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What Makes a Great Startup Idea

Bradley Treat is the type of guy that carries several business cards. He teaches entrepreneurship at the Johnson School at Cornell and at Ithaca College. He’s involved in the startup incubator Rev: Ithaca Startup Works. And he was also the CEO of the video and voice communications company SightSpeed before it was bought up by Logitech.

So the self-described serial entrepreneur was a natural fit to join eCornell’s Chris Wofford for a WebSeries event on what makes a great startup business idea. What follows is an abridged version of their conversation.

Treat: What I’m going to talk about today is actually an excerpt from a class I teach at the Johnson School called “The Business Idea Factory.” As people begin the entrepreneurial journey, they need to make sure they have some great ideas to start with. We’ll focus on giving you the tools to generate a lot of ideas and then help you filter out the best one and decide where to go from there.

To start the process, ask yourself: “What is a business?”

A business solves a problem that people care about. Someone has to be willing to pay for the solution. To break that down a little bit, the first thing we have to ask is, not what does your business do, but what problem does it solve?

Wofford: So this is really thinking about your potential customer in terms of what problems they might face and what kinds of solutions to that problem they’d pay for?

Treat: Right. Why do they care about solving this problem? Why should they be willing to pay you?

What I want to do next is give you some examples of businesses that solve problems. The first problem we’ll look at is the need to save money.

There’s a company called Forward Air, which is an air freight company that doesn’t own planes and a trucking company that doesn’t own trucks. What Forward Air does is to drive trucks between airports in the middle of the night.

You might say, “But Brad, why would somebody want to drive trucks to airports in the middle of the night?”

Well, what they figured out was a lot of air freight doesn’t have to go on planes. If you were to send an air package from Syracuse to Boston, you’d have to send it by 7pm. It’s not going to leave the FedEx depot in Boston until 7am the next day, so that’s a 12-hour period. They realized Syracuse to Boston is a one hour plane flight or a five-hour truck ride. So why not put that envelope on a truck and drive it to Boston? It’s much cheaper to drive mail than it is to fly mail. Forward Air figured out that they could handle a lot of airmail for the overnight carriers and save them significant money.

I also mentioned that this is a trucking company that doesn’t own trucks. One of the things Forward Air identified was the fact that many trucks sit idle in the middle of the night. So they went to truck owners and said, “Hey, your truck is just sitting there overnight. Let us use it. We’ll drive it, fill it back up with gas and get it back to you in the morning. You’ll make a little money instead of it just sitting in your driveway.” They identified a problem and solved it in a very unique and practical way.

Another example of a company solving the “Save Money” problem is a company called Kettleshell. This company invented a way to turn dumbbells into kettlebells. As you might know from the gym, a kettlebell sort of looks like a Civil War cannonball with a handle on it and there are a lot of workouts you can do with them.

Kettleshell converts a dumbbell into a kettlebell through a handle that bolts right on. If you’ve already got a set of dumbbells, you can now bolt this handle on and do kettlebell exercises using your existing dumbbells.

It’s a tremendous idea but interestingly, the founder originally thought he was going to save people money on not having to go out and buy a bunch of new kettlebells but it turned out that people in urban areas, particularly urban gym owners or urban apartment dwellers, were actually less concerned about the cost than the space. They didn’t have anywhere to put a bunch of kettlebells. So this product ended up solving two problems.

Wofford: It sounds like one of those products where you think, “Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before?” What about addressing problems that aren’t money-related?

Treat: Another area where businesses find success is in making something more convenient.
A good example is Sean Neville, the founder of Simply Audiobooks. Audiobooks are still something that people listen to on a physical medium because so many people listen to them in a car. So Sean developed a subscription service similar to the early days of Netflix, in which subscribers get mailed the audiobook CDs. Part of their innovation was coming up with a packaging sleeve that allowed the company to mail multiple audio discs at once. Unlike Netflix, which would send one disc at a time, Simply Audiobooks would send all of the discs required for a book, which sometimes could be as many as 12.

