This course will allow you to identify and evaluate opportunities for creating a tech business, and to better understand its principal issues on a human, technical, commercial, environmental and financial level. As such, you will obtain solid foundations either for building your own tech business, or for joining one. Deciding to create or to join a tech business in these early years is an out-of-the-ordinary adventure, and it certainly won’t be straightforward: you need to be ready to accept that not all "good" ideas will lead to success, and that only a very small number of projects lead to great success. You must learn to overhaul your relationship with failure, which is a valuable source of experience and should be managed according to the logic of “acceptable loss”: the entrepreneur loves uncertainty, not excessive risk. The creation of tech businesses gives you a genuine opportunity to change the world, but requires you to adopt a particular state of mind and to be able to acquire knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills. You will have the chance to work alongside passionate and exciting people from a whole multitude of backgrounds. From a technological point of view, these women and men have constructed numerous companies of a global scale. The development trajectory of a tech business is full of mishaps which require you to be both agile and greatly prepared to build on a strong idea, choose your market, develop your proposal, assemble a team worthy of the task in hand, and finding financing. The course is made up of methodological sessions as well as first-hand accounts from entrepreneurs and people who have succeeded in creating tech businesses themselves. You will thus be able to get to know the essential dilemmas with which high-tech business creators are confronted with, beginning with the initial decision to set up your very own structure, which itself represents a significant life decision. You will also see that the creation of a tech business is much more a collective adventure than an individual one. In the English version, all of the reading content, quizzes and assesments will be in English, whilst the videos will have French audio and English subtitles.
1.5 Methods and recommendations for defining and assessing an opportunity to create a tech company.
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Из курса от партнера École Polytechnique
Creating and Developing a Tech Startup
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Из урока
From laboratory invention to formulation of an innovative concept
Before any technical or financial consideration, the creation of a technology company is above all a human adventure that requires each associate to make personal choices. Besides your initial intuition that a new cutting-edge technology offer is marketable, we want to familiarize you with several development methods and practices. Mostly you will be asked to explore what the potential applications of your offer will be and the different ways to make it stand out from the existing offers.
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Romain BeaumeChargé Mission chaire MIX
50% Ecole polytechnique + 50% ParisTech
Etienne KriegerAffiliate Professor
Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Hello.
My goal isn't to tell you what you can find in books,
you can take any good book you want
refering to marketing, you will find there the essential.
My goal is to give you, to show you,
to point out what could be a problem in the evaluation of an opportunity
to create a high tech company.
Being able to make a difference between industry and market
is my first point, and probably the most important to remember.
Here is an example.
There is a laser industry.
People who know how to make lasers have a laser competence.
However, there is no laser market.
There is a welding market, a cutting market,
there is also a market for the organisation of auditoriums.
These three markets represent the use of lasers.
So, from one technique or even a patent,
a technical knowledge,
there is only one industry.
So if you say that you are engaged in a company working on lasers
it isn't entirely true.
You don't work on laser market but on laser industry.
This applies to many other fields.
All the more so when the patent concerns a complicated sofware
with an incomprehensible acronym
which doesn't represent its use.
What other crucial point do you need
once you understood the difference between industry and market?
Market, costumers and business, of course.
Let's take a look at those three terms to understand them better.
First, market: if you studied economics you will say that
market is the place where the price balances supply and demand.
It is indeed certainly true.
But it is not directly useful for a person who develops a company
unless it is a very big company.
But it is not appropriate for the creator.
And you can clearly see it when you evaluate your position
on the market; it is only about ridiculous percentages and quite
hideous evaluations.
Thers are billion dollar markets
and we try to reach 300 000 euros or dollars.
This is the reason why we are going to follow Derek Abell's analysis
as he says this very simple thing: there is a certain amount of uses,
fonctions, even desires which are satisfied by the offer.
For example, the desire for clean hair is a hygienic desire,
but the desire to be beautiful
which probably requires shampoo as well isn't of the same kind.
A good shampoo will accomplish both.
A shampoo which only accomplishes the first idea
- to clean hair -
doesn't have a great value, is not expensive, it is classical chemistry.
A shampoo that makes you beautiful is almost from the myths of Faust
and is worth a fortune.
Then comes the target entity: who can afford the desire
to be beautiful?
This is when comes the question of the use and the desire
and the group or segmentation
as we say in marketing.
What substitutes can take part of this?
You will start from your invention, your industry, you will transform it
into use, desire and then watch what the segmentations are
and you will wonder: who could be a subsitute?
You won't wonder: who could be a competitor, who does the same as me?
