.

Playing for the Tie

Like Playing to Lose, Playing for the Tie is a strategy that doesn’t lead to winning. The difference is that people inadvertently playing to lose think they’re aiming their boat at the far shore, instead they’re heading for an iceberg. Playing for a tie means you’re more scared of losing than winning.

Why is not losing (but not winning) a bad strategy for a startup? Because:

• Opportunity cost - What aren’t you doing while you’re not succeeding? What next great startup idea are you not working on while your current one treads water?
• Survival is not (necessarily) a milestone - Survival is a huge achievement for any startup, but it’s not the goal. You have to be able to tell the difference.

Many startups have a strategy to win at the beginning but this gets diluted to a strategy for a tie when things get operational. Here are some telltale signs:

• You’re afraid to say that you are or will be a world leader in your category (ask yourself why)
• You never hear your team talk about being the best
• You gravitate towards any type of validation (”they like me!”) even if it’s too scattered to truly prove your business value
• You’re risk averse. I’m a firm believer that many risks, like operational risks, can be mitigated in a startup. But you just can’t avoid the fundamental leaps of faith that will be required in proving your business. If you’re afraid of leaping ask yourself what you’re preserving by avoiding risk. If you’re still proving out your business then you really don’t have anything to protect (yet).

Caveat: I’m not saying swing for the fences every time. Be iterative, i.e. get out there and see what sticks. But don’t forget that getting a little traction reduces some risk (a few people like me) and sets you up for new risks (how do I get everyone to like me). See Crossing the Chasm.

Next up: Playing to Win

Playing to Lose

I heard a bunch of different pitches from startups this week that made me think: too few startups are playing to win. Most people have a strategy for moving from point A to point B but I’m hearing more and more strategies for getting “better” not becoming the “best”. I think it’s a problem.

Here are some strategies that I consider Playing to Lose:

• You don’t have a strategy. No further explanation necessary.
• You only have one strategy. A good sign that you are playing to lose is that you can’t describe several alternative strategies in detail. A strategy is only as good as the ones you considered, but rejected. Be a skeptic.
• You don’t understand the cost of success. When people plan to scale a business they often forget that revenues don’t scale by themselves without a some kind of scaling of expenses. Take headcount. Double headcount and I bet you’ll more than double HR expenses. Double the feature set of your product and I bet it doesn’t maintain itself anymore. These ‘diseconomies’ of scale better be built into your strategy.
• Your winning strategy is your losing strategy in disguise. Sometimes I hear a strategy for winning that sounds a lot like a strategy for losing. Here’s an example: Your platform is so feature-rich and versatile that it can be used by anyone. Your strategy is to sell it to anyone. But soon you’ll realize that all of your customers are different and all your recurring license revenues are replaced by low-margin service fees for customization. Yep, that’s your winning strategy.

I think you can avoid Playing to Lose by spending more time understanding your winning scenario and making sure it holds up to scrutiny. Why do you think your cost structure will be leaner than other comparable companies? Why will acquisition costs go down, not up? What things get more difficult, not easier, the more you achieve success?

Are you sure your idea of winning is actually winning?

Next up: Playing for the tie…

The Thinking Behind Starting Up: 10 Posts

The Flow Ventures blog has been up and running for over six months and during that time it’s naturally gravitated towards topics for early-stage startups. Partly because that’s our focus at Flow and partly because people still overlook all the difficult work that happens right at the start of a startup. Things like idea screening, brainstorming, finding strategy, and finding competitors are all things entrepreneurs should be doing for themselves, not just when requested by outsiders.

I often tell people that the very first step in a startup is relatively risk free. You haven’t committed your time and money yet and you haven’t made promises to others that obligate you to a certain path. You have time to noodle around finding great ideas and discarding bad ones. This is the time to spend at whiteboards, in cafes debating your ideas, and doing research on the Web and in the real world. This is the time to assume your idea stinks and try to convince yourself that it doesn’t (not the other way around).

