Archive for October, 2011
October 31st, 2011
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“Real achievement comes from racing ahead when no one else sees a path–and holding back when the rush isn’t going where you want to go.”
Seth Godin in “Run Your Own Race“
More context
If you’re going to count on the competition to bring out your best work, you’ve surrendered control over your most important asset. Real achievement comes from racing ahead when no one else sees a path–and holding back when the rush isn’t going where you want to go.
If you’re dependent on competition then you’re counting on the quality of those that show up to determine how well you’ll do. Worse, you’ve signed up for a career of faux death matches as the only way to do your best work.
Self motivation is and always will be the most important form of motivation.
Seth Godin in “Run Your Own Race“
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“My inbox is like a sunken ship filled with gold. Yikes! Need to be better at getting things into my to do list.”
Chris Miller
I like this “sunken ship filled with gold” metaphor.
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“He who stops being better stops being good.”
Oliver Cromwell
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“Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all of the difference.”
Mignon McLaughlin
I originally used this in “Hello 2008” my inaugural post for 2008.
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“Find a Problem so Bad That People Pay You To Solve It and Let You Keep the Software”
Bill Paseman(paraphrased from his LinkedIn profile) see “Find a Problem So Bad that People Pay You to Solve It and Let You Keep the Software“)
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“In a world of hyper-abundant content, point of view will become the scarcest of resources…”
Paul Saffo “It’s the Context, Stupid“
Originally from a March 1994 Wired article “It’s the Context, Stupid“, more context:
It is not content but context that will matter most a decade or so from now. The scarce resource will not be stuff, but point of view. [...]
The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those who control the filtering, searching, and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the expanses of cyberspace. [...]
“Point of view” is that quintessentially human solution to information overload, an intuitive process of reducing things to an essential relevant and manageable minimum. Point of view is what successful media have trafficked in for centuries. Books are merely the congealed point of view of their authors, and we buy newspapers for the editorial point of view that shapes their content. We watch particular TV anchors for their point of view, and we take or ignore movie advice from our friends based on their point of view.
In a world of hyperabundant content, point of view will become the scarcest of resources, and we will race to model human points of view within the personalities of our software agents.
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“True remorse is never just regret over consequence; it is regret over motive.”
Mignon McLaughlin
I used this as my closing quote to “Learning from Netflix”
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“Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.”
Joseph Roux
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“The future isn’t measured by years or technology, but by how it disagrees with the past about what is and what is not important.”
Carlos Bueno “Steampunk, Progress, and You“
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“Ideas are easy to come by but reduction to practice is an arduous but inspirationally rewarding matter.”
Buckminster Fuller in “Critical Path“
In running this down I came across the “Fuller Map,” a great overview of Fuller’s work.
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“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”
Edwin Schlossberg
h/t Jim Flowers (@startwithmoxie)
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“Nothing ventured, something lost.”
Neale Clapp
I mentioned this in “Success for a Bootstrapper”
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“Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.”
Edwin Land
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“Entrepreneurs sell because they need to meet a payroll not a quota.”
Sean Murphy
My critique of Rain Today’s “Entrepreneurial Selling” course. I realized the third time that I heard someone mention “make your quota” in the promo videos I realized that this was not the entrepreneurial selling I was familiar with.
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“We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic.”
Cullen Hightower
October 30th, 2011
I watched the Grey Fox recently as was struck by two pieces of dialog. Richard Farnsworth plays Bill Miner, “the Grey Fox” a train robber and “gentleman bandit.”
When asked by another ex-convict to take up robbing banks instead of robbing trains he answers:
Bill Miner: “A professional always specializes.”
I first heard this line when the movie came out in 1982 and I took it to heart.
Later he decides to leave his sister’s house and start robbing trains again.
Sister: “But I thought things were going so well. You have work and a place with us. What will you do?
Miner: “I will head down Portland way and so some prospecting.”
Sister: “The Gold Rush is over Bill.”
Miner: “Seems like I missed out on all of the good opportunities.”
Sister: “Please stay.”
Miner: “I have realized something about myself. I have to act on it. I am just no good at work that’s planned by other heads. I’ve got ambitions in me that just won’t quit.”
This conversation reminded me of several I had with my father. He was independent in his own way, as was his father–and by all accounts his grandfather. He wasn’t against entrepreneurship, but he felt the legal profession would provide more security.
