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WIForum on Asia Roadshow

The two founders of the World innovations Forum, Axel and Marita will be visiting ambassadors in 8 countries in Asia, co-organize local “Entrepreneurs Night Events” and explore key challenges and opportunities to increase success rates of entrepreneurs and corporate intrapreneurs.

There is an enormous engagement to increase the level of innovation all over the world. However most societies work isolated from the other and still live in the old paradigm of keeping everything close to their chest, distrusting others and maintain a rather closed mindset. Our mission is to change that.

It takes a special mindset to bring innovation successfully to global markets.

An economy is only as good as their ability to innovate and progress. What was the US in the last century, the UK before that is China today. And while China is the economic leader in Asia right now, other Asian countries like South Korea, Malaysia, or Japan are high on their heels. Yet, bringing innovation to global markets requires a paradigm shift in mindset. Our mission is not to create even more innovations – but bringing the good ones successfully to global markets. Only then, businesses grow, create jobs, and spark new businesses again.

We are visiting Thailand, Nepal, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mainland China, South Korea and Japan.

Entrepreneurs Nights

Tue Mar 6 Kathmandu, Nepal
Thu Mar 8 Hanoi, Vietnam
Tue Mar 13 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Thu Mar 15 Singapore, Singapore
Tue Mar 20 Hong Kong
Thu Mar 22 Shenzhen, China
Tue Mar 27 Seoul, South Korea
Thu Mar 29 Tokyo, Japan

In each city we will have time to meet with ambassadors, investors, entrepreneurs, sponsors and governments.

We are extremely excited about this tour, meeting many amazing people and sharing our vision of a globally connected innovation meta space that helps entrepreneurs from all corners of the earth to work with each other as if they would sit in the same co-working space.

 

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Compete successfully with enterprises as a startup

competing successful with enterprises - Society3

Once in a while I meet entrepreneurs with amazing ideas but they don’t know how they could compete with even the largest enterprises.

I started my first company from scratch with $20,000 and needed to compete with 3 other businesses, each $200 Million to $1 Billion in revenue – 10 years later we were market leader on a global scale ($5B in revenue)

My second company was a little more different

I started my third company right after the bubble burst and competed with two other competitors who had $70 Million and $68 Million cash in the bank from pre bubble rounds – I started with $500,000 – 5 years later we were close to acquire one but let go because the due diligence made clear there is nothing we could gain – being the market leader already.

Here is how we compete:

1) In each case we developed a disruptive business model. We completely went of the beaten path and redefined sales channels or we made payments in very different ways, provided transparency were was none, service integration in the pricing and so forth. It was the market that forced the competition to follow us and compete with us – or loose it.

2) I never competed based on technology, product functions or any of those short term win or loose features. I learned: “The best product never wins”. However we did have great technology because we had great engineers – yet it was not the winning factor in the end.

3) Business is done between people. I knew I can win more customers when I have a nicer team – and I always had a stellar team. :)

In retrospect: all big winners won with a superior business model and amazing teams.

Obviously I don’t know anything about your business and therefor it is hard to make more specific suggestions – but look at your business model and your team before you even spend a millisecond on your product when it comes to competing for market share.

A good read to make sure you can handle such a problem is the question to find great founders

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MVP, Minimum Viable Product

There is a concept called MVP – Minimum Viable Product.

Even though the name kind of says it all, the concept “MINIMUM” – “VIABLE” – “PRODUCT” indicates that there are as few features as possible, it must kind of work and it is a product – most entrepreneurs interpret MVP as the early iteration of a product they want to build. But that is definitely not the case. Let me explain it in more details:

1) MINIMUM VP
An MVP is supposed to demonstrate your core functionality that shows how your product is different from others. And as such focus exclusively on the core mechanism and process of the new solution. If you build a self driving car, it would be perfectly OK to use an old VW beetle that may have no lights and only one seat. But if it is perfectly self steering – you made a great MVP. Try to implement as little features as possible. Every “nice to have” feature destructs unless it is absolutely necessary to show the core idea.

2) M VIABLE P
Be aware that the MVP will only be used by early adopters and need to be seen by investors and other key people. They are typically smart enough to abstract the concept and imagine where you want to take it. It just needs to show the core feature in a very solid way. It need to work over and over again. The function needs to be robust enough that anybody can envision you build the whole concept in a beautiful way later on. Equally important, let the users experiment with it BEFORE it is ready. You will want to learn as much as possible from those users to build the final product after their feedback. Redoing a product is not only much harder but a rather “ready” product may mislead users to a behavior they may not be able to articulate their pain – rather leave it open in an MVP.

3) MV PRODUCT
Make sure that you have a well thought out business model that is actually the disrupting part of your solution. EVERY business model is reflected in the MVP. If the business model is lame, your MVP will not be too catchy wither. Make the PRODUCT reflect your business model.

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