Need money? Read this!

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Dave Berkus

How important is this issue for your business?

The subject of raising money is critical to many businesses and a passing option to others, depending upon the capital efficiency of the enterprise.  Some businesses require very little capital and the founder can self-finance the enterprise and retain 100% of its ownership and control from ignition through liquidity event (startup through sale).  For those of you who fit that description, nice work.

When the need is high…

For the rest of us, desiring to build large, valuable enterprises quickly, the need for outside capital is high on our list of requirements and even the source for some sleepless nights as we worry over the availability and cost of capital.  It is for this group that we explore the implications implicit in raising money for growth.

It might be useful to list some of the ways in which you can raise money for growth with and without outside investors.

Bootstrapping: 

This term describes your ability to start a business with little investment and grow it using internally generated funds.  Certainly, bootstrapping is a preferred method of funding growth if it does not hold back the speed of growth or hobble the quality of product or service to the extent that better-funded competitors can overtake the business.  There is a lot to say about retaining control.  You will realize much more from the ultimate sale of your business even if at a considerably lower price than if splitting the proceeds with investors.  You will have more control over strategy and execution than with an outside board overseeing planning and performance.  But few businesses grow into the sweet spot of $20 million to $30 million in worth to an ultimate buyer without the injection of outside capital.

Friends, family and fools: 

[Email readers, continue here…]   This term, although pejorative, describes the typical mix of early investors in a small, young growing business.  Money from these sources is relatively easy to come by, and most often comes with no strings as to oversight by a formal board composed of these investors and management.  However, most often, these funds are solicited by a well-meaning entrepreneur from investors who are not qualified as accredited investors under the law (currently requiring a proved income of $200,000 a year or $1 million in net worth for an individual investor).

My experience with early valuations by founders for friends…

I’ve arrived at a significant number of companies that were looking for additional growth capital after a “friends and family” round and had to “clean up” the cap table more than a few times over the years.  Taking this kind of money has several pitfalls you should be aware of.  It is most common to greatly overprice such a round of financing, valuing the enterprise well above what it may be worth at the moment for friends or related investors who do not have the sophistication or willingness to challenge the valuation.

The result of early over-valuation…

When professional investors look at such overvalued prior investments, they may refuse to become involved with a company, knowing that there will be, at the very least, universal disappointment and anger from prior investors when a new round is priced lower than the earlier friends and family round.   Sometimes this money is just too available, and the risks seem so far away; so, an entrepreneur will take the money and put off the worry over the eventual consequences, all in the hope that no more investment will ever be needed and everyone will be richer for the effort.

Using your bank credit line and credit cards: 

Even with the credit crunch signaled by the recent threat of recession, many banks will issue business credit cards with a $50,000 limit if the entrepreneur is willing to personally guarantee the balance, and has the net worth to do so.   And even with the significant cost of credit card debt, many entrepreneurs aggressively use existing cards to finance a startup.  It’s an option, even though an expensive one.

 “Strategic partner” investors:

If you can find a strategic partner willing to invest in your enterprise, consider it a blessing. Whether the partner is a supplier looking to gain a lock on your business as it grows or a customer looking to create a competitive barrier through use of your product, such an investment typically carries fewer restrictions than from a professional investor and less oversight.  Better yet, the valuation of your enterprise is often higher than if the same investment were taken from a professional investor.  Strategic investors validate a business, by their presence creating the very value they pay for with increased price per share purchased.  It is most often a win-win for both you and the strategic partner.

Professional angels:  

This is the arena where I work and play.  This class of investor, once quite disorganized, has become much like the venture capital community, creating a process including due diligence (careful examination of a business before investment), terms of investment that match those of venture capitalists, and a process that sometimes takes months from introduction to investment.  Yet, professional angels are usually willing to take active board seats in a young enterprise and act as cost-free consultants to the CEO-entrepreneur, giving freely of their individual and collective years of experience, often in the same industry as the investment target.

Do not expect grand valuations of your enterprise from these professional angels. They have been burned too badly during the last decade by overvaluing businesses and finding themselves like friends and family, “stuffed” into a down round of lower valuation when a company takes its next round of financing from the next step, venture capitalists.  Professional angels, often organized into groups, usually invest from $100,000 to $1 million in a young enterprise.

