Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurs’ Category

No More Racing Home to Let Out Your Dog

by Bruce Kasanoff

Sam looked up at his Mom, a blank expression on his face.

For the third time, she said, “How was your day?”

At last she penetrated the consciousness of her young son.

“I invented a business that’s going to make us all rich.”

“You did,” she smiled sweetly. “How nice that will be.”

“Seriously, Mom. It’s called Dogs Unleashed.”

Lisa sat down. Sam was not one to waste words, and he came up with some very creative ideas.

“Tell me how it works,” she said.

“Think of it as a supercharged version of an electric fence, only much, much smarter. The whole thing is based on a smart collar that always knows where it is, that can access online data, and that can communicate with people and other devices.”

Lisa smiled again. “That actually sounds pretty cool. What will it be able to do that a normal electric fence collar can’t?”

Now Sam smiled. “Well, for one thing, it will only open the dog door when it’s not raining outside, so Max won’t get soaking wet. It also has a moisture sensor, so if a sudden rainstorm gets your dog wet, it won’t let him back into the house.”

“So we won’t have another disaster like when Max ran across the sofa with muddy feet,” she prompted.

“Exactly,” said Sam. “Plus, it can open or close virtual roads to other parts of the neighborhood. So if you’re delayed at work and worry that Max is going to get bored, you can use the speaker to tell Max, ‘Go see Romeo’ and you can expand the fence so that it includes Romeo’s yard and the path between our houses.”

Lisa frowned. “But what if Max wanders out into the busy road? I don’t want him to get hurt.”

Sam shook his head. “There are certain places that will always be off limits, like the busy road, or the Huggins property, because they hate dogs so bad.”

“That makes sense,” said Lisa. “What a great idea.”

Sam got a bit agitated. He stood up, and started pacing around.

“What’s the matter?” asked his Mom.

“You don’t get the whole idea. This collar will be really, really smart. It will tell you where Max is, what he’s doing, and even what is around him. It can hear barking, and can tell the difference between two dogs playing and two dogs fighting. It even will let you give Max commands, like ‘Go home’.”

“Wow. That is pretty smart. I wish they had that technology today,” Lisa responded.

“That’s the thing, Mom. We do. It’s all there, but no one has put it together yet. I did research today from the school library, and some companies are close, but they don’t have the whole picture yet.”

Sam raced out of the room, most likely to go online. Lisa started thinking… Sam’s Dad is in the investment business… gotta ask him whether kids can get access these days to venture capital.

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Companies hire Bruce Kasanoff to write stories that help their employees – and sometimes their customers – better understand what it will take to compete successfully. His clients use these customized pieces in many different areas of their business.

Could your start-up use $10,000?

by Bruce Kasanoff

My friends at CJP Communications are doing a great job introducing the British insurance company, Hiscox, to American entrepreneurial businesses, and vice versa. Some months back I wrote a more detailed piece about Hiscox and their interesting approach to entering the U.S. market.

Their latest brainstorm is a contest in which entrepreneurs submit their startup story, and the best entry wins $10k. You can see the latest entries here.

I’m not sure if this is still true, but as of about five months ago Hiscox Direct was the only firm selling insurance direct to small businesses online. But first things first. It’s time to win some money, and it looks to me like your odds are pretty good if you have a compelling story about your startup.

To create your entry, just click on the banner.




You created it, but can you explain it?

by Bruce Kasanoff

Over at Apple, the App Store now has more than 472,000 apps. That’s a lot of innovation.

Tech start-ups continue to pop up, despite the economy. If anything, it’s gotten cheaper to launch start-ups; two or three founders can often get a beta version running.

But can these folks explain their innovations? How many of the 472,000 apps ever get noticed?

The hard part is explaining why anyone should care about your new app, company or product. Even when you find a customer, they often use just 10% of your new capabilities.

Bob Dorf, my former partner, used to say that the way companies use innovative technologies is often like using a freight train to deliver a cartoon of eggs.

In other words, customers often use a new technology to automate the way they have always done things, instead of taking advantage of the innovation’s true capabilities.

You can prevent such outcomes by working harder to understand how customers live and work. Many innovators skip that step.

The New York Times has a wonderful interview with Dr. Paul Polak, a 78-year-old former psychiatrist who is highly focused on using innovation to solve the problems of the very poor.

