Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: business

  • Niches and needs: necessity and the mother of invention

    Niches and needs: necessity and the mother of invention

    An old saying is necessity is the mother of invention and nowhere is this shown better than walking the exhibition floor of the Internet of Things World conference in San Francisco today.

    The Wallflower is a good example of this, thought up of after the founder had to rush home when his partner thought she’d left the stove on (she hadn’t), he thought there had to be something that could monitor this on the market and when he discovered there wasn’t, he invented it.

    Snowboarding needs

    Probably the sexiest device on the floor is the Hexo+, an autonomous drone designed for video shots. Use the app to tell you what shot you want and it the drone will take off and video you.

    Hexo+ was founded by Xavier de Le Rue, a French professional snowboarder who wanted to get shots of his maneuvers but couldn’t afford a crew or a helicopter to do so. The preprogrammed flight patterns represent the most common camera sequences optimised for the GoPro camera.

    Probably the most trivial is the MySwitchMate, a mechanical device that fits over a wall light switch. Set it up and you can use its app to flick your lights on and off.

    The device was born out of the founder wanting to remotely control his college dorm lights from his bed. While the market seems to be those who don’t want to get out of bed, its main market are those who would like remotely controlled lights but can’t install a smart lighting system.

    A niche from a need

    What all three of these devices show is how a need by an inventor spurred a  product’s development, in that respect the Internet of Things is no different from any other wave of innovation.

    So if you wonder “why doesn’t someone sell this?” it might be an opportunity to set up your own business or invent an IoT device to meet that need.

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  • The tough world of IoT hardware startups

    The tough world of IoT hardware startups

    Yesterday Internet of Things startup Ninja Blocks announced it was shuttering its doors after three years of operations, two successful Kickstarter campaigns and three successful fundraising campaigns that netted $2.4 million.

    Ninja blocks aimed to become the centre of the smarthome with its simple controllable device but, as many other startups have found out, the costs and complexities of designing, manufacturing and shipping hardware are not trivial.

    Last year I spoke to Ninja Blocks and a similar IoT startup which also failed, Moore’s Cloud, about their opportunities and challenges. In the light of both companies failing they are worth watching again.

    Daniel Friedman, CEO of Ninja Blocks outlined the company’s plans along with the limits of crowdfunding.

    The CEO of Moore’s Cloud, Mark Pesce, had much stronger views on crowdfunding and its limits.

    From the Moore’s Cloud and Ninja Blocks story it would be tempting to conclude that pure IoT hardware startup plays are doomed to failure, however the lessons of companies like Fitbit and the Pebble watch show otherwise.

    A very good example of success is Spanish IoT company Libelium whose founder and CEO Alicia Asin told Decoding The New Economy two years ago how the company had started under the shadow of the 2009 economic crisis and thrived since.

    The failure of Ninja Blocks and Moore’s Cloud really tell us we’re in the early days of the IoT and the business models and technologies are not certain. It’s also a commentary on the risks involved in startup businesses, as investor Dave McClure says, “not every one will be a unicorn.”

    As the markets grow and the technologies evolve we’ll be seeing many more IoT startups, few will become billion dollar unicorns and many will fail. That’s the nature of new industries.

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  • Winning the cloud

    Winning the cloud

    “The cloud has won, the argument is over and any software company that hasn’t moved onto the cloud is doomed,” stated Netsuite CEO Zack Nelson at the Suiteworld 2015 conference in San Jose this week.

    Nelson and Netsuite certainly can say their software is selling with revenues increasing thirty percent over the last year, although the company’s overall losses were the same as a year earlier at $22 million.

    As with all conferences the focus was on big product announcements with Netsuite showcasing their enhanced Point of Sale services, European data centres and their alliance with Microsoft.

    Microsoft become partners

    The video appearance of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to announce the partnership covering Azure web services and Office 365 is another step by Nadella to move Microsoft into strategic relationships with key cloud computing companies following another with Dropbox last month and with Netsuite’s fierce rival Salesforce last year.

    For Netsuite the partnership offers the opportunity to integrate more tightly into Microsoft’s office productivity and enterprise tools that have been clawing their way back in marketshare after sustained attacks from Google and other cloud services.

    In the product offerings, Netsuite was showing its push into ecommerce and retail showing off both its Point Of Sale system and its site builder capabilities with the big boast their back end services are “faster than Amazon’s.”

    Taking the game up to Amazon is a big boast and it will be worthwhile seeing how the Seattle based giant responds, certainly for Netsuite’s customers having an e-commerce system that can match the industry leader will be a big attraction.

    Rolling out the data centers

    Data centers are always an issue for cloud computing services with the questions of redundancy, data sovereignty and latency being raised. The announcement that Netsuite will be opening centres in Europe will help the company in those growth markets.

    For the Asia Pacific, there are no immediate plans for data centers in the region but the company’s main push is on developing deeper relationships into the Chinese markets with resellers and partners.

    The international push is important for Netsuite with the proportion of its non-US revenues being stuck at just over a quarter for each of the last three years with Craig Sullivan, the company’s Senior Vice President for Enterprise & International Products, flagging China, Brazil and Germany as key growth markets in the coming years.

    A native look and feel

    In all three countries the company is betting on partners growing market share through a Most Valued Players and reseller programs aided by the company’s claim the software works natively in 19 different languages.

    “We want international users feel like NetSuite was designed for them,” is Sullivan’s ambition for the service’s global operations.

