"As an entrepreneur, if you think that you don't have any competition, then it means one of two things:
- What you're working on is not worth working upon or
- You don't know how to use Google"
- Guy Kawasaki had once told this to Peter Panas and me during a global student business plan competition years ago, after we had just pitched the business plan for Securamed at the Stanford global e-challenge in Singapore. Competitiveness is the essence of any business and you need to know the competition to be competitive.
It must be obvious that you need to know who your present competitors are, but it is even more important to know the following three facets about your competitors:
- How will your competition react to your strategies?
- What is your strongest point and your competitors' weakest point?
- Who is likely to be your competitor in the short term vs the long term?
In this this post, I'll share my thoughts on #1 - proactively predicting the competitor's moves/reactions:
Just knowing the names and basic offerings of your competitors is never enough. Basic information about the obvious competitors is typically very easy to find. If it is a large company it is pretty straight forward to find the basics from the company's website. If the competitor is a public company, then it is even better. For large companies, which are private, you may find the basic information from the Dunn And Bradstreet reports. For large companies, which are publicly listed, most information is available from the EDGAR reports or the annual reports. Hoover's database (easily accessible from any decent library) is also very comprehensive. It starts getting trickier as the size of a competitor starts decreasing. Not only can a smaller company harder to spot, but their strategies/reactions are harder to predict. Most effective small companies are fairly agile and can adapt easily to changing market conditions.
more at the original post: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/11/on-competition-knowing-the-other-players.html
Every year, I set aside some time to "think". Typically, it has been during the month of December, but this year it ended up being the month of October. While throughout the year, mind is always on a relentless pursuit of thought, followed by action, I make conscious efforts to prioritize thoughts, share thinking points with friends/mentors and select three concrete areas to work on.
I've found this process very helpful and in fact addictive over the last six years. Several people I know and respect have been doing it for years. For me, the "think" day/week/month entails three things :
1. Emptying your mind and organizing all thoughts in the mind: Open up a journal (I prefer paper journal, but OneNote works as well) and write down all thoughts that have been lingering around in the mind - things you've wanted to learn, things that have been bothering you, things that you've wanted to get done, people you've wanted to meet, etc. After listing down all thoughts - sort, bucketize, prioritize these thoughts/themes.
2. Deliberately add new thinking points to the mind: Since our mind is always receiving information/thinking points from a gamut of sources, "think time" is a good opportunity to put a filter on the information sources and seek out to learn more about a few specific topics. Seek out the experts on these topics, read books, read blogs and take notes.
3. Executing: The entire exercise is not worth it, if it is not acted upon. Prioritize three or four themes/areas to focus on, create milestones and action items, between now and the next "think time."
more at the original post at: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/11/back-to-business-after-a-think-month.html
(last in series - which company should I start?)
We've identified factors/criteria that an entrepreneur could use to select a venture, and have talked about the importance of Bigness of the idea and understanding of people's needs. I believe that the most important traits of an entrepreneur is relentless passion and that should help you select the idea to start the new venture.
- What are you most passionate about (and where can you add value)?
- Ask Maslow: Which need in Maslow's hierarchy of needs is your idea addressing?
- How BIG, HAIRY and AUDACIOUS is your idea?
Starting anything up is characterized with difficulties. Honestly, it can get very rough (series of setbacks, unplanned time-wasters, interestingly wierd people to deal with, changing market conditions, etc.) One can only survive these setbacks and emerge out successfully, if he/she is supremely passionate about that idea. Life's too short, so please don't postpone it by working on things you're not passionate about.
More at original post: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/09/rebel-without-a.html
-Kintan
From the three identified factors/criteria that an entrepreneur could use to select a venture, we discussed applying Maslow's hierarchy of needs to identify and size up the market. I've always been fascinated by the bigness of an idea and its impact. I've come to learn/realize that bigness is actually important (almost indispensable).
- What are you most passionate about (and where can you add value)?
