"We already have all these customers....."

It was 4 in the morning and I stood over a smoking set of sales targets for a software venture within a top 10 company. It all seemed so reasonable. The huge sales targets got red penned and the numbers in the sales plan were doubled. It was a simple job to fit them into the massive spreadsheet and suddenly millions of revenue became even more juicy.

The unease I was feeling was tempered by the millions of existing customers they already had. It was a borderline case of a business but I just hoped that they knew what they were doing. I couldn't stop them but I still felt that horrible sense of dread when the business failed to ignite. I've seen it since too - the juggernaut of a parent company imagining their customers will just fall in love with their new business. It's actually pretty obvious - a bad business concept is a bad business concept.

© Copyright 2005 Richard A D Jones 2005

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Struggling against the culture

An independent start-up has plenty of issues but there are some unique ones for ventures within larger companies.

The simplest thing an independent company can do is make a decision. Yes, the VC's may be in and controlling/frustrating/helping the board but you can make a decision pretty fast. Compare this to a multi-national trying to create a new venture. If well set up, you would want to have a sensible process to decide which ventures go forward and to review milestones and 'gates'.

All you need to do is round up the senior team of the company, hope they are not going to be distracted by other business, pray you don't get over-run off the agenda and also wait for this busy group of people to be available at the same time.

It gums up corporate ventures and seems to cause more frustration than anything else.

What kills more corporate start-ups than anything else.....well I would say slow decision making but there is something worse. When this business plan is off my back I'll get back to "10% of China - big companies thinking they can pull off what a rational small company would avoid."

© Copyright 2005 Richard A D Jones 2005

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