This presentation covers some basics on how to define your customer, measure your TAM market, what is persona, definition of beachhead market, etc

1. “Building a
company: 8
themes & 3
“must””
Yelena Kadeykina
GITA, Tbilisi
September 2, 2015
©Yelena Kadeykina

2. Personal Intro
 Serial entrepreneur
 Specialty: entrepreneurial marketing, online and
video marketing; business development
 MIT Sloan Alum
 Community work: MIT Enterprise Forum &
MassChallenge, etc
©Yelena Kadeykina

3. 8 Themes to Consider When
Launching a Company
Who is your customer
How do you make money = business model
Your team and company’s culture
How does your customer acquire your product
What can you do for your customer
How do you design and build your product
How do your scale your business
Quality of ecosystem
©Yelena Kadeykina

4. ©Yelena Kadeykina
What’s is the only minimum required
condition for any business to exist?

5. 5 Steps to Define Your Customer
Market and market segmentation
Select a beachhead market
Build an end-user profile
Calculate TAM size for beachhead market
Profile persona for your market
©Yelena Kadeykina

6. Market segmentation
©Yelena Kadeykina
Characteristics: Characteristics:
End User Application
Benefits Partners/Players
Market Characteristics Competition
Size of Market
Needs

7. 6 “yes” to pick beachhead market
 Is your customer a paying customer
 Is your sales force can access your customer
 Is it hard for your competitor to block you
 Are your ready to deliver a whole solution/product
 Can you leverage this segment to enter additional
segments
 Is this market consistent with values and passion of
your team
©Yelena Kadeykina

8. End User and DMU
Customer = End User + Decision Making Unit (DMU)
Decision making unit:
 Advocate (often an end user)
 Primary Economic Buyer
 Influencers
©Yelena Kadeykina

9. End user profile characteristics
 Gender, age, education
 Income range
 Geographic location
 What motivates them
 Their fears
&inspirations
 Early adopters vs. main
stream
 Where they go on
vacations
 Where do they dine
 What newspapers they
read, websites, etc
 Main reason to buy
product: image, peer
pressure, saving?
©Yelena Kadeykina

10. Persona: Michael, Facility Manager
at Cisco
Personal Information:
American, family (1 kid), 40 years old, college degree
Career context:
Mid-career (same place for 10 years), technical savvy, hopes for
promotion, makes $65K/year
Informational Sources:
Websites to make decisions, tried competitor product and is not
impressed for A/B/C reasons
Purchasing Criteria:
Reliability (high), Costs (mid)
Others:
Listens to country, drives Ford, used to volunteer as a fireman
©Yelena Kadeykina

11. Calculate TAM (total addressable
market)
Top-down analysis – use market analysis
reports, etc
Bottom-up analysis=“counting noses” (use
customer, lists, trade associations, groups)
TAM = number of customers x Price of product
$5M>TAM - No
$5M<TAM<$100M – Yes
$1B<TAM - No
©Yelena Kadeykina

12. ©Yelena Kadeykina
What is more important
then a good idea?

13. B = f(P,E)
Building team and culture: 4P framework
People
ProcessPatterns
Purpose
 Purpose – your values and company’s values
 Patterns – accepted behavior
 People – whom do you hire
 Process – operational processes in your company

14. Hard to build, easy to break
You will be challenged constantly
It is hard to find right people
Tough fires
Manage offshore team
Personal problems
Maintain processes
Celebrate small victories

15. ©Yelena Kadeykina

16. Strong entrepreneurial ecosystem. Solving real
world problems
 25,000+ companies founded by MIT alums (i.e., Akamai, Intel, HP,
iRobot, Gillette, Dropbox)
 3.3+ million jobs
 $2 trillion in annual world sales (source: Kaufman Foundation 2009)
MIT Intellectual and Technology Powerhouse
 72 MIT-related Nobel Prize winners (including 9 current faculty
members)
 5 schools, 33 departments/divisions/sections/other programs (57
interdisciplinary research units)
©YelenaKadeykina
Why MIT

17. Cambridge innovation and intellectual capital: 74 colleges &
universities, $1.5 billions spent on R&D annually
$2.4 Billions of VC investment second after Silicon Valley,
highest investment/capita: $457/capital (source: Flybridge
2010)
Innovation clusters: Cambridge, 128/495 clusters –benefits of
high concentration
Boston startup incubators&accelerators: CIC, Dogpatch,
MassChallenge, TechStars
Future IPO candidates: HubSpot, Brightcove, Kayak and Tech
giants: Microsoft, Google
Every night there is an entrepreneurial event!
©YelenaKadeykina
Why Boston

18. Motivation
Desire to help and to give
How to choose a mentor
Experience
Few mentors
Right match
Advisors / Mentors

19. ©Yelena Kadeykina

20.  Give before you ask. Always be open to help people in
your network
 Develop relationships, don’t just acquire a bunch of
contacts
 Listen to people’s stories. Make it about them, not about
you
 Follow up with people once you meet them
 Be genuine
 Be passionate about your ventures
 Be realistic about what you should expect and follow up on
promises
 Stay professional and relevant (i.e. , no gossips)
 Do you homework
Do’s of networking

21.  Prepare and practice
your elevator pitch
 Prepare your presentation
materials (i.e., business cards)
 Research the list of attendees
 Make a list of top 7-10 contacts
 Research their bios
Do you homework

22. Don’t’ brag about yourself
Don’t exaggerate the truth
Don’t try to discuss everything. Value
other people’ time.
Don’t ask personal questions (i.e.,
questions about salary)
Don’ts of networking

23.  Follow up on the night you met
 Make it personal: include 2-3 points from the
conversation
 Be brief and to the point
 For VIPs, handwritten notes are preferable
 Schedule another on-one-one conversation with
the people you found some immediate common
interests
 Stay in touch via events/social media (i.e.,
LinkedIn)
©YelenaKadeykina
Follow up/Stay in touch

24. Personal brand – timeless. It is how we market
ourselves to others. We sell something every
day.
What is your personal brand
Idea
to your
investor
Vacation
trip to your
spouse

25. Strong personal brand = VISIBILITY
 Speaking engagements
 Investors
 Clients
 The opportunity to make a difference!
©YelenaKadeykina
Why your personal brand is important

26. Thank you!
Contact information:
E-mail: yelena@sloan.mit.edu
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/yelenakadeykina
Facebook: www.facebook/yelena.kadeykina
Twitter: @ykadeykina
©Yelena Kadeykina