    Cloud computing may have won the software wars but there’s still plenty of battles to be fought over who will make the profits from the online software market, a fight not helped by evolving business models.

    Suiteworld was a good demonstration of what Netsuite is hoping to fight that battle with. Whether it’s enough to succeed either as a company or a takeover target remains to be seen.

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  • Adventures in Startupland – the brutal truth of starting a business

    Adventures in Startupland – the brutal truth of starting a business

    Startupland is a magical, mythical place where the unicorns roam free and much of the advice dished out to nascent entrepreneurs has more in common with a romantic fantasy novel than the hard work of building a business.

    Mikkel Svane’s Startupland is not one of those books. Svane, the co-founder and CEO of cloud based customer business Zendesk, is instead a tough description of the challenges and personal costs of venturing into business for yourself and the harsh, demanding realities of the Silicon Valley statup model.

    “No-one tells you how little you get paid,” warns Svane as he charts his own journey from developing and selling through Stockholm’s computer shops of the mid 1990s a basic program that created 3D optical illusions through to floating Zendesk on the NASDAQ in 2014.

    During Zendesk’s journey Svane and his business partners experienced the entire range of challenges that a business founder could face ranging from managing high growth, laying off staff in the face of a downturn, the inevitable pivots and, sadly, the passing of a valued employee.

    “Startups are fragile” warns Svane and observes how he nearly fell for the trap all business owners have been tempted by in doing consulting work to provide cash for the business. Invariably the side job comes to dominate and the new venture withers due to lack of attention.

    Working from home

    For those starting out in business, whether it’s a tech startup or something a big more mundane, the observations and tips on working for home are worthwhile in themselves, if you find you’re one of the type that “sits at home and eats toasts and masturbates” then it’s probably best to find an office or coworking space.

    Having had the opportunity to interview Svane a number of times, his own passion and character comes clearly out of the book including his view that seemingly boring things like customer support is sexy, citing how Marilyn Monroe fell for Arthur Miller (although that didn’t end well).

    The ‘boring is sexy’ mantra is one Svane repeats throughout the book, and his contention is seemingly mudane areas like customer support are where the real business opportunities lie.

    Business is about relationships

    Ultimate Svane sees business as being about relationships; between customers, staff and investors. His view on accepting investor’s money is an important lesson from the book.

    “Great investors have unique relationships with their founders, and they are dedicated to growing the company,” writes Svane. “Mediocre and bad investors work around founders, and the company ends in disaster.”

    The brutal truth

    In telling the brutal truth about starting a business Svane gives anyone considering the idea of ditching the cubicle a realistic view of the challenges ahead. That advice alone will save many families from the stresses and costs of self employment and startup land.

    Those considering entering the world of startups, small business or self-employment should read Startupland. If you’ve already started that journey, then Svane’s story is worth reading to show you aren’t alone in your daily challenges.

     

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  • Is your job really safe?

    Is your job really safe?

    Yesterday we looked at the PwC report on the value of science and engineering education to the economy.

    The survey wasn’t good news for the workforce with the survey predicting over two in five workers’ jobs were at risk as digital technologies changed industry.

    Notable in the list were the industries PwC believed to be safe over the next twenty years; largely being the medical, health and ‘people’ businesses like public relations.

    jobs-least-at-risk-from-tech-change

    While the industries themselves might be safe, specific jobs in those sectors may not be so with roles ranging from hospital porters being replaced by robots to surgeons carrying out remote operations.

    Looking at the list of relatively unaffected industries, it’s hard not to see how digital technologies aren’t going to disrupt those occupations.

    Redefining public relations

    PR for instance is undergoing a radical change as the media industry is being totally disrupted requiring today’s public relations professionals to have a very different set of skills to those of twenty years ago.

    Those skills include a much more adept use of technology itself and having to deal with a faster, more fragmented industry.

    Public relations professionals brought up in the days of boozy lunches and far off deadlines struggle in a time of bloggers, social media and data journalism.

    Evolving medicine

    Similarly medical practitioners, the top position on the list, have seen their jobs dramatically transformed over the past twenty years by computers and those changes are far from over as medical equipment gets smarter, personal fitness devices become pervasive and the amount of data being collected on patients grows.

    Across the medical industry the roles of almost every occupation is being redefined as technology changes the tools they have, along with the nature of ailments their patients present with.

    Big Data and analytics

    Some professions will grow but automation in those fields will grow exponentially faster, a good example being the fifth role on the list – database administrators and ICT security professionals.

    Ensuring the reliability and security of servers and networks is going to become even more essential as the economy increasingly depends upon these systems however security and IT professionals are going to rely on algorithms and Big Data to manage the massive task they have – these are the opportunities for companies like Splunk and Microsoft Dynamics.

    In all of these comparatively safe industries the jobs of tomorrow are going to need different skill sets to what they require today.

    For workers in these ‘safe industries’ this means further education, training and reskilling to stay employed. Just being employed in a sector that’s expected to stay static or grow isn’t enough to keep your job.

    Employers in these ‘safe industries’ also face a challenge in making sure their staff have the right skill sets to use the new technologies.

    The airline analogy

    If you were running an airline in 1965 it would be cold comfort to look at the explosive growth ahead for the industry in the jet airline era when all your staff are trained to keep propellor aircraft in the air.

    So when we talk about digital disruption, it’s not just about industries being shut down and jobs being lost but about radically changing occupations.

    It would be a brave person to assume that just because their industry is safe, their own job or business is secure.

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