Blaise Vignon / Bindi Karia Microsoft Emerging Business Team Microsoft France and Microsoft UK
Entrepreneurs: Several Practical Tips to Help you with your Business
Agenda:
1. Who are we?! 2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking
A little bit about Bindi
Bindi career to date
Graduate 1996
1996- 1998
1998 – 2001
2001 2002 2002- 2004
2004 2005 – Present
Polytechnique
Stanford
Insead
A little bit about Blaise
nVidia
BCG
Microsoft
Engineer by training
Microsoft employee by vocation
Startup guy for the love of it
Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here? 3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking
Microsoft ♥’s startups!
Why are we here?
Support
Visibility
Software
Microsoft BizSpark is a program designed to provide software startups all the resources they need to build
successful companies and connect them with a community of experts.
• 47,000 startups and 2500 + Network Partners worldwide, in 112 countries and 9 languages
• 2,600 startups and 150+ NPs (UK) ; 1,000+ startups and xxx NPs (France)
In a nutshell, Microsoft ♥’s startups!
Software
• Full featured development tools and production for 3 years.
• Free Windows Azure computing time for 16 months.
Support
• Professional technical support from Microsoft: Email support, Managed newsgroups, invitation to BizSpark Camps.
• 2 Free MSDN Support incidents.
Visibility
• Profile on BizSpark Connect.
• Promotion on BizSpark.com.
• Offers and Events on BizSpark Connect.
How BizSpark Works
Investors
University incubators, government agencies
Entrepreneur and industry associations Hosters
Startups join BizSpark™
Network Partners sponsor Startups
Visit www.microsoft.com/bizspark to learn more
CASE STUDY: (France) Leader in European Social Gaming
11
$1-2bn market in 2012
Market Size Forecasts ($bn)
Source: Think Equity (2010); eMarketer (2010); Business Insight (2010)
Founded 2008
80 staff
$7.5M funding in April 2011
Premium hits including GooBox (+10m users) and Pyramidville (+5m users)
Global Social Games
WEBSITE: www.kobojo.com LOCATION: Paris, France YEAR FOUNDED: 2008 MARKET SPACE: Entertainment INVESTORS: Self-funded EXECUTIVE TEAM: Vincent Vergonjeanne, CEO Franck Tetzlaff, COO Sébastien Monteil, CTO Philippe Desgranges, Executive Producer AWARDS: Featured at CES, Microsoft Booth, January 2011 Named to the Guidewire Group’s Innovate!100 List, December 2010 Winner, European BizSpark Summit, 2010 JOINED BIZSPARK: August 2009
Company Overview
Kobojo was created to give a social dimension to classic games and online applications. The company was built on the belief that games are fun, but can be even better when played with friends. Its products are designed for social networking sites, such as Facebook, to facilitate human connections and bring people together. Five million users play Kobojo games monthly
Why It’s One to Watch:
In less than two years, Kobojo became one of the most popular gaming sites in Europe and earned a spot among the top 5 European companies in the social gaming industry.
Kobojo founder Vincent Vergonjeanne competed at the 2004 Imagine Cup, where his team captured the top prize in the software design competition. Other members of the Imagine Cup team are now part of Kobojo as well.
The company uses the agile development methodology to rapidly produce games. This approach has attracted 41 million users since 2008 and continues to pull in about 5 million users monthly.
The Kobojo game Robotz is running in Facebook and is hosted on Azure.
Kobojo is well known for a sophisticated analytics platform for evaluating game play and optimizing for attracting highly networked users and driving monetization. Kobojo’s goal is to be the global Zynga working with studios in each of the target geographies to create engaging, local, social content.
Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach 4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking
Lean Startup
Software engineering is
• Highly creative
• Very interdependent on co-workers
• Loosely coupled
In short, it is like many other startup functions
• Marketing
• PR/Communication
• Business Development
• Product design
The learning from Software Engineering have been applied to broader fields
A sad statistic
Most startup failures are due to running out of money before having the right product
There can be other (WCR, founder shoutfest, litigation)
But not in the context of this talk
Source : Illusions of Entrepreneurship Scott Shane (US Data, all industries)
Proportion of New Businesses Founded in 1992 Still Alive By Year.
