How Entrepreneurs Can De-Risk And Accelerate New Ventures

A serial entrepreneur and go-to-market pro, Andrew Amann has developed a bunch of patents and startups, with some successful exits along the way. A Nuclear Submarine Engineer turned CEO, he runs one of the fastest growing product design and engineering studios, building dozens of companies and hundreds of products, used by millions of people that have created over$ 1B in revenue.

Listen in as we unpack how startups can better de-risk themselves and get help. From partnering with hubs like 1871 and developing a supportive ecosystem to coming up with a breakthrough product/platform ideas that can scale with a real market fit—there are lots of challenges, mountains and potholes for entrepreneurs to deal with along the way to success.?

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Incubators, Accelerators, and Venture Studios Oh My

Before we get into how to de-risk start-ups, we wanted to discuss the differences between accelerators, incubators, and venture studios. All three of them aid start-ups in some way but have subtle differences that are important to understand. Andrew described each very well; Accelerators are “exactly what it says it is, it’s just pushing a product from kind of the .5 stage to the one stage.” Incubators “inject a resource when it’s needed” when a startup needs some extra support. Then finally Venture Studios, which is what NineTwoThree was from, “is building [everything] from zero to one.”

De-risking Failure By Understanding It

In Andrews's career, he has built 14 ventures. Of those 14, 2 have been acquired, one is currently being acquired, and 11 have failed. A piece of advice Andrew has to potentially avoid that failure is “Sales and marketing is 90% of the effort that should not only [be] invested in, but put towards the founder’s mind in how the product will be built.” Before you make a product and go show it off to the Incubators, Accelerators, and Venture Studios, make sure people will buy the product and are looking forward to buying it when it releases.

What To Focus On

Another lesson that Andrew has learned over the years is that to become very successful, you don’t need a brand-new shiny innovation that has never been done before, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Andrew advises his clients to think about their products in two ways; Are you peeling away from a larger market where you have a good market size? Or are you trying to combine multiple products for ease of use on the consumer size? For example, Andrew talks about how Airbnb leveraged Craigslist accelerate it’s journey toward a multibillion-dollar company.

A Winding Road Journey

Mphasis has had an interesting history since its start in 1998. Through all of their acquisitions and mergers, they were never completely consolidated into companies like EDS or HP, which saved them when those companies began to fail and shed assets. Then in 2017, according to Nitin, they made their most important reboot to date, which was “we decided to make a few big bets and then go all in on them.” Knowing that they were not able to do everything, Mphasis decided that they should instead become the best at a handful of things, which has done very well for them. A bit risky if those baskets end up breaking, but luckily they were able to pull through and make a great business from it.

The Future Impact Of AI

Since AI is all the buzz we had to get Nitin's perspective on what AI is going to impact in the future. Nitin says AI is the “Next big productivity lever that we had been missing for the last couple of decades.” Nitin also notes that AI is going to remove a lot of friction from businesses like customer support, contact centers, and business operations, as well as reduce to amount of time it takes to get a new mortgage application.

Nitin’s Personal Reboot

?As with all our guests, we asked Nitin about some of the biggest challenges he has faced up until this point and the lessons he has learned from them. One of those challenges is that Nitin has “switched industries and continents four times in the last 25 years.” So not only did he have to learn about a whole new industry, he had to adapt to a whole new culture and country to boot. In both cases, you will probably feel like a fish out of water for some time, but some advice for switching industries is “In the end business is business. In every business, there are levers and dials you push, and you find ways to show value to the customer.”

About The Show

The Reboot Chronicles Show is a popular business podcast highlighting the world’s top leaders and CEO’s through engaging peer-to-peer conversations that audiences love.

The show is available wherever people listen to or watch podcasts, with thousands of listeners, watchers, readers, and fans who turn to the platform for insights from top leaders who are rebooting everything from their industry and organization’s competitiveness to growth, innovation, technology, talent, culture…and more.? Reboot’s entertaining CEO conversations also provide audiences rare behind the scenes views of their personal and professional challenges—with actionable lessons on how listeners can reboot their organization, their career and their life.

Tune?in wherever you get podcasts or here:?https://rebootchronicles.com/

About The Host

A WSJ Best-Selling Author, Forbes Contributor, and frequent media guest & speaker, Dean DeBiase is the Executive Producer and Host of The Reboot Chronicles Show, a top leadership podcast that has interviewed hundreds of CEOs, celebrities, and world leaders—unpacking their untold?behind-the-scenes stories to help audiences transform their organizations and themselves.

Named “Growth Guru” by Inc., Dean is an award-winning Silicon Valley serial CEO who has lead dozens of public and private organizations through diverse operating environments—creating hundreds of products, thousands of jobs, and billions of dollars of revenue, value, and capital.

Dean is a trusted advisor to CEO’s and boards, helping emerging-growth companies increase their value, and scale toward IPO optionality, by tackling their most challenging issues, seizing emerging market opportunities—and developing new customers, partners, and ventures.

His award-winning Dancing with Startups Program, brings Fortune 1000’s and scaleups together around the globe to accelerate growth, by leveraging global relationships with corporations, executives, thought-leaders, and emerging organizations, to co-create expansion initiatives, new ventures, and M&A.

Dean has an inclusive engagement-culture leadership style that attracts, builds, and inspires multi-generational/multi-national teams to be first-to-market leaders. His Reboot teams have been recognized for rapidly scaling organizations and producing industry-shaping products, services, and brands across sectors—that transformed industries, economies, and societies.

Connect with Dean here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/keynotespeaker/

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