I love the phrase "unfair advantage." Peter Crouch is a striker at Liverpool who towers over defenders and so gets more than his fair share of headers. I always look for the same thing in startups (and I don't mean tall people). Read on for more about the different types of advantages and how you can develop some for your technology company.   more »

I think this should be the motto for entrepreneurs and those involved in startups...

It is not the critic who counts,
nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
I think this should be the motto for entrepreneurs...
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly;
who errs and comes short again and again;
who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those timid souls
who know neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

How many prototypes did James Dyson make of his cyclonic vacuum cleaner before he succeeded? Scarily the answer is Five thousand!!   more »

I was in a strange conversation today. Someone was asking about UK broadband opportunities and I told them it's a blood bath. It really is horrific with free broadband offers appearing (if anything is ever truly free). So why are my business partners and I are so keen on broadband in Eastern Europe. Broadband is broadband right?

Well, the difference is the adoption curve. You probably know this already but there is a profile of sales over time that starts to build slowly, then accelerates before flattening out again. This s-curve is seen in many industries. Sometimes your product or service can re-juvenate itself by finding a new niche or set of users and a second s-curve builds on your original one. Tricky but good if you can do it.

In broadband, we can see in the UK that we have achieved near saturation and companies are being forced to givie it away 'free'. However, countries in Eastern Europe have very low penetration and so are only at the start of the s-curve explosion.

This doesn't make it easy but it does mean that you can learn from what has happened in other countries and use strategies that have worked.    more »

I get to work with a lot of new companies and corporate ventures and, you know what, they frequently have no clue about what a real customer wants. Cambridge (the UK one) is a great place for technology innovation but even the smartest people don't always understand about having a real market. They have the “Field of Dreams” view about customers - 'if I build it, they will come." However, this mistake isn't limited to startups - I worked with a European electronics multinational and I couldn’t believe their approach to innovation.

The division I worked with produced equipment for automating factories - essentially like computers with input and output connections to make machines work. Here were two classic conversations with them.

"Good news Richard - we have done a deal with M****** (identity masked to protect the innocent) and will be distributing their single board computer series. Our arrangement means we will have the same market price as them."

"Okay. What do you mean by market price?"

"Our list price is identical to their’s."

"Hang on," say I, "our normal customer gets a discount of 10% whereas M****** give a discount of 30% as standard. Our real market price to users or distributors is going to be significantly higher than their’s. In what way do you think that is market pricing?"

....silence....   more »

The most tired management story on the planet is how 3M came to make the Post-It pad. Remember - man uses not very sticky glue to put bits of paper in his hymm book and eventually has to ..... oh I can't even bear to repeat it.

For every great idea that someone 'games' through the barbed wire and trenches of internal barriers, there are thousands that die a slow death in cupboards and desks.   more »

Ten years ago, I had a discussion with a friend who was a serious rower. He's not Sir Steve Redgrave but understands what it takes to win. His assertion was that teams don't have to like each other to perform. In fact they can downright hate each other and still do the job. It was alleged that Eric Cantona would never pass to striker Andy Cole at Manchester United for example.

At the time I wasn't convinced that the sporting metaphor could translate to business. I'm certain now - he was wrong.

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When someone has to persuade you about why you need a service then you probably don't. Need is pain. When you have something that is really inconvenient in your life then you recognise a solution when someone shows it to you.

Sick of the shower burning your bum when someone flushes the toilet - you need the .......

Worried about losing your family photos from your laptop, then you need the ..........

If there is not a 'selfish benefit' to a company, one that you understand intrinsically, then you probably don't want to buy the product and I don't want to help it grow and succeed (because it won't).   more »

Here are the signs of how to spot if you are talking to a startup company that is doomed. Might be a bit harsh and an exageration but I bet I'm right almost all the time on this. Here is the first thing they say that should make you run out of the door screaming.   more »

Okay you've sold your idea to a big company for $1 a unit they fit it to..... and they make millions each year. Just before you start driving away in your Ferrari though, you realise they aren't building any units with your baby incorporated. What's worse, you can't get the idea back from them. You've been caught in the pay or play trap.   more »

One of the most interesting problems in a technology startup can be figuring out where to enter the value chain. This real example shows the thinking needed to maximise the return for your company.

An electronics company had a revolutionary component for mobile networks. Thinking traditionally - they would be sold to form part of an assembly made by another company that would be sold to a systems integrator who would deliver the network for a mobile operator.

The overall savings in a network rollout by using this product would be in the order of 100’s of millions of dollars – by allowing the removal or down-speccing of other systems.

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