Give me fuel, Give me fire, Give me that which I desire

2. an utopia

I always like to think about what would be a great idea for a new business. Recently I thought about green tech and energy problems… We are told all day long that the future for entrepreneur is green tech… So what is the biggest energy problem incoming ? We are going to lack oil. So ok it takes millions years to produce oil naturally… Why not generate it ? Silly isn’t it ? That’s also what I thought !

I was actually too quick and too late on this idea…

• too quick

It was too quick because I discarded it as soon as it came… One of the best idea developed by Denise Shekerjian in her book “uncommon genius” is that the difference between a genius and the normal guy is that a genius is able to let an idea live a little bit longer than the usual guy (remember : he did not know it was impossible so he did it!). On the other hand, a genius is able to admit an idea was crap and to cut it… So as I discarded this idea really too quickly, I am officially not a genius (not yet!).

• too late

Yes it was too late because some guys at Solazyme already had the idea. It was about 12 years ago and they implemented it! They are near mass production (actually they announce everywhere that they could be able to sell their oil in two to three years).

• How is it possible to generate oil?

They actually found that the quickest organism to produce oil is algae. So they trained and specialized them in order to generate oil. Instead of using direct photosynthesis, they feed their algae with sugar (plants, diverse wastes…). That is the great thing. The plants take CO2 to grow, algae transform it to oil, and then the oil is burnt and releases the CO2. So their process is not releasing fossil CO2 in the atmosphere…

On top of that, from what they say, their oil is more pure than natural oil. So it pollutes less, enable your car to run longer… They already obtained various cerfications for their oil including US Military specs. What they are producing is raw oil, so they can produce diesel for your car, but also jet diesel, plastic, lipstick … anything that could be build using fossil oil can be built with their algae oil.

From what they are saying, the price of algae oil is not so far from being competitive with classic oil.

If all this is true, these guys are soon to become the kings of the world! Their technology is green, clean; the business plan is all done. It is just too beautiful to be true!

See their website and videos at http://www.solazyme.com/
Also they are around COPENHAGEN Climate Conference 2009. It is possible to try a car powered by their algae oil.

Business ideas in bulk

Just some notes on some business ideas I had and the research I did about it…

1. The realistic one

My girlfriend is a pianist. Everyday she carries a heavy bag of scores. Chopin, Mozart, Schubert… All magnificent musicians, but they are breaking her back! For a geek like me the solution seems easy: just use electronic scores and a kindle-like device for reading them everywhere! If you know a musician, you know that reading score is not enough, this device should also let the musician write annotations on the score.

On top of the huge advantage of being lighter, some features could be added:

• Real Time analysis of the music played and page turned automatically (did you noticed that a pianist often need someone to turn his pages?)
• Learning functions like showing the notes names, hiding a part of the score to train learning by heart…
• Playing the score with midi to give and example or to play the orchestra part…
• Transferring annotations (e.g. between teacher and student)

On the business side, the system could be coupled with an itunes-like system for selling scores. The simplest paper score cost 10 to 40 euros. To my mind it would not be difficult to sell them really cheaper over the internet (I am not naive, they are not expensive because of paper cost! However the usual take less margin, sell more could work).

When I first thought about this, I was really convinced it was a great idea! Then I thought about what I learnt at It Transfert barcamp: if you do not have competitors, this is because there is no market for that. So I checked a little bit what could be the competitors for my idea. I found two of them:

Music Reader, http://www.musicreader.net

This is a software that allows displaying electronic scores. It can run on desktop, laptop and tablet pc. The advantage is that it is really cheap (less than 100$) if you already have the hardware. However I do no know that many musician having a tablet pc, and laptop or desktop does not seems convenient. It implements all the features I talked about previously and add a special pedal to turn pages, half-page turn (to have the end of the current page and the beginning of the next one), metronome… Actually these are some good ideas to get inspired by.

In the “about us”, we learn that the company has been founded in 2008, and that the software has been started in 2002. It has been written by a student during his master. Wanted to check the turnover but did not find relevant information.

MuseBook, http://www.musebook.com

This software is built by a Korean company. It is designed to be installed on a tablet pc however the cost is 900$. They intelligently provide an academic license which is 600$ for 5 licenses. An interesting function is that if you are playing to piano, it can listen what you are playing and turn the page automatically. The website has not been updated since 2004…

Ok this seems really great! Why isn’t everyone using it?

I think this business cannot be profitable, or at least not yet. Musicians, like a lot of readers, like to have the “score” object in hand and write on it. Someone willing to make money with this idea should be really careful about this and take it into account from the start of product design and marketing planning.

On top of that, if I think about my wife, she is playing piano 4 to 8 hours a day, and already sometimes suffering from headaches… What if she would have to look at a screen all day long? It would be awful. I think a big competitive advantage would be to implement the thing on e-ink device (which can be difficult because it must have the annotation features)…


next ideas later ...

Want to test your entrepreneur abilities? Just get yourself married!

Woo ! long time no write ne ?!

I married a nice and clever girl on October 10th. It was tougher than expected! In the middle of the rush, I realized that organizing a wedding is very much like starting a business and managing a team. I felt that it could be a good comparison to do and that some lessons can be learned from this.