- Ask Maslow: Which need in Maslow's hierarchy of needs is your idea addressing?
- How BIG, HAIRY and AUDACIOUS is your idea?
If we at some of the visions of super-successful entrepreneurs, they've always strived to tackle big, hairy and audacious pursuits. Bill Gates wanted to put a computer on every desk, while Henry Ford strived to make cars affordable for everyone. That word "every" makes all the difference.The grandness of the vision is not only stimulating for you as an entrepreneur, it ends up serving as a magnet for talent. As an entrepreneur you want super smart people to join you and smart folks are not easily excited by mediocre visions or mediocre entrepreneurs striving to solve a small problem. Smart people always want to work on big hard problems. So by selecting a big, hairy and audacious venture will significantly increase your chances of attracting smart people to join you.
More at the original post: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/09/big-hairy-and-a.html
-Kintan
Earlier I had identified three factors/criteria that an entrepreneur could use to select a venture:
- What are you most passionate about (and where can you add value)?
- Ask Maslow: Which need in Maslow's hierarchy of needs is your idea addressing?
- How BIG, HAIRY and AUDACIOUS is your idea?
First and third factor (passion and vision) tend to be innate in most entrepreneurs, so I'll share my views about them later. Let's discuss the most predictable/deducable factor - market need. In simplest terms, the answer to fundamental question: "What should I build?" is "Build what people need." If you're an entrepreneur, it is indispensable to assess the needs of the customers and decide to address the most needs that matter the most.
Abraham Maslow proposed a theory to explain and prioritize needs of human beings. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, which he subsequently extended to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity (from wikipedia). It may not seem obvious, but this theory offers a powerful framework for assessing needs for human beings (read customers). So, if you have multiple ideas and are trying to prioritize those ideas, it would help to listen to Maslow.
Needs, represented as a pyramid with most fundamental needs at the bottom can be read interpreted in several ways. For instance, two bottom-most sections (physiological and safety needs) areapplicable to every one and are mostly non-negotiable. People need to eat, drink, sleep, etc.
From an entrepreneur's perspective, these needs are typically served by commodity products/services (and mostly not by technology products).The barriers to entry are low and price-elasticity is very high. These are typically "bad" businesses to start, especially in tech realm, because scope for innovation and growth is restricted. Another observation is that the size of the addressable market (number of people to whom the needs apply to), start decreasing as we move higher in the pyramid.
More at original post: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/09/ask-maslow.html
-Kintan
An entrepreneur (or a wannabe entrepreneur) typically has a list of ideas and when a million other things align, the entrepreneur has to pick one idea and give it all he/she has. Selecting one idea can be a daunting task and a lot of thinking should be involved before making the plunge. Most entrepreneurs I've known have always maintained a prioritized list of all potential startup ideas that came to their mind. Many of them have focused some energies on the top two or top three ideas (build prototype and see market's/investor's reactions, before proceeding further). As an investor looking to invest in an idea/startup, typical factors to look for are:
* compentence of the team
* size, growth potential and landscape of the market
* barriers to entry
* timing (think "riding the wave")
* and a variation of one of the above (depending on who you talk to)
If you're reading this blog, you may find it insightfully entertaining to check out....
More at original post : http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/i-am-an-entrepr.html
-Kintan
Continued from tres...
After spending the first 12 minutes of a design interview for a program/product manager role in learning more about the user, requirements, constraints and scenarios, as per the design template, you could spend the next 30 mintues in actually designing the prodcut/feature/object.
What design you come up with will be directly proportional to your imagination, your readings and your curiosity; but it is important to do the following at the very least:
- Approach the design in logical steps
- Ask for feedback and design iteratively
- Recognize key decision-points during the design and decide
More at the original post on kintya.com: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/how-would-you-3.html
-Kintan
continued from dos..
