I'm really excited to share with you some findings that really surprise me about what makes companies succeed the most, what factors actually matter the most for startup success.
Navdušen sem, da lahko z vami delim nekaj ugotovitev, ki so me resnično presenetile, o tem, kaj je tisto, zaradi česar podjetja uspejo, kateri faktorji so tisti, ki največ prispevajo k uspehu startup podjetij.
I believe that the startup organization is one of the greatest forms to make the world a better place. If you take a group of people with the right equity incentives and organize them in a startup, you can unlock human potential in a way never before possible. You get them to achieve unbelievable things.
Verjamem, da so startup podjetja najboljši način, da svet spremenimo na bolje. Če vzamemo skupino ljudi, ki so dobro motivirani in imajo kapital, jih organiziramo v startup, lahko človeški potencial izkoristimo, kot še nikoli prej. Lahko jih pripravimo, da dosežejo neverjetne stvari.
But if the startup organization is so great, why do so many fail? That's what I wanted to find out. I wanted to find out what actually matters most for startup success.
A, če so startup podjetja tako super, zakaj jih tako veliko propade? To sem želel ugotoviti. Želel sem ugotoviti, kaj je dejansko najbolj pomembno, da bo startup uspel.
And I wanted to try to be systematic about it, avoid some of my instincts and maybe misperceptions I have from so many companies I've seen over the years.
In želel sem biti sistematičen, se izogniti določenim instinktom in napačnim mnenjem, ki jih imam od vseh podjetij, ki sem jim bil priča.
I wanted to know this because I've been starting businesses since I was 12 years old when I sold candy at the bus stop in junior high school, to high school, when I made solar energy devices, to college, when I made loudspeakers. And when I graduated from college, I started software companies. And 20 years ago, I started Idealab, and in the last 20 years, we started more than 100 companies, many successes, and many big failures. We learned a lot from those failures.
To sem želel izvedeti zato, ker odpiram podjetja odkar sem dopolnil 12 let, ko sem prodajal sladkarije na avtobusni postaji izdeloval naprave za sončno energijo, do faksa, kjer sem izdeloval zvočnike. Ko sem diplomiral na faksu sem začel s programskimi podjetji. 20 let nazaj pa sem začel z Idealabom in v tem času smo odprli več kot 100 podjetji, ogromno uspešnih, a tudi ogromno neuspešnih. Veliko smo se naučili iz slednjih.
So I tried to look across what factors accounted the most for company success and failure. So I looked at these five. First, the idea. I used to think that the idea was everything. I named my company Idealab for how much I worship the "aha!" moment when you first come up with the idea. But then over time, I came to think that maybe the team, the execution, adaptability, that mattered even more than the idea.
Poskušal sem torej preveriti, kateri faktorji največ doprinesejo k uspehu ali neuspehu nekega podjetja. Pogledal sem si sledečih 5. Prvi je ideja. Včasih sem mislil, da je ideja vse. Podjetje sem poimenoval Idealab, ker sem oboževal tisti "aha!" trenutek, ko se domisliš neke ideje. A čez čas sem pomislil, da so morda ekipa, izvedba in prilagodljivost tisto, kar je bolj pomembno, kot ideja.
I never thought I'd be quoting boxer Mike Tyson on the TED stage, but he once said, "Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face." (Laughter) And I think that's so true about business as well. So much about a team's execution is its ability to adapt to getting punched in the face by the customer. The customer is the true reality. And that's why I came to think that the team maybe was the most important thing.
Nikoli si nisem mislil, da bom citiral Mike Tysona na TED odru, a nekoč je rekel: "Vsak ima nek načrt, dokler ga nekdo ne boksne v obraz." (smeh) In mislim, da to velja tudi za posel. Veliko tega, kar je v izvedbi ekipe, je njihova sposobnost prilagajanja temu, da jih stranka boksne v obraz. Stranka je prava resničnost. In zato sem pomislil, da je mogoče ekipa tista najpomembnejša stvar.
Then I started looking at the business model. Does the company have a very clear path generating customer revenues? That started rising to the top in my thinking about maybe what mattered most for success.
Nato sem začel gledati za poslovnim modelom. Ali ima podjetje jasno določeno, kako ustvariti prihodek od strank? Počasi je najpomembnejša postajala misel o tem, kaj je najbolj pomembno za uspeh.
Then I looked at the funding. Sometimes companies received intense amounts of funding. Maybe that's the most important thing?
Lotil sem se še financiranja. Včasih so podjetja prejela neverjetne vsote financiranja. Morda je to najpomembnejša stvar?
