Innovation Archives - Serious Startups

Get Up! I Didn’t Hear No Bell!

One of my favorite scenes in Rocky V, really the only good scene in the movie, is when Rocky is in a street fight with Tommy Gunn and just getting his butt kicked. Barely conscious, he has a powerful flashback of all his hard fights, and Mickey comes to him in a vision.

Now Get Up One More Round…Fight This Guy Hard…I Didn’t Hear No Bell!

As an entrepreneur, you face tough opponents on a daily basis. It could be keeping the lights on, dealing with difficult clients, losing a major deal, or having a complicated employee situation. It often feels like you’re getting hit daily with jab, jab, uppercut, body blow.

Everyone who has been in business for any length of time knows how this feels. We have all had experiences where we’ve been knocked down and it feels like the lights are going dim.

Now watch the scene so the rest of this makes sense.

Leadership Requires Toughness

Just like a physical fight, business requires toughness – both physical and mental – and the will to win. If you don’t have your heart and soul in what you’ve set out to accomplish and people are trusting you to achieve, then when those tough times come, you are the guy or girl with a glass jaw.

Innovation Requires Agility

Just like a physical fight, innovation requires agility and reflexes. You have to be able to see opportunity and seize it, while also being able to anticipate pivots and counter-punch the competition. We often become so blinded by the big picture and long term goals that we forget to pay attention to the here and now. Avoiding pitfalls, objections, and the status quo demands being able to sidestep and get in a few jabs until you’re ready to deliver the knockout punch.

Entrepreneurship Requires Stamina

Just like a physical fight, being an entrepreneur requires stamina. Achieving success requires you to have toughness, agility, and great reflexes. Since all those traits require stamina, you better prepare yourself physically and mentally for the long road before you.

Have Rocky Style Training

Of course in the Rocky movies the insane training he does is compressed into two minutes. In life and business, you need to be training on a daily basis to keep up with the hard times that are coming.

There will be more than a few times when it seems like there is no point in going on. It would be easier to just give up. If you haven’t taken the time to push yourself when the times are good, then when you enter the ring and punches are being thrown, you might as well throw in the towel.

Prepare To Go One More Round

My encouragement to you is to surround yourself with people who have already fought the good fight. Learn from them. Go find yourself a Mickey. Use all of the amazing resources at our fingertips with mastermind groups, online forums, books, training videos.

Being an innovator requires leadership abilities and entrepreneurship requires amazing toughness. Train like you know the fight’s about to get tough.

Success is falling nine times and getting up ten. – Jon Bon Jovi

Prepare yourself for the hard times. Because they will come. Business is a knock down, drag out fight and you will find yourself on the canvas. When that happens, just do what I do. Watch that simple scene and let it speak to you in a very powerful way…then say:

Hey Life…I Didn’t Hear No Bell…One More Round!

Business Innovation Requires Patience

Innovation requires patience.

I know that seems counter-intuitive to driven entrepreneurs, but hang on, there is logic behind this statement.

The vast majority of people just don’t have the ability to see future possibilities until they exist and are being used by their peers. This may seem like a degrading statement, but it’s not.

Some people have the ability to see the future possibilities others don’t. Just as often, those who have entrepreneurial vision are totally incapable of turning the dream into a reality.

Accepting this truth as an innovator will give you the patience needed to make sure your vision becomes reality.

Patience With Family & Friends

When you have an innovative idea, especially one that directly impacts your life, frustration quickly grows when you can’t convince others of its validity. Those around you not being able to understand how this could change their lives seems outrageous.

When you allow this frustration to impact how you treat those close to you, they will begin to question your abilities. The people who are most likely to help you take risks can quickly become those most opposed to your dream. Not because it’s a bad idea, but because who you are as a person is more important to them than your “crazy” business idea.

Remember that all the hours you spend contemplating and planning your idea isn’t what they are doing. Be patient. Write down your idea. Think of analogies that will have relevancy to them. Not only will this help you prepare to counter objections, it also helps get you ready for customers and potential investors.

Patience Convincing Investors

On the investor side, they are already successful. The need to take risk isn’t something they have to do. It’s something they choose to do. More importantly they want to take risk, but only with the right people. 99% of investors will tell you that the person is more vital to success of their investment capital than the idea.

Since they are getting pitched hundreds of ideas, this means they have so much to filter through. On top of that, most of them have multiple companies, incredible responsibilities and decisions to be made on a daily basis.

So in terms of patience, never expect everyone to see the potential in your idea. You have a 1 in 50 chance of getting a yes from an angel investor, and 1 in 300 chance from a VC. Many startup founders give up after being turned down the first time. Don’t give up the first time.

Just like it’s hard to convince your friends and family, it takes time to connect with the right investors, identify objections and develop ways to counter them. Not just through words but expanded business logic, customer acquisition strategies, and proof of concept.

So Why Be Patient?

As you try over and over again to convince friends, family, bosses, or potential investors of your genius, remember that people just can’t see what is in your brain. Everything about entrepreneurship requires the courage to take risk. Since very few are ready to make that leap of faith, the ability to see beyond the here and now becomes even more limited.

