Just because you can doesn't mean you should: thoughts on smartness & entrepreneurship in...

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino @iotwatch

Thoughts on smartness & entrepreneurship in #iot

CEO of Tinker London 2007-2010

Good Night Lamp 2012-

designswarm 2011-

This talk in one slide We aren’t even close to #iot being mainstream. A lot of men are designing things for women…again. Investors are the meatgrinder of the industry Success is a complicated thing.

“IOT IS EVERYWHERE!”

We are part of a continuum Human-Computer Interaction Ubiquitous computing / ubicomp blogjects Smart (insert noun) Internet of Everything Industrial Internet Internet of things Wearables Connected products ….. NORMAL LIFE

But we’ve been there before.

Smart vs connected.

Latent issues

OR

OR

We’re not there yet.

Innovation Diffusion

o  Communication channels (subjective perceptions)

o  Time

o  Social System (role of opinion leaders & change agents)

4 ways to spread new ideas

o  What TechCrunch / The Verge / GigaOM say

o  Time

o  If people invest in you and retailers know what to do with you

4 ways to spread new ideas

YOUR STARTUP

The forbidden apple of crowd-funding A convenient way for investors to ignore you early on (you may not need them anyway) A quick way to do market research. Not a replacement for real PR. You become part of a market, people want to make money from you as an entrepreneur.

YOUR STARTUP

INVESTORS

We are educating investors.

Early days for investors who have been investing in web for over 15 years. Most tech investors focusing on industrial / B2B Consumer-focused investments are led by US funds (Foundry Group/Tech Stars)

Aquihire or death? It used to be people were afraid of starting businesses because most would fail within 2 years. Now they can sell it and look successful! Berlin & London have some examples of this. We are meat for SF’s more successful businesses.

The role of experts

Supply chain & retail are known skillsets but are different communities Electronics engineering isn’t easy to find & is expensive but will help design something scalable A 20 something or a graduate can’t help you with either.

Pacing yourself

Incubators & accelerators are often too short & shouldn’t put you off your course. It takes 3 years to really be known in all markets but also be boring to some. Decide if you’re a one product company or a products company. (Lava Lamp vs Apple) Both can be successful.

Merci! Grazie! Danke.

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino @iotwatch

@liquidcon @ConnectedIOT