Accelerators:

This relatively recent combination of coach and limited investor is available to some early-stage businesses, usually in major cities, and requires that the entrepreneurs spend from weeks to months being coached by the accelerator team.  In return, the accelerator often invests $25,000 to $100,000 in the young enterprise and takes from five to ten percent of the equity in return.  At the conclusion of the acceleration period, the company participates in a “demo day” in which institutional investors are invited to review the company in a live pitch session.  Many accelerators have come and gone during these past five years.  Several are well-known and professional investors pay special attention to their graduates. These include Y-Combinator and TechStars, among others.

Venture, private equity and more: 

Here we lump a large number of investor classes into one.  Venture capital comes with a cost, and there are no bargains for the company when taking such an investment.  VC’s value an enterprise lower than others might at the same stage of investment, always aware of the need to create opportunities for “home run” profits at exit, since over fifty percent of their investments typically are lost when companies die before an opportunity to sell to others.  Further, as a class, VC’s have not done well for their own investors over the past decade except for several first-tier entities, making it doubly important to fight for low valuations and high profits at exit.

VC’s do not even engage in discussion with most of those entrepreneurs seeking capital. By some estimates, 95% of contacts are ignored unless they come as referrals from trusted sources such as known lawyers, accountants, or fellow VC’s.  And just for measure, VC’s fund less than 2% of all deals they do investigate.  Typical VC investments begin at $2 million and quickly rise to $5 million and above, depending upon the size of the fund and stage of investment.  Terms are much more restrictive than from strategic or angel investors, often requiring the entrepreneur to escrow his or her founder stock for a number of years to prevent the founder leaving, and restricting the sale of prior stock without the VC also being allowed to offer a share of its holdings in the same sale.

Micro-VC’s:

This is a recent class of venture investors, often with smaller funds, and willing to invest from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 on average, filling a gap between professional angels and VC’s.

Private equity investments are available from firms created for this later stage opportunity, but typically are available only for businesses that have achieved revenues well above $50 million.  Often private equity investors will want control of the business as well.

Bank lines of credit are often available to businesses that are profitable, most often personally guaranteed by the entrepreneur, but available at a cost in interest less than most any other source.  Small Business Administration (SBA) federally guaranteed bank loans are available again after years of limited activity.  With some restrictive provisions, these loans are favored by many banks as carrying much less risk than loans without the guarantee.

But it is the outside investor that validates a business, often influencing growth with shared relationships, experienced guidance and providing a gateway to needed resources.  In the next weeks, we will investigate several insights that relate to these money resources, all to help you to determine what is right for you, and how to prepare and succeed in securing funds.

Posted in Ignition! Starting up, Raising money | 1 Comment

Go ahead! Drive with no speedometer!

Posted on July 27, 2023 by Dave Berkus

Have you ever driven a car that had no speedometer? 

I had that thrill when a student at the Richard Petty Stockcar School of Driving at a motor speedway in California.  With a wide track, angled aggressively at the curves, and being told to hug the wall on the straightaways, there was little reference available to a novice driver as to speed.

How it feel to have no information:

I followed my instructor’s car closely, but still could not tell anything about my speed, so that I could neither compensate for lags behind the leader nor test my comfort zone at various points that matched the expectation of my instructor and my own increasing capabilities as a driver.  Upon conclusion of eight laps of this, after pulling into the alley and climbing through the window on the driver side (there are no doors in these cars), I was handed a sheet with my timings for each of the eight laps.  Only then, after when the information might have been useful, could I see how well I did.

Do you manage without a dashboard?

That’s how you would feel if you ran your company without a dashboard containing relevant metrics that drive your company.  If you cannot relate to this, then you probably have been driving without a speedometer from the start and need to pay particular attention here.

…and great, relevant metrics?

[Email readers, continue here…]   Metrics should be created by you and your managers to measure near real time progress of your enterprise.  Those deemed critical to you and your managers should be combined into a single page on your desktop screen or in printed form and available or circulated as often as daily.  These measures of progress must be fresh and meaningful.  Yesterday’s sales and returns compared to same day last week and last year for retail businesses; Units produced and units shipped compared to plan and same period last month for manufacturers;  Yesterday’s overtime hours by department;  Ratio of hours worked to units produced;  Backorders unshipped;  Customer service calls in cue or unresolved.

