I rarely do this: but a facebook thread just really piqued my interest and I think this bit of info is a valid article in itself.

The problem?
Most places in the world trying to build innovative knowledge-based economies are struggling with the actual understanding of what those economies look like.
(I'll give you a hint: it doesnt look like this)

I'm going to use 3 scenarios to prove a point here:
Luxembourg - which will act as the extreme case of basically all of western Europe. (All of western Europe is similar enough - so read Luxembourg as Europe if you want.)
Thailand - which is one of the only places now in SE Asia without a startup scene. (Even Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia are sprouting - and of course the local 800-lb gorilla Singapore is way ahead: one of the top 6 spots in the world.)
And India - which has a HUGE tech industry, LOTS of engineers, and enormous amount of capital and connections.

So whats the problem? Why are these places - which are as I said simply examples out of hundreds of places in the world - who are trying to build innovative knowledge-based economies, not succeeding in doing so?

First I'll tell you why NOT...
Its not a financial issue - as I saw in Luxembourg a few months ago (highest GDP country in the world, people still live in Chateau's and Castles, it's a private banking haven)...Thailand has investor permanent residency visas for foreigners who want to enjoy one of the highest qualities of life that Thailand currently offers, and all they have to do is invest. Theres lots of em here from Chinese to Americans and Europeans. India has some of the wealthiest people/families in the world - and especially in Asia, who also have some of the widest range of funds and capital available.

It's also not a technical ability issue - Luxembourg is in the middle of a cradle of the best scientific and engineering schools in Europe - Bangkok has close to a dozen technical universities pumping out 100,000 skilled engineers per year - India? yea dont even get me started.

It's not either a legal issue - Luxembourg has the "best IP model in the west", and very efficient tax and business reforms. Thailand has very easy laws to work around if you have only a minimal amount of solid backing. India...they dont even make copies of the paperwork. (OK - not literally, but I know companies operating there for close to 10 years who dont actually exist on paper in India. Theyre doing fine. Never had a problem.)

So why is it that startups simply - dont exist (for the most part) in these environments which are actually incredibly supportive for them?

I answered this discussion thread on facebook as such:
I read a very good article by Dr Jay Chunsuparerk last night concerning this topic exactly - which I actually am glad to hear because this is why I moved our company out here.
The potential and eagerness to do something *BIG* and meaningful - not just outsourced consulting or web-dev shops - but actual PRODUCT companies - is where we need to drive things in order for a true startup scene to flourish here.

It is a very wide misunderstanding here (and I've seen it all over the world - its not unique to Thailand) that starting up a business, filing for a tax number, and selling your SKILLS or SERVICES = a startup.

That is not at all what a startup is - that is a services company.
A startup, by definition and purpose, is NOT a services company.
An entrepreneur, likewise, is NOT someone who builds a company that sells services (at whatever scale: large or small). An entrepreneur is someone who INNOVATES a new kind of business model, and VALIDATES it.

Taken from Paul Graham himself:
A *startup* is a TEMPORARY human organization that is actively SEARCHING for a SCALABLE, REPEATABLE, business model.
A *company* is a DEFINED human organization that has already FOUND, and is EXECUTING it's repeatable business model.
...and I'll add one of my own which I've used for awhile now:
A *consultancy* is a TEMPORARY human organization that provides SERVICES and SKILLS to a startup or company - but has no business model of its own - a consultancy's business model is created by the market - not itself.

What we are actually seeing in Thailand - is service companies or consultancies (whichever you like to call them).
Service companies are selling SKILLS, and ABILITIES - these are intangible, non-physical products which are only put to use by OTHER organizations who actually come up with the INNOVATION to building new products.
Service companies are outsourced labour.
Consultant/service companies are therefor very crucial - as there is always going to be holes in companies that need filling; and there will DEFINITELY always be holes in startups that need filling.
Consultancies fill these holes.

However, it is completely wrong to call a consultancy or service company a startup. Likewise just as wrong to call the people behind it entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs = innovators. Service companies are not.
I - for example - outsource my financial services as long as I can when I build a startup. I outsource CFO roles completely. I am currently using E&Y to take care of all my financial needs. I wont hire an internal CFO until we absolutely have to - or until a great opportunity crosses our path to do so.
E&Y cannot be called a startup however. (Even if it was a smaller, newer, firm that I used instead)
It is a services company.

Likewise - a website dev shop cannot be called a startup.
If I'm a business and I need a website, hiring a company to build it is the exact same thing as hiring E&Y to do my books as a tech business.
They are both service companies.
They are not startups.

Service companies are very needed, of course - startups cannot survive without them! They are the first crucial part of building a startup ecosystem. So - would-be-entrepreneurs, take this lesson to heart: treat your service companies well! They deserve our respect.