Once the requirements are gathered, constraints are taken into account and the mental model of the user is understood, you would have laid a solid foundation to start talking about key user-types and the scenarios in which the product/object is likely to be used the most.
It is important to identify key user-types, commonly known as "personas". Jonathan Grudin and John Pruit has written a detailed explanation of participatory design and personas here. My friend from User Research at Microsoft - Lada gave me a quick primer on various types of personas. In her words:
more at original post on kintya: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/how-would-you-2.html
-Kintan
Continued from uno..
I'll attempt to describe the notions of "mental model" and "affordances" in this quick post. Our mind constantly picks up pre-conceived notions and expectations about certain things. Mind assumes certain object to have a particular set of characteristics and if it finds out otherwise, it has a tendancy to judge the object as poorly designed.
More at the original post: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/how-would-you-1.html
-Kintan
I've received a few notes from friends to explain the my template for answering a design question in further detail, so let's use one of the cliche interview questions to walk through my approach of answering design questions in Product/Program manager interviews.
"How would you design a kitchen?" is tantamount to "How would you move Mt. Fuji?". Several PM interviewers are known to have asked this (in fact I was asked this twice - once in my campus interviews long time ago and then during a full-day interview - again several years ago.) As an interviewee, the key is to know that the "question" really does not matter. The approach does and the same approach can be successfully applied to ansewering a technical question like - "How would you design an object model for an instant messaging client?"
Before we start answering the question, let me share as to why I believe this template and more importantly "writing/scribbling/drawing your answer on the whiteboard" works. There are three strategic advantages of using the whiteboard in answering any design questions. The whiteboard helps in:
1. Taking notes and not having to worry about remembering them: As you'll see, the key in answering such questions to the interviewer's satisfaction is to ensure that you ask about every requirement and constraint before starting to answer the question - more the merrier. Writing down all requirements on the whiteboard and having them available during later stage in the interview can be really helpful...
More at original post: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/how-would-you-d.html
-Kintan
Three years ago, I asked myself and several of my mentors within and outside of Microsoft - "What's the closest thing to entrepreneurship at Microsoft?" The unanimous answer was - "Become a Program Manager on a product that's about to grow/explode!!" I took the leap of faith and it worked. I've enjoyed every bit of it and would recommend it to anyone, who's passionate about technology, entrepreneurship and design.
Several folks have asked me a gamut of questions aboutthe role of a program manager, but the most common threads of conversations have been around "becoming a program manager at Microsoft."
While the role is called Program Manager, it is similar to the role of a product manager at most other companies including Google, Facebook, startups, etc. At Microsoft, Product Manager is a marketing role. Much has been written about the role by my mentors and people who are much more experienced, so I won't delve into it. I recently wrote two posts on the topic on my official/personal blog:
Part 1: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/how-to-become-a.html
Part 2: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2008/08/how-to-become-1.html
Let's create great things!
-Kintan
It is rare that I would share an email publicly. But this one is pretty interesting. Microfinance, poverty elimination and Unitus are gaining popularity in the Microsoft community. Ed Bland, former General Manager of XBOX marketing (he and his team first launched one of the biggest marketing campaigns for the first launch of XBOX), recently left Microsoft to join Unitus as the COO. Here's a mail from him, with interesting video messages from other Microsoft executives and employees.
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Dear Kintan,
When I left Microsoft two years ago, I set out to discover how I could best invest my time and effort to make a real difference in the world. But where was the greatest need? Here’s what I learned:
- Half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day.
- Over 100 million primary school-age children are not in school today because they cannot afford to be there.
- Every year, 6 million children die from malnutrition before their 5th birthday.
Despite the numbers, there is reason for hope—and for action. As I dug deeper into these issues, one idea kept surfacing: microfinance. It was a concept as quantitatively successful as it was radically ambitious. Microfinance offered the big idea I was after—a remarkably effective, sustainable, and scalable approach to alleviating global poverty. And among the most innovative organizations leading this movement, one stood out: Unitus.
