Tag: startups

Industries of the future on display

Today’s startups indicate the future shape of the economy, but where will the jobs come from?

One of the challenges we face in looking at the economy’s future is going lies in identifying what tomorrow’s industries will be.

I’ve spent the day at the 500Startups pitch day at the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley listening to the startups on the program making their investment spiels and in many ways those businesses are a glimpse of the future economy.

While not all of these businesses will survive, and many will pivot over time, they do indicate directions the economy is taking.

The question though is what sectors will drive jobs growth over the next quarter century and whether those industries will pay enough for workers and their families to survive, let alone keep a consumerist economy ticking along.

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Diversity and startup success

One investment company believes they have found four factors that predict the success of a startup business – being in Silicon Valley isn’t one of them.

There are four factors that seem to be key to the success of startup business and one that doesn’t reports the Harvard Business Review.

A survey of six hundred investments over the past decade by First Round Capital found the best predictors for success were that at least one of the founding team was a woman, one had been to an elite university, some had worked at a top tech firm and the average age of the team was under 42.

Interestingly First Round’s successful investments weren’t dependent upon the businesses being based in the Bay Area or New York.

Those factors may have something to do with the focus of First Capital’s investment managers but the results are food for thought.

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A lack of systems, process or even a working website

AirBnB had almost no working technology when it launched in 2007. But they proved their idea.

The first ever guest of AirBnB tells his story. At the time the site had no contact details and Amol Surve was desperate to attend the San Francisco’s Industrial Design Conference in 2007.

He tracked down AirBnB co-founder Joe Gebbia to get the air mattress and the business was born.

Which shows a good business idea doesn’t need all their processes and technology in order to prove it works. Something that anyone with a new business idea should consider.

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Bootstrapping becomes fashionable for startups

As VC money becomes scarce for startups, bootstrapped businesses could come into their own

“The sincerest form of flattery is that customers will pay,” says Alex Bard, the San Francisco based CEO of Campaign Monitor, an email marketing platform originally out of Australia.

Two years ago we spoke to Bard who at the time was Salesforce’s Vice President for Service Cloud and Desk.com. Since then he left the cloud CRM giant to run the global of expansion of Campaign Monitor. We caught up with him again today at the company’s San Francisco offices.

Campaign Monitor is an interesting company in that unlike most tech startups it has been cashflow positive from its early days and when it did take investor money, half the funds were raised from private equity rather than venture capital funds.

“Because the financing climate in Australia wasn’t as fertile here in the United States – and  San Francisco specifically – until recently, you have a whole crop of tech companies that have been built differently. From day one they’ve been focused on economics and business fundamentals.”

Bard sees this focus on bootstrapping and cashflow as being an advantage in the current funding climate where suddenly unlimited amounts of VC money can no longer be assumed.

It could turn out more conservative companies are better fixed to weather the coming investment drought than today’s unicorns.

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Tech’s tightening times

Dropbox’s warning about staff benefits is an indication of tougher times in the Bay Area

Despite having spent a hundred thousand dollars on a chrome panda for their office lobby, Dropbox are warning staff that benefits are about to tighten, Business Insider reports.

The warnings from Dropbox’s management are a clear indication that tougher times are approaching for tech companies. For those wanting to imitate the Silicon Valley greater fool model or get a slice of it, that opportunity may have passed.

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Do it now

There’s one common piece of advice entrepreneurs have for others.

I’ve spent much of today, interviewing Australian tech company founders on why they moved to San Francisco for a project I’m doing.

One question I’m asking is what advice they would give others planning a similar move.

Every response so far has been, “do it now. Don’t wait.”

So what are you waiting to do?

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