Socrates Greek Philosopher Socrates and young man walking

Socrates – Greek Philosopher

Socrates and young man walking towards the river

Socrates ducked him into water and boy is struggling to get out. But he kept him in water till be turned blue

Young man gasp and takes a deep breath of Air

Socrates – what did you want the most when you where there? Boy – “Air” Socrates – that is the secret to success. “When you want success as badly as you wanted air, then only you will get it”

There is no other secret. A burning desire is the starting point of all accomplishment. Just like a small fire cannot give much heat, a weak desire cannot produce great results.

Building success into a high-tech start-up – John T. Preston

How one organize a start-up company is more important than the product in determining the success or failure Attitude Management Teams Passionate Behavior Investors Investment Timing Securing patents

Attitude James Utterback, his friend from MIT was looking for radical innovation taken place in past 100 years And found no case in which market leader pioneered radical innovation thinking that it would cannibalize there existing products Eg: Software program 1 -2 -3 designed by Mitch Kapor, a student and offered to IBM but they missed the opportunity & Paid 15000 times more Eg: William Orton rejected an offer to buy Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patent for $100, 000 and described the invention as a “scientific curiosity” that would never have practical use.

Management Teams Entrepreneurial behavior succeeds more often when performed by teams of complementary skills A 30 year study found success increases dramatically with team size 4 -5 entrepreneur founding the company He observed that first-rate managers hire first- rate team but second-rate managers hire third-rate

Passionate Behavior Passionate people overcome barrier One key difference between Japan or European is that US company are much generous in giving stock options to their employee ie it gives sense of ownership Eg: Southwest Airlines – pilot, copilot & flight attendant clean the plane as they don’t want to waste money by hiring cleaning crew. Eg: Sanjeev Bikhchandani, CEO of Naukri. com gave 5% to his brother while he wanted to buy server, 7% to programmer to develop a web-site and 9% to his friend for working with him

Investors Key determents: 1. The quality of investors and the pace at which money flows 2. Venture capitalists and whether they can provide adequate access to more money downstream.

Investment timing

- A curve shows strategy of putting a small amount of money into company over long time and hoping it goes positive [ radical innovation ] 2 problem 1. Management spends time raising money instead of building money 2. A wide window of opportunity is opened for competitors - B curve enter and capture the market [ incremental innovation ]

Thank You !!