Category: Business/Entrepreneurship

청년 창업 유감

청년 창업과 관련해서 새로 생기는 행사, 신규 단체 – 많아도 너무 많다. 때로는 거품도 필요한 것이라고는 하지만, 정말 이건 너무 심하다. 창업 동아리 신규 모집에 몇 년 전보다 몇 배가 넘는 인원이 몰리지 않나, 기업가 정신과 별 상관 없던 모임에서 갑자기 ‘창업’을 외치지 않나…

닷컴 버블이 꺼지고 ‘벤처=사기꾼’ 취급하던 2000년대 초반부터 중반까지 창업 동아리 활동을 했던 선배로서 지금 학교에 있는 후배들이 걱정된다. 창업을 하면 겪게 될 수많은 현실적 어려움에 대한 언급은 전혀 없이, ‘창업은 간지(!)나는 일이다, 창업하면 너희들도 부자가 될 수 있다’ 이렇게 속삭이는 사회 분위기가 정말 할말을 잃게 만든다.

올해 후배들에게 내 이야기를 해줄 기회가 오면, 과거 몇 년 동안처럼 ‘창업해라, 도전 해 볼만한 일이다’라고 외치는 것이 아니라, 창업하면 얼마나 사서 고생을 하는지 이야기 해줘야겠다. 창업 할거면 적어도 그 정도 ‘개고생’은 각오하고 하라고. 그래야 견딜 테니까.

사랑하는 창업 동아리 후배들아, 제발 우쭐해 지지 말고, 1~2년 지나고 나서 이 거품이 사라져도 그 무관심과 주변의 시선에 굴하지 마라. 혹시 창업을 결심하게 되었다면, 이것만은 꼭 기억해라. 창업은 정말 힘들다.

창업해서 열심히 만 하면 못해도 본전은 건진다는 것은 충분한 시장 규모를 가진 바다 건너 있는 어떤 나라 이야기다. 창업해서 몇 개월 만에 어마어마한 성공을 거두었다는 이야기, 그걸 내 이야기로 착각하지 마라. 그런 일이 드물기 때문에 기사에 나는 거다. 모두 다 그러면 왜 그게 기사화 되겠나?

창업을 결심하면 각오해야 할 것이 많다.
몇 푼 안될지언정 너와 네 부모님, 친구들의 돈을 몽땅 날릴 수도 있고, 정말 마음 잘 맞던 친구와 원수가 될지도 모르고, 남자친구 또는 여자친구에게 이별 통보를 받을 지도 모르며, ‘옆집 자식은 취직 해서 돈 많이 벌어서 가져온다 던데…’ 류의 자존심 상하는 비교를 당할지도 모른다.

이런 현실을 담담히 받아들일 준비가 되었다면, 창업해라.
현실을 알면서도 도전하는 그 정신이 아름다운 것이고, 진짜 박수 받을만한 일이니까.

– 두 번 실패하고 세 번째에 도전하고 있는 선배로부터.

Execution, Execution, Execution – The Primary Virtue of Startups

 There is old saying between venture business fields.

‘1000 people think ‘something nice idea’ at the same time, but only 10 people make execution.’

Long time ago good ideas based on knowledge and insight was the only gift for nobles. Many people have to work for living daily and don’t have much time to think and make good ‘ideas’. But Industrial Revolution made people ‘live well’ than before and people could have enough time, knowledge to make a good idea.

Actually this kind of concepts can be more powerful to make certain IT products – software and web applications. They can be modified and redistributed easily than traditional industry products. Compare them with a car manufacturing company to modify specification of their newly launched model after showcase.

Fast modification with user’s feedback can be great strength to them. (Of course manufacturing Companies can apply Rapid prototyping to make this kind of strategic concept. See ‘The Art of Innovation’, story of Ideo.)

Execution is the most important thing to Startups including new business Task Force Team who belongs to big, fat size traditional company. 

Ideas are worth nothing unless executed.

 

P.S.) This article inspired with books below

– The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm by Tom Kelley and more.

– Getting Real by 37signals

– Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Charles Burck

 

Challenge after understanding

Original Post : A Korean microblogging service sees two of its users getting married

Me2day, just like Twitter, seems to follow the right path. The only concern I have is, compared to Twitter, Me2day’s core users could be too small in numbers because the service is only offered in Korean. In fact, that’s the same kind of limitation that works against our company as well. Which is why we should have “globalize or die” mentality

As it is mentioned widely in certain marketing theories – Purple cow, Blue Ocean and etc. – ‘different market conditions’ can give great chance to business – the ‘differentiation’.

Moreover, some ‘cultural specialties’ protect some start-ups because English base star-up teams can’t make efficient strategies to Korean market. 

(Yeh, that’s right. They may don’t need Korean market. But don’t consider that kind of views in this article.)

But anyway, small IT business market size (or user pool) in Korea gives certain limitation of growth (or chasm) to start-up ventures – this is exactly what I concern about in these days.

Globalize or die strategy is very desirable thing to Korean IT start-up teams including my company, but I’m afraid that it’s really not easy to Koreans make and maintain successful web service targeted to global market.

I learned that from my full time job – global targeted community portal.

Conclusion

We have to understand SW(+OT) of us. We have to know about ourselves first.
Though with these inevitable things people or team dreaming about great company should keep challenging to our goal.

 

‘Good to Great’

[Scrap]So You Sold Your Company For Millions, What Next?

Original Article : Read Write Web
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Written by Emre Sokullu / July 6, 2007 / 23 comments


What would you do next if you sold your company to an Internet giant for millions of dollars? Existing examples show 4 different types of Internet millionaires:

  • Serial entrepreneurs – keep doing the same
  • Dreamers – expand their horizons
  • Midas – invest and help multiple entrepreneurs grow new businesses
  • Consistents – stick with their jobs

Now let’s look into each of these types and illustrate them with some famous examples.