At the time Sean sold the company to a Toronto private equity firm, they had 25,000 customers and were North America’s number one audiobook rental company. Each one of those customers was paying an average of $25 to $35 per month.

To understand how valuable the convenience they provided is, you need to remember that their number one competitor wasn’t charging anything. Their top competitor was the local public library, where users could get an audiobook for free. But the convenience of having the audiobooks come to your home and being able to send it back and forth was worth $25-$35 a month to over 25,000 people. Convenience is truly valuable even if you’re competing against free.

Another good example is a Cornell company called Rosie. Rosie is an app to do grocery delivery. Now, people typically view grocery delivery as a luxury item for rich people. But what Rosie discovered was that rich people actually like to go to the grocery store. They like to walk the aisles at Wegmans. They like to pick out their own apples.

It turns out that the people who really need something like this are folks for whom getting to the grocery store is actually quite inconvenient. This is primarily people without cars. It could be students, it could be people who can’t afford a car, it could be people who choose not to have a car because they use public transportation for most things. But going to the grocery store is wildly inconvenient if you have to take a bus. You have to fit all of your grocery bags on the bus or you have to pay for a taxi, and that’s both inconvenient and expensive.

So what Rosie discovered is that although they thought they would be selling to rich people, their audience was really those who found the value in paying a very low delivery fee that was cheaper than a cab and more convenient than a bus ride.

Wofford: I know someone who has a modest income with three children under the age of two. With the inconvenience of trying to take the kids to the grocery store, this sounds like a no-brainer.

Treat: That’s a perfect example of who Rosie reaches. The company polled college students and asked why they needed a car and the number one reason given was for going grocery shopping. With Rosie, you don’t need a car anymore. I can also tell you that university administrations don’t like having to deal with a lot of cars and parking and all the permits. They’d prefer that students do not have cars. I also know that here in Ithaca, our mayor is very excited about it because he’s trying to figure out how to get people out of their cars from an environmental standpoint.

Wofford: So this company is actually addressing numerous problems at once.

Treat: Exactly. When you’re thinking about problems, think broadly. It’s not just about saving money or saving time. There are always creative ways of solving a problem for someone out there if you can deliver on it in a meaningful way.

One thing I really like to point out to people is that you do not have to come up with a business that nobody else has ever come up with. It’s a popular myth that a good idea is one that nobody else has ever had. But think of Google. There were all kinds of web search engines that existed before Google but Google came in and said, “Hey, we can do this better, we can do it differently, and we will be able to compete with all of these.” And of course, they didn’t just compete, they completely took over the market.

The way we see it is that if there are no competitors doing it, that’s a problem. It means nobody cares and you don’t want to try to solve a problem that nobody cares about. Having competitors is good — you just need to know your competitors and understand how you’re different and unique from them. If you can be slightly different or slightly better or target a different, underserved market, that’s a tremendous opportunity for you. Don’t get discouraged and just say, “Gosh, somebody already came up with that idea.” Revisit the idea and say, “How can I do it better? How can I do it different? How can I find a new market that is being underserved?”

Wofford: I think that’s great advice. It certainly seems easier to improve upon something that already exists than to invent something out of whole cloth.

Treat: It is. If you can understand how big a problem is for people or how you are better than the competitors at addressing it, you’ll have an edge. Focus on the problem you solve and then you can build an organization around that.

So, where do you find the ideas? You need to put on your entrepreneur glasses and look at the world in terms of problems that you could solve. If they’re big problems, people will pay to solve them. The bigger the problem, the more they’ll pay. Find somebody who has their hair on fire and they will pay you a lot to put it out.

Once you change your lenses and look at the world through different ways, you can actually start coming up with lots of ideas. I would encourage you to put everything on the list.

Wofford: Let’s say you have a list of 100 ideas. How do you know which ones are worth acting on?

Treat: There are certain criteria that we can use to define what makes a good business idea. You have to make sure it’s a good business idea for the customer. We want you to say, “I want to make what customers want to buy.” That should be the focus rather than trying to sell something that you want to make. Understand the customer and build an organization accordingly.

