The Road to Entrepreneurship...

As young entrepreneurs - especially those of us with technology or engineering backgrounds - we tend to get carried away with the technology that is running the business rather than creating a business that continues to meet the customers need. This became apparent to me as I was discussing some venture ideas with an old friend of mine. I caught myself talking on and on about the technology that this venture will use - citing its trends and benefits. As the conversation went on, the venture idea began to get muddled and lost. I realized that such an idea was not framed to solve anything in particular. It was based on using new technology in hopes to find problems to solve - rather than solving an identified problem with technology.

So why do we get so caught up with it? I think it has something to do with the type of entrepreneur. If you are like me, you are an early adopting - technology enthusiast. As early adopters, we generally are in the know of new technology that is being released and are willing to acquire it (generally for a higher price) before it has reached maturity. I think this works great on a personal level because it enables us to keep up with the ever-changing world of technology. However, from a venture point of view, it tends to cloud our ideation. We need to remind ourselves that technology by itself has no objective value, until it is commercialized in some way that meets a customer need (Open Innovation by Henry Chesbrough). By creating and/or using technology that either exceeds or does not meet a customer need, all you have is another asset sitting on your shelf that is not bringing you any money.