October 27th, 2011
We are starting our planning process for 2012 even as we scramble to finish everything still on the cooker for 2011. We have meetings scheduled with our partners to help us assess what we have learned from 2011 and arrive at a working consensus for 2011-13.
I welcome any suggestions for:
- How to improve this blog and related website.
- How to improve the Book Club for Business Impact.
- How to increase the impact of usefulness of the Bootstrapper Breakfasts for bootstrapping entrepreneurs.
- Other programs, talks, workshops you would like to see us offer.
I am very interested in any insights you care to share about key technologies and business trends likely to impact bootstrapping entrepreneurs in the next year or two. In particular in these areas:
- New models for global teams and multi-firm collaboration that are predicated on transparent incessant collaboration among experts.
- Perspective on the impact of communication and pervasive connectivity in creating new business models.
- Is video the new HTML? Will it be as ubiquitous and interactive as HTML within five to ten years.
If you interested in partnering on a joint project or initiative we are always happy to talk with other serious entrepreneurs. We do business with teams all over the world.
You can reach us at skmurphy@skmurphy.com / 408-252-9676 / or use the contact form
Details as they unfold.
October 26th, 2011
This originally appeared in EETimes on-line as “Eric Deal bounces back from a startup shutdown to establish Cyclic Design” on Dec-20-2010.
I met Eric Deal, president of
Cylic Design, through the
IEEE Consulting Network of Silicon Valley and was impressed by his energy and enthusiasm in bouncing back from one failed startup to begin a second one.
The ongoing recession is encouraging a number of engineers to be more entrepreneurial. I think entrepreneurial engineers will find Eric’s answers insightful. His approach to establishing Cyclic Design as a successful IP company had three key components:
- He built on his two decades of design expertise.
- He leveraged his knowledge of trends in the solid state drive (SSD) market.
- He reframed the problems the recession was causing his prospects as an opportunity he could focus on.
What follows is an edited transcript of our interaction with links added for context.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about your background
I graduated from Texas A&M University in 1992 with a BS in Electrical Engineering. Over the past 18 years, I have worked in digital logic design and architecture on a variety of projects at IBM, Conexant, and Sigmatel.
In 2008 I left Sigmatel to found an enterprise SSD startup called Multixtor as the VP of Hardware Engineering. In this role I defined, designed, and verified the hardware architecture for a multi-channel SSD. Unfortunately, we began fundraising about the time the market crashed, so in June 2009 we decided to pursue other options.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about what led you to found your company, what was the problem that motivated you?
In the middle of the recession, I didn’t see any interesting opportunities at local companies, so I took the opportunity to start my own business doing consulting. To differentiate myself (and keep myself busy since few companies were hiring contractors/consultants), I took my expertise with error correction and created BCH IP (the algorithm used for NAND flash) that I could license to companies in need of a solution.
When I left Sigmatel, they were left without an ECC expert. I wondered how many other companies would be in a similar position as layoffs and lack of investment in R&D during the recession; when designs started ramping up again as the economy recovered, they would be left with a deficiency in the ECC of their NAND flash controllers.
I also saw the transition in NAND flash correction block size as an opportunity. The companies I had worked for were designing large SOCs, where they typically had designed their NAND controllers as a highly-integrated portion of a larger IO controller. For these companies, buying a new NAND controller was not a good option since it would require discarding their legacy hardware design and software drivers. It seemed that these customers would benefit most from simply integrating ECC IP into their controllers, preserving this investment.
Q: How did you get started?
I started networking with companies in Austin to determine if I could address this disconnect in the NAND market with a service. My goal was to determine if firms would value ECC as a consulting service. If they did, my plan was to offer a faster time to solution by building on a flexible ECC IP platform. I found my first customer at NXP for their SOC applications. I also promoted Cyclic Design online and became a Design & Reuse partner to improve visibility outside of Austin.
Q: Can you give me a brief overview of where the company is today?
There were a few bleak periods, but now Cyclic Design is to the point where we have a few customers and a few more on the way, and it’s getting easier to find and close new business. As a small company, we can provide a high level of service to customers and have the ability to customize the IP in order to better fit their needs. Cyclic Design has also expanded IP offerings to support higher ECC levels for MLC flash as well as providing a solution for SLC devices as customers transition from single-bit Hamming codes to BCH algorithms requiring 4-12 bit correction.