Wofford: I’d like to now turn to the audience and take some questions. We had a good one come through from Lawrence in the chat window while you were speaking: “How should a successful startup value its equity prior to seeking angel funding?”

Treat: I would actually encourage him to not value it. I know that sounds like a dodge, but valuing early-stage companies is extremely difficult to do. It becomes a sort of a thumb in the wind.

Still, there are techniques we can use, the most notable of which is something called convertible debt. What this says is that any money that comes in will be valued at some future date and there is a whole mechanism for doing it. You can actually find a lot of these templates online but basically what it says is you put the money in now, that money will earn interest, and then at some future date it will convert into equity once we have a better way of determining valuation.

Wofford: Here’s another great one: Once you’ve got a good idea for a new or improved product, what’s the best way to go about getting it out there?

Treat: Let’s go back to the Kettleshell example. He made the handle that goes on the dumbbells and he thought he should go out and build a prototype out of steel, aluminum, rubber handles — the whole thing. I said, “Don’t do that. Just make a mock-up.” So he went over to the art supply store, got some styrofoam, some duct tape, and some spray paint. That was enough to make a mock-up that he could put into gym owners’ hands. They were then able to give him feedback and suggest some changes. That styrofoam version turned out to be way more valuable than had he made the real thing. He was able to get pre-orders based on a CAD drawing, essentially. The more you can talk to customers, the better.

Wofford: We’ve got another audience question here, this one from Rohit in India. “I have a great product idea, but building it requires funding. I’ve done my research and believe this product will be the first of its kind. Where and how do I begin?”

Treat: Well, as I said earlier, it is rare that I find something that’s truly one of a kind. So I would challenge Rohit by asking how people are currently solving the problem that his product addresses. You may be solving it in a unique and different way, but how are others currently solving it? If you can go out there and talk to customers and find out what their needs are, then they’ll help you build the products.

I would challenge you, Rohit, to think very creatively about how you can get a minimally-viable product. If the guys from Kettleshell can do it with Styrofoam, then you should be able to creatively come up with some way to demonstrate your product.

Wofford: We have a question from Lance, who asks if you can recommend any other resources for generating ideas.

Treat: The best way to come up with a lot of ideas is to talk to a lot of people. Ask them open-ended questions about what problems they face. The more open-ended, the better. What’s your top expense? What check do you hate writing each month? What is one thing that you do in your job that you wish would just go away?

If you’ve currently got a job, look at the company you are at right now and ask yourself “What’s something that my company does now but shouldn’t be doing because it’s not our core business?” That could help you spin it out into a whole new business.

Wofford: Those are all great ideas. We’ve unfortunately run out of time, so I want to thank Brad for joining us and thanks to all of you in the audience for posing such good questions.

Treat: Thanks Chris, this has been fun.

 

Want to hear more? This interview is based on Bradley Treat’s live eCornell WebSeries event, What Makes a Great Startup Business Idea? Subscribe now to gain access to a recording of this event and other Entrepreneurship topics. 

Here’s How to Make Innovation Real

There’s a wealth of information on innovation out there, but how can you turn all the theories into action?

Professor Neil Tarallo, a senior lecturer at Cornell’s Hotel School, focuses on how to foster innovation within the workplace in his most recent discussion with eCornell’s Chris Wofford.

Wofford: Neil, it’s great to have you back here with us. What do your students and our webinar viewers need to know about innovation?

Tarallo: My favorite definition of innovation—and believe me, there are many of them out there—was articulated by Peter Drucker, a great researcher out of Harvard who really had a great take on how and where innovation and entrepreneurship come together.

Drucker said, “Innovation is change that creates a new dimension of performance.” I really like that concept of a new dimension. It provides us with opportunities to apply things in a very different way than they’ve ever been applied before.

Innovation really comes in two different levels. One is incremental, or what some people call “sustainable innovation.” And then there is disruptive innovation.