A substitute doesn't have to do the same, he replaces you.
Here is an example. The first substitute to shampoo
isn't necessarily another shampoo.
It is "I don't wash my hair", that's it, I don't do anything.
This is what we call a shadow competitor.
So you must decide between a market
with many shadow competitors, or many real identified competitors.
This is a key element.
A market can at first seem very narrow
and in the end appear not to be explored.
If your invention is an innovation
you have chances to create the market and to open it up.
Surprising examples can be used. Let's say I am a car salesman.
My substitute, appart from other car salesmen,
are holiday commercials.
Why?
Because we are competitors in the family budget, people have the choice
between buying a new car and having cheap holidays, or, on
the contrary, having expensive holidays and keeping the old car
and just changing the break pads.
So in a company situation
you would sell your invention to the company.
You are not necessarily facing a competitor,
you must ask yourself: is it really necessary?
Are we good in this field?
Once I identified all the compitotors
as substitutes, I realise there are plenty of examples.
For example, in the future,
banks and telecoms will probably be competitors.
They deal more or less with the same people, they will both have
rich information.
So if your invention is in telecoms
take a look at what bankers do and vice versa.
Here is an example that should make you feel optimistic
as competition is no limited in the conceptual field of technology.
This conceptual field of technology leads us to marketing
and observation based on three new criteria.
The first one is, of course, the value of our offer.
Value isn't a technological dimension, it is the translation
of the use in this technological dimension.
You don't evaluate the value, the costumer does.
You only give him/her the opportunity to evaluate it.
So reverse the language: look at the value of the costumer's point of view
and don't convince yourself that he/she
will find the value exceptional.
The absence of value doesn't prevent from selling, because
you pay attention to value, the existence of a risk does.
If you are a small company with an exceptional invention,
such as a software, your value is not a problem, the problem is
the possibility that you will not exist more than two years
and that the company working with you will be in midstrem
and you won't be able to follow its development
as you wouldn't exist anymore.
Maybe a less technological company, less efficient
but more perennial, would be better.
So take a look at the possible risks for your costumer and
try to reassure him.
Be sure that you work at the same rythm as your costumer,
canvass at the right time, find the moment when his need
is important, don't lose your time as many entrepreneurs do
while you wish to have more costumers in very big companies of CAC 40
who will accept to receive you
because they like what you do and say but will change the meeting into
a subliminal or implicit training for their teams.
You will explain what you do but
you won't necessarily get a contract.
So there are two driving forces. First, technology.
And you should know that most of the technology will not come
from your line of business.
The convergence is clear in information technologies between
computer science and telecoms.
At first it was really seperated now it's hard to say where it belongs.
And the second thing is our role as marketing people;
what we call intimacy of costumer, of consumer.
Don't get intimacy and physical proximicy mixed up such as
"I know him well because we studied together", this is not very important.
What we call intimicy of costumer
is the answer to this very simple question:
Does the costumer see me the way I want him to see me?
This is a crucial question if you are a new company
because you often have no image.
How do you want to be seen?
Do you want people to think of you as a giant or as a clever,
reliable company?
Work on this and check that your image matches
your intention.
You will work with a costumer who is an industry.
What will happen between you and this costumer on the market
is called the trade market.
It is a trade: you are going to sell something which is
good, you will earn money.
Great.
The end. The value of this trade is
operated downstream.
This is called the market for value.
You don't have access to this market.
But this is where value is,
where it is realised, where it becomes visible.
Get knowledge of this downstream market.
Not to be arrogant in front of your costumer, but simply to have
a synchronous language.
These are pragmatic pieces of advice which come from experience
and you must always have them in mind.
You can also have self-regulation process.
Five rules have been fixed. The first one is that there must be
a bilateral exchange and benefit.
This is true for negotiations, also for transactions
which are a form of negotiation.
If you feel that your costumer doesn't find any particular benifit
in the transaction but he still buys your offer, it means that he is taken
hostage, he needs it and he will probably blame you one day or another.
Be sure he is aware of the value
of your offer.
This is not in relation to your vision as offeror,
but to his vision as buyer.
Secondly, you understood,
market isn't linked to technique, it is linked to use.
For example, if I sell agricultural chemistry
phytosanitary product or fertilizer,
when do I put these products in the fields?
You understand that the use isn't the same according to
the time of the year (if harvest is soon or if plants just sarted growing).
The third rule is the most difficult
for new comapnies: know yourself.
It is very difficult because people are often very enthousiastic,
almost under the command of their invention,
they become easily irritable, insufferable, people change,
and the company has the status of "baby" not child, "baby".
