19 February 2017

Problem-Solving: Transparency of Startup Operational Risks...

The lifeblood of an organization is comprised of several key components to sustain and continuously grow the enterprise.  Founders, senior management, engineers, financial and legal subject matter expertise usually comes first.  Then once the minimum viable product or solution is ready for the intended market there is a mad dash to add the sales and business development resources.

Startup mentality that initiates the planning, demand generation and "Go-to-Market" execution for the growth engine have higher Operational Risk exposure.  Many founders and new entrepreneurs who have engineering or operational expertise, underestimate the need for substantial growth engine investment early in the startup timeline.

How many times have you attended "Demo Days" or other such events intended for the startup founders to pitch their new App or service solution, begging for a first customer?  You must recognize that the new Artificial Intelligence interface, the optimized algorithm or the faster encrypted communications is not going to create a new market overnight.

Entrepreneurs require a substantial immersion into the business environment of problem-solving.  It begins with the customer or client who detects that there is an area of risk that needs remediation.  How do you think companies like Symantec and McAfee first started?  The personal computers that were becoming so pervasive were encountering something now called malware.

Solving problems from the customers perspective requires a deep and focused process with the owners, operators and end users.  It requires substantial time being embedded at the customer level or with the people who perform their daily tasks.  You need to understand the risks that the customer is experiencing.

This "Diagnostic-to-Prescriptive" process is not new.  Yet how many times have those "Demo Day" entrepreneurs or "Accelerator" graduates ended their pitch, with a plea for a first customer?  This is a recipe for failure.

How can this be changed or addressed, in order to increase the number of successful new businesses?  What should we be doing to assist these new entrepreneurs in embracing the "Operational Risks" of a customer and inventing a new solution to solve their problems?

The engineers and inventors should embrace the idea of finding customers first, who have real and risk sensitive problems they can solve.  It is not enough to just change an interface, reduce the pricing and copy an App, to do the same general function.  How long will it now take for Snap to begin building their own data centers and infrastructure?

Entrepreneurs that utilize the "Go-to-Market" strategy early in their growth cycle, will simultaneously increase exposure to substantial Operational Risks.  Take that great idea or new "Minimum Viable Product" to an established business in the industry sector you think is going to listen.  Find the right business to adopt you as a problem-solver with this new solution and take the time to learn.

Once you have lived with the same problem across several different businesses, agencies or governments, it might be time to launch the "Go-to-Market" strategy for a single industry sector or country to start.  The learning phase and early adoption of a multitude of business development processes, will establish a more solid foundation for launching the new product / solution.

When you look at Snapchat and its growth cycle, it was not obvious up front, how privacy was going to be such a tremendous risk to the business.  How you can pivot quickly from understanding your customers appetite for transparency, to also provide a robust privacy policy program, is just one way to build a trusted set of repeat customers.
Snapchat Transparency Reports are released twice a year. These reports provide important insight into the volume and nature of governmental requests for Snapchatters' account information and other legal notifications.