Wofford: Can you walk us through what you mean by those?

Tarallo: Well, an incremental innovation is really a small improvement or upgrade to an existing concept. It can be technology, a product or service. Think of software upgrades that fix minor things or add new features. In the physical world, think of Gillette. They started with a single razor. Over time, Gillette has innovated and created a lot of different things. They went to disposable razors, they have multi-angle blades, they have lubrication bars. So Gillette is an interesting example of how incremental innovation has allowed a company to sustain market leadership for a very long time.

When it comes to disruptive innovation, we’re talking about innovation that changes the way people think about things. Clay Christensen coined the term to describe a process by which a product or service takes root initially in a very small and unnoticed way but gathers momentum as it goes to the market and then people start to really grab onto it.

One of the interesting things about disruptive innovations is that we don’t know if disruption is happening before it actually starts to happen. An example of this, to stay within the shaving realm, is Dollar Shave Club, which has taken us away from the expensive replacement blades by saying they’ll just send you new blades every month for just a couple of dollars.

Wofford: Right, for them it is a subscription-based product and a recurring revenue model for the company. That’s kind of how they get you.

Tarallo: Exactly, and that disrupts the old business model that Gillette created, which was to give you the razor handle and then sell the blades at very high prices.

The important thing to remember is that both incremental and disruptive innovations are necessary for organizations. In my opinion, you need to have a plan for both the incremental improvements that you’ll be doing as well as constantly searching for that disruption that’s going to completely change things.

These two innovations generally focus around three areas: technical innovation, product innovation, and service innovation. A great example of service innovation is how Netflix changed the movie rental business.

But in order for innovation to be successful, you have to create an opportunity within the organization for entrepreneurial behavior to really manifest itself and to take hold. You need an organizational architecture that fosters and supports entrepreneurial behaviors so that you can be chasing after these innovations as you go along.

Wofford: How does a business go about establishing that?

Tarallo: There are two components that I think of when I try to action innovation within an organization. One is what I like to think of as “opportunity discovery” and the second is value proposition design.

When it comes to opportunity discovery, there is a clear methodology that applies. It starts with observation of the market and of potential customers, getting them to talk about their experiences—doing interviews with them to gather information, applying surveys and focus groups and the science behind those. It’s observing people and how they behave as they go throughout their days.

This process is actually called ethnography, which is sort of a fancy word, but it’s really a simple process of just watching people and taking note of what they’re doing and what they’re experiencing as they go through their daily lives. We’re looking for things that are missing for them as they try to accomplish tasks. We’re looking at problems that they encounter that need to be overcome and we’re also looking for pain that they’re experiencing along the way.

In those observations, I’m thinking about three specific behaviors: the functionality of what it is that they’re trying to apply, the social implications of what they’re doing, and also any emotional implications.

Wofford: We have some open-ended questions here that I think it would be good to get the audience to think about. When was the last time that you spoke with your customers regarding their experience with your product, service, or technology? If you would put your answers in the chat window please.

Tarallo: Look at that, someone wrote “just yesterday.” I like that, that’s great. Someone else replied “every single day.” That’s a lot of work so I would be curious how that actually works. Is that through a survey, and what do you do with that information when you get it? That’s really the big thing.

Wofford: That brings me to the natural follow-up question. What do you do with this feedback?

Tarallo: For me, every time a student comes into my office to talk to me about anything, I get information from them for some research that I’m doing about entrepreneurship and how we teach entrepreneurship. I’ll ask a very simple open-ended question, which is “What has it been like for you registering and taking entrepreneurship classes here at Cornell?” And when that student leaves, I have a little red book on my desk and I’ll open it up, put the date and their name and take notes on what they told me. So it’s good to pose these really open-ended questions to get your respondents to tell you stories.

Storytelling is really one of the most powerful tools in this process. When you can get people talking you through their experience, you really learn things you wouldn’t have anticipated.