In 1981, he said, “I’m going to interview 100 $1-a-day families every year, come rain or shine, and learn from them first.” He’s done that ever since, and averages six hours with each family, joining them at work and home, doing his best to understand their world and their challenges.

If you commit to this level of understanding and interaction, you will be able to not only develop products that customers really need, but you will also be able to explain how your innovations meet their needs.

Leap Year: the joys and risks of start-up life

by Bruce Kasanoff

I once raised over $1 million in venture capital with little more than 10 Powerpoint slides. That was the high point. The low point – a year later – was admitting to myself, and my employees, that our start-up was dead.

We all talk a lot about entrepreneurs and the American Dream, but the truth is more complicated than people imagine. Lots of people are entrepreneurs because they have no other option, especially over the past couple of years.

Go ahead – take a ten minute break.

This week, a new web comedy launched, called Leap Year. In a touching and funny way, it tells the story of five friends and their five start-ups.

You might recognize Julie Warner from Crash, or Craig Bierko from Damages. It’s a cut above the typical Web programming, and thankfully lacks the advertising breaks of commercial TV.

The whole series is funded by Hiscox Direct, which sells insurance to – you guessed it – small businesses. But Hiscox is wisely keeping a very low profile, and they are just visible enough on the site so you know who to thank.

A huge gaping hole in the insurance marketplace?

Being the curious and bold type, I phoned up Kevin Kerridge, who runs the Direct business. He used to run the Direct insurance business in the UK, and perfected a process for allowing small firms to obtain quotes and buy a policy online, without ever having to talk with a human being. (But you can if you want to.)

Nothing too exciting about that, right? Wrong. It turns out that until Kerridge arrived in the States, not a single U.S. insurance company sold insurance online to small businesses. None.

It took six months – the regulations are piled high and deep – but last November Hiscox became the first. The next challenge was to figure out a way to get Americans to become aware of the Hiscox name.

No selling. Just a slice of life.

Long story short, Kerridge green-lit Leap Year as a way to just get Hiscox noticed. Google searches already drive business to his online quotes site, and he wasn’t so much interested in getting more short-term sales out of the comedy as he was in starting to build a real brand.

Leap Year offers a slice of the entrepreneur’s life. It wraps the ambition, greed, excitement, camaraderie, exhilaration and terror into one touching and funny package. You care about the characters, and have a week in between episodes to think about how you got yourself into the life of a small business owner.

As a serial entrepreneur, much rings true for me:

- Wife pregnant? (check)
- Start business anyway? (check)
- Wake up sweating at 3 a.m.? (check)
- Thank the heavens above I quit my job? (check)

Life is short. Go for it.

Seth Godin, disrupted

by Bruce Kasanoff

This is mostly for fun, but I just stumbled onto a post that included 500 ideas generated last year by students of Seth Godin’s Alternative MBA program. The point of the post: ideas are easy, execution is the tough part. But this provided me a good opportunity to screen a long list of new business ideas versus the six disruptive forces Michael Hinshaw and I see changing customer experience.

Disruptive Technologies vs. Customer Experience

The forces are explained in the webinar slides above, but here’s a quick list:

1.) Social Influence
2.) Pervasive Memory
3.) Remote Access
4.) Digital Sensors
5.) Shifting Time
6.) Physical Web

One of the things that turns an idea into a true opportunity is a change that is both substantive and durable (it lasts a long time.) Disruptive forces create such changes. Here are the ideas that made the cut, because they are supported by one or more of the six forces:

Website where musicians can collaborate on tracks.

Signs in restaurants on menus that list all the ingredients (BK: even better as an augmented reality app.)

Multiple camera angles on live television (especially for sports) or online viewing.

A company that installs a monitor (BK:sensors) at a building entry and hosts virtual door attendants.

Web-based language tutors leveraging Skype and Google Docs for curriculum.

Monthly subscription service for unlimited ebooks on your ebook reader device.

Let’s Get Coffee – for couples; pairing service similar to matchmaking service “It’s Just Lunch” to help couples find other couples with similar friends

A service that discounts newspapers after 8pm the day of print. I do not want to buy a NYTimes for $5 at the end of the day.

Website mock-ups for people seeking VC funding.

