TBIZ 2012 - Elementi di un Business Plan Teoria e pratica

Augusto Coppola

co-founder InnovAction Lab

Idea vs Team What will drive you to success

Experts

My first startup

What I mean by “success”?

60x

What investors thought about me

Pure genius

VC Consultant

InnovAction Lab

What's the secret ingredient for success?

There is no secret ingredient

(Po, Kung Fu Panda)

My second startup

What I mean by “failure”?

0x

What investors thought about me

@#*WTF@]+!

No one understands a nut (not only me!)

We said no to: eBay, Apple, Intel, PayPal

(http://www.bvp.com/Portfolio/AntiPortfolio.aspx)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessemer_Venture_Partners

Vision

Mission

... no kidding, I’m serious

Vision/Mission Statement Generators are freely available:

http://www.timmcnulty.iofm.net/missionstatement.htm

http://www.isms.org.uk/mission%20statement.htm

http://www.laughing-buddha.net/toys/mission?

Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound

methods of empowerment so that we may continually

negotiate performance based infrastructures

(generated by Dilbert ‘s Mission Generator)

Vision: why do we do it?

Understanding trends to anticipate value

Visions: examples

Microsoft 1978

A computer on each single office desk

My first startup 1996

New services will be enabled and provided by Internet

My second startup 2002

Money will not be the only currency

4 qualities of a good vision

1. Short (and written in plain English)

2. Easy to understand (also if arguable)

3. Comes true quite rapidly (less than 5 years)

4. Persistent (it lasts for decades)

Mission: what we do? For whom?

Microsoft 1975

Developing one easy to use operating system for any

HW platform vendor

My first startup 1996

Developing a billing system for Internet services

delivered by Telco operators

My second startup 2002

Developing a Telco platform to dinamically authorize and

price purchases of any possible good based on any

possible currency combination

Challenging your core value

Don’t project into the future your past success

(i.e. success makes you blind)

Vision & Mission keep you focused

Collect and organize data about pros and cons

What markets should we address?

Large and quickly growing markets (CAGR > 10%)

Now write down your business idea

1. What are the emerging trends we are noticing?

2. What does our product/service do?

3. Who will buy it?

4. Why will they buy it?

5. What is the forecasted size of our market?

6. What is the duration of our opportunity window?

Jot down everything in less than 200 words and start

pitching your targets

Team

What is the value of the idea?

A person with a new idea is a crank

until the idea succeeds

(M. Twain)

Team: can we do it?

Microsoft Corporation, 1978

Discipline of learning

Fail fast and cheap (and move on)

What do you know about your market?

Entrepreneurs live in world of surprises, they cannot afford

the luxury of prejudices

nothing

What do you know about your market?

We don’t know what the market will be.

We perfectly know what the market was.

everything

Questions about founders

• Where are the founders from?

• What have they accomplished in the past?

• What is their reputation?

• Whom do they know?

• Who else needs to be on the team?

• Are they prepared to recruit high-quality people?

• How realistic are they about the venture chances?

• How will they respond to adversity?

• Do they have the mettle to make the inevitable hard

choices that have to be made?

• How committed are they to this venture?

• What are their motivations?

Conclusions

A few football scores

Great teams with bad ideas 2

Average teams with average ideas 0

Great teams with average ideas 2

Average teams with great ideas 1

...but great ideas are always generated by great teams

http://www.facebook.com/InnovActionLab

Thanks

augusto@innovactionlab.org

http://www.innovactionlab.org

http://twitter.com/innovlab

http://it.linkedin.com/in/augustocoppola

http://www.facebook.com/augusto.coppola

http://twitter.com/5anatre