Obviously an important part of that is to listen carefully, but you also need to look for those nonverbal cues as well as you go along. From there, you can start to generate a hypothesis about what is going on in the marketplace or what is happening within the context of your interest.

Wofford: And what’s the best way to get people to share their stories with you?

Tarallo: It can be through singular and/or multiple engagements, meaning I can sit down with you for an extended period of time and have a longer interview, or we can do multiple engagements where I’m talking to you for 10 to 15 minutes over a long period of time. Both of those are powerful applications of the interview process.

Surveys are another step. Here we start to move away from the qualitative aspects of our research and we start moving more into the quantitative. Surveys primarily help validate hypotheses by reaching a very large sample size. You can also use surveys at the very beginning of your process simply to identify the people that you want to be speaking with to make sure that you have a diverse population in your sample size. You’ll be looking for demographic information like race, geographic location, household income, age, and so on to ensure that you get the right population to ask. Otherwise, your validation is not going to be accurate and you’ll have problems going forward.

Focus groups are another popular thing but I personally stay away from them because there is a real science to focus groups. To run a focus group well, I think you need to be trained in it or you need to hire people to do it for you. And they’re expensive, so when I’m in startup mode, focus groups are generally not something I’ll incorporate.

Wofford: Whichever method you choose, you need to then do something with the information you gather. What do you do?

Tarallo: When we analyze the data, there are a handful of things we do: code the information that we have, look for patterns or anomalies in the information, and then start to generalize and create a narrative around it.

We want to track our assumptions and any biases that we think were brought in and then we want to validate it in the market through a series of controlled experiments and prototyping. We know that these experiments are often designed to fail, but they’ll teach us something that will help us move forward again and take that next step.

I’m a big fan of controlled experiments that are likely to fail, but when they fail, they’re not going to impact our market or people’s perception of our company. I’m not a proponent of the philosophy these days of going out and failing big and failing fast. Failure is just not a good thing, I’m sorry. Controlling it makes a lot more sense, as I can learn more when I do that.

This, in my opinion, is particularly true in the service industries. Service-based businesses are much harder to innovate in and much harder to build business models around. It’s relatively easy to hand somebody a tangible product or put a technology in front of them and have them tell you what’s wrong with it and then you can do an update or a new iteration. But if you’re trying something new out in your restaurant and it results in bad service, most of the affected customers won’t come back to your restaurant a second time. So we want to be very careful. It’s about testing. It’s about failing in a controlled way. It’s about repeating that process until we have what we need as we go forward.

Wofford: Can you tie all of this together for us?

Tarallo: As I’m going through the innovation process, I’m thinking about and utilizing all of the information that I got through the ethnographic research that I’ve done. Through that process of observation, storytelling, interviewing, surveying, and validation, I’m bringing those components in and placing them on the value proposition canvas, which is a powerful tool that presents a graphic illustration of what I’m experiencing and what I’m seeing in the marketplace. I use Post-it notes so that I can take them down and move them as things change, so it’s a very dynamic tool and really lets us get to where we want to go.

My advice to folks is always that if you find yourself sitting at a computer doing research, you’re doing it wrong. It’s all about really interfacing with the marketplace. All your hypotheses need to be validated in the market. We need to be doing those small controlled experiments that help us validate things without damaging our relationship with our customers.

Wofford: Neil, thank you so much for joining us once again.

Tarallo: Thank you, Chris. And just remember, it’s all about getting out there and trying it. You probably won’t succeed the first time you do it, but don’t be dissuaded. Get out and practice. It’s the application of it that you get better and better at.

 

Want to hear more? This interview is based on Neil Tarallo’s live eCornell WebSeries event, A Fresh Look at Innovation. Subscribe now to gain access to a recording of this event and other Entrepreneurship topics. 

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The Triple Bottom Line In an Entrepreneurship Enterprise

Entrepreneurs have a unique opportunity to structure their businesses in a way that achieves balance in the “Triple Bottom Line” (TBL). To find this balance in the TBL, you must manage the competing, as well as complementary, business interests of people, planet and profit. This one-hour webinar will highlight the value of a strong TBL strategy that promotes environmental and social initiatives while optimizing the financial health of the enterprise.