It means the company can't live without you and
in one way or another you can't live without her.
No, know yourself. What distance do you need to put,
it is about company, money and personal realisation which
is very good, but it mustn't hinder the development of the business.
Know yourself.
Know yourself but also know your costumer. Who is he/she?
Check who is prescriber, who is an influencial actor.
If I sell fertilizer
am I contacting international institutions,
big agriculture or agro-business?
The three of them. And finally,
don't overestimate your market potential.
Too many business plans have a geometric optimism,
and suddenly revenues grow exceptionally
up to a margin of 80%.
No.
Do not overestimate.
So, how not to overestimate?
There are two rules. The first one is to avoid making a high estimate
an average one, a low one,
make a good estimate and give sensitivity.
The second rule has no scientific basis. Multiply the costs
times three and increase timeframes by multiplying them times three.
So I use the pi squared rule.
If with a pi squared coefficient, which equals almost 10, your company
keeps going, it means it is relatively optimistic and strong.
At this moment, marketing has phenomenal tools that
you can find in books, mix marketing, prices,
products, promotions, places, so distribution.
I am not giving you much details, the books are very well done
and you must read them, it is the key to marketing.
You will place your product with this,
with four main positions.
A position for innovation, another one for imitation, one for adaptation
and one where you exist but you reposition yourself again.
This is not perennial.
It can change through time.
But what is the main axis today?
Everyone has its advantage, for example, once your value
has been settled higher than the price, the costumer makes benefits, you can
decide to be on low-end, high tech innovaters hate this,
they always want to be on the Moon, on March now, but
maybe they could first go to Royan, for example, it would be a start,
in Charente-Maritime, they can check if there is business to do there.
I have nothing against Royan, I go there of course.
They can also work in high-end, in luxury,
but it is often obstructed.
It is important not to be between low and high end,
because it is desert there.
You must increase the value and lower the price.
This is very complicated.
You are not prepared for this so don't venture into it.
Choose a clear position, either low-end or high-end.
Then build your business line from that.
What advantages do you have as a pioneer?
Either a tecnological advantage, or a scarce asset,
or your consumers are with you and waiting for you.
You need at least one of these conditions. If you don't hava any
you can't be a pioneer so you should follow the way of imitation.
Technological leadership isn't a patent.
Technological leadership is also having experience.
Then scarce assets. Well this is physical,
if I possess 70% of the world's reserves of phosphate,
I am a leader in phosphate whatever happens.
The consumer's behaviour is luxury, costumers
want this luxurious brand and not another, which is not your
case if you create, even if it is your deepest desire.
For this you also have the possibility to be follower,
it might be less glorious but to be follower you
must be able to be opportunistic.
Very big companies recently decided to confirm that they had
an opportunistic strategy and their market value increased.
The world is so unstable than opportunism is also a way to
reduce uncertainty.
But this isn't that easy,
you must show that you are flexible and that you can adapt.
You also have the possibility to simply adapt, make the
product differ a little bit from your first idea.
Don't make footballs for world championships,
but if your idea is to make balls,
you can target supermarkets maybe which is good for a start.
What are the sources for adaptation and do we have them?
Don't wait for THE commercial director.
There are methods you can find in many articles and books
which are based on the properties of your offer.
You can also make a range but don't do it too early.
Try to differentiate yourself, low-end, high-end.
This différentiation can be spatial (geographic),
or it can be in perception,
which means that you only need to change a few things,
for the costumer to perceive a real difference, maybe in esthetic,
security, or energy saving.
Which criteria are the most interesting to change?
This way I can find the right distribution,
the right costumer relationship.
To conclude, if you want to diffenrenciate yourself and
look credible, you need three rules.
The first one is to be comprehensible, it must be significant for
the buyer, it must create something good for him/her;
either less risks or more value, or the right time.
So it must be significant.
It must have the possibility to gain value from the company on its
value market, so check how the costumer valorises.
And finally, it must be opposable to competition,
it must defend against competition,
so that it brings something difficult to imitate and
it can be the position of your own brand.
So what is the general advice that I can give you in this branch?
Well, don't be attached to your invention if you
really want to protect it and make it last,
be attached to the company which will create this invention.
But being attached to a company also means to consider giving it away to
someone else one day, who will be more competent than you at the right moment,
you will have gone on a first part of the way and you can later take other
ways. You can also stay in your company and I wish you to, of course.
But there is no rule for this.
Your invention, your technology temporarily belongs to you,
it is your role to develop it, to take a step back and to apply all
or some of the principles I suggested you today.
Good bye.
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