Your turn to think of your most critical measures

You can think of numerous critical measures for your business that must not be ignored, but often are neglected by senior management. It is not bad to manage by walking around, a term that came from another of the many business advice books of the ‘90’s.  But that method, although good for employee morale, is imprecise as a tool of measurement and should be relegated to a supporting role for you.  Financial information from last month compared to plan and same month last year is certainly relevant, but not part of a dashboard, since there is nothing you can do to fix a problem when numbers are as old as a week, let alone the typical several weeks required to prepare financial statements for review.

Act immediately upon variances!

Finally, what good is the information contained in a great dashboard if you ignore it?  Show that you value the information by acting immediately upon variances, even if only to question the numbers.  Everyone down the line will become aware of your attention to their work, your interest in the outcomes and care for their success.  And you will drive revenue and better control costs and the customer experience with quick reaction to the variances within critical metrics that best describe your immediate situation.

Posted in General | 1 Comment

What’s the difference between your budget and forecast?

Posted on July 20, 2023 by Dave Berkus

Hold it! These are confusing terms. When does a budget become obsolete? Do we rely upon constant changes and call it a forecast? So, let’s spend a few moments defining this sometimes-confusing set of terms.

This is a budget:

A budget should be created each year after a series of negotiations between departmental managers and their superiors all the way yup to the CEO, all in support of the next year’s tactics previously agreed upon (which in turn support the longer-term strategies leading to the next goal beyond).

Here is the punch line: a budget sets the limits upon spending for the next year – limits negotiated between the players.  An important part of the budget is expected revenue for the coming year, a critical factor in setting hiring and resource expectations for the year.

…and this is a forecast:

[Email readers, continue here…]    But during the year, if the forecast revenues fall short or are greatly exceeded, it is fair to revise the budget and rethink your hiring and resources.  Otherwise, it is the expectation of the board of directors of a company that each year’s budget be approved in advance and adhered to as long as revenue goals are met.

Note that I used the term “forecast” for revenues for the next year.  The term is also used when projecting revenues for succeeding years.

The term “forecast” is a bit confusing, because it is also used by some as a measure of expected revenue and expenses to the end of the current year, found by taking actual performance year-to-date and adding best estimates of remaining revenues and expenses for the rest of the year to obtain an expected or “forecast” outcome at yearend.  Both uses of the term are common.  Just be sure all who participate understand which use of the word is the current one.

The punch line:

The real point here is to create a financial plan to support the strategic plan, marrying them in harmony one with another.  Many entrepreneurs are impatient by nature, not the best of detailed planners.  Yet, with the assistance of those in support such as the CFO, everyone in management must be aligned in a single direction, with the budget reviewed and updated annually as accomplishments, the marketplace, and even the competitive landscape change.

Posted in Positioning, Protecting the business, Raising money | Leave a comment

Make your detailed strategic plan!

Posted on July 13, 2023 by Dave Berkus

In these past weeks, we explored the need for a tangible goal and strategies that are measurable as steps toward achievement of your goal.  Today, we explore how to create tactics to accompany each strategy, and even suggest a number of tactics to consider for your strategies.

Definition of tactics:

Tactics support strategies and are shorter term and more procedural than the strategies they support.  Tactics change frequently as achieved and may be updated or replaced during a year when achieved, unlike strategies which often span several years.

How many tactics can you support at once?

Five tactics to support each strategy seem a fair, even if arbitrary number.  Tactics direct each department in very specific ways.  Here are several examples of tactics from my recent experience with companies where I serve as board member.

Example tactics for one strategy:

[Email readers, continue here…]    Strategy Three: Expand into at least three new continents through new distribution channels.

  1. Sign one distributor by June of this year in each of three major geographic areas. EMEA, Asia, Latin America.  Each distributor should be capable of generating $1 million in business by year two.
  2. Assign our development manager to localize design and oversee the needed enhancements to our product and support materials for each new territory.
  3. Train and transfer technology to each new distributor within 90 days of signing.
  4. Assign one of our corporate employees to support sales and installation efforts by all distributors.
  5. Seed demand in each new territory with at least two corporate marketing events in partnership with each distributor.

Here’s how these tactics support your strategies.

Note that each of these tactics directly support the strategy, are measurable and assumed to be achievable, bought into by each department affected by the tactic.  Note that the strategy calls for cooperation between business development, sales, marketing, product development, installation, and support.   This is a great way to unify departments that once may have competed for resources toward individual ends, now pointed toward a common goal supported by all levels of management up to the CEO.