By the conclusion of the discussion, attendees will understand:

  • Why entrepreneurs should integrate this strategy throughout their enterprise
  • The framework and conditions necessary for establishing a Triple Bottom Line
  • Key factors for implementing a successful TBL strategy and how this strategic approach creates value for the entire business enterprise.

Click here to preview this WebCast. Sign up for a 30-day trial of our Entrepreneurship WebSeries Channel to attend for free!

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The Startup Pivot: Changing Strategic Direction

On Wednesday 5/11 at 1 pm ET, we’re meeting with GiveGab CEO and Co-Founder Charlie Mulligan to talk about the pivotal maneuvers and strategic shifts that led to GiveGab’s rising success in recent years. Charlie will discuss lessons learned as an entrepreneur and offer advice on how you might apply them to your own startup. You’ll learn:

  • Why pivots are a common and necessary fact of life in startups.
  • How to decide when it’s the right time to pivot.
  • Best practices when changing strategy.
  • How to communicate around the pivot, both internally and externally.

I sat down with Charlie earlier this week to learn a bit more about him, GiveGab.com and his experiences.

Chris: What exactly is a pivot in the business sense?

Charlie: A pivot is a shift in strategy, which to me means you’re changing something significant (such as who your customers are or how you make money).

Chris: Is failure a necessary predecessor to a pivot?

Charlie: I would say failure is a common predecessor to a pivot, but not 100% necessary. If you discover a great opportunity in the mechanics of what you’re doing, it makes sense for a startup to pursue the bigger opportunity, even if the current one is doing OK.

Chris: I interviewed visiting e-ship lecturer Steve Gal from Johnson School at Cornell, and he described the pivot in the basketball sense: “You change your focus and direction, but you must keep one foot on the ground.” In GiveGab’s case, what was it that you gave up, and what was it that you gained in your organization’s pivot situation? What was the thing that kept you grounded through your pivot?

Charlie: Our pivot led us to change who our customer was (from universities to nonprofits) and how we made money (via fundraising vs. volunteer management), but it didn’t change our core as a connection portal between nonprofits and supporters. This allowed us to utilize a new strategy while still being able to build off our experience in the nonprofit world and our connections and partners.

GO HERE to register and to take advantage of our free 30-day trial subscription to the Women in Leadership Channel.

GiveGab, the Nonprofit Giving Platform, is an online fundraising and supporter engagement tool designed exclusively for nonprofit leaders. Charlie Mulligan has 25 years’ experience in entrepreneurship, corporate leadership, fundraising and sales partnerships. He has served as a speaker, mentor and consultant for businesses and nonprofits all over the world. His passion is helping mission-driven organizations gain the resources and skills necessary to succeed. Mulligan has a BA in Marketing from Penn State and an MBA from Cornell.

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Know Thy Entrepreneurial Self, Build On Your Strengths

Here is a 5-minute excerpt from our recent WebCast for entrepreneurs, The Entrepreneurial Profile: Building On Your Talents. Professor Mona Anita Olsen, from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell, walks us through the Gallup Entrepreneurial Profile 10 (EP10), a new talents-based assessment that helps entrepreneurs discover and develop their entrepreneurial talents.

If this excerpt has piqued your interest, I recommend you sign up for your free 30-day trial subscription here and enroll through the Entrepreneurship Channel. For best results, try the EP10 yourself ($12 cost) before viewing the WebCast.

After you complete the assessment, you’ll receive a personalized report that includes your unique talent profile. Prof. Olsen provides her contact info at the end of the session, so feel free to connect with her for advice as you prepare to build on your talents as an entrepreneur.

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Strategies For Moving Your Startup Into a Bricks-and-Mortar Space

On April 6 we’ll be hosting a WebCast for startups called “Build Your Business: Real Estate Challenges for Startups” with Cornell alum T.J. Hochanadel.