Serial Entrepreneurs

Serial entrepreneurs know how to raise money, pick the best people and execute their company towards an acquisition or an IPO. Their fellow investors love them and are ready to give their money to this type of successful entrepreneur, because they are sure that he or she will make it happen again. Note that most serial entrepreneurs are also investors in parallel.
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis
Kazaa, Skype and now Joost. These North European stars haven’t stopped disrupting decades-old businesses and changing the way we use our computers, using P2P. Their latest venture, Internet TV service Joost, raised $45 M from high profile VC firms like Sequoia Capital.
Marc Andreesen
He was the founder of Netscape and now he’s on the web 2.0 bandwagon with Ning – a network of social networks. Also, keep an eye on his great new blog http://blog.pmarca.com
Joe Kraus
Excite anyone? JotSpot was the second venture of Joe Kraus, and it eventually got acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount of money; Joe is now a Googler, but I suspect that a new idea may flame his passion for founding another startup.
Mark Fletcher
His first success ONEList became a part of Yahoo in 1999, but that was not enough for him – he then founded Bloglines, which eventually got acquired by Ask.
Reid Hoffman
He was a member of the board of directors at Paypal, but he is now preparing for possibly the biggest IPO of the web 2.0 era (unless Facebook does one too) with his professional networking venture, LinkedIn.
Pierre Chappaz
Founder of the shopping comparison engine Kelkoo, which became the biggest hit of Europe after Yahoo bought it, he is now heading Wikio – a mix of Digg and search, focused on Europe.

Dreamers

Dreamers know this business very well, but they choose to pursue bigger dreams and take bigger risks. They usually go out of the web business and run after more scientific projects. As for funding, they are not as lucky as their serial entrepreneur peers – they usually need government grants, since the chances of getting a return is relatively much lower.
Elon Musk
From the web to space. Elon Musk’s new ambition is to conquer space with his company SpaceX, which recently accomplished a successful rocket launch to space.
Martin Roscheisen
Co-founder of eGroups, he is now in the green energy business with his solar power company NanoSolar.
Marc Cuban
Started with broadcast.com (acquired by Yahoo for billions) and now heading the NBA team Dallas Mavericks. Well this is not scientific, but definitely a big dream!
Carl Page
The elder brother of Google co-founder Larry Page, Carl not only helped his brother to build Google – he was also one of the co-founders of eGroups, which was acquired by Yahoo. And now he’s the CTO of HandHeld Entertainment, a mobile entertainment gadgets company.
Trevor Blackwell
He stated a company called AnyBots, focusing on humanoid robots in his peaceful office in Mountain View. He was a co-founder of Viaweb, which was sold to Yahoo.
Mark Shuttleworth
His new target is Bill Gates and Microsoft. South African Mark Shuttleworth, ex-founder of SSL certificate company Thawte (now Verisign) is currently leading Ubuntu – which recently succeeded in becoming the 1st Linux distribution to be bundled with Dell computers.
Michael Robertson
Similar to Mark Shuttleworth, Michael Robertson is also in the operating systems business. The founder of of mp3.com (which was acquired by French Vivendi Universal), he is now leading a controversial Linux company, Linspire.
Sabeer Bhatia
The founder of Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft for $400 M) is now trying to rebuild Silicon Valley in India – with the name Nano City.

Midas

This list is perhaps the most crowded one; because almost every venture capital company contains one or more successful entrepreneurs in the team. However we will limit ourselves with just a few examples. These Midas list members, instead of focusing on a single company and idea, share their experience and money with new entrepreneurs – getting equity in return.
Peter Thiel
Along with Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, the founders of Paypal are now leading the Founders’ Fund VC firm, which invested in Facebook, Geni, Powerset and Slide.
Paul Graham
Paul Graham is helping young entrepreneurs with his funding program Y Combinator. His successful investments include iminlikewithyou, reddit, Scribd and Justin.TV
Josh Kopelman
Founded half.com and sold it to eBay. Now he’s heading First Round Capital – a seed stage investment company with a rich portfolio including Wikia, OpenAds, Powerset and Riya.
Magdalena Yesil
This Turkish-Armenian entrepreneur sold her company CyberCash (a pioneer in eCommerce) to Verisign. Now she’s an angel investor and partner with US Venture Partners (USVP).

Consistents

Consistents are usually those who succeeded in taking their companies to IPO. For example, Jeff Bezos was the founder of Amazon.com and to this day continues to head his company. Similarly Pierre Omidyar is founder and still chairman of eBay. But the interesting point is they both reinforce their technology passions by investing in younger companies too. For example Jeff Bezos’ investment in 37Signals and Omidyar Networks’ investment in SocialText.
It’s very rare that an acquired company’s founder remains committed to their new company. Scott Shambarger, who was with eGroups, is still with Yahoo. Sometimes, as in the case of MySpace, the founders of the acquired company may demand aggressive compensation just to stay with their new company.

Conclusion

None of these entrepreneurs are solely motivated by money. After all, there are safer but still very profitable ways of making more money. I think their continued investments and entrepreneurship can only be explained by the pursuit of new technology and creating things.
Al of these people do what they think they are good at and keep bringing value to our society. That is perhaps the primary condition of being successful at your business; if your motivation is spending your time at the Caribbean, then you may be on the wrong path. It seems that what kept the above entrepreneurs coming back for more, is their passion of technology.

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Few years before, I might choose the ‘dreamer’.
But with my recent experience – startup my own business – teach me that it should be strictly depended on business circumstances.
Don’t choose this kind of job “if your motivation is spending your time at the Caribbean.”
It really is.