Q: What are the two or three things that you have been able to accomplish that you take the most pride in or satisfaction from?
As a designer, it is satisfying to see Cyclic Design’s IP used in a wide variety of applications across the market. It is also pretty incredible to think that with easy access to global communications, Cyclic Design is providing solutions for companies all over the world.
Q: What has been the biggest surprise? What was one key assumption you made, perhaps even unconsciously, that has caused the most grief?
Probably the biggest surprise is how hard it is to get potential customers from first contact through licensing. Having a solution that meets an engineering need doesn’t necessarily turn into a successful business relationship.
Q: What development, event, or new understanding since you started has had the most impact on your original plan? How has your plan changed in response?
Over time we learned that our initial ideas about customer demand was a little off, but we were able to learn and adapt our offerings. Now we believe we’ve gotten a better understanding of what most of the customers need, and we have a pretty good handle on what product offerings to do next.
Q: Any other remarks or suggestions for entrepreneurs?
You have to find something you love doing; otherwise, it is really hard to make it through the down times with little to no income or when a client changes direction and decides not to use your product or services. Also, before starting a venture, you need to know how long you can afford (financially) to stick with it before moving to something else; in this respect, a good financial adviser is a great asset.
Q: Thank you for your time.
October 25th, 2011
Our “Book Club For Business Impact” promises actionable insights for entrepreneurs and change agents, drawn from the panelist’s experience and informed by the book’s content.
Dave Stubenvoll, CEO of Wowza Media, joins the discussion of Amar Bhide‘s “Origin and Evolution of New Business” this Wednesday October 26 at Noon PDT. Click http://skmbhide111026.eventbrite.com/?discount=WowzaMedia
to attend at no charge.
A co-founder of Wowza Media Systems, Stubenvoll has over 23 years of experience in enterprise and consumer products and services. Prior to Wowza, the fifth new business he has developed, Stubenvoll served as an Entrepreneur in Residence/Senior Director at Adobe Systems and previously managed mergers and acquisitions. Stubenvoll has also held senior management positions at Intuit, and was President of GALT Technologies (an Intuit subsidiary) and was a co-founder and CEO of Freeworks. Stubenvoll, who holds two patents, earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University, his JD from Boston College and an MBA from the Carnegie Mellon Graduate School of Industrial Administration.
We interviewed Dave Stubenvoll in 2008 where he highlighted the impact of “Origin and Evolution” on his startup planning process: “Founder Story Dave Stubenvoll of Wowza Media“ What follows is an outline for the discussion, including key excerpts from the book and some prepared questions for Dave. The audience is free to ask their own questions at any time as well.
Key Take Aways We Expect The Audience to Gain from this Roundtable Discussion
- Understand How to Probe / Explore
- Uncertain and Ambiguous Opportunities
- Emerging Markets
- By Taking Risks That Are
- Large Enough to Allow You To Learn
- Small Enough You Can Afford to Lose
Background: Key Diagram from book: “Irreducible Uncertainty, Investment, Expected Profitability”
Amar Bhide on the “Entrepreneur’s Irreducible Uncertainty”
“Entrepreneurs who undertake uncertain initiatives face a wide spread between desirable and undesirable outcomes, but they cannot quantify the odds they face or even fully anticipate the possible results. The uncertainty is irreducible to the degree it cannot be resolved without undertaking the initiative by prior testing and research.”
Questions for Dave Stubenvoll: How did you assess the risk in starting Wowza Media? What did you do to mitigate it?
Amar Bhide on Niche Markets
“Serving niche markets not only allows entrepreneurs to start a business with limited funds, it also limits the competition they face from well capitalized entities…
Therefore, the bootstrapped entrepreneur in a niche market faces direct competition mainly from other undercapitalized businesses.”
Question: You entered a market that Adobe already had an established lead in, was there a niche that you focused on? How did you determine where to focus?
Amar Bhide on “High Uncertainty / Low Capital”
“Promising startups cluster in market niches characterized by high uncertainty generated by technological, regulatory, or other such exogenous changes or by the amorphous nature of customer wants…High uncertainty and low capital and opportunity costs create a ‘heads-I-win-tails-I-don’t-lost-much’ proposition for entrepreneurs.”
Question: How did you calculate the opportunity cost of market exploration
Amar Bhide on Ambiguity
“Ambiguity is known to be missing information or not knowing relevant information that could be known.”
