Jun

20

Before You Come to Indiana

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Indiana State HouseBefore you come to Indiana, make sure you’re in the right industry.  If you’re in business, you can only be in 2 types of industries: the right industry or the wrong industry.  All you have to do is make sure that you’re not in the wrong industry.  Well how can you know if you’re in the right industry?  Easy. 

Are you doing something that has to do with biotech?  No you say?  Do you have a patent on something that gives you an unfair sustainable competitive advantage?  No you say?  Got some farmland?  No you say?  Do you own a manufacturing firm?  No you say?  Are you at least selling a physical object that I can feel and touch?  No you say?  Then you might want to rethink coming to Indiana.  The entrepreneur who answers “No” to all these questions, will face an insane amount of resistance in Indiana.       

If you answered “No” to all of the above questions, your best bet is to do what you’re doing elsewhere.  Silicon Valley might be cool, because surely you must be a Web-based operation–probably of the Web 2.0 variety.  Another place might Boston or Chicago.  Another pair may be NYC or DC.

This fact, in my opinion, plays some role in young people leaving Indiana.  Generation Y is interested in doing, oh I don’t know, cool stuff.    There’s definitely some cool stuff in Indiana, but let’s face it, not everybody gets turned on by biotech.   

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, only certain type of innovation is exalted in Indiana.  Do you want a warmer reception of what you’re doing in the Web space?  You might want to do what you’re doing in a state other than Indiana (unless you can answer yes to one of the questions given earlier in this post).  Don’t get me wrong, you can totally be successful with your Web app in Indiana, but you’re just going to take a few kicks in the shorts, a few slaps in the face, and a few elbows to the groin.  If you find yourself in Indiana launching a Web based app, be ready for the paaaaain.              

[Note: Even though I am picking on Indiana, I’m pretty certain that most of America is no better than Indiana when it comes to this kind of stuff.]

Apr

15

The Burton D. Morgan Curse: More Reasons Why Initial B-Plans Don’t Matter

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B-Plan

In Marc Andreessen’s post, he says the following:

“If Thomas Edison didn’t know what he had when he invented the phonograph while he thought he was trying to create better industrial equipment for telegraph operators…

…what are the odds that you — or any entrepreneur — is going to have it all figured out up front?”

Yet we jam into people’s heads that before they start a business they have to have everything well laid out in business plan.  This truly makes no sense for a number of reasons, but I will not delve into them here.

The meat of this post is this: The Burton D. Morgan business plan competition has been in existence for over 21 years now.  Where the hell are all the “startups” that win these competitions?  Clearly the winners had phenomenal business plans.  So what the hell are they doing?!?  One reasonable conclusion someone can draw is that their disappearance into the oblivion had NOTHING to do with their business plan.  It’s almost as if the winners of the Burton D. Morgan competitions fall into a black hole never to return.

If you’re among the new winners of the latest Burton D. Morgan competition, control your destiny and do not fall victim to the curse.  In my humble opinion, the best way to beat the curse is to execute, execute, execute.  And when you get tired, execute some more.        

Apr

2

We Really Need Help!!!

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Indiana’s definitely hungry for some entrepreneurship. We just need some guidance. No really, check it out:

Entrepreneurship

We can’t even spell entrepreneurship out here :o(.

Mar

23

The Real Low Down on the Indiana Entrepreneur Bootcamp

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ElevatorThis entry is going to give a “real”analysis of the entrepreneurship bootcamp elevator pitch contest that took place in Indianapolis last week Thursday. InnovateIndiana has plenty of love for all the entrepreneurially inclined in Indiana, but we got to give it to you straight here at i^2. Otherwise why would anybody come here :o).

The elevator pitch competition allegedly had the 10 biggest ideas there were in the room that night where selected hopefuls had the opportunity to win cash prizes (1st place $1K, 2nd place $500, 3rd place $250).