The longer the project, the likelier the failure
….because the less clear what success looks like
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
10 100 1,000 10,000 100,000
% o
f p
roje
ct r
eq
uir
em
en
t ch
ange
s
Project size (measured in function points, yes, we know…)
…but do we know why projects should be big?
Only 13% of features are used
often
… and designing the wrong thing is easy…
(We do not always know what the customer will look like)
Project (and startup) management can be like this
Inefficient way of working
The « break-down and specialize » management method leads to much waste:
Stock of useless functionalities, documentation
High cost of coordination and communication
Agility proposes a different management paradigm…
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Source: http://agilemanifesto.org/
Important Agile Principles
Customer satisfaction is the main goal
Intrinsic quality
Measure to objectivize
Collective commitment
…so we should delay design decisions as late as possible
Incremental deliveries
Iterative deliveries
Fail fast, fail early
As we are delivering fast, we can harvest positive and negative feedbacks
As we accept changes, we can take into account these feedbacks and adapt our plans
Feedback is more precious than perfection
Agile Marketing
Cust omer
discovery
Cust omer
Val idat ion
Cust omer
c reat ion
Company
bu ilding
Validate market hypothesis
Imagine and validate the MVP
Generate demand
Accelerate!
Business Model Canvas
Some great books…
http://institut-agile.fr
Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money – The “Perfect Pitch” 5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking
That Chance Meeting…..
ONE Minute….or four floors….
And if you are pitching on stage?
Three to five mins MAX
WHAT? HUH? HOW?!?!?!
A simple formulaic approach:
Value Proposition
The Problem
Your Solution
The Marketplace
Your Team Business
Execution
Business Model
Your Value Proposition
• Simple, short, memorable, no insider “jargon”
• One-two simple sentences, that even “granny could understand”
• Remember, they don’t necessarily understand your industry!
OR
The Problem
• What are you trying to solve for your future customer base?
• How many have that problem?
Your Solution / Technology
• Unique? USP?
• Concept / Alpha / Beta/ Execution?
• How Meeting your customer needs?
• Do Demo – but *beware* of live demos!?!
• They will ask questions throughout!
Your Marketplace –
• Market Size and Competition, your USPs
The Team
• Who are you? What have you done before? Do you have the right skills?
• Who do you need to hire longer term?
Delivery Delivery Delivery!
Core Business Metrics (i.e. acquisition, activation, retention, conversion, revenue)
Show me da money!!!
• Direct: » SaaS
» Freemium
» Subscription
» Licensing
» Consulting
• Indirect: » Advertising
» CPA / CPM
» Partnerships
» etc etc
Maybe then, you will get that second meeting!
And, don’t forget….
Great Resources for Practice Practice!
• Pitching in the UK
» UKTI Pitch Workshops
» TechCrunch events
» Seedcamp
» BizSparkCamps
» BizSpark Summit
» NE England??
• Pitching in Europe
» Le Web Startup Competition
» The Next Web Startup Competition
» European BizSpark Summit
» Start In Paris/Lyon
» Startup weekends
• USA
» DEMO Conference - http://www.demo.com/ (launch or pitch)
» TechCrunch Disrupt - http://disrupt.techcrunch.com/
» Guidewire – Innovate Conference / Pitch Slams
• How to’s:
» Guidewire – gscore http://guidewiregroup.com/services/g-score/
» 500Startups - http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/how-to-pitch-a-vc-aka-startup-viagra-how-to-give-a-vc-a-hardon
» Search on Slideshare www.slideshare.com
Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates 6. Effective Networking
Navigating the mysterious world of engaging with large corporates “Swimming with Whales”
Who do you approach?
Understand your needs from them
Understand that contact person's internal objectives and needs
Find the appropriate balance between persistence and aggressivenes
Be prepared for your meeting.
Desired outcome
Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking
Keith Ferrazzi – never eat alone
It’s not what you know, it’s *who* you know
The Genius Of Audacity…
Don’t be a Networking “Jerk”
Cold Calling is so “Old Skool”
Be yourself!
And finally, “Where’s Waldo?”
Agenda in Summary
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking
Recommended
