Analysis or Analy-guess?
“You can always tell a Harvard Man. You just can’t tell him much.” – James Barnes
There’s a school somewhere in the Northeast called Harvard — maybe you’ve heard of it. For some reason, the people who’ve matriculated from there (they prefer the term to graduated) often make a point to tell you about it. Well, I’m an alum of the University of Michigan and, up in the Great White North, we heard a lot about Harvard too, although I don’t recall us ever playing them in football.
Pick a Card, Any Card
When Entrepreneurs ask me how I help evaluate their company’s strengths and weaknesses, they’re always surprised when I assure them that coin flips, Tarot cards, and the I-Ching are but a few of our many sophisticated evaluative tools. It turns out that the first tool I usually pull out when I run across a prospective client goes by the curious name, The Harvard Framework. The Harvard Framework covers the three fundamental aspects of a successful venture; people, opportunity, and environment:
1. First comes people, particularly the quality and maturity of a venture’s management and technical team, the experience and connections of the venture's stakeholders (investors, advisors, partners, and such), and, of course, the quality and commitment of the entrepreneur herself. 2. Next up is the market opportunity. Specifically, we look at the size and growth rate of the expected market, the uniqueness of the business model and whether it’s executable, the general strength and receptiveness of the proposed customer base, and the timing of the venture with respect to installed infrastructure, new technology adoption, and switching costs. 3. Third, we look at the overall context and environment into which the proposed venture will emerge, i.e., the stability of the economy, investment trends, barriers to entry, strength and flexibility of the competition, and regulatory factors.
Then we close our eyes and throw a dart at the wall. If it hits the picture of Michael Dell (the patron saint of Right Place, Right Time), we bow to the evident good karma and accept the company as a client.
Seven Come Eleven
We use other tools, of course—many of them having nothing to do with Harvard, and we’re always trolling for new ways of looking at things (which, now that I think about it, often involves reading the Harvard Business Review). But we recognize that no single assessment, group of tools, or handful of loaded dice will provide a definitive evaluation when it comes to the kind of ventures we like to work with. Ultimately, no matter how much information we gather, the companies we work with still carry lots of uncertainty and risk. So how do we really select clients? We start by weeding out the obvious, and then we use our tools and judgment to identify the areas where we can provide the most help. Ultimately, we take a shot and hope for the best, just like our clients do when they decide to start a high-growth, technology-based business. That’s what makes it so much fun. By the way, just so you know, I’m working on an General Ideas Framework, which is based solely on the strategy and tactics of modern collegiate football—something at which my alma mater has historically excelled. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marty Kaszubowski is President of General Ideas, a Norfolk-based technology venture consultancy, helping early stage companies and solo entrepreneurs figure out what they want to be when they grow up. Marty is the former Director of the Hampton Roads Technology Incubator and a former President of the Hampton Roads Technology Council, and is a long-time participant in the on-going, regional efforts to promote a more robust entrepreneurial culture here in Hampton Roads. Marty can be reached at Marty@General-Ideas.com.
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