Here’s a memory tool for this exercise.

In planning, the matrix, “5×5=1” (5 strategies, 5 tactics, 1 goal) is a good memory tool for you to keep from overreaching with too many strategies and too many tactics.  But it is not written in stone.  And development of these important elements of the plan should be made using all the resources available, from your board of directors to your senior management to departmental management.

Getting all of your stakeholders to buy into each step may not be easy, but when accomplished, is a powerful and invigorating opportunity to celebrate, then to get to work as a functional unit of the whole.

Posted in Depending upon others, Growth!, Positioning | Leave a comment

You’re the general. So, make your strategic plan!

Posted on July 6, 2023 by Dave Berkus

Continuing the process of planning…

So now we’re getting organized.  There are many ways to express the roadmap for your enterprise.  One of the most popular was used by the U.S. Army late in World War II and adopted by many high-profile businesses such as Texas Instruments after the War.  And I’s my favorite method of organizing a strategic plan.

There are two important elements.

The structure combines the listing of your goal with a series of strategies and then tactics, each designed to support each other, each measurable and made public throughout the organization.

Let’s call it “OST.”

The technique, “OST” (objective, strategies, and tactics), is a very good way to organize your effort to find guideposts and then develop metrics to measure progress.

What is a strategy? 

It is a medium range process involving senior management and departmental management as well, directing resources in ways that, as accomplished, lead the company toward the goal.  A typical small to medium business finds five sweeping strategies for the current year, many cross-departmental, and some carried over from the previous year’s plan and even from years before that.

[Email readers, continue here…]   Here are some example strategies from some of my companies over the recent years.

  • Expand into at least three new continents through new distribution channels.
  • Penetrate the Fortune 500 with at least five active accounts within two years.
  • Create a hosted “software as a service” or “on demand” addition to our product line by end of (next) year.

Aren’t these just goals?

Note that these are expansive “junior” goals that, if achieved, would certainly move the company forward toward a larger financial goal.  Yet each is measurable if achieved.  In fact, the degree of progress toward achievement can also be achieved, such as “We did establish early profitable relationships with two of the five Fortune 50 accounts this year.”

Measurement is the key to success. 

Even at the strategic level.  Next week, we’ll look at the last major step in creating an OST plan for an entire organization.

Posted in General | 1 Comment

So, what’s the plan?

Posted on June 29, 2023 by Dave Berkus

It’s time to speak of some sort of business plan.  

As a professional investor in early-stage companies, I have long discounted long, detailed

business plans in favor of a concise “executive summary” followed by a believable spreadsheet-based financial forecast projecting three to five years into the future.

Yes, everything does change between drafting that plan and its successful execution.  But flying without a map of some kind seems just plain too risky.

A story of “secret plan

I once joined the board of a company that was growing slowly, running beyond breakeven, but had not approved a plan for the current year, let alone attempted to develop one for the next.  So, the CEO had one of his own that he did not share, while the CFO had one for internal use that was never shown to the CEO or to the Board.  No wonder the Board members wanted to dig in and find who was communicating with whom, and who oversaw the map to the goal.

[Email readers, continue here…]   By the way, there was no goal understood by all or agreed to by anyone.  How do you compensate executives and all levels for successful accomplishments if there are no established steps toward the goal?  And how do you measure a person’s contribution to an unnamed goal?

Here’s the simple advice for you.

So, if you have not, create a concise map for your enterprise.  Start with a reasonable goal, usually expressed as a revenue number some number of years into the near future.  Assess your current resources and attempt to calculate the resources needed to accomplish the goal.

Do you need to raise money, focus spending upon only core projects that advance the company toward the goal, or bring in new management talent to make it happen?  Write these steps down in any form for now. We’ll explore a more organized approach in the next several weeks of insights.

Posted in Finding your ideal niche, Positioning | Leave a comment

Can you guess 10 tests for your success?

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Dave Berkus

Your success must be based upon data that is solid and sometimes flexible enough to pass several critical tests if it is to guide a business enterprise to greatness.  Here in brief are ten tests for your business success.  Try these on for size, and test yourself for attractiveness to the marketplace, to investors and to history.