Question: When you started what was the “known to be missing information? What key information did you discover that was relevant to making Wowza a success?
Final Questions From Audience
Please join the discussion of Amar Bhide‘s “Origin and Evolution of New Business” this Wednesday October 26 at Noon PDT. Click http://skmbhide111026.eventbrite.com/?discount=WowzaMedia to attend at no charge.
October 24th, 2011
This interview originally ran Nov-4-2010 at “Docea Power Successfully Bootstraps As a New EDA Player.”
I had a chance to catch up with Ghislain Kaiser, CEO of Docea Power, a promising new startup based in France. Their product,
Aceplorer, has been gaining increasing acceptance in the power and thermal management space. Ghislain was kind enough to share how they got started and some of the key things he has learned bootstrapping a new EDA startup. What follows is an edited transcript that I have added hyperlinks to for context.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about your background?
I’m CEO and one of two co-founders of Docea Power. The other founder is Sylvian Kaiser, my brother, who is CTO and R&D director.
I worked for STMicroelectronics as senior system architect on wireless applications and before that as project leader for the set-top box division. I have a Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Supelec (Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité, France).
Sylvian worked at Infineon then TTPCom, covering multiple aspects of 3G/2.5G modem circuit design like system and algorithm definition, embedded software development and validation on FPGA and silicon. He has a Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from SupTelecom (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France).
Q: Can you talk a little bit about what led you to found your company, what was the problem that motivated you?
At ST I was in charge of defining power management strategy at system level for wireless applications like Application Processor engine. I had a second role which was to represent ST at MIPI consortium for system power management topics where I had the chance to work with the best power experts from the major semiconductor and system integrator companies.
Most of the time architects develop complex spreadsheets to estimate power consumption early in the design phase and drive implementation teams with specifications. But this approach is not scalable with the increasing complexity of the SoC and in an environment involving multiple teams over the world.
After visiting many companies and meeting many designers and architects I can say that the Excel spreadsheets represent 90% of the solutions used for power planning. The spreadsheets are a
quite good solution when the system is not too complex and dynamic analysis is not required.
In 2005 Sylvian and I believed two things:
- The spreadsheet approach would be no longer be satisfactory for the next generation of SoC designs.
- Temperature issues would become a critical constraint for more and more electronic applications because of:
- Increasing dependency of the leakage current with the temperature at each new technology node.
- Increasing integration capability also increases the power density and the pressure on costs of chip packages.
This led us to found Docea Power in 2006. We collaborated with research centers for two years to develop our first product, Aceplorer, which helps architects explore low power/temperature architecture.
Q: How did you get started?
In 2006 we started with $400k by winning the national innovation award organized by the French ministry of research. We also received grants also from European and national Research projects as we are involved in several collaborative projects. We had service revenue as well from customer engagements during our first two years.
Q: Can you give me a brief overview of where the company is today?
Aceplorer and our methodology have been adopted and deployed by several major chip and system manufacturers, including ST-Ericsson. At DAC 2010 we announced a common laboratory with CEA-Leti around 3D chip design which raises new challenges like low power / thermal architecture exploration.
Q: What are the two or three things that you have been able to accomplish that you take the most pride in or satisfaction from?
First, we bootstrapped Docea for almost 4 years. Our first round of funding was done only this year. It was not an easy exercise to develop a product, get the first customers and drive our solution to industrial maturity
Second, we have managed to raise an investment round in a tough context for EDA start-ups. Fortunately our revenue growth and strong customer references made it possible.
Q: What has been the biggest surprise? What was one key assumption you made, perhaps even unconsciously, that has caused the most grief?
The economical crisis was certainly the most unexpected event for us. Late 2008 corresponded to the launch of our first product Aceplorer but also to the beginning of economy slow down. The situation couldn’t have been worse. Fortunately we were able to get our first customers in 2009.
Q: What development, event, or new understanding since you started has had the most impact on your original plan? How has your plan changed in response?
In our original plan we didn’t anticipate the emergence of new standards related to power topic. In 2007 a new area of standardization appeared and two new standards started fighting : CPF first, proposed by Cadence, then followed by UPF driven mainly by Synopsys, Mentor Graphics and Magma.
We have modified our original roadmap to include support for both of these standards in our Aceplorer product.
Q: Any other remarks or suggestions for entrepreneurs?