We’re going to keep focusing on the early stages of startups but here are 10 blog posts we’ve written so far that provide some practical ways to think about idea and business creation:

• Bulletproofing Your Ideas: Part 1 - The Quick Screen
• Bulletproof Your Ideas: Part 2 - Be a Skeptic
• A method for finding out if you have a painkiller or a vitamin
• Really Simple Strategic Planning
• Tips for Running Effective Strategy Sessions
• Translating Strategy Into Action
• Business Planning Without Business Plans
• Competitive Analysis for Startups: The Goal
• Competitive Analysis for Startups: Being Better, Not Just Different
• The Value Net as a Tool for Competitive Analysis

Writing this list makes it obvious that there are lots of gaps in our coverage. Hopefully, we’ll fill in some of those gaps over the rest of the year.

The Value Net as a Tool for Competitive Analysis

Having talked about the goal of competitive analysis and being better, not just different, it’s time to talk about a framework for doing competitive analysis. The Value Net, developed by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff, is inspired by Porter’s Five Forces. It’s easy to understand but includes a lot of depth that will allow you to more fully understand the competitive forces surrounding your startup.

Let’s take a look at the graphic above. It shows 4 sources of potential competition surrounding you: Partners (whose products and services complement yours), Rivals (who compete with you), Suppliers (whose “raw materials” you require), and Customers (and distributors) who are the destination for your products. The horizontal items are the players in your industry and the vertical items are your supply chain.

Rivals: More than direct competitors

Most new companies do everything they can to say “there is no competition”. I’ve already covered why this is tantamount to saying “I do not know what I am doing.” Just because there isn’t a company that looks exactly like you doesn’t mean you don’t have competition.

Rivals are all the people or forces competing against you for the dollars and attention of your customers. They include:

• Direct competitors - if you’re a best-of-breed product, look for integrated solutions and vice versa
• Indirect competitors - if you’re a product company, watch out for service companies
• Alternatives - like doing nothing, in-house solutions
• Changing standards and regulation - when standards change, everyone in your industry might suffer

Think of it from the customer’s perspective. If you want to improve employee communication you might build an employee portal, buy one, hire a consultant or put it off until next year. There are many alternatives competing for your time and money.

Partners: Wolves in sheep’s clothing?

Partners are your “friends” in the marketplace whose products or services complement your own. This could be someone who integrates your product into theirs or provides a value-add service, like consulting, that makes it easier for people to adopt your product. Why even consider partners in a competitive analysis?

The reason is because partners, like rivals, are also fighting for customers’ attention. Sure, in the beginning you may specifically go into a partnership to reach markets outside your immediate target. That may be your partner’s strategy too. But the more successful you are, the more your partner might realize that your market (or your business) is something worth emulating. They could become a direct competitor. This is especially true in the type of partnerships startups tend to enter into, i.e. David (you) vs. Goliath (them).

Here’s an example. You build the next great mobile enterprise app. You license a “lite” version to a major portal so they can market it to individuals and SMEs. It becomes a success and the portal decides not only to replace you with something they developed on their own, but to release an enterprise version that competes directly with you in your other markets. For them, you were just free R&D.

Yes, you can do things legally to protect yourself. The point is don’t forget how easily partners can turn into rivals.

Suppliers

How can a supplier be a threat to you? When they decide to work with a rival instead of you. This isn’t as rare as you might think. Exclusivity agreements could lock you out of a key technology. Or a bigger rival could simply eat up so much bandwidth that your supplier can’t pay any attention to you. Employees are “suppliers” too and competitors would like nothing more than robbing you of your stock of talent.

Don’t overlook the fact that the more volume you drive to a supplier the more they might think about competing with you. This is called forward integration and it’s especially acute when your supplier has leverage over you in the form of an exclusive resource, the best price, or some other unique advantage. Here’s an example: you build the next great mobile enterprise app that relies on you licensing a patented mobile synch technology from another firm. This is great for them because you drive sales and they don’t have to do any work. But, the more successful you are the more it’s tempting for them to move forward in the supply chain with their own branded product. Worse, if they cut you off from your supply of technology it will put you at a competitive disadvantage.