Changing the status quo requires being able to paint so vivid a picture, your target customers and potential investors will be able to see the future created if they adopt your new product or service. Think of painting this picture just like an artist would. While the vision is there, it takes time, patience and expertise to create something of true value.

Since there is no way to escape this truth, it is much more efficient to just accept it and leverage to your advantage. When the inevitable panic sets in that someone else is going to beat you to the punch, just remember they are facing the exact same challenges as you.

11: Josh Davidson Talks Tech Startups & Having 6 Flags As A Client

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Joshua is the CEO and Founder of Chop Dawg, full service company lined up with leading designers and developers that take ideas from concept and turn them into reality. Chop Dawg helps create startups for inspiring entrepreneurs by providing them with a wide range of services including web and mobile development, branding and marketing strategies.

While most teenagers are busy getting their drivers license, he founded Chop Dawg at the ripe age of 16. Shortly after, at the age of 20, he went on to launch his second company, Subtle.

The David and Goliath Guide to Innovation: Don’t Always Solve New Problems

We’re always looking for that untapped holy grail of a new market. Something super niche. Something that no one else thought to go after. It’s exciting. It’s sexy.

And as entrepreneurs, we’re programmed to ask ourselves:
What new problems can I solve?

But why don’t we ask ourselves more often:
How can I solve problem X better than company Y?

We’re becoming so programmed to look for the “new”, that we’re becoming averse to solving existing problems, better.

Maybe it’s because it’s just plain daunting to think about going up against a Goliath when you’re a David. And even if you’re incredibly confident that you’ve found a better way to do things, there are a million reasons to talk yourself out of going up against a heavy hitter. It’s intimidating.

But actually, it happens all the time. Some of the most successful companies of the last couple years didn’t come up with an idea that required a new market. They solved old problems in new ways.

Take Lyft and Uber for example—going up against the Taxi unions. Stripetaking on PayPal. KISSMetrics and Mixpanel taking on Google Analytics.

What it really comes down to is finding a way to do things better (whether it’s a new problem or an old one), and knowing what and where your advantages are.

In his book, “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants”, Malcolm Gladwell takes the stance that David, not Goliath, actually had the advantage in that battle.

“It is because of, and not despite, David’s size and unorthodox choice of weapon that he is able to slay the lumbering giant[…]most people underestimate the importance of agility and speed.”

“David’s sling is a devastating weapon[…]Then we have a big, lumbering guy weighed down with armor, who can’t see much more than a few feet in front of his face, up against a kid running at him with a devastating weapon and a rock traveling with the stopping power of a .45 caliber handgun. That’s not a story of an underdog and a favorite. David has a ton of advantages in that battle, they’re just not obvious.” -Malcolm Gladwell

So how do you take on a Goliath?

We recently interviewed Todd Garland, founder of BuySellAds (BSA). He opened up about his experience and the challenges of taking on his Goliath, and diving head first into a dinosaur of an industry: online banner advertising.

“I was pretty naive going into it. Had I known it was a David & Goliath situation, I probably wouldn’t have done it. But that’s the beauty of being naive and being able to take a fresh perspective on an industry with a ton of baggage. Just being able to go into it with a fresh set of eyes and looking at how you can break down a problem at the most simple level, and how you can help people solve their problem.” -Todd

When he entered the market in 2008, he was up against the then dominantAdBrite. It seemed like they had all the advantages: a huge existing customer base, a big team of sales people, tons of options for advertisers to place ads, tons of features, etc. But AdBrite was clunky, and they were complicated.Todd saw a better way — a need for massive simplification.

And that became the key difference for BSA. They sold ads at fixed 30 day rates. And that was the only option. They focused on making it incredibly simple for publishers to get ads up on their site, and easy for them to get paid.

“I found a better way to get advertiser money and ‘Robin Hood’ it over to the publishers.” -Todd

What it came down to is that he really understood the product that he was trying to build, and he really understood the problem that he was solving. So he was able to articulate that really well to folks who he had identified as having that same problem.

Then, he just looked for them online. And the hard work began. He emailed, he cold called, he built personal relationships anywhere and everywhere he could. He hustled.

Fast forward about 6 years and BSA has a team that spans worldwide, they’ve got an established customer base, brand, infrastructure, etc.

“It’s always going to hard for any company to launch a new thing. That’s an important lesson for folks starting out for the first time, and maybe people launching their first company to understand.

While you may think you’re up against Goliath, because they already have a customer base, and they have tech, and they have a team, and they have money and all those things, it really is much more of a level playing field than you might think.” -Todd

Listen to the full interview with Todd on The Rocketship Podcast or subscribe on iTunes to receive all of our founder interviews.

Joelle Steiniger is Co-Founder of Small HQ, currently building HookFeed, a Stripe analytics app. She’s also writing How to Build a Rocketship and co-hosting the Rocketship Podcast.

Follow her on Twitter at: @JoelleSteiniger

This post originally appeared on Medium.