I've been training budding entrepreneurs for a long time. Either directly involved in their startups investing/advising/mentoring (sometimes even coding) or even just by academic means..... But it never ceases to amaze me that everytime I go somewhere new - I have to repeat myself all over again. "Service companies are not startups"

Here in SEA the very definition of a startup is still something that needs to be grasped.
That is why there are, just like Adrian stated: not very many actual startups to invest in.
Its not about substance - its about actually understanding what a startup is.
So many people dont understand that yet - and therefor, their companies appear to be "not so substantial".
It's because they arent really startups to begin with.
(...and they shouldnt be needing investment anyway unless their services are simply so bad that nobody will hire their labour!)

Of course - there is also the problem of helping those few startups who are innovating something new - to understand how to build products for a global market.
Thailand is in a very good position right now though. I am excited to be here. I am fairly positive I will build my company here. Because the people here are respectful, willing to learn, and easy to work with.

So - lets get busy and fill these holes.
bangkok.3daystartup.org and many other things we are rolling out are here to do just that. They work. Lets get busy.

Labels: 3DS, Asia, education, Europe, leanstartup, startup, workshop

Yes my doggies I know you've been waiting for it - the report of the final day @ LSM D.C.

The final day was indeed the most intense of them all. The air was buzzing all morning as teams wrapped together last chances at (in)validating assumptions by going out onto the streets, then mapping out the results and pivoting one last time based on what was learned.

Quickly after lunch the teams were all required to upload final presentations that they'd put together based on all things learned over the weekend. It was damn incredible how drastically every single project changed from the first day pitches. Some projects did not even remotely resemble their original counterparts!

With exactly 5:00 minutes each to present their projects, and an additional 3:00 minutes for Q&A (and I mean exactly!) - teams were anxiously practicing their pitches and putting together their presentations.

At roughly 15:00 everyone cornered into the presentation room - with quite a few more guests, investors, and interested attendees - making thefort.vc venue pretty packed and focused on that little pull-down presentation canvas.

Check here for all the photos in instagram fashion

From start to finish:
 Sporting their DIY company T-Shirts pre-pitch time, LOLDreams...
Pat Sheridan, CEO of Modus Create, a very interesting development team of industry experts pushing agile development to its limits.
A shot from behind of Jonathan Perrelli, one of the damn coolest incubator directors and investors I've met.


So - what you've all been waiting for: Final Pitch Day!

Starting off with team Factsheets.io, who started the presentations with a bang! (Sorry but I love seeing women founders up on stage kicking ass)
Factsheets solve a huge pain button for the US government (and entire public) by providing straight-forward-simple factsheets on how government policies affect YOU! One of my favorites!
Team EventKick pivoted quite alot during the weekend, starting from something resembling a wedding planner and invitation/RSVP tool to an app that helps remind you and your connections of the meetings you promised to show up at. Lots of features and integrations planned forward, and lots of things (in)validated!
Team IAGOZ pivoted wide circles around their target customer/user (yes - same target for both) of the "professional male" demographic. Ultimately resulting in a service which will clone your favorite shirt that fits you the best, into an exact copy (without trademark tags of course) or any other fashion you want...
Up next - Crowdfinder, which aims to help you find the crowds that you might want to avoid - or join.
With location based tracking and a few other features planned, the pressure point for them was to solve people's wasted time waiting in lines by helping people find the stores less crowded...
This next one won a cool factor - LeapList.
Ever get a gift you thought was crap? What does one do? Ever not know what kind of gift to give someone?
LeapList makes it easy: make a profile with the things you really want to do before you kick-the-bucket, and have your friends, family, whoever - help fund it. One little bit at a time...
Ready to take a trip? A tour? Thats just the beginning of course - with the next team that I was actually the one to give them their name: Groovl. Group Travel For Less is their motto - find trips that others also want to take and consequently the group buying effect lowers all of your prices! Groovl will soon expand into other areas of group buying as well!
Ever need a Taxi and cant find one? How about the opposite that you need a taxi and can find 100's but they are all full? How about seeing those long lines of taxi's outside hotels waiting for clients?
Big problem, Simple solution, with Concierge: help taxis and taxi-seekers be in the right place at the right time.
The next team didnt actually come up with a final solution for anything - but what they did do was definitely win the prize of most invalidated assumptions - aptly named: Invalidator, had a long list and chunk of data on products that really wouldnt be useful, which they had a few new ideas on to use for something that would be...stay tuned I guess??? :)
Spicify.me was up next with a solution for everyone who ever wanted to find a specific spice, herb, or special cooking item and just couldnt manage to find it. Look it up, find it in your local area, and help others by tagging those rare ingredients where you do find them.
This next team definitely got the laughs. LOLDreams, an entertaining portal where people share their craziest dream stories and get to enjoy those of others - already launched and active by day 3 with users posting their dreams online and ranking other's. An energetic team with very friendly demeanour, check it out at www.loldreams.com
This group was after my own heart: Smart-ly.com started with an attempt to solve the US education decline (US now ~#22 in education) by figuring out the real problem.
It ends up, the real problem is that being smart just aint cool in the good-ol-US-of-A. So to fix that, students can now aim high, achieve their goals, and get rewarded for it - like, a personal channel and getting to know your favorite celebrity perhaps? Smartly won the top LSM prize by actually not only finding tons of young students and their parents who loved the concept - but actually getting a local celebrity (Jonathan Perrelli) to make a personalized video for a local who had only dreamed of meeting him.
Smartly is also going to integrate with eKita to provide them with the full academic workflow statistics and social graph data they need to systematically reward students for over-achievement. Many celebrities are already eager to help out.

