I was asked last week to speak in a class at MIT on entrepreneurship. Rather than a self congratulatory parade through past products and companies that I’m most proud of, I gave the talk that I wished someone had given when I was a student 20 years ago at HBS taking a course on entrepreneurship. In that course I remember meeting Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin who came in to give us his simple self-aggrandizing recipe for success (passion + persistence, bla bla bla). It’s humble to talk about your mistakes, but hopefully more useful. And slightly cathartic…

1. 20 years 20 important mistakes
I’ve made as an entrepreneur
A presentation to the MIT Media Lab Ventures Class, 2/18/10
David Rose
drose@media.mit.edu
drose@vitality.net

2. Don’t sell the right bike,
Sell the bikes in the basement

3. You ≠ your company
Commitment is critical. Obsession may be
regrettable.

4. Select your customers carefully
Museums, educational publishers, and toy
companies have little spending power.
Mindstorms
Enchanted Objects

5. Ignore 90% of potential opportunities
Prioritize low-hanging fruit that ripen quickly

6. Babson
Don’t confuse a clear view with a short distance
Vision is easy, market timing is the challenge

7. Starve together. Feast together.

8. Listen to early customers
Don’t be afraid to throw out the bplan

10. How can the web help people tell stories with pictures, and co-create photo albums?

11. – Create Construct Pholios based around a life event,
wedding, birthday party, trip to Europe or just a collection of
pictures of old school friends
– Personalize Follow an easy-to-use process to build well-
designed personal, customized area to share stories
– Communicate Stay in touch with family and friends
– Collaborate Add captions, thought balloons and sound
effects
– Protect Password-protect or make public
– Organize and Archive Sort, categorize and preserve

13. Don’t just work on the product
Your job is to make 4 bridges meet
Team
Product Customers
Investors

14. Site X-ray: visualizing online traffic patterns on ecommerce sites

15. What if connectivity and computation could be baked into any object?

18. We envision that the architectural spaces we inhabit will become an interface
between humans and online digital information. We have been designing ambient
information displays to explore the use of kinetic physical objects to present
information at the periphery of human perception.

19. Press and sales may be inversely proportional
Novelty generates headlines. Incrementalism
makes an easy buying decision.

20. Fishing

21. Fishing

22. Fishing

23. Ambient Channel Line-Up Preview - Spring 2004
Finance Travel Outdoors Sports Messaging News Enterprise Other Shopping
DOW Traffic Weather Game Email Election Sales Web Traffic eBay
Congestion Forecast Score Waiting Polls Trends Auctions
FTSE Commute Ski Team IM Buddy Opinion Customer Online Wedding
Time Standings Status Polls satisfaction Transactions Registry
NASDAQ Frequent Surf Game Mobile plan NewsFutures Inventory Homeland
Flyer Miles Countdown minutes Levels Security
My Portfolio Sailing Betting Meeting Profit
Odds Countdown Margins
Bank Air Quality Blogshares Employee Developer*
Balance Utilization
Credit Card Pollen Competition
Balance Forecast
A single pixel browser is only interesting at MIT
Net Worth Golf
You can own one idea in people’s minds Ambient Devices CONFIDENTIAL

24. Ambient Umbrella

25. Compensation isn’t about the money,
Pay your best people more than you

26. Beware of group-think
If everyone on your team likes it, expand the circle.
ambient

27. Ambient Dashboard
ambient

28. Smart-swappable faces. Insertion instantly reprograms the device.
ambient

29. Startups shouldn’t partner with startups
Weather Wizard
ambient

30. Energy Joule
Startups shouldn’t partner with startups

31. 5-Day Forecaster

32. LG Refrigerator
Exclusivity is a type of currency
It can beget larger orders, marketing support, ...
ambient

33. Ambient Bus Pole
Temper your entrepreneurial optimism
articulating risks garners credibility
ambient

34. Your board is not your strategy team
Exceeding expectations may shorten your lifespan

35. CEO 1.0 cannot co-exist with CEO 2.0

36. Persona: Jill, age 34
VITALITY Lifestyle: Working mother, travels often for work
Flower Power Motivators: Fashion, style, convenience
Condition: Depression
Prescribed: Cymbalta (Lilly)
For Jill the Flower Pillbox lets her
manage her depression with security
and ease. The stylish circular case
holds a week’s worth of pills. She
puts the Flower night-light discretely
in her bathroom. Each filled pedal
represents a compliant day of the
week. It provides Jill and her
husband peace of mind each day
that she is taking important steps to
improve her condition.
Don’t design the right product for the customer
VITALITY
VITALITY INC. ©2005 PATENTS PENDING

37. Persona: Mel, age 72
VITALITY Lifestyle: Sedentary, retired Construction Manager,
Match Book Motivators:
Condition:
Coupons and Rebates
Hypercholesterolemia, Hypertension
Prescribed: Lipitor® (Pfizer), Toprol-XL® (AstraZeneca)
Nowadays Mel is managing heart
disease, not ironworkers. At the last
office visit his physician gave him a
handsome new smart pillbox to manage
his once a day Statin and
Antihypertensive pills in a consistent,
convenient way. Each Sunday morning
Mel loads it up…at the end of each
month he receives coupons for being
compliant. He values the coupons
because they offset his out of pocket
cost. He has already saved $15 since
Don’t design the right product for the customer
starting on the program. He knows that
if he keeps his medication compliance
over 75% for 6 months, he will receive a
reward bonus for $20 in the mail.
VITALITY
VITALITY INC. ©2005 PATENTS PENDING

38. instead, design the right product for the channel

39. 6 months of GlowCaps data shows over 95% adherence.
Now data streams in daily. We know exactly which people are taking their medication when. Here each box is one day.
Rows are people, columns are days. Shades of green show when medication was taken relative to dose times. Glyphs
represent reminder calls. Pink indicates a missed dose. These results far exceed our expectation.

40. Invert the sequence
develop final product > get paid by a customer > promote > launch

41. Attribution is a currency
Private label deals often reduce risk and accelerate adoption

42. Simplify until is hurts
Try to fall out of love quickly with your favorite ideas

43. 43

44. Oscillation between poles is healthy
Design
Teach Mentor
Fund Raise Fund
Mentored Learn
drose@media.mi
Critique

45. Don’t tell your girlfriend, spouse, family,
friends that you’re on the verge of a deal.
...until the funds are wired into your account

46. Connected Syringes
Don’t stop sketching • Looks like a high-tech sunglasses case
Sketching doesn’t defocus your engineering team
• Insulated case slides open to expose syringes
• Glows, vibrates, and plays ring tones to subtly
get your attention
• Wireless connection to pharmacy and caregivers
• Distributed by specialty pharmacy as part of
adherence programs

47. Salt Sentinel
• Dispenses salt and grinds pepper
• 360 degree camera uploads images
to offshore nutritionist for realtime
analysis
• Mini-projector displays information
adjacent to each item: calories
against a budget, ecological footprint,
transportation modality.
• Press the “i” for more information.

48. Spirometer Kazoo
• Makes spirometry fun using sound and
projection
• Spirograph projection shows visual
feedback to anticipate an asthma attack
• Wireless connection to the web permits
realtime data analysis and graphing on
smart phone.

49. 20 years 20 important mistakes
David Rose
drose@media.mit.edu
drose@vitality.net