IT@IE adds new feature!

In a desperate attempt to capture more attention from the online community, IT@IE has created a new feature that allows the readers of this blog to interact in an innovative and unique way with the author.

Arguably, I could also say that this new feature is part of the healthy experimentation that goes on when launching a new tech start up.

Now you can ask me a question (any question) by simply clicking on this link or on the one you can see on your right below the headline NEW FEATURE!!!!

So what are you waiting for? Ask me a question!

DO IT! DO IT!

on PR, international growth and uninspired outdated copycat ideas

Our MBA elective "Managing the Tech Start Up" proceed last week with 3 more sessions designed to help us get us som insights about launching and managing our own tech venture.

We had Iñaki Arrola, from coches.com, Gabriel Echevaria, from Chiquissimo and Jesus Encinar, virtual real estate local celebrity and founder of idealista.com and Alberto Torron, virtually unknown e-bay supplier that eventually opened up a series of specialized websites like todotaladros reaching 1,000 customers (yes, an ode to "(very) small is (or can also be) beautiful").

The sessions varied in degree of interest mostly depending on the eloquence of our guest speaker, but content wise they were, as always, quite enriching.

Naturally, my key take aways are essentially the ones I thoroughly look for to confirm the emotional decision that I already took that "my" idea for a venture has all the ingredients of the Next Tech Big Thing. Here they are:

1. unispired outdated and not necessarily exciting copy cats of already existing ideas have as much chance of succeeding as any other. It's all about the execution. For example, when Jesus Encinar decided to launch himself in the real estate online classifieds there were roughly 28 sites already in existence. In Spain only. I don't need to remind you that Facebook came way late to the social network arena, right?

2. when you go online, the interface is key. So maybe there are 20 guys doing the same as you do on the web. So what? Each person has as much patience to spend time figuring out his/her way around a website as they have for "amazing" telecom offer cold calls at dinner time.

It's not the functionality, it's the user experience!

Get the usability right and they will choose you. My favourite example of this are google.com and apple products. 10 years ago going to google.com and yahoo.com yielded completely different user experiences. I mean, the yahoo.com page is still so crowded that I really don't want to go there, it makes me dizzy! And remember the press conference of Steve Jobs when he  launched the 1st i-phone? He said something like "this gadget will revolutionize your life because now you have a phone, email and web browser all in one place". Daaaa!.... as if blackberries didn't exist at the time! Again, it's not the functionality, it's the user experience!

On this matter, one extra piece of reflection I would like to share: have a look now at yahoo.com, google.com and bing.com. Done? Isn't it funny how yahoo is still horrible, google is still simple and clean and bing is still faithful to Microsoft's (highly successful) business model of "copy the best but no less than 5 years later"?

3. Forget advertising, go to PR instead. No start up has advertising budget and placing ads is the "investment" with (one of) the most uncertain returns you can possibly make. So work your way up the brand awareness levels through careful PR. Suggested steps: 1) get your act together, make sure you have something decent going; 2) start a dialogue with influential bloggers in your field. here is a good tip of how to do it right (thx for the tweet, guerson); 3) pray that they like you and talk about you; 4) start reaping the rewards as mainstream media starts to talk about you

Incidently, since we are talking about PR and brand awareness... I am appalled at the pathetic traffic this blog of mine is generating.

I mean, I know that it may not be the most interesting thing but given the ratings below, and assuming that google analytics and statcounter are not purposefully sabotaging the results, not even my family seems to be following this blog and if it wasn't for the pity of my good friend Karan that seems to be the source of  60% of my traffic no one would read..., pardon, open these pages!

I will have to do something about it! Keep watching...

hjk

a conversation about money

The second chapter of my "Next Tech Big Thing" journey proceeded with a highly entertaining and rather enlightening session with Jorge Mata, former management consultant and MBA graduate that degenerated to serial entrepreneur with a very big ego.

Jorge's conversation started off exactly with this word: ego. Entrepreneurs, Jorge claimed, are first and foremost looking to fulfill their egos. Think about it: you are sitting around somewhere fantasizing about some product or service and imagining how this thing will once change the world and/or make you filthy rich. I mean, how big of an ego must you have to dare think you can do that?

And with this start I could relate to Jorge instantly and was eager for more!

I will spare you in this post a long list of quotes and minutes of minutes type bullet point (you can check those up in the this twitter account) but instead I will focus on the two key aspects that I took from Jorge's presentation and that it is so critical for my TV ME, my "Next Tech Big Thing".

#1
"A tech start up is not about technology, it is about the process". Jorge means, forget the techy stuff, what pain are you solving? Then choose the technology. THIS IS GREAT!!, because, as I mentioned in my previous post, I do not own any technology nor own any of the tech skills required to fulfill my vision. But this is all secondary because I have The Pain!