Three things I have learned in the last four years:
- Cash flow is key when you are bootstrapping: understand where you are spending money, what commitments you have made on your cash, and when you are likely to see revenue.
- People make the difference, not the technology.
- Be more than a vendor, be a partner to your customers: you must collaborate with your customers, not just sell to them.
Q: Thanks for your time.
October 23rd, 2011
This interview originally ran Aug 11, 2010 in EETimes online at http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4206103/Interview–Paul-van-Besouw–Oasys-Design-Systems
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Paul van Besouw, CEO of
Oasys Design Systems, and interview him on lessons learned from his entrepreneurial efforts at Ambit and Oasys. I have added hyperlinks where I felt they would provide context.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about your background?
I am a founder of Oasys, along with Johnson Limqueco, vice president of R&D, and Harm Arts, CTO. We were part of the core R&D team at Ambit Design Systems, which was acquired by Cadence. At Cadence, the team focused on physical synthesis, connecting traditional synthesis to physical design.
I have a Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands.
My entry into the EDA industry goes back to when I was at the University of Eindhoven. I was part of a group doing EDA research and I got an email from Rajeev Madhavan, who was starting Ambit. He was looking for software developers who had experience developing RTL synthesis front-ends. I was just finishing my Masters degree and trying to figure out what to do next, so the timing was perfect.
That was 1995. I talked to Rajeev Madhavan and he invited me to come out to California. I packed up my suitcase and came over, and that is how the whole thing started. It was initially meant to be a six-month project but it turned into 15 years.
Just coming out of University with no industrial experience, it was a great opportunity. There really was nothing there. Everything had to be built from scratch, and it was a great learning experience. We had a small core R&D team of about six that built the foundation of the Ambit technology.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about what led you to found your company, what was the problem that motivated you?
By building synthesis technology at Ambit and separately building physical technology at Cadence, we realized that we were forcing design teams to deal with a suboptimal solution. We saw how hard it was to integrate synthesis and place and route together in a way that produced the best quality of results. Traditional synthesis turns RTL code into a quick-and-dirty netlist and then runs a powerful but slow optimizer on that netlist. Our goal is to produce the best starting point for physical implementation by producing placed netlists that in turn enable the place and route tool to deliver the targeted quality of results.
It took two years to build a new chip synthesis technology from scratch, we call it RealTime Designer. The first prototype solution was qualified on an actual design and the engineer’s reaction was priceless. After they had verified the design and validated the quality of results on site they said: “Holy smokes! The run really did take less than 15 minutes.”
Q: Can you give me a brief overview of where the company is today?
RealTime Designer has proven itself in dozens of benchmarks and is in use in production flows. For example, Renesas in Japan has been working with Oasys for more than two years and its chief engineer considers it to be the most advanced synthesis technology. In fact, he thinks that it has the potential to change the usage model.
Design teams today are more sensitive about letting their company names be used as a reference. Most of the design teams we are working with have single vendor relationships, and several of these customers have EDA CEOs as their executive sponsors. That makes it tricky for them to come out and say anything about another competitive technology.
Just before the Design Automation Conference this year, we announced that Juniper Networks had selected RealTime Designer for the design of its next-generation networking chips. Juniper thoroughly evaluated RealTime Designer and concluded that it offers high-quality results and performed well in the Juniper design environment. Juniper approached us because the runtime of the existing tools was way too slow and took forever to get from RTL to GDSII. Debashis Basu, vice president for Silicon Development at Juniper Networks, gave RealTime Designer high marks, noting that it is a great tool that fits a very real performance need.
We followed this announcement with the news that we signed a multi-year strategic licensing agreement with Xilinx for our Chip Synthesis technology. Vin Ratford, Xilinx’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said that with programmable chip sizes growing and complexity mounting, Xilinx needed to look at a new generation of synthesis to support the needs of its customers.
Q: It has been reported that Xilinx is an investor in Oasys? Is either Xilinx or Juniper an investor in Oasys? Are any of the executives of either firm an investor in Oasys?
Juniper and Xilinx are customers and not investors. Neither has taken an equity stake in Oasys. None of the executives at Juniper or Xilinx is an investor in Oasys.
Juniper licensed our RealTime Designer software to use in its design flow. Xilinx licensed the Oasys Chip Synthesis technology and is modifying it to support FPGA designs; it will have the Xilinx brand.
