Steve Hoffman - "Think Like A Startup" GEC Summit 2017 Kuala Lumpur

alltalknoaction (34)in #steem • 7 years ago

Last December Malaysia held the Global Entrepreneur Community Summit 2017 in the heart of the country's capitol, Kuala Lumpur.

The event had many famous names in all different industries - from business to science!

Among them was Steve Hoffman, the CEO of Founderspace!

Steve Hoffman gave a talk on how people can start businesses. This was amazing! Finally, a proper talk by someone who has been there done that! He had given a talk from two different perspectives: (1) From a entrepreneurs perspective, (2) From a venture capitalist perspective.

The audience got the best of both worlds! Knowing what entrepreneurs like themselves would need to look out for and also what venture capitalists want from startups!

(source: Youtube-GECSummit)

Here is a summary on his talk.

Steve Hoffman - "What Makes Entrepreneurs Successful?"

Determination

Entrepreneurs need to be driven to succeed. The need to figure out what to solve? and how to solve? and the don't take NO for an answer.

Curiosity

Entrepreneurs are willing to go deep into something that they find fascinating and that excites them. Many will stop with the first idea that they have and will not continue after that. But, good entrepreneurs will ask Why? and from there, they will further work on the idea and create new things.

CEO

A CEO is not someone who tells people what to do, but rather a CEO is someone who brings the resources into the startup. CEOs are the ones who feed the startup with value, information and point the team into the right direction.

Prepare to Fail

All startups and entrepreneurs need to prepare to fail. It could be a small failure or a big failure, it all depends on what stage you are in. Failure is a process. People should learn from their mistakes and use that to fuel your success. They should also learn more about themselves.

Stand out

You need to have something that will stand out from other products in the world. If you have a product that is a little bit better, you have failed. Your product needs to be exponentially better!

The Big Idea

Many great startups don't start this way. Many of the ideas from the greatest startups have come by accident! Youtube was initially a video dating site. but it became the largest online broadcast platform in the world.

Think Small

Don't start with the Big Idea, That can come in later as your startup progresses.

Start Small

Hire as slowly and as little as possible. You don't want to over hire and people will work less and you become less productive.

Small Budgets

Starting with small budgets is good, because large budgets ca be dangerous because it allows you to do things you do not have to with that large amount of money. So have small budgets and work around it.

Go through the Loop

Go through the innovation loop: Idea,Build,Test, Compile Data, Analyse the data

Get Dirty

If you want to innovate, go out and see the world. Observe what other people are doing and observe what are the problems that people face.

New Technology

Use new technology so that you can be up to date and be more productive as a startup.

Run Experiments

Try coming up with an idea and try to kill that idea with something else. It could be anything at all! Just try to kill that idea. If you succeed at killing your idea, then your idea is not as good as you would like it to be. but if you can't figure out a way to kill your idea then you probably have something.