BD in the Valley

Goals• Introduce the culture and values of Silicon Valley• Explain theories that inform business development practices• Share ideas on Mozilla and business development• Highlight available resources

Relevant ideas for Newfoundland and Labrador?

Introduction• From Toronto – (sorry!)

• Twelve years in Silicon Valley–Business Development: Mozilla, Cisco

–Corporate Communications: DDN, Cisco, Applied Communications

• Other activities–Mentor companies

–C100 OC

–Teach: Stanford, San Jose StateSilicon Valley isn’t a place you work in, it is a place you contribute to

Culture of Silicon Valley

Whatdoes

Silicon Valleymean to

you?

Traitorous Eight:Silicon Valley founded by a single act of betrayal

Fairchild Semiconductor• Julius Blank (Xicor)• Victor Grinish (UC Berkeley,

Stanford)• Jean Hoerni (Teledyne)• Eugene Kleiner (Kleiner

Perkins)• Jay Last (Teledyne)• Gordon Moore (Intel)• Robert Noyce (Intel)• Sheldon Roberts (Teledyne)

Traitorous Eight: Resulting values• Ideas are open and portable• Execution counts• Risk/failure are acceptable• Fluid movement of people

Warning: Somewhat stylized history!

Ideas vs executionFirst GUI? First Social Network?

First Smartphone?

Ideas are nothing without executionNeed input to grow an idea

Legendary meeting places

Risk and failureBounce Evolution

Burger Rush

Burnout

Cyber Blood

Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak

Darkest Fear 3: Nightmare

Risk and failure

Movement of people• Networks and relationships

are key• Sharing and supporting

ideas is at the center of Silicon Valley

• Contact sport, you need to be there to play

Culture of Silicon Valley• Ideas are prized, but not worshipped• Collaboration and execution are paramount• Failure is tolerated• Clique-y; need to be “in the know”

Silicon Valley is relationship driven

Business Development Theories

Lean start-up• Minimum viable product–MVP tests fundamental business hypotheses.

• Continuous deployment–Code is written and put into production

• Split testing–A split test: different versions of a product to customers at the same time.

• Actionable metrics–What are the metrics really driving your business?– You may look at page views or customer acquisition numbers, but are they really

helping you grow?• Pivot–Course correction

Shamelessly stolen from Eric Ries: www.leanstartup.com

Customer Development

Concept/Bus. Plan Product Dev. Alpha/Beta

TestLaunch/1st Ship

Product Development

CompanyBuilding

CustomerDiscover

CustomerValidation

Customer Creation

Customer development

Shamelessly stolen from Steve Blank: www.steveblank.com

Business development mistakes• Focus on product, not customer• Sales and marketing, secondary to engineering• Don’t know how to price• Talk features, not end-user benefit• Become insular, don’t get out to talk to customers

“There Are No Facts Inside Your Building, So Get Outside”-Steve Blank

Culture and Theory in Action

Mozilla Firefox – Powering the Global Internet

• 450+Million Users• 80+ Languages• 700 Employees in 15 Countries• 3 Billion Add-Ons Downloaded• 140,000 Add-ons built by 1,000+

Developers

• 30% Global Market Share• #1 in Europe• 56% German Market Share• Brand Power: Firefox = trust,

safe, secure, fast, reliable

Mozilla Firefox Global Reach

Mozilla doing business• Browser is open, standards based; anyone can download the code• Everything is in the open, anyone can contribute• Company meetings are held online• Internet is a public benefit, made better via market forces• Exchange of ideas, friendly or competitive, is best for the user• Prefer to compete on features, UX and values

We’re an extreme caseThen again, we brought down a monopoly

How do we make money?

$$Ka-Ching$$

Business development for a non-profit

Normal state On a partner call

Even though we’re a non-profit, we’re always sellingLegacy is desktop browser, we’re following the market, customers

Mozilla going mobile

• Form partnerships around new products

• FirefoxOS-> Carriers and OEMs

• Marketplace-> Apps developers

We’re leaving the building, we’re forming relationshipContributing to the discussion around mobile

Business dev for Newfoundland and Labrador

Local ideas, executed globally

Can be done!

C100 – an introduction

Building the next generation of global, billion dollar Canadian companies through mentorship, partnership

and investment

Available Resources

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The C100Mission:

C100 is a private, non-profit membership organization comprised of accomplished Canadian technology entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley

who are dedicated to accelerating the top Canadian technology entrepreneurs through partnership, mentorship and investment.

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Charter Members – we’ve reached 100!

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Highlights – our first 2 years

30 Events across Canada & US135 Start-ups participated in C100 mentoring in the Valley100+ Charter Members (Silicon Valley based)3000 C100 member network (North American wide)4000+ Entrepreneurs attended C100 events in US and Canada$425,000,000 Of investment in C100 companies

 

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Our events…

• The Accelerate Series brings together the local entrepreneurial community to celebrate successes and to inspire them to create more.

• 48hrs in the Valley is our flagship mentorship program

• The CEO Tech Forum is a one-day event where companies meet with Corporate and Business Development executives

• Grow is the premier entrepreneurial conference in Canada

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The C100 in action!

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A few success stories…

Dinner

CEO TECH FORUM

Brian Wong Lars Leckie

CEO TECH FORUM

CEO TECH FORUM

Canadian Consulate

Keep in touch!

• Email: ronpiovesan@gmail.com

• Twitter: @ronpiovesan

• Blog: www.ronpiovesan.wordpress.com

• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ronpiovesan

• Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/ronpiovesan

Thank You