Fireside Talk with Chris Burry - Co-CEO USMAC

Yesterday, I attended a session with Co-CEO of USMAC - Chris Burry at T-Hub - Hyderabad. Below are the Notes:

Learning Journey:
You are in a journey of a lifetime, do not consider yourself as part of journey of a company.
In Silicon Valley - people do not speak about failure. Somethings do not work. What are your learnings from it.

Learn from:

• What went right?
• More importantly, what went wrong?

Chis: Who do you think is the most successful entrepreneur ?

• Musk ?
  
• Travis ? ( Travis and I were working in the same coworking space in Sillicon Valley )

Anybody attended Lean Startup Training?
Pivot - lexicon is used
Plan A - Did not work .  Learnings from plan A applied in plan B
Plan B - Did not work  Learnings from plan A,B applied in plan C
Plan C - Did not work   Learnings from plan A,B,C applied in plan D
Plan D - Did not work   Learnings from plan A,B,C,D applied in plan E
Plan E - Did not work   Learnings from plan A,B,C,D,E applied in plan F
Plan F - Did not work Learnings from plan A,B,C,D,E,F applied in plan G
Plan G - Finally works !!


Elon used to work first for PayPal. Do you know what plan has worked for PayPal? It was Plan G. It took plan 7 to reach success. Hence, there is not shame in saying - plan A did not work. Adapt and do it again. Find new ways to screw up.

• Do not think as failure. Think as learning.
• Learn Fast.
• Sillicon Valley is running fast and harder than Hyderabad startups. Fear drives people.

Do you know - how many tech companies in Bay area - which are less than 2 years old?  I mean the ones that have completed the paper work with the Government (30000). Around 15000 new startups are added every year.

Is there no one who is working on the same problem as you are working? If not, then maybe the problem is not worth working on. Funding: It is a measure of how well a startup is doing.

Rounds:
Seed Round: FFF - Friends Family and Fools
A Round - Angel Round
B Round - (Scale the company)

In Sillicon Valley Time for:
Seed Round to A round - 10 months
A round to B round - 14 months

Seed to B - 2 years and 2 weeks (Time taken has become 30% shorter than a year ago.) You cannot allow the guys in sillicon valley run away from you.

In Ireland, Seed Round to Series B round: 4 years. But, Sillicon Valley has 10 times as much money. This is why sillicon valley is able to scale their businesses. Scaling a business means - building a sales force. Getting the customers in the market. Your tech can be better - but if your competitor is scalling faster.. it becomes hard to win.

Startups in Sillicon Valley: They think in terms of Global Scale.
Example:
How much money did Travis Kallanick raise for Uber? 20 billion $
Next Largest Competior, Didi ? say, 50% of what Uber has raised -10 billion $
Next Competitor, Lyft? say, 50% of what Didi has raised - 5 billion $
Next Competior, Singapore based ? say, 50% of what Lyft has raised - 2.5 billion $

Unique Characteristic of Valley:
Everybody talks to everybody. Don't hide crap. Always look for ways to cooperate.

First Question: Which is a bigger market?
10% of 500 billion market. or,
90% of 1 billion market.

The biggest problem, If we cannot convince the customer, we will all die. Not ruthlessly competitive, turn around and help each other.

Why is apple alive today? Gates and Microsoft helped it. How?
200 million Dollar
+
MS Office commitment for a number of years.

Why did gates help Apple? US government was trying to break Microsoft into three pieces. Fierce competitors talk to each other. The person who talked to Steve Jobs during his final hours: bill gates.

Look for ways to work with each other. Cooperation to Competition. All of the innovation in Silicon Valley can be traced back to one guy - Dr. William Shockley.  (Invented a Transistor) - He had himself quit Bell Labs to start shockley semiconductors. He went to bay area and hired all super smart guys. 1 of the 8 guys leave the company and started his own company. Everyone of the 8 people who worked for Dr. shockley signed the 1$ bill and went on the form a company for their own - Fairchild Semiconductors. \

1. Gordon Moore - Fairchild Semiconductors + Later, Intel Corporation
2. Sheldon Roberts - Fairchild Semiconductors
3. Eugene Kleiner - Fairchild Semiconductors
4. Robert Noyce - Fairchild Semiconductors +  Later, Intel Corporation
5. Victor Grinich - Fairchild Semiconductors
6. Julius Blank - Fairchild Semiconductors
7. Jean Hoerni - Fairchild Semiconductors
8. Jay Last - Fairchild Semiconductors

The concept of employee ownership was born. There are 65 companies in sillicon valley today (2017) which can trace their roots to Fairchild Semiconductors. Thank you  Dr. Shockley!

Breakfast table conversations:
Making IC at that time was a black art. They all used to sit together and discuss. For example, one guy at the breakfast table commented, that during the creation of IC, till yesterday it had not worked but it worked yeterday, when it rained!

They wondered if humidity made the difference. Thus, they realized that humidity also needs to be controlled.

How that culture has expanded in the last 60 years. Only company that did not play by the breakfast table conversation: Apple. They keep everything a secret. But, the behavior of the engineers is the same.

Follow the NABC method while creating a product - This will help Efficiently Answers Four Fundamental Questions:

An NABC comprises the four fundamentals that define a project's value proposition:

1. Need: What are our client's needs? A need should relate to an important and specific client or market opportunity, with market size and end customers clearly stated. With DARPA, for example, we are required to state a critical Department of Defense (DoD) need. The market should be large enough to merit the necessary investment and development time.
2. Approach: What is our compelling solution to the specific client need? Draw it, simulate it or make a mockup to help convey your vision. As the approach develops through iterations, it becomes a full proposal or business plan, which can include market positioning, cost, staffing, partnering, deliverables, a timetable and intellectual property (IP) protection. If we are developing a product, it must also include product specifications, manufacturing, distribution and sales. DARPA usually demands paradigm-shifting approaches that address a specific DoD need (e.g., a 10-times improvement).
3. Benefits: What are the client benefits of our approach? Each approach to a client's need results in unique client benefits, such as low cost, high performance or quick response. At DARPA, the benefit might be an airplane that turns faster, goes higher, costs less or is safer. Success requires that the benefits be quantitative and substantially better - not just different. Why must we win?
4. Competition/alternatives: Why are our benefits significantly better than the competition? Everyone has alternatives. We must be able to tell our client or partner why our solution represents the best value. To do this, we must clearly understand our competition and our client's alternatives. For a commercial customer, access to important IP is often a persuasive reason to work with us. At DARPA, our competition is usually other research laboratories and universities across the United States. But, whether to a commercial or government client, we must be able to clearly state why our approach is substantially better than that of the competition. Our answer should be short and memorable.