used in the context of an organisation’s strategic planning process. Strategic planning involves asking (and answering) the following four questions: “where are we now?”, “where do we want to go?”, “how do we get there?” and “how do we know we are getting?”. Technology roadmapping is used in conjunction with other tools to help answer the question of how the firm will get to where it wants to go. Groenveld (1997) and Phaal et al. (2004) provide schematic diagrams of a technology roadmap which have been adapted and depicted below.

A Focus on the Incubatee

Key Points

• An incubatee must balance short and long term responses to new technical and market opportunities;
• Incubatees must be encouraged to use control systems within their operations at the early stages; and
• Interaction among incubatees is vital.

Strategic Planning (part 2)

This is part 2 of a four-part series on strategic planning. Part 1 is here.

For this part, we will concern ourselves with the second question: where do we want to go? It is in this part where the firm formulates (if it hasn’t done so previously) or re-formulates (as needed) its hierarchy of objectives. This hierarchy of objectives is composed of the following in decreasing scope and time span:

The double-headed arrows between the vision, mission, and goals represent a two-way relationship. From top to bottom, the vision serves as a guide for the mission and, in turn, the mission serves as a guide for the goals. That is, there needs to be alignment in the three. From the bottom up, achievement of each goal contributes to the achievement of the mission. Likewise, the achievement of each area of the mission contributes to the achievement of the corporate vision.

On Teaching Entrepreneurship

“…being an entrepreneur is not a personality characteristic, it is a learned skill…An entrepreneur doesn’t seek risk; he or she tries to minimize risk…it’s actually about managing uncertainty. What is teachable is how, given your character, you can live in an entrepreneurial way–as opposed to changing your character.”

–Prof. P. W. Marshall. Entrepreneurship: It Can Be Taught.
Harvard Business School New Business. Winter 2002.

 

“We don’t urge our students to ‘just do it.’ We spend a lot of time telling them to get to know an industry, get to be known in an industry, develop your skills, develop your contact base.”

–Prof. H. Stevenson. Entrepreneurship: It Can Be Taught.
Harvard Business School New Business. Winter 2002.