And then of course, the timing. Is the idea way too early and the world's not ready for it? Is it early, as in, you're in advance and you have to educate the world? Is it just right? Or is it too late, and there's already too many competitors?
In pa seveda časovni okvir. Je ideja prezgodnja in svet nanjo še ni pripravljen? Je prezgodnja v smislu, da bomo morali svet nanjo še pripraviti? Je čas pravi? Ali je morda prepozno in je na trgu že preveč konkurentov?
So I tried to look very carefully at these five factors across many companies. And I looked across all 100 Idealab companies, and 100 non-Idealab companies to try and come up with something scientific about it.
Analize teh faktorjev sem se lotil zelo previdno, v večih podjetjih. V vseh 100-ih Idealab podjetjih in 100-ih drugih, da bi lahko prišel do kakega znanstvenega zaključka.
So first, on these Idealab companies, the top five companies -- Citysearch, CarsDirect, GoTo, NetZero, Tickets.com -- those all became billion-dollar successes. And the five companies on the bottom -- Z.com, Insider Pages, MyLife, Desktop Factory, Peoplelink -- we all had high hopes for, but didn't succeed.
In najprej v Idealab podjetjih, najboljših pet -- Citysearch, CarsDirect, GoTo, NetZero, Tickets.com -- vsa ta so postala vredna več milijard. In pet najmanj uspešnih -- Z.com, Insider Pages, MyLife, Desktop Factory, Peoplelink -- za katera smo imeli velika pričakovanja, a jim ni uspelo.
So I tried to rank across all of those attributes how I felt those companies scored on each of those dimensions. And then for non-Idealab companies, I looked at wild successes, like Airbnb and Instagram and Uber and Youtube and LinkedIn.
Poskušal sem jih rangirati v vseh teh atributih, po tem, kako se mi zdi, da so dosegla na vseh teh področjih. In nato še za tista podjetja, ki niso naša, z noro dobrim uspehom, kot so Airbnb, Instagram, Uber, Youtube in LinkedIn.
And some failures: Webvan, Kozmo, Pets.com Flooz and Friendster. The bottom companies had intense funding, they even had business models in some cases, but they didn't succeed. I tried to look at what factors actually accounted the most for success and failure across all of these companies, and the results really surprised me.
In določene spodrsljaje: Webvan, Kozmo, Pets.com, Flooz in Friendster. Podjetja z močnim financiranjem, ki so imela tudi dober poslovni načrt, a jim ni uspelo. Gledal sem predvsem faktorje, ki so prispevali največ k uspehu ali neuspehu v vseh teh podjetjih in resnično so me presenetila.
The number one thing was timing. Timing accounted for 42 percent of the difference between success and failure. Team and execution came in second, and the idea, the differentiability of the idea, the uniqueness of the idea, that actually came in third.
Najpomembnejši je bil timing. V 42-ih procentih je bil timing tisti, ki je bil odločilni faktor med uspehom in neuspehom. Ekipa in izvedba sta bili na drugem mestu, ideja, njena raznolikost in unikatnost, pa je bila šele tretja.
Now, this isn't absolutely definitive, it's not to say that the idea isn't important, but it very much surprised me that the idea wasn't the most important thing. Sometimes it mattered more when it was actually timed.
To sicer ni 100% točno, ne moremo namreč reči, da ideja ni pomembna, a me je zelo presenetilo, da ideja ni najpomembnejša. V nekaterih primerih je bila bolj pomembna kot timing.
The last two, business model and funding, made sense to me actually. I think business model makes sense to be that low because you can start out without a business model and add one later if your customers are demanding what you're creating. And funding, I think as well, if you're underfunded at first but you're gaining traction, especially in today's age, it's very, very easy to get intense funding.
Zadnji dve, poslovni model in financiranje, pa sta bili logični. Logično je, da je poslovni model tako nizko, ker lahko začneš podjetje brez poslovnega modela in ga dodaš kasneje, če tvoje stranke želijo videti, kaj ustvarjaš. In financiranje prav tako, če nimaš dovolj financ na začetku, a podjetju uspeva, še posebno dandanes, je zelo, zelo lahko pridobiti finance.
So now let me give you some specific examples about each of these. So take a wild success like Airbnb that everybody knows about. Well, that company was famously passed on by many smart investors because people thought, "No one's going to rent out a space in their home to a stranger." Of course, people proved that wrong. But one of the reasons it succeeded, aside from a good business model, a good idea, great execution, is the timing.