New Hampshire Startups Look To 2032 At Disruptivate Oct 9th

New Hampshire startups and innovators are looking forward to the second Disruptivate event scheduled for October 9th at Wentworth By The Sea in New Castle.

Mark Galvin, the Managing Director at the New Hampshire Innovation Commercialization Center was ecstatic with the turnout at the first Disruptivate event held in April. According to seacoastonline.com Galvin was hoping for 100 attendees. Over 250 folks came to they event with most staying into the night, and the after party.

“We were hoping we could break 100 participants,” Galvin told seacoastonline.. “We were pleasantly surprised that 250 people showed up and we sold out. Many people stayed from registration in the morning through the after-event party until 8:30 that night. A lot of people were really jazzed up. ”

The first event was broad in scope, highlighting technology innovation across a variety of sectors. For the October 9th event Galvin and the team are highlighting the healthcare and education sectors. Afternoon panels at the event will take a look at what healthcare and education may look like in 2032.

“We are looking to highlight 12 disrupters who have a company, an idea or even a piece of legislation that can actually change and move the innovation agenda in New Hampshire for health care and education,” Galvin said. “The woods are filled with disrupters and serial entrepreneurs. We need more people to help move the needle on disruption to benefit the state, the country and the world.”

Jeff Carlisle, the founder of an EMR startup and author of the book “We Love Innovation, so Long as It’s Nothing New”, was named a top Disruptivator of 2012 at the April conference. He will be on one of the healthcare panels at the October Disruptivate conference.

If you’re in the North East it looks like this is going to be a great event. Hit the link below to register.

Linkage:

Source: seacoastonline

You should also check out this mega event for startups

FCC Chairman Genachowski & Senator Frank Lautenberg Announce New Jersey Apps Challenge

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was in New Jersey with Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) on Wednesday to announce the New Jersey Apps Challenge and a new piece of legislation to foster American innovation.

The New Jersey Apps Challenge is of course a mobile apps design contest between three New Jersey universities. Students at Stevens, Rutgers and the New Jersey Institute of Technology are invited to participate in this statewide contest. The contest is open to students, faculty and alumni of the three institutions.

“The New Jersey Apps Challenge” will accept built-from-scratch mobile apps through December 31, 2012. A panel of judges will evaluate entries based on several metrics, including overall utility and potential commercial success. Winners will be selected from each university to meet with the university presidents, and one overall winner will meet with Dennis Crowley, CEO of foursquare, to pitch the winning idea.

“New Jersey’s students and entrepreneurs are on the cutting edge, and the apps challenge will showcase this next generation of New Jersey innovators,” said Senator Lautenberg. “From Thomas Edison to Albert Einstein to Bell Labs, New Jersey has long been the birthplace of new ideas that have transformed our economy and our world. By bringing the brightest minds in business and academia together, we can help ensure that New Jersey continues to build on its rich tradition of innovation.”

Genachowski added: “New Jersey has all the key ingredients to become a great engine of job-creating innovation: talent, world-class research universities, infrastructure, and access to capital. I’m glad that New Jersey leaders like those here today are working to encourage collaboration and entrepreneurship in the apps economy. It’s a low-cost but potentially high-yield way for young people to build their business skills and practice being an entrepreneur without quitting their day jobs or interrupting their education.”

The “America Innovates Act” will help universities and other research institutions grow “proof of concept funds” The legislation will also provide innovators with the business development training they need to take their ideas to market.

Microsoft Kinect is coming to Windows AND laptops?

Microsoft Kinect is coming to Windows (AND??) laptops? During CES 2012 Microsoft announced that they would be releasing the Kinect for Windows PC’s. They released the SDK earlier this month you can download it here. Microsoft is following its old patterns of gouging consumers charging an additional $100 over the cost of the Xbox 360 Kinect. If you have yet to see or test the Kinect we have included a video below.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diy7rkWkDtU]

This in itself is exciting. I am hoping to have a review unit (two actually) coming to Nibletz for in-depth testing of the Kinect on the few PCs that we have at our disposal. TechCrunch and The Daily are reporting that a few other options may be on the horizon. The Daily was able to spend some time with a pair of prototype laptops with Kinect sensors built-in to the devices. While no photos were taken they did give a brief description of what they witnessed.

“The Daily had a chance to check out a pair of prototypes incorporating Kinect sensors over the last few days. The devices, which at first glance appear to be Asus netbooks running Windows 8, feature an array of small sensors stretching over the top of the screen where the webcam would normally be. At the bottom of the display is a set of what appear to be LEDs.” Matt Hickey, The Daily

They also identified a potential to give people with disabilities more accessibility options. This would be ideal in the kitchen while cooking, using it as a HTPC, and automotive applications. I have already started to plan the way that I will be using this as my Infotainment system in my next car. Microsoft will be showing off the preview for Windows 8 and they will most likely take that time to showcase all of the innovation coming out of Redmond.

Kinect for launches for Windows on February 1^st, 2012 in 12 countries (United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom), at a suggested retail price of US $249. Read more from Microsoft here

TheDaily via TechCrunch