I mean, did you have a look at the twitter account link above? With the pseudo web cast of what happened in the session? If not, go now and ask yourself: did you get anything? Did you find it engaging? Who wants to follow text tweets in the video era??!!!!

#2
"Founder's money is not a good idea because the founder's role is to fulfill the vision; the VC role is to diversify the business. If the founder puts too much money in the venture he will turn it into a pizza delivery service if he has to". THIS IS EVEN GREATER, because, as you might suspect from a soon to be MBA graduate, I am pretty much broke.

So I don't have the TECHNOLOGY and I don't have the MONEY but I do have the PAIN and one thing I can start right now is to leverage some of the existing technology to explore different ways to solve this pain.

So stay tuned to this blog to watch the Next Tech Big Thing unfold right in front of your eyes!...

The Idea

This post is about that fascinating period in a start up called "the inception of the idea". It's a long post so as a public service to this blog's readers I shall make a quick summary of the topics addressed:
1. the origins of the idea
2. the mental masturbations about the idea
3. disappointment #1: someone else already thought about it
4. reinventing the concept
5. disappointment #2: I don't have what it takes to make it happen
6. cry for help (and a shoulder to shed tears on...)

Here it goes then.

Once upon a time (not quite a long long time ago nor in a galaxy far away but almost feels like it) I had an idea: what if we developed a service that allowed each person to broadcast live their life on the web 24/7? What if we give miniature cameras with mics that would be hidden in spectacles or necklaces and they could broadcast and record every second of their lives to forever remember?

It sounds a bit crazy and in fact it is. This idea, which by the way is not really exclusively mine, was developed together with a small group of MBA colleagues during a quite extraordinary workshop led by the consulting firm Fjord. During this workshop we were asked to explore different (futuristic?) realities and design a product/service that fit that world. We had one restriction: it had to be something possible to create with current technology. 

"Our world" was not a nice one: it was a world where economic collapse had been followed by the complete disaggregation of community values giving rise to an "Orwellian" style autocracy. Suddenly "TV ME", as we called it, starts to make a little more sense, doesn't it?

After the workshop we kept on discussing this idea for a while and thought that, with some adaptations, it might actually be a good idea for our world of the present. People have been sharing on social networks much more than we thought they would ever want to. So why not live videos of moments of their lives? 

For a couple of weeks we enthusiastically fantasized about zillions of features and applications as well as the issues that would likely occur (wife to husband: "honey, your camera was offline all day today. what do you have to hide from me?"; husband:"rsssffssffsssrr...."). The more we talked and thought about it the more interesting it sounded. And in the secrecy and privacy of my head I dared dreaming about forever changing the world with the TV ME service...

Then I made some research and found some geek had published an online article on April 2007 comparing the relative merits and demerits of 6 providers of video live streaming over the web. Ouch! Not only the idea was not innovative, it had already been implemented 4 years ago by at least six guys. 

A quick chat with our section tech geek Guerson (aka Jersson) yielded yet another punch in the stomach: "yes, it's interesting it already exists. I think we can do this with my Justin TV account, let's try". 45 seconds later our conversation was being broadcast - live - on the web from his i-phone. 

And as we looked at ourselves in the big screen of our classroom (live via the web!...) I thought "that does it, I'm ditching TV ME!".

However, as anyone who as had a "brilliant idea" before and that has fallen in love with it knows, it is not so easy to let it go. A few weeks later I had convinced myself that it was not important how many ideas you have but rather how you make them happen. After all, facebook was not the first social network and, as I learned from my consulting days, implementation is key. So I went back to thinking it was a good idea.

I partnered with a colleague and talked to an entrepreneurship teacher about it. Everyone we talked to seemed to have an interesting perspective and encouraged to go ahead to at least refine the concept and make a plan around it.

The partnership did not last long for irrelevant reasons but my enthusiasm started to fade anyway as I realized that I did not have around me the skills necessary take it forward. Specifically, I needed to find a tech guy that  could drive the technical aspects of the service and at IE this person did not exist.

And so the whole thing faded away again....

It's now 10 months gone since the first time the idea popped up and, as anyone who as had a "brilliant idea" before and that has fallen in love with it knows, it is not so easy to let go.

And just a few days ago Julio Alonso from weblogs, SL came over to one of our classes and shared his experience about starting his own internet start up. Weblogs, SL is, very simply put, a creator/manager/agglomerator/monetizor of blogs. They started off small in 2005 and now they are the main blog publisher in spanish languages with reference blogs on gadgets, on cars, on fashion,... 

One question I have for Julio is: back in 2005 when you first started, how many "weblogs" existed in Spain and in the world? And how many blogs existed about gadgets? I suppose currently the number is much larger but is the number of competitors something that takes your sleep at night? Is the number of competitors at all relevant?