Online transcription service for conference calls – leveraging Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Google for video & audio – Dragonspeak -> voice to text -> with searchable tags

Company that records your voice message and other digital forms of media and sends it out into space as a message in a space bottle.

Personalized cereal boxes (to celebrate child’s achievements).

Personal lessons for using your cell phone features.

A service that gives well-known business people a public email address, so that if an email get sent there you can read the email and then read the response. The idea being that it will give you insight into the mind of the person and what made them successful, and it will also teach you how to write good emails and learn email etiquette.

A technology/service that Preachers/Rabbi’s/Clergy can use that creates a way to gather feedback during the service from the attendees.

Artists’ Playground. This is a building that has rooms setup for ceramics, painting, silk screenings, theater, writing, open mic, dance, photography, etc. This building will also have social areas for people to mingle over coffee and healthy foods. People pay a monthly membership to have access and it is also rented out for events.

Employee monitoring service that provides detailed reports on employee’s online and offline activities. – include hardware scrubbing and “forensic” proof removal of data, footprints and histories.

A trend of the month club, where each month you get mailed something hip with a glossy booklet explaining how cool that item is about to become. Limited to 5,000 people. Gives you a cool story to tell yourself for the rest of the month, and something to talk about with your friends.

Replication service for clothing items – make you a new pair just like the old pair.

A Build Your Own Robot Shop.

An IMDB for people who have won awards. I want to a quick way to find the professors with the most citations in any given subject, the chefs in the area with the best Zagats reviews, the local high school football players with the most touchdowns, etc.

A website that users can program in advance to take some action if some event happens. For example, a national chain of tire stores could send an email reminding its customers to get their snowtires on two days before the first predicted snowfall of the season in that user’s zipcode.

DeadCells Art: mail your old, hated cell phones to a factory that smashes it and returns it to the user as framed work of art.

A website that connects people with Objects of Sociability. For example, you have a group of friends you want to do something with and it connects you with an open hibachi table or a deep sea fishing boat rental. You can also rent objects of sociability, so for example you could rent a bread maker or a super nice tea set with 30 looseleaf teas. It would also connect people to third places that would be suitable for, say, a first date.

TV Show Summary Service – Brief summaries of your favorite shows are e-mailed to you in case you missed them.

Creating a website community for freelance professors (professional educators with a specific expertise; different from tutors in the sense that they are not preparing students for a certain test or “actual class”) to connect with students who want to be educated via an alternative route. The ideal site would essentially be a hub for professor profiles/portfolios with a variety of mediums for conversation between the students and the professors for hire. comments/rating system (no anonymity including a record of that person’s comments rates so you can get a better picture of who is saying what). The idea is similar to something like pick a prof. that most college kids use now to pick their classes; however, the emphasis with pick a prof is typically to pick easy classes to graduate where as this would be an effort to allow professors and students to negotiate the value of the education without going through the university as a middle man. Monetization routes: site advertisements, membership fees for students and/or profs, selling books written by professors for commission.

Online mentoring program for students of all ages (Pen pals that teach each other skills online.)

A website that you can put in a characteristics of a person and it will come up with an avatar.

A sophisticated website that uses an eHarmony-like algorithm to match nannies and families.

A data aggregator of global statistics on death, destruction, catastrophes, violations of human rights, freedom in media, etc. There is so much attention put on the middle east. It would be interesting to see and compare what is happening in your neighborhood.

Filmmakers café-It would be great to have a place that people could go and use a TV and DVD player in a cool coffee house setting–similar to how the internet cafes are run…It could be a place where people could just leisurely watch something midday and also people can meet and discuss their work and others’ work while watching through it.

iPhone app that measures the speed of a pitch. Utilizing the built in accelerometer, you throw the phone as fast as you can. When you pick it back up it tells you the speed of your throw. (BK: OK, flawed but funny)

Words sewn into a certain brand of clothes – need to find people with same clothes to spell out a word or phrase on the website to win a prize (like McDonald’s Monopoly but with clothes and a website.)

Art co-op that sells memberships and the art travels among the homes of the members. Kind of a Netflix for art, maybe. Art to eventually be sold at auction via exclusive contract with Sotherby’s and profit made. Could be sold as a shared-art program or as an investment co-op. Or both.

