Today I attended the XMediaLab event in Wellington New Zealand (my hometown). Tom Duterme, who is in the New Business Development group at Google in Mountain View, was here talking about innovation. Tom's job is to travel around the world looking for acquisitions for Google, so it was interesting to hear what things he looks for in startups.
Imagination is key, he advised -- see the Einstein quote at the end of this post. But also there are three things which startups should take advantage of: hammers (tools), wires (broadband), rucksacks (storage).
For the 'hammer' category, he was referring to tools. In the Internet age, things like games (e.g. flash), video (e.g. hd camcorders), music (e.g. garage band), web (e.g. blogs, vlogs). These tools are all cheap and the distribution is open and free (e.g. youtube, social networks, rss).
The next concept was 'wires'. That is, broadband. It is getting faster and Tom said that "speed is not the barrier" (or at least that is the trend). He noted that there will be a generation soon that "will never know the concept of waiting" - streaming will be instantaneous, speed will be a non-issue.
The third concept was 'rucksacks', by which he meant storage. In 1992 a Gigabyte cost $4000, in 2000 it cost $20 and in 2008 just $0.30. So, he said, storage will become a non-issue too.
He said that in 50 years time this era of the Web will be thought of as a renaissance, an age of great creativity. The Internet itself is still very early, in it's 'startup' age.
It's obvious then that Google looks for acquisitions that will take advantage of the above 3 things. But how do startups commercialize those ideas? Tom had this advice:
* Collaboration - get the right people on your team.
* Fulfilling user needs should be the focus - 70-80% of ideas that fail do so because of lack of user focus. Google places a lot of emphasis on this, said Tom.
* Iterate often ("Big will not beat small anymore. It will be fast beating slow"; quote from Rupert Murdoch).
He ended by saying that imagination is better than knowledge, referencing a quote by Einstein: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
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"in 50 years time"... OMG... :-)
Posted by: 113.com | May 29, 2008 9:20 PM
He rightly said this "imagination is better than knowledge", I completely agree.
Posted by: sachin | May 29, 2008 9:36 PM
So it's the idea over execution? But he also mentions small iterations and collaboration. So maybe idea+execution over technology... That would be goog news, as I'm not technical but rather marketing/management type of guy.
Posted by: Marcin Grodzicki | May 29, 2008 11:19 PM
4000$ for 1GB... that was befor my time with computers... :-)
Posted by: dani | May 30, 2008 12:48 AM
He ended by saying that imagination is better than knowledge
You can't imagine without knowledge? Einstein quotes was meant to be semantic and not to mean, the actual cognitive capability of the brain.
Posted by: Falafulu Fisi | May 30, 2008 2:58 AM
Collaboration, focus on user, and iterate often. It really sums up (almost) everything. Well, I hardly know nothing else beyond those 3 (yet).
Now that everyone has known the key to impress Google, it's now a matter of the faster beat the slower ones. No?
Posted by: Akhmad Fathonih | May 30, 2008 7:21 AM
Without execution the best ideas in the world are worthless.
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Posted by: The Masked Millionaire | May 30, 2008 9:10 AM
Perhaps I didn't explain it well enough, but yes obviously execution is key too :-) The 'fulfilling user needs' and 'iterate often' points confirm this.
Posted by: Richard MacManus
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May 30, 2008 2:49 PM
Now matter what hammers (tools), wires (broadband), rucksacks (storage) you have, ultimately the most important thing will be traffic - more customers.
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Posted by: HappyTutors.com - Connect Tutors with Students & Parents | May 30, 2008 7:25 PM
I think Google want's to dominate or, they do not have where to spend it's money... in both ways, the big thing is to use that money to make their business bigger and more stable... also to add to Google tech group other possible future concurrents
Posted by: Ruben Zevallos Jr. | June 2, 2008 6:45 AM