*8 Things to consider when launching a startup"
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“Building a company: 8 themes & 3
“must”” Yelena Kadeykina
GITA, Tbilisi
September 2, 2015
©Yelena Kadeykina
Personal Intro Serial entrepreneur
Specialty: entrepreneurial marketing, online and video marketing; business development
MIT Sloan Alum
Community work: MIT Enterprise Forum & MassChallenge, etc
©Yelena Kadeykina
8 Themes to Consider When Launching a Company
Who is your customer
How do you make money = business model
Your team and company’s culture
How does your customer acquire your product
What can you do for your customer
How do you design and build your product
How do your scale your business
Quality of ecosystem ©Yelena Kadeykina
©Yelena Kadeykina
What’s is the only minimum required condition for any business to exist?
5 Steps to Define Your Customer
Market and market segmentation
Select a beachhead market
Build an end-user profile
Calculate TAM size for beachhead market
Profile persona for your market
©Yelena Kadeykina
Market segmentation
©Yelena Kadeykina
Characteristics: Characteristics:
End User Application
Benefits Partners/Players
Market Characteristics Competition
Size of Market
Needs
6 “yes” to pick beachhead market
Is your customer a paying customer
Is your sales force can access your customer
Is it hard for your competitor to block you
Are your ready to deliver a whole solution/product
Can you leverage this segment to enter additional segments
Is this market consistent with values and passion of your team
©Yelena Kadeykina
End User and DMU
Customer = End User + Decision Making Unit (DMU)
Decision making unit:
Advocate (often an end user)
Primary Economic Buyer
Influencers
©Yelena Kadeykina
End user profile characteristics
Gender, age, education
Income range
Geographic location
What motivates them
Their fears &inspirations
Early adopters vs. main stream
Where they go on vacations
Where do they dine
What newspapers they read, websites, etc
Main reason to buy product: image, peer pressure, saving?
©Yelena Kadeykina
Persona: Michael, Facility Manager at Cisco
Personal Information:
American, family (1 kid), 40 years old, college degree
Career context:
Mid-career (same place for 10 years), technical savvy, hopes for
promotion, makes $65K/year
Informational Sources:
Websites to make decisions, tried competitor product and is not
impressed for A/B/C reasons
Purchasing Criteria:
Reliability (high), Costs (mid)
Others:
Listens to country, drives Ford, used to volunteer as a fireman
©Yelena Kadeykina
Calculate TAM (total addressable market)
Top-down analysis – use market analysis reports, etc
Bottom-up analysis=“counting noses” (use customer, lists, trade associations, groups)
TAM = number of customers x Price of product
$5M>TAM - No
$5M<TAM<$100M – Yes $1B<TAM - No
©Yelena Kadeykina
©Yelena Kadeykina
What is more important then a good idea?
B = f(P,E)
Building team and culture: 4P framework
People
Process Patterns
Purpose
Purpose – your values and company’s values
Patterns – accepted behavior
People – whom do you hire
Process – operational processes in your company
Hard to build, easy to break
You will be challenged constantly
It is hard to find right people
Tough fires
Manage offshore team
Personal problems
Maintain processes
Celebrate small victories
©Yelena Kadeykina
Strong entrepreneurial ecosystem. Solving real world problems 25,000+ companies founded by MIT alums (i.e., Akamai, Intel, HP,
iRobot, Gillette, Dropbox)
3.3+ million jobs
$2 trillion in annual world sales (source: Kaufman Foundation 2009)
MIT Intellectual and Technology Powerhouse 72 MIT-related Nobel Prize winners (including 9 current faculty
members)
5 schools, 33 departments/divisions/sections/other programs (57 interdisciplinary research units)
©Y
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adeykin
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Why MIT
Cambridge innovation and intellectual capital: 74 colleges & universities, $1.5 billions spent on R&D annually
$2.4 Billions of VC investment second after Silicon Valley, highest investment/capita: $457/capital (source: Flybridge 2010)
Innovation clusters: Cambridge, 128/495 clusters –benefits of high concentration
Boston startup incubators&accelerators: CIC, Dogpatch, MassChallenge, TechStars
Future IPO candidates: HubSpot, Brightcove, Kayak and Tech giants: Microsoft, Google
Every night there is an entrepreneurial event!
©Y
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adeykin
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Why Boston
Motivation Desire to help and to give
How to choose a mentor
Experience
Few mentors
Right match
Advisors / Mentors
©Yelena Kadeykina
Give before you ask. Always be open to help people in your network
Develop relationships, don’t just acquire a bunch of contacts
Listen to people’s stories. Make it about them, not about you
Follow up with people once you meet them Be genuine Be passionate about your ventures Be realistic about what you should expect and follow up on
promises Stay professional and relevant (i.e. , no gossips) Do you homework
Do’s of networking
Prepare and practice your elevator pitch
Prepare your presentation materials (i.e., business cards)
Research the list of attendees Make a list of top 7-10 contacts Research their bios
Do you homework
Don’t’ brag about yourself Don’t exaggerate the truth Don’t try to discuss everything. Value
other people’ time. Don’t ask personal questions (i.e.,
questions about salary)
Don’ts of networking
Follow up on the night you met Make it personal: include 2-3 points from the
conversation Be brief and to the point For VIPs, handwritten notes are preferable Schedule another on-one-one conversation with
the people you found some immediate common interests
Stay in touch via events/social media (i.e., LinkedIn)
©Y
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adeykin
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Follow up/Stay in touch
Personal brand – timeless. It is how we market
ourselves to others. We sell something every day.
What is your personal brand
Idea
to your
investor
Vacation
trip to your
spouse
Strong personal brand = VISIBILITY
Speaking engagements
Investors
Clients
The opportunity to make a difference!
©Y
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adeykin
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Why your personal brand is important
Thank you!
Contact information:
E-mail: yelena@sloan.mit.edu
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/yelenakadeykina
Facebook: www.facebook/yelena.kadeykina
Twitter: @ykadeykina
©Yelena Kadeykina
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