I know that was already 4 questions and not only 1 but I will push it a little further and ask you another: in your speech you mentioned that at some point you were not a merely a "content provider" and that technology was actually an important part of your business. Where and how did you gather the technical capabilities for Weblogs?

I cannot resist finishing off with a video about ideas and making them happen. It is an old advertising campaign from a mainstream consulting company but it is a very good one! 

IT@IE Revamped: a brand new sociological experience

In its current form, IT@IE Revamped is a demand from one of our teachers at IE Business School.

As our "Managing the tech start up" teacher, freeky Enrique has selected a list of guest speakers, all tech entrepreneurs, which in the upcoming 5 weeks will share their experiences in a variety of start up topics: from idea generation, to getting exposure, financing, making key technological decisions, growing pains,... Our task: blog about it and engage the guest speakers with clever MBA like questions.

That can be pretty boring, so I will do here something slightly different: I will be blogging about my own tech start up which has its day 1 today (16th March 2011) and by the end of the course (15th April 2011) will have become the next tech big thing!

Skeptical? Well, I don't blame you but I tell you what: Sean Parker in a recent interview with the FT claimed that the Napster story had plenty of "sex, drugs and rock&roll".

And I promise I will not hold back anything!

Now, go browse some of the other posts.

Insight #1 - how to boost innovation in your company... at 0 cost!

Life is full of surprises.

About 10 years ago, my very young wife had the opinion that the employees of Accenture belong to one of two groups: the tech geeks and the boring nerds. Little could she guess that one day she would be married to one of those and that she would actually work there. And be happy with both, at least so I'm lead to believe...

Something equally mysterious happened to me when I realized that last Thursday's top MBA insight came from such an unsuspected subject as Cost Accounting. I mean, what interesting learning could possibly come from any subject  that has the word "accounting" in it? Well get ready, because it is actually quite simply and rather ingenious.

In the last class we were roaming about cost allocation, specifically about how overhead costs (say rent, electricity, corporate jets,...) could be allocated to specific products. One very simple way could be to divide the cost equally among all the products. So if the overhead is, say €1M and the company produces 500K of products then we would allocate 2€ overhead for each product that goes out of the factory.

You can easily reach the conclusion that this division is not really fair because maybe the company, for example General Electric, produces both large scale industrial equipments and toasters and the proportion of overhead used in the production of each is different. When this is the case how should the allocation be carried out?

There are various methods but the innovation focus enterprise will choose to allocate overhead costs based on the man hours required to produce the product. And this simple decision is likely to do more for innovation and efficiency than any clever idea put on powerpoint by some hot shot consultant. To see how, follow the role play described ahead.

"role play"

You have just been promoted to product manager of toasters in General Electric with P&L responsibility. As you review the profitability numbers of toasters you realize that they are much worse than your coffee machine pal Joe, the product manager for large scale industrial equipments. You quickly realize that the reason for that is that each of your 20€ toasters get 10€ of overhead costs the same as Joe's €1M large scale industrial equipment. This is because Joe's highly efficient and automated process uses the same labour hours as your manual intensive toaster production process. Hence, the same overhead allocation.

Naturally, your first reaction is to summon up a long list of very rational arguments about why Joe's big machine should take more overhead than your small toaster and you present them to Jack Welch on the first opportunity.

As Jack tells you "tough luck bro, just eat it!" you realize that the only way you can improve your numbers and collect the hefty bonus at the end of the year is to make your process more automated and efficient. So you go back to your corner office and start working on innovation!

end of "role play"


I leave you with some food for thought: if the European politicians had attended Luis Fernandez-Revuelta Perez's cost accounting course at IE, would budget deficits be as high as they are?

IT@IE is dead! Long live IT@IE!!

Dear readers,

Long time since the last post. I have not forgotten about this blog nor the 7 of you that read me. There is a reason for the absence.

This blog was created for the Information Systems class of my MBA. It was used for the IT assignements plus occasionally for some other stuff that did not mention IT at all.

However, having finished the course I went into a reflection mode about what could I use this space for. Several thoughts crossed my mind but it was only after reading my friend and "illogical" classmate writing about his impressions of out first term that I decided what I wanted to do: 3 daily paragraphs about interesting insights from the MBA experience.

You see, amidst the many boring sessions and the more than expected stream of pointless interventions, there is not one day that goes by without me adding at least one more good insight worth remembering. And after 1 year that will make around 365 new and original take aways.

Therefore, IT@IE is now officially reborn as the repository of thoughts and "ah-as" of a journey in the business school wonderworld instead of the reflections on the virtual wonderworld.

IT@IE is dead. Long live IT@IE!