10% for the world – an association of businesses who add 10% to their prices and donate the 10% to charity.

A personal education coach-they pick blogs, books, resources for you to learn based on your personal interests and career goals. They gather all the materials and for you and make recommendations on the best way for learning the material.

A crowd-sourced social filter. So you type in something you think would be funny to say or do to someone else, and the site tells you whether it’s actually a good idea or whether it would be wildly inappropriate.

Tech adventures. Expensive one and multiday adventures where we put the players in scenarios where they get to play with the latest cool technology…night vision…robots…James bond type stuff. Real life role playing game.

A website or iPhone app that finds places for large groups to hang out in real time. So for example if you’re wandering around union square with fifteen friends at night, find the nearest ten places that can accommodate that many people right now.

In store sales: for the next 60 minutes – x is 50% off – sent via SMS to customers who have signed up. (BK: the shorter the sale, the better the idea; creates urgency.)

ThatsAThing.com – tells you if things already exists.

Golf balls with low powered GPS signals in them so you can always find your ball.

1toEverything, part 2… how to invent cool new Apps

by Bruce Kasanoff

(click to enlarge)

The best way to predict the future is often to invent it, so I’d like to encourage you to use this chart to invent the apps you’d most like to have at your disposal. You don’t actually to build them; odds are if you can dream them up, it won’t be long before someone else either: a.) Builds them, or b.) Makes them so easy for you to build, you do it between dinner and desert.

Work from left to right, and start with Identify. Focus your attention on anything of importance to you, and figure out what you’d like a service to be able to identify instantly for you. This chart includes many possibilities that are already possible, like identifying a flight, but we have just begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. You could start small, with something like the ideal next Scrabble move, or aim high and conceive of a service that could locate your soulmate.

Next, how do you want it to Differentiate these selections? This is where you ought to feel like a kid in a candy store, because the ability to recognize patterns in data is growing so powerful, it often feels like magic. Give some thought to the ways in which you want to be able to sift through all the possibilities to find the ones that are perfect for you, at any give moment. To continue the Scrabble example, perhaps you are playing your 17-year-old daughter by phone and do not wish to make it obvious you are cheating, so you want not the best Scrabble moves, but ones that are just good enough for you to barely squeak out a victory?

Third, tell us what happens next. Do you want to Interact with the results through some boring set of numbers or figures? Perhaps you might like to have the data surround you, in exquisitely beautiful images? If you chose the soulmate search, pictures and videos would be nice (at the very least.) For example, here’s a piece of fiction I wrote about a Soulmate app. This stage – Interaction – is ripe for dramatic innovation. It is also the realm of customer experience, the next big competitive battleground for companies.

Finally, our world is all about learning. How would you like future Customization to be impacted by this experience? You might value your privacy, and choose “not at all.” But most people crave intelligent interactions, and it would be wonderful if each of us – and our tools – get smarter as we go through life.

Look around. The world is your playground. What do you want to do next?

Great teachers and dynamic entrepreneurs

by Bruce Kasanoff

The names Glenn, Ashley and Carol come to mind when I think of what’s right with our educational system. It still attracts amazing human beings like them, who have real compassion, insight, talent and enthusiasm.

Glenn taught two of my three “children.” Ashley just taught my youngest. And one day many years ago, Carol pulled my daughter aside and told her, “If you don’t understand what I’m teaching you and I don’t notice, you need to grab me by the lapels and say, ‘I don’t understand.’” My quiet daughter got the message, and became an assertive advocate for her own needs.

But these wonderful teachers succeed despite the system, not because of it. Most schools are still run in an outdated mass production, assembly line system that barely works anymore to make cars, nevermind bring out the best in our next generation.

Unfortunately, our schools are not going to change much from the inside out. We need to change them from the outside in.

Government isn’t going to do this. Entrepreneurs are.

You see this already happening as entrepreneurial firms hack away at the edges of our educational system, offering test prep services, online learning and distance tutoring. Many top colleges are helping, by offering free access to some of their courses. Other schools routinely offer distance learning options.

This trend should accelerate. It has to, because many students simply aren’t being taught the skills necessary to succeed in the world they are inheriting. We already have a lot of teachers. Now we need entrepreneurs to create a better system for them and their students.