Last but not least - another team after my heart with another education based solution: Quume, where your academic & professional accreditations, achievements, and merits are verified and organized. A great team motivated to solve the process of continuing education and knowledge seekers in providing a simple platform for everyone to prove they know what they know.
To boost their project up they also received a LOI from yours truly (thats me), as eKita will very much support them by hosting their application on our platform.

Labels: 3DS, cowork, education, edutech, lean, leanstartup, startup, washington DC, workshop

Day 2 of LSM @ DC was intense!

A very, very long day full of action packed lean learning. Some good workshops, one by myself on ideation and techniques of how to use it in customer development; but otherwise a day full of participants getting out of the building and talking to customers, learning, and pivoting fast.

We've got everything from an educational project to help make education cool - a realization after attempting a learning platform that nobody would really use it because getting high grades and being smart in the US culture isnt considered cool. So the pivot is now working towards making high-grades and academic achievement highly rewarded by being able to have private channels of communication with student's favorite celebrities. Want to meet your favorite celebrity? Get straight A's and you will, on Smart-ly.com!

Obviously this is a very interesting project for us at eKita.

There's also group travel buying project Groovel (name change imminent: there's already a groovel.com) who help people looking to travel in groups get it that much cheaper - by group buying the travel and tour packages.
A similar concept to what Elan is doing over at MorePeoplePayLess.com.

Overall we've got about 8 projects here, with some very interesting ideas here that are evolving into solid solutions for painful problems - right in front of our eyes.

With its hyper-drive model of invalidating and validating assumptions about product->market fit and customer->product fit, LSM is definitely a success at making you learn lean!

The only cave-at I have so far about the intense 3-day approach of this is that there are lots of false negatives and false positives in the testing process. Something that I've seen happening here quite alot with teams, and have mentioned to them to keep this in mind: dont necessarily throw away an assumption simply because of a quick street-test that invalidates it!!!

All in all though - learning the techniques and methods is the goal of LSM - and at that, it is excelling incredibly well.

Participants are quickly becoming lean startup machines!

Labels: 3DS, cowork, education, edutech, lean, leanstartup, startup, washington DC, workshop

Day 1 of LSM (www.leanstartupmachine.com) in Washington D.C. was quite a thriller. Hosted in a fairly interesting (and relatively new) incubator in central D.C. called TheFort.vc, the D.C. startup scene looks to be growing and thriving.

I came over here (all the way from Bangkok) to learn what they are doing and start working with them as an MC (master of ceremonies; role description: run the show). It is indeed different than expected but in some quite positive ways. They definitely seem to have nailed down a very functional leanstartup method and even after the first day - which was actually less than a half day (started at 18:30, ended at 23:00) I could see teams grasping leanstartup methodology and techniques actively.

LSM looks like a very hands-on, learn by doing workshop. Which is great because the learn by doing philosophy is of course what I'm all about (its even our 3 Day Startup signature). The team running  LSM is also really fun. A young group of people who have really researched leanstartup well and as the saying goes they do what they preach.  LSM itself is a startup that very visibily uses its own techniques - and has done a fairly impressive job at scaling and executing new projects that adapt and improve in real-time.

Day 1 of LSM@D.C. saw participants come together, get an introduction presentation by Trevor, after which they are all required to sign a pledge that helps to break them out of the mental mold and contributes to forcing them to adapt and learn leanstartup techniques over the weekend.
From that point, quick idea pitches are given by participants, of projects they want to work on.
A typical voting mechanism takes place and teams are formed.
From that point, a bit of information is given and a plan of action (assignment) is given to the teams: to start using LSM's custom leanstartup canvas (components taken, customized, and added from the Business Model Canvas method) to start learning fast by failing faster (a very interesting and well-branded slogan for LSM indeed).





Brant Cooper, a fairly active evangelist of leanstartup also skyped in to give a nice Q&A session a bit later in the evening, while iconically sipping a beer in his backyard out in California.








Stay tuned...there's 2 days left, and more to come! (and here's a nice arbitrary photo of a view from TheFort;)

Labels: lean, leanstartup, startup, washington DC, workshop