Getting Old
Back in my days , as a 23 year old founder of a dot-com, I did everything I could to appear older. I lied and told everyone I was 25. (yes, I truly believed 2 years made a lot of difference.) I wore glasses. I tried eating fried food so I would gain some girth (did not work). One of our board members was so concerned that I was the youngest member of the executive staff that they asked our bankers how we can obfuscate my age in the S-1. (putting the cart before the horse aint we?)
Well, a bust, business school, some time trying to gain some “name brand business experience” later . . . . I’m all of a sudden too old. So today, to celebrate getting TOO old, I’m listing the Top ten signs you are too old for sillicon valley.
10. You are too old to work for facebook
9. The 49ers have retiring players that are younger than you
8. Continuing the sports theme, you call your favorite Warrior player, “a kid” (your last favorite Warrior last wore a suit on TNT)
7. You don’t own a Penguin (but you have pets.com puppet)
6. You think glitter graphics give you headaches (dont know what that is? you dont even deserve to read my blog !
5. You got teary eyed watching the Jobs-Gates love fest on you tube
4. You are still waiting for the web 2.0 bubble to bust
3. You have more friends on your friendster profile than facebook profile
2. You believe Jennifer Aniston is hotter than Olivia Munn
1. You have more free schwag T-shirts than laptop stickers
0. You dont know what to wear when you go to “90’s” parties those guys at Digg throw
(ok I snuck in an extra one, so what!)
Khosla’s Tease
Its amazing the stuff you can find online if you just look around. Last week I was (for whatever reason) on the Khosla Ventures website and reading David Widen’s profile. One of the links I discovered on the page is a presentation regarding a market entry strategy framework called “Rifle”
The framework is somewhat similar to something I’ve seen from Bain but simpler in its data resource requirements. The framework answer the question of which segment within a market to enter, what accounts to target, and HOW to win those targeted account. It works in the following steps
1) Find the right segment within a market via a combination of easy of entry attributes (competition, product, channel, etc) and market size
2) Rank companies within attractive segments via the another set of attributes which predicts likelihood to win a deal and deal size
3) Understand each target companies ecosystem of partners and leverage existing products and existing assets
As interesting as these slides are, they lack a lot of detail on the latter part of the framework (#2, #3) . . . it looks like some slides were taken out OR supplementary material (spreadsheet? presentation notes?) missing. Would have been really helpful to a lot of entrepreneurs if these details were available somewhere.
Anyways, the website is somewhat half done (I think) so I hope David put up a more complete version soon . . . if you are going to share your secret sauce, might as well do it all the way instead of being a tease.