First what you need is a vision! What if you dress 1900 style, rent a break-dance band to distract your guests during the cocktail, and organize the meal in a farm? Your guests are going to get mixed up, each of these ideas taken individually could be really nice, but all together, it will not fit… What you need is a vision, an idea that will guide your guests all along the wedding. It is really difficult to select between all these so cool ideas in order to get something consistent… This is the same difficulty as selecting between many so cool features that could give you access to other so cool markets and customers… Customers are like guest, they want consistency, they want to feel like you have a guiding idea, a vision. The difficult thing in being an entrepreneur is selecting carefully between all the paths that you could take, and to make your range of product something sensible…

If YOU do not have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, how are your customers and your team going to understand what your company is about and identify to this company enough to buy your products or work hard for you ?!?

This brings us to the second part, I am sorry to tell you that but you cannot make a software or a company all by yourself (John Carmack can, not you or me!). Same for your wedding. First because you are not competent enough in every field (I have never met either a cooker-DJ-musician-waiter-hair-dresser or a HR-accountant-lawyer-programmer-sales-manager). Even if they exists they could not do everything by themselves, because they are the star of THE day and so they need to be on stage (think Steve Jobs!), posing for everyone taking pictures, and not in the kitchen finishing the appetizers ! There are two types of people who will be able to help you:
- Suppliers (of goods or services)
- employees

Concerning suppliers, they are not always that easy to find and select, and as your are just starting your company (or because they already have wedding booked for the whole year), sometimes a bit reluctant to help you. A good thing to do is to ask around you. When starting a business you cannot afford to choose the wrong lawyer or accountant, you need to be sure. Relying on a well designed website can be a method for choosing an hotel for the weekend, but not for your company! Relying on people past experiences is the best way to avoid getting wrong. On top of that you will notice that it takes some time to handle all those guys, so try to limit yourself to one or two providers per category. Also this remembers me the “be important” advice of Guy Kawazaki (http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/03/the_art_of_suck.html#axzz0WP6bZ1Ld).

For what the suppliers cannot do, if you have competencies in your family or among your friends, ask them to help you. As you probably do not have that much money (and budgets are always shorts), get all the free help you can. In my wedding/team analogy, the people among your family and friends could be the people of your team: you know them well, you work together toward the same goal, and your happiness is closely linked to heir happiness. The only difference is that, well, the people of your team have to be paid at the end of the month! Choosing the people that would help you is a little bit like doing a HR job: trying to find the most competent people, that would be happy to help you, and making a match between teams so that that old uncle Willy will not be in the same team as John, the guy he hates the most on earth.

These people are happy to help you, but only you have the vision, so they do not really know what to do! Make sure that everyone knows what he has to do (what you want him to do, which goal he should achieve) and when he has to do that. Next make sure everyone has the information and tools he needs to perform the task. Nothing is more upsetting than someone supposed to park your car near the church, and that do not know where that church is. It is so obvious to you, but not to them ! On the other hand, how is your cousin supposed to cut cakes if he does not have a knife? It is your role as a manager to make sure that everyone has the sufficient knowledge and tools to perform the task you are asking for!

To sum, a good entrepreneur should:

• take some time to think about the vision he has of his business
• find suppliers and a team that can help him to reach toward this vision
• make sure they know exactly what he wants
• make sure they got the information and tools to perform what he wants

All this can seems pretty obvious to you but in the heat of the day to day battle, one could forget these basics and get angry at his team or suppliers, because they just won’t do what he wants. In this times, remember the wedding analogy.

Is it really a good time to launch a start up ?

This question is coming over, and over again each time I speak about Golaem with my family.

You may also have a business idea, and wondering about this question of timing. With mass-media speaking every day about the financial crisis and how company are striving to survive, your family, colleagues or friends may try to prevent you from doing this.

Actually I think the best time to launch a business is just now !

Why ?


1. It's way easier to get public funding.

Just speaking about France (which obviously I know better), several actions have been taken

• the limit of public funding that may be given to a company have been set from 200Keur over 2 years to 500Keur between 2008 and 2010.
• 20Meur have been allocated to serious gaming, web, or mobile projects.
• OSEO provides unsecured loans to innovative companies
• some R&D expenses can be reimbursed, and measure have been taken so that reimbusement is quicker.
• the self-entrepreneur status has been created and allow individual entrepreneur to not paying tax while his company is not making any profits
  

All this add to existing measures (like not paying (or paying less) taxes on salaries in the first years of the company).

To my mind France can been seen as a paradise for entrepreneur ! But a lot of this measures are temporaries and when the crisis will be over, you won't be able to benefit from them...


2. If you follow the start up model, having no clients in the first years is not necessary a problem...

Let me explain what is my definition of the "start up model". This means trying to get some funding to develop a product which could make your profit curve exponential.

You cannot do this with a grocery store or consulting, because the money you earn depends on how many consultant you hire, or the size/location of you store... All this clearly cannot lead you to an exponential curve. Selling software can, because it is a work once, sell many product. Once you product is built, you can sell millions at nearly zero additional cost.

Hence if you manage to get some funding (public or private), having no clients enables you to concentrate on developing your products instead of spending your (small) resources and reputation to sell unfinished products and doing a lot of support. ( ok on the other hand you may ends with a products nobody wants ! Be sur to do your homework before deciding to spend one year on developping a products without having clients)


3. If you sell cost saving products, the crisis may actually helps you

Lots of people have to cut down on expenses, and buying your product may be a way to do it


4. As everyone is thinking that launching a company in a crisis environment is bad idea...

This results in a less competitive environment and gives you more space to sell your products.
When times are better and everyone start to build there product, you are one or two year ahead, and in good condition to take a big market share.

So do not wait any longer and start thinking about your business plan !