Ten tests for your business success:

  1. Is your market identifiable and accessible? Test yourself as to whether you can identify the size of your market niche, and whether you can overcome the many barriers to access customers within your niche.
  2. Where in industry life cycle? If your vision is for a product or service that fills a need in a mature industry, you may be flying against the prevailing winds as a market shrinks over time, taking your business with it.  Conversely, a fast-growing industry lifts most all good participants, making excellent companies excel even more and grow even faster, like a small plane flying at 150 knots with a 75-knot tailwind.
  3. How large a total market? If the total market for your niche is under $100 million per year, it is going to be difficult to build a $50 million business, even if not impossible. If the market is ten times that size, there is probably room for competitors to fight for dominance and still succeed if you are not number one.
  4. Can you dominate that market? The dominant player in any niche controls pricing for all those under it, and often sets the risk profile for new entrants into the niche if the dominant player’s products or services fill the needs of customers at reasonable prices and quality.  [Email readers, continue here…]
  5. Have you created high barriers to entry? If your business is a “me too” entrant into any market niche, even the smallest success will soon attract competitors that will sap some degree of your potential growth. What can you prove as a barrier to entry for competitors?  Is it the advantage of time – years of development ahead of any competitor? A core patent or “thicket” of patents protecting your offering?  A strategic relationship with one or more of the largest customers?
  6. Are margins high enough? Some great ideas just can’t make money and ultimately die for lack of profit potential.  Profit margins are higher for unique products or services early in the life of an industry niche, or for products protected by patents that prevent others from undercutting you simply by releasing a cheaper product.  High profit margins are a sign of high barriers to entry and attract investors and ultimately good buyers for your business.
  7. Can this business grow to above $20MM to $50MM in annual revenues? This is a basic test for investors, separating your business from those with smaller visions.  There is nothing wrong with a vision for a smaller enterprise if not in need of professional investors to make it a reality.
  8. Do you have a world-class management team? The best way to protect against failure is to attract a team with members who have experienced success and failure and can recognize the ways to manage toward success and avoid the pitfalls previously experienced from past failures.  From a professional investor’s perspective, the team should be able to be flexible, coachable and experienced enough to get a business through breakeven and beyond the next level of outside investment, greatly reducing execution risk.
  9. Can you translate an idea into a compelling product? Some great ideas just cannot be made into a product at a reasonable enough price to attract customers.  And some attract early adopters but cannot pass into the mass market.  Sometimes, an idea is just too early for the available technology to make it attractive.  Early cell phones were large bricks that required a large carrying case and cost up to a dollar a minute to use.  As technology caught up, allowing miniaturization and light weight, mass adoption drove the price down and allowed the building of infrastructures everywhere to support the use of inexpensive minutes.  Do anything you can to develop compelling products or early prototypes as proof of ability to reduce technology risk.
  10. Is there an exit strategy for the investor(s) over time? There are many professional services businesses that make fine lifestyle opportunities for architects, doctors and dentists.   But these types of businesses are not attractive to potential buyers willing to pay a premium for businesses that are worth millions more than their asset value.  Building a great business to create wealth for the entrepreneur at exit, means thinking of the exit strategies from the beginning.  Who or what type of buyer would be attracted to this business if successful?   Great wealth is made from selling great businesses at immense profit for the entrepreneurs and investors who took the journey.
Posted in Finding your ideal niche, Growth!, Positioning | 1 Comment

How are you at setting your goals?

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Dave Berkus

We’ve spent several weeks discussing your vision for success, and whether you could be the next Ford, Jobs or Musk.  Now it’s time to make this more tangible, more real – by attaching personal goals to this vision we’ve created together.

Reminder: What is your vision?

So, your vision tells the world what you want to be as you contemplate how you will change the world for the better.

How does that differ from your goal?

In contrast, your goal is a tangible aiming point, one that should be achievable within several years if you accomplish your progressive steps planned between now and then.  You can express it in terms of money, market share, influence or other measure that reflects success.

Here’s a business example:

“To be at a $25 million run rate by the end of our fifth year in business.”  That is measurable.  From it, you’ll be able to look backward to develop a set of steps (strategies) to achieve that goal.

[Email readers, continue here…]   Once achieved, a goal is meant to be overwritten with a newer one, set to even higher standards.  If achieved early, celebrate and set another goal earlier than planned.

And why is that so important?

The good thing about a goal is that it is measurable, and progress toward it can be measured as well. Unlike your vision, which can’t be measured, there is a satisfaction in each step toward achievement of your goal.  For business goals, your employees and investors will appreciate constant attention to the goal and reports of progress toward it.   A goal serves as a rallying point for all associated with your vision.