Q: What are the two or three things that you have been able to accomplish that you take the most pride in or satisfaction from?
We created a new technology with a small team, and little funding. At first, we were completely self-funded. We rented a small apartment where we spent about a year just coding everything from scratch. Later, we received some seed funding from several EDA-savvy angel investors, which allowed us to move into a “real” office.
We had a working prototype by 18 months to show other angel investors, which allowed us to secure a bit more funding. I was able to attract the attention of some of the best people in the industry. It took some convincing, but I was also able to attract Joe Costello‘s attention. He is now a member of our board of directors.
Joe’s keynote speech at the 43rd Design Automation Conference in 2006 outlined three rules for building a successful company in EDA. The rules talk about how to “think like a fish,” and that you should “write your press release first,” and to “fundamentally change the rules.” It was around the same time that I started my discussion with Joe. I talked him through the technology and how we did things. He definitely saw the potential of this kind of technology where it could fundamentally change the game rather than trying to play the game, which is basically what we had done at Ambit.
Q: What has been the biggest surprise? What was one key assumption you made, perhaps even unconsciously, that has caused the most grief?
From the very beginning, the team was focused on building a better implementation technology, and on getting better quality of results through place and route. We expected to improve the capacity and runtime as well, but really did not expect such a huge improvement. I think this must have been the biggest surprise, although a positive one.
On the negative side, the biggest surprise was when the economy weakened so much. It has made the funding environment challenging, to say the least, and has also caused customers to become cautious about considering new tools.
One big challenge is that we are competing in a mature market. That sets the bar extremely high since design teams only start to become interested once the tool is better than the incumbent technology in pretty much every respect. And, not just incrementally better, but compellingly better.
If you go back to Ambit, the motivation for design teams to buy Ambit was different. Synopsys had a monopoly. Ambit had a good technology, but it was more a “me too” implementation. We had the advantage of doing it from scratch and were able to do it a little bit better than what Synopsys had done at that time. Clearly, one motivation for design teams to go with Ambit was just to have a competitor in the market.
Ten years later, it is more difficult to innovate and come up with new technologies. Nobody got fired for going with Synopsys. Adopting a new technology in a critical path of your design tapeout is a big deal.
If you start a technology company and are able to compete in the market today, it is all about building a complete solution. It is one thing to have a promising technology that shows some good results on one or two designs. You have to be able to build out a technology with all the bells and whistles and still show that advantage over a large number of designs.
Q: What development, event, or new understanding since you started has had the most impact on your original plan? How has your plan changed in response?
Venture capital for EDA is pretty much non-existent. This was a new reality and we were forced to do things differently. We are working with less money and fewer engineers on a longer development time-line than we would have if we had started Oasys 10 years ago.
Nobody embarks on a startup thinking it will take six years just to get to market, but that was the reality we faced. On the other hand, it did allow us to focus on maturing the product before announcing the product and/or company. We were able to close some significant business, which is driving the company right now. We continue to focus on building our customer base and growing the business based their success.
When we started, we had a different perception than we have now. With my background from Ambit, I knew what it would take to build things from scratch, but we were still counting on the funding to be there. In hindsight it was a blessing because we were forced to do more with less. It was a core team that worked on the technology from the ground up rather than having some ideas, build something and then have a big team work it out. In the end, it has helped the technology mature in the way it did because it was a technology completely different from what we had ever done before.
However, it definitely took longer to develop the technology because of a lack of funding. It took us three years to get a prototype to work and to get to a point where we could start engaging with some design teams. However, when we did, we realized that we had something different that was even better than we had imagined.
Q: Any other remarks or suggestions for entrepreneurs?
Starting a company sounds glamorous but it is hard work and takes perseverance. The two pillars that allow the company to go through some of the tough times are the support of your family and a founding team that works well together.
Obviously the founders have to believe that what they are doing will make a difference. They need to learn to balance out the highs and lows to keep the team motivated.
I have been very fortunate in being able to key surround myself with great people. Oasys has extremely knowledgeable people as investors and on the board of directors. It is easy for a founding team to get absorbed by the technology, so it is important to balance it out.
What makes EDA both interesting and challenging is that it is not only about the software. In the end, you are building software to build hardware. You have to start with insights into both and learn a lot more along the way. In many cases it is the experience of what does not work that really allows you to focus on the things that do work. EDA software is built on a technology foundation surrounded by algorithms. Starting out, a lot of time is spent on finding out what does not work. There are many details that need to be incorporated to enable your technology to work in an actual production flow.
