Short versus long term ideas

by ⋅ 2 Comments

During one of the lectures Serdar Temiz mentioned  that you should focus on what you have to do right now to become the key player in 5 years.
But what if you have a great idea for a short term solution? I thought of this when I saw a pitch from Scrive. They provide a short term solution for companies which want to implement e-signing, but don’t have the time to wait until their legacy systems are updated. The first thing that came to my mind was that the product they sell is only useful for a couple of years, as I imagine their customers will eventually upgrade and won’t make use of Scrive any more.

I have an idea myself for the pitch, but it focusses on the generation of for instance my parents. Many of this generation know how to use applications as word and excel, but lack the knowledge to do a bit more advanced things like building and launching websites and online applications. As you can imagine the amount of people who lack this more advanced knowledge decreases every day, so if you target this group you’ll eventually run out of customers.

Does this mean you shouldn’t launch this idea? Should you let these potential customers figure it out themselves? I think not. I think that, in line with what Scrive does, you should move fast and provide them with a nice short term solution. However, I would like to know what you think about it. Do you agree? Otherwise, please let me know what I’m missing!

Enthusiasm

by ⋅ 15 Comments

Entrepreneurship fascinates me. Not specifically because I have certain entrepreneurial ambitions. I have the feeling that I am better fitted for the position of “second man”, I’m not prone taking too many risks and I’ve never really felt the urge to start my own business. But I enjoy reading everything that has to do with the subject and I am very interested in the process of starting up a company.

One of the aspects that attracts me to entrepreneurship is the overwhelming enthusiasm that every entrepreneur seems to possess. As I do with all interests I normally have, I started googling. I started with search topics such as entrepreneurship enthusiasm, enthusiastic entrepreneurs and so on. Among the results were a lot of a lot of blogs, sites and even scientific proof that enthusiasm is a necessary ingredient for entrepreneurs. Sites about how you can share it with your team, your investors and even how you can make sure it lasts as long as possible.

Interestingly, besides those kind of positive articles, I also found a lot of sites stating that enthusiasm is a pitfall for start-ups and entrepreneurs. There is even a syndrome named after it: Enthusiasticus Founder syndrome. For me personally I don’t think the syndrome is an issue, therefore I will focus here on the positive side. I just looked up the definition of it to see whether I didn’t know what enthusiasm is or that I had the wrong picture of entrepreneurship. The Cambridge dictionary told me this:

Enthusiasm
Noun /ɪnˈθjuː.zi.æz.əm/
A feeling of energetic interest in a particular subject or activity and an eagerness to be involved in it.

If we take into account this explanation you would definitely agree that I describe the people at STHLM TECH FEST as enthusiastic. The people pitching on stage were of course very enthusiastic about their own idea. Standing in front of a big audience and a panel of important and influential people from well established companies. But especially the companies at the fair I found ultimately enthusiastic. Most of them were so fond of the idea that they conceived and so willing to share it with the crowd that they really tried to draw their attention. It was almost un-Swedish how they took the initiative to make contact with people who passed by. As a new student in town it felt really welcoming and very inspiring to see what’s going on in Stockholm.

I hope to see you all tomorrow for another enthusiastic (and very early) lecture entrepreneurship!

Michiel

If you are interested here is some more on the syndrome:
http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/20/startups-how-to-avoid-death-by-enthusiasm/