The best advice:

Make the goal realistic, achievable and public.  You’ll find others buying into the objective and even creating better ways to achieve it because they are invested in the dream and the measure of that dream – the mutual goal.

Posted in Finding your ideal niche, Positioning | Leave a comment

Fewer words, greater effect.

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Dave Berkus

I have a good business friend, an experienced manager and teacher with a Harvard MBA, whose creativity and intelligence are admired by many.  But he dilutes his effectiveness with wordy PowerPoint presentations.  It has become a long running joke between us, as I often remind him that most of us have a very limited attention span and ability to recall important points from a presentation.

Note the title and tone of these insights.  Short, to the point.

Mark Twain said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one instead.” He cogently encapsulated the problem.

It is more difficult to reduce your thoughts to a few core sentences, but that is what you should do for maximum effect.

Posted in General | 2 Comments

Could you be the next Ford, Jobs or Musk?

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Dave Berkus

Well, it’s a fair question.

Note that none of these three famous innovators were inventors like Thomas Edison, but visionaries who see a new marketplace or niche or how to reach the mass market in ways not previously attempted.

Innovation does not always equal invention.

Leaders and companies that innovate new products, services and methods of delivery are the ones that stand out in a crowded business world, especially when attempting to gain recognition among the throngs of competitors visible on the web.

And innovation is what creates value.

Innovation is valued by our society, by investors and certainly by consumers.  It is the focus for state and federal governments worldwide, many finding ways to reward innovators with tax incentives or investors with tax credits to finance innovative new enterprises.

My experience describing innovation.

As a keynote speaker on technology trends, I often started presentations beginning with a short history of innovation in the United States, using the twist of examining innovation through the lens of 150 years of cyclic bursts of bubbles, leading to subsequent recessions and depressions.  It is not hard to find strands of gold in the carnage left by failed businesses lost when a bubble bursts, such as in 1857, 1902, 1929, 2001 and 2008.

Sometimes, innovators enable unfinished visions of others.

[Email readers, continue here…]   Innovators make use of golden strands of opportunity left when the unfinished vision of another cries for completion, or when a genuine new concept changes the very way people think about their lives.

ARPANET becomes the Internet.

Leonard Kleinrock and a few of his UCLA computer lab students worked to send the first several text characters from UCLA to Stanford in 1969 over a direct line established for the test.  They could send only the “LO” of “LOGON” before recording the very first crash of what was to become the Internet.  And I’m sure they had no idea what they were fathering with that effort which eventually became ARPANET, and then of course, the Internet itself.  They had no mantra, and a limited vision to connect mainframe computers to share academic information.

The Internet and AI – new opportunities for innovation.

How many entrepreneurs used that new Internet infrastructure to create an expansive vision of what could be?  Tim Burners-Lee wanted to use it to create a friendlier “web” of pages, sharing data like the pages of a massive library of books extending throughout the world.  The result was the worldwide web, upon which Mark Andreeson and his crew in Chicago built the Mosiac browser with his vision to make this data more available to anyone.  Which in turn allowed innovators worldwide to create applications inside a browser, share detailed information previously locked inside libraries and corporations, and ultimately to change the world by making the exchange of information frictionless.

So, who will be the next Ford, Jobs, or Musk for AI?

We can’t help but be amazed by the rapid developments in artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence (AGI).  Yet, so far, we have the foundation, thanks to development teams at OpenAI, Google and Microsoft among others.  It won’t be long before we hear names of innovators who invent new uses for AI forming highly profitable companies around the work of inventors who laid the groundwork for these yet to come applications.

What about Edison, Bell and tesla?

We can look back to Ford and other visionaries who were not inventors as well as Edison, Bell and Tesla who were inventors – as great innovators of their time.  And perhaps the most impressive invention of recent times is the result of hundreds of people, firms, and institutions, each adding a new brick to the building of the Internet and AI.

Now we have the infrastructure for innovators to create applications with open-source software – building innovations for mobile, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain and drones.  And millions of innovators are at work extending these capabilities.

So, could you be the next Ford, Jobs, or Musk? 

You don’t have to invent the next big thing, just see the place where you can fit technology into a new, much larger environment.

And who said that “Everything that can be invented has been invented?”  Ah yes. That was Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents in 1899.   Oops.

Posted in Ignition! Starting up | 1 Comment