Customers (and distributors)

The area of the Value Net above you includes your customers as well as any resellers or distributors you use. Like with partners and suppliers, be aware when these people have power over you in some way. E.g. customers (and distributors) have power when there are a lot of rivals in any industry. Or there may be other industry practices that favor resellers: e.g. brokers in real estate and insurance.

Understanding how your customers buy (from you or from your resellers) is an important aspect to understanding competition. Again, look at it from their point of view. The customer might value on-site installation and customization. Your Web 2.0 SaaS model might be feature-rich and inexpensive but your competitor’s product is sold through local VARs who can provide consulting, installation and after-sales support on the customer’s premises. The point is that competition can occur between different types of sales channels, not only between firms.

Putting it all together

To summarize, here’s how you can use Value Net to do competitive analysis:

1. Identify your key Rivals, Partners, Suppliers and Customers/Distributors - Be paranoid and build a long list that you pare down later
2. Look at the red arrows to understand behind-the-scenes competitive dynamics
3. Look at the grey lines to understand your power relative to your rivals, suppliers, partners and customers - any area where you have less power is a potential competitive threat

The nice thing about the Value Net is that it’s easy to fit onto one Powerpoint slide. Showing this level of depth for your Competition slide will be a huge improvement over what I normally see in startup pitch decks. I’ll post some examples of completed Value Nets in a later post.

Competitive Analysis for Startups: Being Better, Not Just Different

In the last post I talked about the goal of competitive analysis. In this post I’ll talk about why (and when) it’s ok to compete head-on.

Let’s review why startups spend so much time showing they’re different. Anyone who’s read (and hopefully re-read) Crossing the Chasm knows that it’s important for startups to find a beachhead, i.e. a niche where they can get some traction without forcing bigger rivals to respond. This is a good strategy because it’s easier and cheaper to start generating results, and revenues, in a beachhead.

But what happens when you’re not the only player attacking a beachhead? Some investors pass on opportunities because there are already one or two funded startups in a space. Others only invest when they see that a space is heating up.

Don’t Be Afraid to Compete

You don’t convince someone you’re going to win a 100-yard sprint by talking about how you have a totally unique approach to running that involves your hands, not your feet. In other words, it’s ok to talk about areas where you and your competitor(s) will compete directly. Your job is to prove how your team, your structure and your approach will mean you’ll win. This is almost entirely overlooked in business plans (and business planning) because we’re all too busy showing why we’re Different, not why we’re Better.

Some examples:

• Funding - I hate to say it as a believer in lean startups, but in some cases more money = more ability to compete. This is true in markets where you’re already competing on price or greenfield markets where there’s a rush to grab open real estate.
• Focus - You may have the exact same product as a competitor but you may be focusing on a different aspect such as bundling/integration, customer service, ease of use etc. You need to prove how your focus translates into competitive advantage, e.g. the best buyers want the best customer service, not necessarily the most features.
• Team - This is why recruiting will always be one of the top priorities of a CEO. In head to head competition the better team (e.g. more experience, more industry contacts, more skilled) will always have a competitive advantage. If you have an A team you should be talking about it front and center.
• Speed - If your startup is built for speed then you don’t need to be first to market. Let your competitor invest in all the R&D and market education. Being a fast-follower is a great head-on competitive strategy and one that’s very well suited to lean startups. Plus it annoys the hell out of your competitors.
• Best Practices - A great way to nullify the competitive advantage of a bigger rival is to adopt industry standards. Being close to the associations that set standards means that competitors cannot say that choosing your product is risky. You won’t have an advantage over competitors but you’ll level the playing field so you can compete in other areas.

I’d like to see more startups openly talk about direct competition and how they’re designed to win that kind of competition. When you think about it, saying you’re unique is just another way of saying your R&D and product development is better than your rivals. In the end there’s a lot more direct competition than startups like to think. It’s ok to compete head-on (assuming you’ve made sure that you have real competitive advantages of course).