I have been the COO of Unitus for just over a month now. In that time, I’ve visited several of our partners (the small banks to the poor that we partner with and help rapidly grow), have seen our impact on the ground, and have met women and men lifting themselves out of poverty with nothing more than a small loan, hard work, and an overwhelming desire to improve their family’s future.
Microfinance works. Unitus is making it work for more people by increasing access to these life-changing financial services throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Our partners add clients an incredible 11 times faster than the industry average. But today we need your help to realize our ambition of reaching 15 million of the working poor by 2010.
Click here to support Unitus through the Microsoft Giving Campaign.
Best regards,
Ed Bland
Chief Operating Officer
p.s. To the right and below you'll find several familiar faces explaining why they support Unitus. I hope you will join them, and me, as we change the lives of millions now and for generations to come. You can also help by forwarding this email to your Microsoft friends and colleagues!
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Ed Bland
COO, Unitus
(Former General Manager, Entertainment and Devices / Xbox Division)
S. Somasegar
Corporate VP, Developer Division
Brian Arbogast
Corporate VP, Windows Live
Rogers Weed
Former General Manager, Entertainment and Devices Division
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orignially published on www.kintya.com
Technorati tags: poverty , Unitus , Microsoft , Giving , Corporate Philanthropy , microfinance
In spirit of the ongoing TechEd conference, I thought this would be an interesting post..
I've been to six conferences in the past year and have organized a few mini-conferences here and there in the past. I've been always fascinated to learn about people's motivations for doing any particular activity or making a specific decision.
"Attending a conference" may turn out to be an expensive ordeal, especially if you have to travel to a different city (or a country), take out the time from your daily planned work, pay for transportation, accomodation and other compulsive costs associated to going to a new place, in addition to paying the conference fees. But people still go to conferences.
When I was in school, I got lucky to be part of the school's engineering magazine's staff (which entitled me to a free pass to all major conferences in the country), and I selectively attended many. Currently I go to a conference either to present, to demo my product to learn more about a new industry/technology. But, the common and the highest order bit for me to attend any conference has always been and will always be "to meet new people", with similar or different interests.
Despite being the single-most motivating factor, I haven't been able to optimally meet all the right people I can potentially meet at any such conference, and I'm often frustrated. After every conference, I do a tally of business cards that I have collected (obviously in return of sharing my business card), and I always feel that I could have met more people with specific interests.
Few sites like Confabb (supported by Dave Winer, started by Salim Ismail) and Pubshub are attempting to create some kind of social community around conferences, but it hasn't worked out for me yet (although I've always yearned for something like this for years)..Confabb recently acquired assets of a Seattle startup from Ben Curtis - Conferencemeetup, which claims to have some social features. It will be interesting to see them integrated into confabb.
I did a quick Facebook poll to learn about people's motivations for attending conferences and here are the results:
Question: Why do you go to a conference?
1. To view demos from exhibitors (7%)
2. To meet new people with similar interests. (24%)
3. To listen to speakers/presentations.(34%)
4. To get away from work.(36%)
Today, with prolific blogging about all events worth attending and the generous conference organizers, who share content (even videos, see examples at www.ted.com and www.allthingsd.com) of the conference for free (in return of advertising), it becomes hard to justify paying the fees for listening to speakers/presentations. There is an interesting debate on value of such services on Techcrunch.
Why do/would you go to a conference?
-Kintan
originally posted at www.kintya.com
Technorati tags: confabb , conference , Ben Curtis , conferencemeetup , entrepreneur , Dave Winer
As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, if you have $100, you would first give them to your lawyer, then to your accountant, and then lastly to your market researcher. Facebook launched polls recently, which enables the users to quickly and cheaply($5 basic insertion fee plus $0.10 per answer) set up a poll (a question with multiple possible answers) and target it to the Facebook community (based on some very high level criteria - age, sex, profile keyword, etc.)