Starting with a great technology is not sufficient.
Q: Thanks very much for your time.
October 22nd, 2011
In a blog post last October entitled “Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack” Steve Blank suggested
Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur defined a business model as how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value. More importantly they showed how any company’s business model could be defined in 9 boxes. It’s an amazing and powerful tool. It instantly creates a shared visual language while defining a business. Their book “Business Model Generation,” is the definitive text on the subject.
Currently there are a number of templates and tools that help teams build a business model canvas:
Osterwalder’s formulation reminds me of Newton’s dot notation for calculus (fluxions or derivatives). It points out the need for a formal notation but it’s too cumbersome and not usefully extensible. I don’t question the need for meaningful and portable representations of business models, and the canvas may be the best thing we have today, but I think it will represent an evolutionary dead end.
It seems like much of the push for it comes from folks who look at many business models (e.g Angels,incubators, and VCs) and want them to be easily comparable, not from entrepreneurs who want to be able to track what they need to validate next and the evolution of their thinking and hypothesis set over time.
For me the approaches suggested below seem more promising, at least through the Find Your Niche stage.
Our approach for bootstrapping entrepreneurs who target businesses includes:
Update Oct 24: Rob Fitz has blogged that he is “
Phasing out Canvas and Dashboard Tools.“
October 21st, 2011
“Nobody makes a video game about the quartermaster division, but armies win and lose on logistics and supply, and politics and diplomacy, and the work people do on the homefront.”
Mike O’Malley in “History-ness and Video Games“
The first stage of a bootstrapped startup is a “come as you are” party. The founders are living off of their savings and are driven by passion. They are developing a product or service offering and if they are prudent they are working simultaneously to understand who their customer will be.
But at some point you have to see revenue and start to map a path to profitability. You have to stop relying on spouses, significant others, or relatives to pay the electric bill and put food on the table and offer them a plan to meet the opportunity cost of your involvement.
You have to put a price on your services or your product and start selling.
The party ends when you are “open for business.”
In “
Finding a Co-Founder: 3 Months is a Long Time” I suggest that you need to get to revenue within three months or risk losing your team.
October 20th, 2011
“Deadlines and commitments,
What to leave in, what to leave out.”
Bob Seger “Against the Wind”
I was thinking about the deadlines and commitments bootstrappers need to meet (perhaps without realizing it the first few times) if they want to meet their cash flow objectives. Here are some examples I came up with:
Commitments to Prospects or Customers
Commitments you make (or negotiate) with a prospect or customer come with a date if they are meaningful. Trust evaporates rapidly if that date is missed unless expectations are re-negotiated well in advance.
Trade Shows and Industry Events
New products may not arrive on schedule but trade shows and industry events do. Work backward from the date to determine what functionality you can demo.
Speaking Events
Budget your time so that you can solicit feedback on early versions and your delivery from many people with relevant insights. Winging it rarely generates leads or future speaking opportunities.
Demo In Someone’s office
After five or six minutes without a meaningful payoff in our demo many prospects’ interest has expired.
Demo in a Trade Show Booth
If you cannot explain what you do in 30 seconds and show them something relevant in another minute a booth a visitor is likely to leave.
Voicemail
If you cannot give them a reason to call you back in 30-45 seconds a longer message probably don’t help. Don’t repeat your phone number, say it slowly and distinctly once.
Payroll
As an entrepreneur you are not selling to make quota but to make payroll, but the deadline is just as clear.
Market Windows / Selling Windows
If you are introducing tax preparation software it needs to be ready well in advance of the filing due date. If you are selling project management software and the prospect’s new project is already well underway you will have to wait for the next one. Understand what events will trigger the need for your product and the time windows a customer has to work within to complete the change process to incorporate your offering into their workflow.
A note on demos: You need to be able to get through a basic demo–one that substantiates a compelling capability that would allow them to address a critical goal or need–in less than five minutes. Peter Cohan’s “
Great Demo” book is well worth your time in learning how to do this. This is true for any product that you are selling to busy people (e.g. almost anyone who manages a budget). They may give you more than five minutes once they see the first capability that you demonstrate, but show the capability most likely to resonate with their situation first.
See also: “Experiments vs. Commitments“
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