As host, I needed to learn a few things about real estate strategies for startups, so T.J. and I had a conversation earlier this week.

What should a startup be thinking about when readying for the big move into a bricks-and-mortar address? 

T.J.: Every company has its own unique set of criteria that drive real estate decisions. Startups should look closely at a number of things, like price, geography, image, scalability, talent attraction/retention, commutability, life cycle of business — we’ll take a close look at all of these during our WebCast.

T.J., Can you recommend any tools or resources here that may help guide the startup toward an informed decision about real estate?

T.J.: Business execs tasked with the assignment of securing an office space should really consult with a commercial real estate professional who can represent tenants’ interests. The best commercial real estate advisors/brokers spend time understanding the business to help you formulate a strategy around your office choice.

Here at JLL, we have a really cool interactive tool called the Square, which is meant to help business executives grasp an initial understanding of a real estate strategy that best meets their current/future business needs. It really helps to guide the conversation going forward.

What if my company is focused on acquisition? Should that change my game plan?

T.J.: Each situation is unique, and it mostly depends on how the acquiring company underwrites the real estate obligation of the company being acquired. I think the argument could be that a company focused on acquisition would want to maintain high flexibility in its lease. However, I can recall several examples where a company was acquired shortly after signing a long-term lease.

What if I live and work in an area where the startup culture is not very dense or developed yet? Should I go where there is a culture and supportive infrastructure around startups?

T.J.: Again, each business requirement is unique. Generally, I believe successful companies tend to locate in geographies that will foster their growth. Tech hubs like NYC, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, etc. offer many advantages over less-developed hubs.

A business owner will want to consider the effects a geography has on access to capital, talent, and other unique business resources, and weigh those against cost of operating in those geographies.

How does company brand figure into real estate considerations?

T.J.: An office is a place that most of us “live in” every day, so it is inherently going to be a reflection of the brand. For the startup out there who is in the process of raising a large round of funding that will enable them to grow their employee headcount, they’ll want a home that will help them attract and retain talent. Or for the fashion designer who is looking to open a showroom, a client’s optical view of the brand image will be significantly influenced by the showroom. As discussed above, each situation is unique, and it is important to undertake the heuristic process to determine the best strategy for reach business. We’ll cover all this and more next week in our 1-hour WebCast.

 

Go here to register and to take advantage of our free 30-day trial subscription to the Entrepreneurship Channel.

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The eCornell Story: A Former Startup Helping New Startups Thrive

On September 7, 2000, the Cornell University Board of Trustees approved the creation of eCornell, a wholly-owned, for-profit subsidiary that would produce and deliver online courses authored by Cornell professors and extension faculty members.

With this charter, eCornell became the Ivy League’s first online education startup. Like any fledgling business, its founders — many of whom were Cornell alums — faced the challenge of defining and serving a relatively new market. Who were online learners? What did they need, and was it different from the needs of students sitting in classes on the Cornell campus? What expertise could eCornell bring to online learners that would set it apart?

Thirteen years later, we’re no longer a startup and we’ve found our niche. True to Cornell’s motto, eCornell has become a natural extension of the university’s ideals: the online outpost of “…an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.” We provide a virtual community for learners at every stage in their careers, spanning disciplines and providing Ivy League instruction grounded in application.

But we haven’t forgotten our roots. Throughout the years, the eCornell executive team has been paying it forward, supporting entrepreneurs and new ventures at all levels — whether through undergraduate student projects, alumni startups, peer coaching, or new courses and certificate programs.

“We’ve been a strong supporter of Entrepreneurship@Cornell (Cornell’s university-wide entrepreneurship initiative) for years because we know there is a direct link between developing the management skills of new entrepreneurs and their ultimate success,” said Chris Proulx, ‘91, eCornell’s Chief Executive Officer.

