Founder’s Dilemma: Dream vs. Reality in Entrepreneurial Ventures

奇群科技總經理宋牧奇

如何創造有市場價值的技術 ?What Technology?

What’s Technology?

Define Technologies• Merriam-Webster dictionary:

▫ The practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area

• The term is often used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics, rather than technology as a whole

• We limit the discussion to the consumer electronics, computer software or hardware, and internet technology

Technologies• Chinese Clone Phone Factory

“Obama have BlackBerry, I have BlockBerry”

What’s the Good Technology?

Define Good Technologies• Make it hard for others to reproduce (in the beginning)

▫ Pitfalls: You CANNOT just rely on technology!

• Considerations:▫ High Complexity▫ High Scalability▫ High Performance▫ Backward Compatibility▫ Differentiation

Technologies• Chinese Clone Phone Factory

▫ Complexity Assembling…basically NO complexity

▫ Scalability Linear, depend on number of

assembly lines and employees▫ Performance

Lots of incomplete functionalities Unstable

▫ Compatibility Not bad, since there’s lots of standards

▫ Differentiation YES, WE CAN! Competitive Pricing from low cost solution

Technologies• Digital Picture Frame Design House

▫ Complexity Low to Medium

▫ Scalability Leverage on manufacturing partner

▫ Performance Limited functionalities

▫ Compatibility Photo formats are standardized

▫ Differentiation Very competitive (now)

What’s the Good & Valuable Technology?

What makes a valuable technology?• Real problem with feasible solution

• User demand

• Timing and marketing (Strategy) does matter

• Execution is everything!

Great Technology• Google Search Engine

▫ Complexity High

PageRank: Larry’s PhD dissertation

▫ Scalability Distributed architecture makes it scale pretty well

More machines for more loads Lots of Google products are built based on the same

infrastructure

Great Technology• Google Search Engine

▫ Performance Google serves avg. 299.8M queries per day (in 2009/05)

3470 queries/second!▫ Backward Compatibility

There’s basically no such thing before Google was born “Google Search” as a standard First mover advantage

▫ Medium to High Cost System is built by low-end commodity hardware Power issue and bandwidth cost

Where are They?

How to Find the Next?• Listen to the customer,

listen to the market, and finally listen to the changes in technology, then you could probably predict the trend

• Try to find the blue ocean ▫ and make profit before it turns into red ocean someday

• Try to solve a hard problem instead of an easy one

• Technology changes very fast, be prepare to keep up with the pace!▫ Do your homework everyday

Dream vs. RealityWelcome to the Real World!

Real-world Challenges• Real-world Timing

▫ Technology developments, especially great ones, take some time to get mature and harvest

▫ The corresponding market also takes some time to accept new technologies

▫ The user might need to be trained and educated, even before your technologies are in place

Real-world Challenges• Real-world effectiveness of technology barrier

▫ It could be just a small barrier – could be ineffective!

▫ Patent is extremely important for high-tech start-ups But not every patent is created equal… Get an experience consultant!

▫ Evolve your technology over time

Final Words• Good to have, NOT must to have in order to succeed

▫ Find your core competence

• When you have one, be sure to make an detailed and extensive study and analysis▫ Determine Problem▫ Market/Demand▫ Competitors/Alternatives▫ SWOT

Final Words

The best way to predict the future is to invent it!

What can be imaged can be achieved!