I am impressed by the simple design of workflow of poll-creation, implementation and analysis. But, the most exciting part was the speed. Facebook claims that they can get answers as quick as within 30 minutes (if you pay $1 per answer), but even when I chose the cheapest option ($0.10), I got the answers fairly quickly (I set up the poll, went to sleep and the answers were ready by the time I woke up -- and I didn't oversleep!!)
I set up a sample poll with a simple question?
Why do you go to a conference?
I was happy with the answers that I received, but I am not confident about the statistical significance of the data. If I were to make a critical product design decision, could I rely blindly on results of Facebook polls? I don't know. Probably not, at least now.
Overall, I do believe that Facebook will become a major cultural and economic force, leading up to a huge value creation for its founders and investors. If you've tried their polls, please share your experience. My friend Robert Scoble had doubts about facebook's appeal earlier in December 2006, but he's expressed positive notes about Facebook recently. Facebook is rapidly creating a tightly bound network/community and it is intelligently leveraging its vibrant community for lucrative applications, besides advertising.
Michael Arrington from Techcrunch describes Facebook polls as a marketer's paradise and I agree. I wonder if Microsoft Program Managers would start leveraging such quick polls to get additional datapoints.
get on Facebook.
-Kintan
originally posted at: http://www.kintya.com/blog/2007/06/facebook_polls_.html
Technorati tags: facebook , facebook polls , market research , entrepreneur , marketing
If you are going to read only one book on design during your lifetime, my recommendation will be to read - The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. This book has been instrumental in shaping some of my own approaches to design and I'm sure it has influenced several thousands of designers across the world. I would highly recommend this book for anyone applying for a Program Manager position at Microsoft.
Below is a list of my notes (both interpretations and highlighted from the book). I may have taken some sentences directly from the book, to ensure that the message is communicated optimally. The copyright remains with the author - Donald Norman.
Here's what I found important and interesting from the book:
- The appearance of the device must provide the critical clues required for its proper operation - knowledge has to be both in the head and in the world.
- What makes design a highly challenging and rewarding discipline is that it grapples with the need to accommodate apparently conflicting requirements. All great designs have an appropriate balance and harmony of aesthetic beauty, reliability and safety, usability, cost and functionality.
- Art and beauty play essential roles in our lives. Technology changes rapidly, people change slowly.
- Humans do not always err, but they do when the things they use are badly conceived and designed.
- The psychology of everyday things demonstrate the importance of visibility, appropriate clues and feedback of one's actions.
- Affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used. For instance, a round object is assumed to have an affordance of a ball.
Something that happens right after an action appears to be caused by that action.
Two fundamental principles of designing for people are : 1. provide a good conceptual model and 2. make things visible.
- Good designs have good mappings between the controls and the things controlled by them. For instance, the "next" button on a screen/wizard should be either on the right or bottom of the screen and not on the top left.
- Errors should be easy to detect, they should have minimal consequences, and, if possible, their effects should be reversible. Errors can sometimes be prevented by using forcing functions.
- Designers can use three methods to prevent users get into an erroneous state:
1. Intelocks - by forcing operations to occur in a particular order
2. Lockin - by keeping an operation active, preventing someone from prematurely stopping it
3. Lockout - by preventing someone from entering an erroneous state
- Ask the following seven design questions while designing - How easily can one:
1. Determine the function of the device?
2. Tell what actions are possible?
3. Determine mapping from intention to physical movement?
4. Perform the action?
5. Tell if system is in desired state?
6. Determine mapping from system state to interpretation?
7. Tell what state the system is in?
These principles have worked for me and I'm certain that they'll work for you.
Let's design something extraordinary.
Kintan
PS: I'm blogging regularly at www.kintya.com This was originally blogged at http://www.kintya.com/blog/2007/06/design_of_every.html
Technorati tags: design of everyday things , Donald Norman , program manager , design