Dovolite mi, da vam podam nekaj točnih primerov za vsakega. Poglejmo si nori uspeh Airbnb-ja, ki ga vsi poznamo. Podjetju so marsikatera podjetja odrekla financiranje, ker so ljudje mislili: "Nihče ne bo neznancu oddal prostora v svojem domu." In ljudje smo dokazali nasprotno. A, eden od razlogov za njegov uspeh, poleg dobrega poslovnega modela, ideje in odlične izvedbe, je bil timing.
That company came out right during the height of the recession when people really needed extra money, and that maybe helped people overcome their objection to renting out their own home to a stranger.
Podjetje se je odprlo takrat, ko je bila recesija na vrhuncu in so ljudje potrebovali dodaten denar in morda so ljudje zato premagali odpor do oddajanja svojega doma neznancem.
Same thing with Uber. Uber came out, incredible company, incredible business model, great execution, too. But the timing was so perfect for their need to get drivers into the system. Drivers were looking for extra money; it was very, very important.
Ista stvar z Uber-jem. Na trg je prišel, neverjetna podjetje in poslovni model, ter odlična izvedba. A je bil perfekten tudi timing, zaradi potrebe po vnosu voznikov v sistem. Vozniki so želeli ekstra zaslužek; to je bilo zelo, zelo pomembno,
Some of our early successes, Citysearch, came out when people needed web pages. GoTo.com, which we announced actually at TED in 1998, was when companies were looking for cost-effective ways to get traffic. We thought the idea was so great, but actually, the timing was probably maybe more important. And then some of our failures. We started a company called Z.com, it was an online entertainment company. We were so excited about it -- we raised enough money, we had a great business model, we even signed incredibly great Hollywood talent to join the company. But broadband penetration was too low in 1999-2000. It was too hard to watch video content online, you had to put codecs in your browser and do all this stuff, and the company eventually went out of business in 2003.
Citysearch-u recimo, je uspelo, ker so ljudje potrebovali spletne strani. GoTo.com-u, ki smo ga naznanili na TED-u leta 1998, je uspelo, ker so podjetja želela dobiti promet, a zmanjšati stroške. Ideja je bila tako dobra, a je bil verjetno timing veliko bolj pomemben. In še nekaj naših neuspehov. Začeli smo podjetje imenovano Z.com, spletno zabaviščno podjetje. Imeli smo visoke upe zanj - zbrali dovolj denarja, imeli odličen poslovni model, podpisali pogodbo s Hollywoodskim talentom, ki bi se nam pridružil. A internet v letih 99-2000 ni bil dovolj razširjen. Videe je bilo težko gledati preko spleta, v brskalnik si moral dajati kodeke in sčasoma je podjetje leta 2003 propadlo.
Just two years later, when the codec problem was solved by Adobe Flash and when broadband penetration crossed 50 percent in America, YouTube was perfectly timed. Great idea, but unbelievable timing. In fact, YouTube didn't even have a business model when it first started. It wasn't even certain that that would work out. But that was beautifully, beautifully timed.
Samo dve leti kasneje pa je Adobe Flash rešil problem s kodeki in, ko je internet v Ameriki presegel 50 procentov, je bil čas za YouTube perfekten. Odlična ideja, a neverjeten timing. YouTube na začetku dejansko niti ni imel poslovnega modela. Gotovo ni bilo niti, ali mu bo uspelo. A čas je bil perfekten.
So what I would say, in summary, is execution definitely matters a lot. The idea matters a lot. But timing might matter even more. And the best way to really assess timing is to really look at whether consumers are really ready for what you have to offer them. And to be really, really honest about it, not be in denial about any results that you see, because if you have something you love, you want to push it forward, but you have to be very, very honest about that factor on timing.
Kar želim povedati je torej to, da je izvedba sicer zelo pomembna. Prav tako tudi ideja. A timing je pomemben veliko bolj. In najboljši način doseči pravi timing je, da dobro analiziramo, ali so potrošniki pripravljeni na to, kar jim bomo ponudili. In, če smo popolnoma iskreni, da nismo v zanikanju o rezultatih, ki jih dobimo ker, če imamo nekaj, kar imamo radi, želimo da uspe, a moramo biti resnično iskreni, če je čas za to pravi.
As I said earlier, I think startups can change the world and make the world a better place. I hope some of these insights can maybe help you have a slightly higher success ratio, and thus make something great come to the world that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Kot sem že omenil, menim, da startup podjetja lahko spremenijo svet, ga izboljšajo. Upam, da vam ti vpogledi lahko pomagajo do rahlo boljšega razmerja za uspeh in tega, da ustvarite nekaj odličnega za svet, nekaj kar se sicer ne bi zgodilo.
Thank you very much, you've been a great audience.
Najlepša hvala vsem, bili ste odlično občinstvo.
(Applause)
(aplavz)