First Semster Over!

Finally, the first semester's behind me. The things I've learned in the past 5 months are simply amazing. Hard to believe that seemingly short period of time I've complete Professor Katz's Technology class during IAP, SDM Bootcamp, Professor Labai's Marketing Management, Systems Optimization, and Michael Davies' Technology Strategy; there are lesser courses too not worth mentioning, but they were few and far between.

While there were nuggets in all classes, Technology Strategy helped me solidify my thesis and post-MIT efforts. I'm considering a move toward a start-up and have begun to strategize courses to meet that goal. Along those lines, I've been talking to a few SDM'ers about competing in the 100k next year. Looks like forming a team is a real possibility. Past SDM contestants have said that, while they didn't win anything, they came away from it knowing how to write great business plans, as well as an appreciation for those with the courage to become entrepreneurs.

"Global Opportunities for Entrepreneurs" Event

Today I had the privilege of attending the "Global Opportunities for Entrepreneurs" event hosted by the Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs (OPEN). Among the speakers were Ken Morse, Managing Director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center (and one of the founders of 3Com); and Umair Khan, Chairman, Folio3, Venture Partner, The Entrepreneurs Fund and President of OPEN Silicon Valley, and an MIT grad.

The amount of experience these two brought to the event was amazing. Judging by the size of the audience (about 100), they're highly respected, too. Ken began by outlining the effectiveness of his recent work in Pakistan. MIT and the PK government are attempting to instill the entrepreneurial/innovative spirit within PK society. And while some success was evident, when a society has entrenched, well-meaning mentalities that favor protecting the looser rather than fostering winners, any program will be only so successful. This experience was the scope of the event really. But a lot of what both speakers were saying can be generalized and extrapolated to the benefit of your average entrepreneur.

While looking back at his empirical experience learned from leading the Entrepreneurship Center, Ken said that if we were to take away anything from the event, it was that innovation is one thing, but commercialization of innovation is true innovation. He then went on to give examples of how, despite being great entrepreneurs, until recently the British weren't too savvy at bringing their inventions to market.

Another overarching lesson that any entrepreneur should embrace is the realization that in order to be really truly successful, one should be willing to work their arse off. The end-goal should be a world-class quality company. Don't stop short with 100-200 person organization, commit to the long-run. And one of the most important ingredients to any successful start-up is an outstanding sales force. In fact, a key difference of an average start-up and and outstanding one, is its sales force. Ken maintains that sales people aren't lower forms of life, much to the disagreement of your average engineer. In fact, in his view, lone wolf engineer dominated start-ups build perpetually small companies. These are the organizations that lack the appropriate balance of business and engineering talent.

Umair Khan then spoke to the effects of the globalized workforce, how it contributes to the success of an average entrepreneur and how Pakistani start-ups can benefit from it. He then gave examples of tools entrepreneurs can use to efficiently communicate, travel, hire, find hardware, and effectively market a product or service. I was pleasantly surprised by some of his recommendations (hint: check out jajah.com).

One of Umair overarching assertions was that there are various myths that in order to become a successful entrepreneur, you have to find the talent in the United States. He then went on to, I must say, convincingly dispel those myths. Specifically, within the context of targeting markets, the entrepreneur should identify the relevant market in the US or Asia and set out to build a global workforce to build and support the product. Specifically PK start-ups should concentrate on funding and building from within Asia; "The game is Asia" he says.

One good strategy is to find successful business models in the US/ER and develop alternate competitor products with enhanced value back to the developing world (Pakistan, the ME specifically). Examples of which include Google, developed in the US, was successfully transferred to the China market with a product called Baidu.

In order to execute on this strategy Umair recommends that start-ups be "globally sourced" from day one. In fact, because of economies of scale, most VC's anymore will ask a start-up if they've considered going global. He also believes that for any entrepreneur to increase their probabilities of success, he/she must find a good globally integrated team early in the company's history. So strongly did he believe in this strategy that he closed his speech with, "Go Global, Go Early."

This is good stuff. This is what MIT's all about.