The document summarizes Ron Piovesan's presentation on business development in Silicon Valley. The presentation introduced the culture and values of Silicon Valley, including theories like lean startup and customer development. It highlighted companies like Mozilla that exemplify these values through open collaboration and a focus on execution over ideas alone. The presentation also described resources for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley like the C100 group and ways these values and resources could be relevant for Newfoundland.
2. Goals
• Introduce the culture and values of Silicon Valley
• Explain theories that inform business development practices
• Share ideas on Mozilla and business development
• Highlight available resources
Relevant ideas for Newfoundland and Labrador?
3. Introduction
• From Toronto
– (sorry!)
• Twelve years in Silicon Valley
– Business Development: Mozilla, Cisco
– Corporate Communications: DDN, Cisco, Applied Communications
• Other activities
– Mentor companies
– C100 OC
– Teach: Stanford, San Jose State
Silicon Valley isn’t a place you work in, it is a place you contribute to
6. Traitorous Eight:
Silicon Valley founded by a single act of betrayal
Fairchild Semiconductor
• Julius Blank (Xicor)
• Victor Grinish (UC
Berkeley, Stanford)
• Jean Hoerni (Teledyne)
• Eugene Kleiner (Kleiner Perkins)
• Jay Last (Teledyne)
• Gordon Moore (Intel)
• Robert Noyce (Intel)
• Sheldon Roberts (Teledyne)
7. Traitorous Eight: Resulting values
• Ideas are open and portable
• Execution counts
• Risk/failure are acceptable
• Fluid movement of people
Warning: Somewhat stylized history!
8. Ideas vs execution
First GUI? First Social Network?
First Smartphone?
Ideas are nothing without execution
Need input to grow an idea
12. Movement of people
• Networks and relationships are
key
• Sharing and supporting ideas
is at the center of Silicon Valley
• Contact sport, you need to be
there to play
13. Culture of Silicon Valley
• Ideas are prized, but not worshipped
• Collaboration and execution are paramount
• Failure is tolerated
• Clique-y; need to be “in the know”
Silicon Valley is relationship driven
15. Lean start-up
• Minimum viable product
– MVP tests fundamental business hypotheses.
• Continuous deployment
– Code is written and put into production
• Split testing
– A split test: different versions of a product to customers at the same time.
• Actionable metrics
– What are the metrics really driving your business?
– You may look at page views or customer acquisition numbers, but are they
really helping you grow?
• Pivot
– Course correction
Shamelessly stolen from Eric Ries: www.leanstartup.com
16. Customer development
Product Development
Concept/ Alpha/Beta Launch/
Product Dev.
Bus. Plan Test 1st Ship
Customer Development
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discover Validation Creation Building
Shamelessly stolen from Steve Blank: www.steveblank.com
17. Business development mistakes
• Focus on product, not customer
• Sales and marketing, secondary to engineering
• Don’t know how to price
• Talk features, not end-user benefit
• Become insular, don’t get out to talk to customers
“There Are No Facts Inside Your Building, So Get Outside”
-Steve Blank
20. Mozilla Firefox – Powering the Global Internet
Mozilla Firefox Global Reach
• 450+Million Users • 30% Global Market Share
• 80+ Languages • #1 in Europe
• 700 Employees in 15 Countries • 56% German Market Share
• 3 Billion Add-Ons Downloaded • Brand Power: Firefox =
• 140,000 Add-ons built by 1,000+ trust, safe, secure, fast, reliable
Developers
21. Mozilla doing business
• Browser is open, standards based; anyone can download the code
• Everything is in the open, anyone can contribute
• Company meetings are held online
• Internet is a public benefit, made better via market forces
• Exchange of ideas, friendly or competitive, is best for the user
• Prefer to compete on features, UX and values
We’re an extreme case
Then again, we brought down a monopoly
23. Business development for a non-profit
Normal state On a partner call
Even though we’re a non-profit, we’re always selling
Legacy is desktop browser, we’re following the market, customers
24. Mozilla going mobile
• Form partnerships around
new products
• FirefoxOS-> Carriers and
OEMs
• Marketplace-> Apps
developers
We’re leaving the building, we’re forming relationship
Contributing to the discussion around mobile
25. Business dev for Newfoundland and Labrador
Local ideas, executed globally
29. The C100
Mission:
C100 is a private, non-profit membership organization comprised of
accomplished Canadian technology entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who are
dedicated to accelerating the top Canadian technology entrepreneurs through
partnership, mentorship and investment.
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31. Highlights – our first 2 years
30 Events across Canada & US
135 Start-ups participated in C100 mentoring in the Valley
100+ Charter Members (Silicon Valley based)
3000 C100 member network (North American wide)
4000+ Entrepreneurs attended C100 events in US and
Canada
$425,000,000 Of investment in C100 companies
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32. Our events…
• 48hrs in the Valley is our flagship • The CEO Tech Forum is a one-day event
mentorship program where companies meet with Corporate
and Business Development executives
• The Accelerate Series brings together the • Grow is the premier entrepreneurial
local entrepreneurial community to conference in Canada
celebrate successes and to inspire them to
create more.
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