Proulx and Rob Kingyens, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Marketing Technology Officer, regularly judge business plan competitions around the country and participate as coaches or panelists at entrepreneurship conferences. They also are dedicated to leading eCornell in a direction that meets entrepreneurs’ and business owners’ unique needs.

“Launching a new business is more than a full-time job. Many entrepreneurs, especially those who can’t yet afford to quit their ‘day jobs,’ don’t have time to go back to school,” said Proulx. “They need accelerated, actionable learning, at the right time and place.”

For entrepreneur Egomeli Hormeku, eCornell’s courses were a perfect fit, even while he was running and building a new multi-brand business.

“The structure of the coursework didn’t take away from my business; it only benefited the process. I thought the task of running five brands and taking courses with eCornell would be impossible. That definitely wasn’t the case,” said Hormeku, founder and CEO of The Hormeku Group, a holding company focused on mens’ fashion, cigars, spirits, and wine.

Hormeku completed eCornell’s Business Strategy: Achieving Competitive Advantage certificate program, a decision that he said allowed him to better see the business from all angles, fine-tune the practical information he’d already gained on the job, and learn how to compete in vertical markets some would consider daunting.

Like Hormeku, Adam Zembruski came to eCornell to fill a skills gap. But Zembruski, president of hospitality investment and management company Pharos Hospitality, LLC, needed to fill those gaps for his entire team, not just himself. Though Zembruski has decades of hotel management experience, his new venture was founded on a technical skill he and many if his employees didn’t possess: hotel underwriting.

“We formed Pharos with the intent to bridge the gap between real estate investors and hotel operators. These courses [in Hotel Real Estate Investments and Asset Management] have prepared me to anticipate and meet the needs of all of our current and future partners. The courses taken through eCornell were priceless,” Zembruski said.

If you’re registered for Startup Weekend, you also already know how important networking and connections are for entrepreneurs. At eCornell, this is another way we pay it forward: bringing like-minded, driven people together through courses designed for interaction. Fellow students become your sounding board and source of inspiration.

“The people I take courses with keep in touch with me, and we find ways to sharpen the vision of our career goals. These connections, and my eCornell courses, have helped me cut costs, strategically move more units, stay ahead of my competition, and realize new ways of being profitable. They took me from being a good entrepreneur to walking the road of becoming a great one,” said Hormeku.

For Startup Weekend Fredericksburg attendees, we’re continuing our tradition of supporting entrepreneurs. Save 25% when you enroll in any eCornell certificate program by June 30, 2013. Visit http://ecornell.cornell.edu/swfred and use promo code SWFRED to get started.

Featured Post on Startup Weekend’s Blog

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Driving Innovation, Agility and High Performance

Want to know how Best Buy Canada and Reuters transformed their learning culture to became industry leaders in training and development?

Join Speakers Marjorie Van Roon, Best Buy Canada; Amy Thomson, Reuters and Joe DiDonato, Elearning! Media Group as they teach you how to develop a top-tier learning environment at your organization.

In this session, Joe DiDonato, editor at Elearning! Media Group, will share attributes of the best in class learning & development organizations. Discover how collaboration, innovation and learning culture all drive performance.

Join us on Thu, Dec 1, 2011 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM EST for a free webinar. Register here.

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Entrepreneur Video Contest Winners

eCornell celebrates and encourages entrepreneurs in their quest to build great products. One of the most crucial steps involved in developing new products and services is to develop and articulate a clear understanding of customer needs. Believe it or not, many products are developed without a deep sense of how customers will use them, which often leads to products with low adoptions rates. With that in mind, our newest certificate program, A Systems Approach to Product and Service Design arms entrepreneurs with an eight step process to design and develop products the right way.

Congratulations to the eCornell Entrepreneur Video Contest Winners!

Our First Place winner, Pamela Swingley, won a scholarship for the eCornell Systems Approach to Product and Service Design Certificate program (a $3,500 dollar value). Our Second and Third Place winners both won 2 free courses each (a $1,250 dollar value each).

eCornell is proud to award Pamela, Jay, and Aaron – their submissions were inspiring and creative!