Competitive Analysis for Startups: The Goal

One of the hardest things for emerging companies to get a handle on is analyzing the competition. Investors grimace when we hear “there is no competition” because outside of the world of patents, it’s just not true. But on the other hand, what’s the point of starting a new company when there are lots of competitors, implying a crowded space? Entrepreneurs often get lost somewhere between “no competition” and “too much competition”. This leads to unconvincing business plans or, worse, a strategy that’s blind to real competitive threats.

What’s the goal of competitive analysis?

For most entrepreneurs trying to convince people about a new product, the goal seems to be to prove, at all costs, that what they have is unique. There’s a standard series of tricks to accomplish this, two of my favorites of which are:

Our competitive advantage is that we are at the top right

We have more checkmarks than our competition

It’s pretty easy to define your competitive analysis in such a way that you appear totally unique. The question is, are you defining criteria that your customers care about?

“Competitive Intelligence” vs. “Competitive Analysis”

Whether you’re preparing a VC pitch deck or just strategizing about your business, remember that your real goal isn’t to show that you have a competitive advantage. Why? Because you might not. The real goal is to be an expert about your competitive landscape (and a paranoid one at that). The real goal of the Competition section of your business plan is to impress the reader that you are a) an expert about your competition and b) more paranoid than the reader (since the reader isn’t the one running the business).

The bad news is that being a real expert about your competition takes more time than creating a 2X2 matrix. But the good news is that you’ll be much better prepared for conversations with customers and investors who love pointing out that “Product X already does that”.

Stop Being Afraid to Talk About Your Competition

The takeaway is that you shouldn’t be afraid to have a competitive analysis that seems to be full of competitors. Your job is to show that you have a sophisticated understanding of your industry and where you fit in. I’m always more interested in how a startup is going to compete rather than why they don’t have to.

Business Planning Without Business Plans

I recently ran a couple of business planning seminars at the 5th Annual Inventing the Future Conference put on by Young Inventors. Since it was a no Powerpoint affair (yeah!) I have no slides to share but here is a quick summary:

Business Plans DO NOT EQUAL Business Planning

By The Scott (Creative Commons)

It’s amazing how much stock we put in business plans considering they are works of fiction. Few startups really know their precise target market, product, pricing or cost structure. How could they? I guess writing a business plan is a good exercise in research and discipline but only if it doesn’t distract you from real business planning. My personal favorite is figuring out the size of a market. Any time there is 3rd party research on market size your product is probably too late. You can’t really size a market you’re creating from scratch so don’t sweat the details. Just show an intelligent attempt and that will be impressive enough. A recent WSJ article claims that Business Plans Don’t Matter to VCs (though not all agree).

All Customers Are Not Created Equal

There’s not much I can write about targeting specific customers that hasn’t been covered by Geoffrey A. Moore in Crossing the Chasm. If you haven’t read it please stop reading this blog and buy the book! If you have, a re-read will remind you how it still holds true in so many cases. Startups should realize that there is no such thing as a generic customer. When you’re planning, it’s important to find a niche where you can find customers with specific pain points. Even within this niche you have to figure out how to target early adopters, i.e. people who are willing to take a risk on a startup. Targeting the early majority (i.e. more practically-minded people who need proof before they buy) is a waste of time until you have bona fides with early adopters.

From Wikimedia Commons

Real-world planning tip: Create fictional caricatures of your customers (e.g. “Joe the plumber”, or more precisely “Joe the small residential plumber looking for ways to level the playing field against bigger rivals”). You should have one caricature for each of your customer types. Then keep these ‘people’ in mind every time you make a strategic decision in your company.

Find The Value

Business plans make us believe that commercializing new products is a linear progress of steps leading outwards from the original idea. Reality is a lot less linear. Sure you may have a breakthrough technology or a wonderful idea and have a great plan to push it to market, but it has to pass the “Who Cares?” test first. It’s easy to convince yourself that people (especially generic people…) will buy your product. It’s a lot harder to go out and talk to them. I always ask entrepreneurs if they’ve talked to 100 prospective customers of their products. This actually takes less time than writing a business plan!

Real-world planning tip: Get to the core of your idea by figuring out if you have a vitamin or a painkiller. The good news is that this early in the game it’s not expensive to start over.

