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Editor's Column, MIT Enterprise Forum Reporter Forum members mostly work for companies whose primary focus is technology (it is, after all, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum) and many of our companies are founded by people who have a technology that they want to commercialize. This can be successful, but often leads to "technology in search of a market" - a product that the world ought to buy, but doesn't for some reason. Often these companies regroup and try again, but unless they spend time talking to the market, the second try may be no more successful than the first. Marketing first A better approach is for the technologists to first spend time talking to the market about its needs. Conversations with potential customers before developing product or even the underlying technology will yield wonderful clues as to what the world really will buy for a fair price. Only at that point might the founders sit down and start figuring out the best way to produce the solution that the world wants. I've always believed in this. Ralph Grabowski, long time member of the Forum, has frequently made the point that you should spend significantly more on this kind of marketing than on engineering. I've agreed with him in principle and written on the subject in past columns. Recently, I looked back at my own experience working for young companies and surprise - I haven't always walked my talk. I count seven companies as successes in that they were sold at a profit to all their stakeholders. Three successes Of the seven, three were founded by teams that fundamentally decided that they wanted to work together, then went out and talked to potential customers, and finally developed products to meet the needs they had discovered. These three all went straight from inception to success in one straight line - no restarts, false moves, or product failures. Four restarts The other four were fundamentally teams that wanted to commercialize an existing technology. In all four cases, they had to restart not once, but twice. While their final success was just as good as the others, it was longer and harder to get there and the additional dilution of the restarts reduced the founders' percentage shares substantially. I can't claim proof here - seven is hardly a statistical universe - but it's interesting and will shape my behavior in the future. Find out what the world really needs first This doesn't mean that if you're a software guru that you should consider building new hardware. Stick to what you know and an industry or space with which you are familiar. It does mean, however, that your new company will do better if your first moves as a new founder are to get out and talk to the potential customer, find out what the world really needs and will buy, and then start developing a product or service to meet that need. James L. Woodward, Editor
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