So here are the 10 biggest ideas of the 350 plus students that were in attendance (not everyone submitted ideas):

1) Pooyou.com. This is a website where you can send non-smelly biodegradable “poo” to people electronically or in real life. This isn’t a big idea, it’s a big @ss gimmick. This is a Facebook Zombie application in real life. And this bad boy won the whole elevator pitch contest. Are you kidding me? Ask me if Indiana is headed in the right direction??

2) Dinner plate attachment. You can attach some type of material to dinner plates to turn them into bowls. The guy who pitched it wasn’t really sure of how to do this, so this reflected sort of bad on him. Nonetheless, this is hardly life changing.

3) Video game for I-Step. This is a video game for Nintendo DS to help Indiana High School students pass the I-Step test (the Math portion). Very admirable. If proven successful for high school students in Indiana, I’m sure there will be expansion opportunities. The video game demo has had a major facelift since it’s last demo some weeks ago.

4) Midwest Leak. This is a magazine on hip hop that’s already in circulation. This magazine focuses on hip hop in the Midwest region. According to the owner, the company is already profitable. It’s very admirable that she’s already doing what she believes in and has already made a profit. Kudos.

5) Electronic Receipts. Whenever you purchase something with a credit card, you get an electronic receipt. Doesn’t your online credit card statement tell you this information? Let’s ignore all the technical and practical challenges (e.g., getting the big credit companies to cooperate) . Can somebody explain to me why this electronic receipt idea even makes sense–I mean doesn’t your online credit card account include your purchase information? After much thinking I’m guessing that itemization of what was bought may be useful to folks, but then this introduces privacy concerns.  She wins 2nd place.

6) Freelectric. Essentially the idea is to create exercise equipment that can power appliances in your house. He claims that he can get this built (mass production level I’m assuming) for about $1K. If this is true, this could be disruption on the scale of Henry Ford. I liken the presenter’s idea to Henry Ford, because, currently rich people already have exercise equipment that can power their homes. If this technology could be made available to the masses, then that would be a HUGE disruptive innovation.

7) Soy-based Play-doh. Now children can ingest play-doh. This is a big idea…period.

8 ) Web Video for Doctors to communicate with patients. I didn’t really get this one. Doctors will talk in general terms to patients about the common problems? WTF?

9) Enagewear. Using flash-based games for education. Without a demo, the presenter really couldn’t “change my pulse” in the words of Bill Joos.

10) After school program for robotics. Okay, I’ll be honest, I couldn’t listen to this one. Apparently it was good enough to get 3rd place.

There were some big ideas in the bunch, but there’s no reason why they all shouldn’t have been big ideas. And if all the ideas presented, if the judges are going to be pick pooyou.com to be potentially be the biggest thing to come out of Indiana, Indiana is in some serious trouble.

Feb

25

ChaCha.com Vs. Google.com

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ChaCha LogoSo ChaCha.com is a Indy based company headed by the herald Scott Jones. If you’ve never used ChaCha.com, it’s a Internet search service that’s human powered. This means that you can search with a human search guide. There are people who are trained in searching the Web that work for ChaCha.com and help you if you hit the “Search with Guide” button. The natural question is how will ChaCha.com scale this operation? There are only so many search guides, and only so many of them can help so many people at once. But let’s ignore scaling issues. Let’s pretend that ChaCha.com worked the way it was envisioned to work. Could ChaCha.com really disrupt Google?

Based on the “Innovator’s Solution,” I would purport, “a definitive NO.” ChaCha.com would be sustaining innovation (again, if it worked the way envisioned). Internet search is Google’s breadwinner. You think Google is just going to lay down and let some new entrant snatch its main course right out its mouth? Think again!

So I think ChaCha.com’s move into the mobile search space is very smart one. This is still a relatively untapped space, and ChaCha.com has a real chance to own it. But ChaCha.com would do well to move expediently, as Google is clearly trying to move into this space. Thankfully though, it hasn’t reach critical mass yet. Move quickly ChaCha!!!