Real-world planning tip: Since Frederick Winslow Taylor invented time and motion studies people have been measuring and analyzing user behavior. Though I’m not recommending startups take up cameras and stopwatches, I am recommending you quantify the value you purportedly add. Think your solution saves time? Detail exactly how much time, in minutes or seconds. This presumes you know what your customers were doing before they bought your product. Once you have a convincing argument bring it to a customer and try to convince them. Then on to 99 more.

Write Once, Don’t-Survive-Battlefield Everywhere…

To summarize, I’m not saying that business plans are evil. Sometimes it’s good for entrepreneurs to work out ideas on paper before committing time and capital to them. Other times you have no choice, e.g. for banks or VCs. But don’t confuse writing a plan with real business planning. A plan is something you write, print, file away and celebrate with a pint. Business planning is a continuous discpline you’ll use throughout the life of your business.

A method for finding out if you have a painkiller or a vitamin

The more pitches I hear from startups the more I realize that entrepreneurs have a hard time figuring out if their startup is a painkiller or a vitamin. I mentioned this briefly in a previous idea screening post but I’d like to propose a method to help.

I’ve come up with five measures so far:

1. Do you have a problem or a feature? - “Mobile access” is a feature, not a problem. E.g. I don’t really want mobile access to my tax return. A lot of startups have a feature idea at their core, not a pain point, mostly because the initial idea was created by an engineer.
2. Do you have a specific target market? - A telltale sign of a feature looking for a problem is to target “everyone” or “small business”. Saying everyone needs your product doesn’t mean a trillion dollar opportunity. It just means you don’t understand the problem.
3. Can you describe the person who will use your product? - How, where and when do they work? What are they doing exactly that causes them ‘pain’? What alternatives do they look for? Can you draw a picture before they use your app and after?
4. Is the pain measurable? - Any convincing CEO can make you believe that bad UI is as painful as a root canal. But how do you measure it? Extra clicks? Time lost? Money lost due to errors? If you can’t measure the pain you have two problems: 1) you might be wrong and 2) you can’t tell if your solution is an improvement.
5. Is it verifiable? - Sure, you may find some way to quantify pain but how do you verify with the people who matter, i.e. users? Have you identified ways to double check, like surveys, focus groups or one on one interviews?

So let’s look at an example:

Of course, having answers to the five questions doesn’t guarantee that you have a painkiller. It just makes it more obvious whether the pain you think you solve is really all that painful. Stated one way, the lack of a social network is no big deal for a non-profit. Stated another way, helping find volunteers and funders is a life-or-death part of how non-profits operate.

The main benefit of this process? Forcing you to spend more time digging into the problem. You may abandon your original problem but you may also find some legitimate pain points that are a lot more interesting to tackle.

Next time I’ll post a few more examples and analyses. Feel free to send me some examples from your startup.

Translating Strategy Into Action

In previous posts I talked about how to create a simple, strategic plan without falling down the rabbit hole of arguing about mission, vision, objectives, goals, strategies etc. I also talked about how to actually get a group of people to agree on a set of goals which is always fun and never easy.

cc Fenris Photography

This post talks about the crucial last step: translating your strategy into real action.

1. Follow-through - Once you have your plan finished, schedule monthly or quarterly review sessions right away and make sure people know in advance that they will be expected to report on their performance vs. the goal set in the plan. Send a meeting invite for a specific date and time along with an agenda right away. This tells people this is not a drill.

2. Make people uncomfortable when they don’t deliver - There have to be consequences when people do not deliver. For most companies, having to stand up among colleagues and say either “I didn’t deliver” or “My forecast sucked” is a powerful enough consequence. Don’t be afraid to be tough on people who don’t deliver, including yourself!

3. Reward people when they do deliver - Make a point of congratulating people when they deliver what they promise. It sends a signal that this is important to your company. It seems like common sense but most companies only focus on fixing the negative while taking the positive for granted.

4. Reward people when they deliver part 2 - Put your money where your mouth is. Tie bonuses and option grants to good forecasting and good delivery. If you have compensation tied to anything else you are sending mixed signals.

5. Be prepared for naysayers - People who were cooperative during your planning sessions will become less cooperative when the rubber meets the road and they have to explain why they missed their targets. They will question the planning process, claim that the strategy has changed, and blame external factors (e.g. The Downturn). You need to shut these people down quickly. Decide if you want to be a company with great performance or great excuses.

6. Get the whole company on board - Make the plan (and all the brainstorming materials) available to everyone in your company. After every review cycle, publish the results (good or bad) so they can be seen by all. Apply the same planning discipline to departments, your Board of Directors, and individual employees.

It’s probably fair to say that there’s no such thing as Really Simple Strategy Planning (sorry). In reality it’s a time-consuming process that’s bound to create some conflicts within your startup. But the payoff is huge if you can create a company culture that encourages thoughtful strategy development and hard-nosed dedication to performance. If you don’t have this mindset in your company it may be time to ask why not.

Tips for Running Effective Strategy Sessions

The previous post talked about Really Simple Strategic Planning, a way to cut through the buzzwords and create a practical strategic plan for your company. This post provides some tips about how to organize and run strategic planning sessions.

Getting people together to talk about strategy is a tricky affair. Besides having different opinions about what strategy to pursue, people often differ about what strategy is and the difference between strategy and tactics. Like facilitating productive meetings, running effective strategy sessions is an art form that requires practice. The following recommendations, organized into the Five Ws (and 1 H), will give you a head start:

WHO? - In a small company, be as inclusive as possible, at least in the beginning. Excluding someone tells them you don’t consider their input valuable. On the other hand, it’s difficult to brainstorm in groups of more than 7 or 8, so consider breaking down into smaller groups. Don’t forget to include investors, Board members, outside advisors and (gasp) customers in your strategy sessions.

WHAT? - To be effective, you need to draw some boundaries. It may not be productive to re-strategize everything about your startup from first principles. It’s ok to give people some focus to the discussions by saying “we’re not talking about that”. Show people an example strategy so people know what they’re aiming for.

WHERE? - Don’t hold offsite meetings. Strategizing where you work sends a message that strategy is not a once a year event but fully integrated into your work. That said, you might need to some special equipment such as a cell phone/Wifi jammer, lots of sticky pads, and a timeout corner…

WHEN? - Again, don’t plan strategic retreats once a year. If you’re doing this for the first time you’ll need more sessions up front but discussing strategy should be a regular event. This doesn’t mean you should question your company’s strategy every day. But quarterly checkpoints are crucial for comparing your strategy with your execution, and updating your strategy if necessary.

WHY? - This is not as obvious as it sounds. Some of your staff may think your strategy is self-evident and question why you need to pretend like it’s not. You need to convince everyone on your team (including yourself) that developing strategy as a group is partly an end in itself as it gets everyone to buy into shared goals

by Jacob Botter (CC)

HOW? - The biggest challenge in running successful strategy sessions is to create an environment where people feel they can be creative. Believe me, this is more difficult than it sounds. Your intern might not want to contradict the founder/CEO and non-technical people might assume that the CTO “owns” all the technology strategy. Make sure someone is tasked with being a facilitator, i.e. someone who watches how the conversation goes, ensures everyone has a chance to speak, and gives people timeouts if necessary.

For more information on how to create an environment conducive to good ideas, watch this video about IDEO, a legendary industrial design company who have perfected the art of brainstorming (they designed the 1st mouse). Their GM has also written a number of books on innovation including The Art of Innovation. Although they talk about brainstorming, most of the concepts apply to strategic planning. In fact, if your strategic planning sessions feel less like brainstorming and more like ops meetings, you’re probably not being very strategic!

A lot of what you learn about effective strategic planning boils down to organized chaos. You need organization to make something meaningful out of the process. But you also need the chaos, i.e. the debates, passionate disagreement, kooky ideas, and dead-end discussions. If you can organize the chaos you’ll find it will be easy to create a practical strategy for your firm that people feel motivated to achieve.