Category Archives: QuakeAware

Is the MBA worth it?

October 9, 2011 By in mba, Motivation, QuakeAware Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I received an e-mail from the Dean of the Business school after our convocation ceremony yesterday. Here was the introduction….

“Congratulations on your graduation from the Beedie School of Business. This is a significant achievement and a major milestone for you in your life and career. You have succeeded in a program that combines academic rigor with practical application, has notably high standards, and most importantly, provided you with opportunities to meet new people and confront challenging ideas.” That is certainly what I hoped for when I joined the program. This was not quite my experience though but more on that later.

It seems to me that the benefits of an MBA depend a great deal on who you talk to. Many successful entrepreneurs consider the program a waste of time. They believe you are far better off to actually do\create a business or a product rather than learn from academics. Many professors are incredibly intelligent but lack real world commercial experience and\or have successfully run a business. From a corporate perspective an MBA can be an important “enabler” for more senior positions later in your career. Completing the program shows a drive to gain valuable experience and acquire new skills needed in executive life. I think there are merits to both points of view.

The MBA “gravy train” for major academic institutions is being disrupted by innovators like the University of Phoenix who are offering similar content delivered online for a fraction of the cost. I think business schools obsessed with their brand in light of this very stiff competition are misguided and have lost focus on their core mission. I thought Tony Hsieh of Zappos had a very profound insight when he said that brand is a lagging indicator of culture. His point was that organizations need to align their employee and customer experience to achieve outstanding results. Established universities need to deliver world-class education, foster an entrepreneurial culture and supportive ecosystem to truly differentiate their products and services from their online competition.

A couple of thoughts in terms of my personal experience as an MBA candidate:

1. If students choose not attend most lectures and rarely participate in group assignments how valuable can the MBA credential be?  This suggests to me that as long as you pay the “substantial fees” you earn the credential\brand. This is not rigorous or high standards. I think this is one of the reasons why MBA’s are not as held in as high regard as they used to because of perceived grade inflation. Obviously there are a lot more people with the credential now as well.

2. To charge higher prices established universities need to deliver premium instruction, preferably original research or at least the latest research from talented and engaged professors. The problem from a prospective student is you only find out how good the instruction is after you sign up for the program. My experience was that lecture quality was very inconsistent. It’s fine to tell me about the world-class academics on staff but if I am not taught by many of them frankly who cares? Some professors had little grasp of technology even though it was an MBA with a technology specialization!  One course had content was quite dated with examples that were relevant about 1o years ago. Fortunately many courses were excellent, taught by dynamic professors or incredibly experienced veterans with compelling stories and connections to boot! I would have paid a lot more for some courses and not at all for others had I known what I know now.

3. I was really impressed with the efforts the Beedie Business School make to provide a supportive eco-system for students to develop business ideas. They offer a variety of incubator programs for new ventures and provided free passes to the excellent BC New Venture Competition lecture series. I was fortunate to work with a great group of students that developed an iPhone app called QuakeAware as part of the program. A great way to make your MBA count is to apply the learnings to an endeavour as part of the program. Without a doubt working with this team on our pet project was the highlight of the program for me. I regret not making more of the incubator resources the University offered.

4. Burnout becomes a real issue the further you progress in the program. I became a father towards the end of the fourth semester which made a tough schedule occasionally unbearable. While my wife rapidly lost weight after the birth I continued to expand because I was eating junk food and drinking coffee late into the night on a regular basis. Needless to say this was bad for my health and not sustainable in the long run. Fortunately I was not alone. :) Many other members of my cohort joined me in the “pleasantly plump” brigade. My patience for “light lectures” of questionable value wore thin towards the end as the personal sacrifices I needed to make and the price I paid was not certainly not worth it far too often.

5. I really enjoyed the safe environment for students to share their perspectives on their professional challenges. Most lecturers made a point of encouraging discussion which was often insightful and thought-provoking. I learned that the challenges in my organization were not unique by any means and that in many instances Sage was ahead of the curve in our industry. I highly doubt I could have had these type of conversations over an e-learning or online course as it takes sometime for students to get comfortable with each other to share what they really think.

Was it worth it? All in all I think so. I have a broader perspective on business. I have a solid platform to move from the technical to the business side of my organization. The program has already proven beneficial to at least half the cohort. Many have moved up in their organizations or moved on to new employers already. The MBA is as much a test of endurance as it is a test of intelligence. I promised myself I would do this and now I have. I am pretty proud of myself actually!

Is there a market in the gap?

August 23, 2010 By in Entrepreneurship, mba, QuakeAware, self-employed Tags: , , 2 Comments

I was flattered to be asked to review a business plan for a potential online venture back in Ireland recently. It’s rewarding to know that some people are interested in what I write. Without going into details the guys core idea is to leverage crowd sourcing much like Innocentive in the US. Their mission is to connect bright people with businesses that need creative solutions to their problems. They identified a niche in the Irish market and created a business plan. Now it’s time to execute. Good for them! I wish I was that smart and ambitious when I was in my twenties.

I suggested they consider the following points as they move their venture forward. The text in italics is my direct response to them. The comments later are some general thoughts and personal experience on the topic.

1.       It sounds like your biggest “threat” is non-consumption. How is your target market surviving so far without your product? The QuakeAware team is taking a well deserved break to avoid burnout. We are faced with a similar challenge. Most agree our smart phone app is a cool idea. The fact is everyone has survived so far without it though. What is the “hook” you have to really capture the attention and imagination of non-consumers?

2.       It’s not clear to me how you plan to monetize your product (Online advertising, subscription etc ) Similar to point 1 it’s one thing to have a good idea. It’s quite another to persuade others to pay for it. Music is a great example. While many people are willing to pay for great music online through iTunes I believe far more people will download music illegally for free. Many of us love good music.  Why pay for something you don’t have to though? (I am not making a moral judgment. My intent is to highlight a business reality that is severely impacting profits in the music industry)

3.       How do you protect yourself against imitation? Branding is one way of course but new entrants typically lack the money or time to build a brand quickly. If your product is  manufactured your costs will need to be negligible to compete effectively with the Chinese. If your product or service is in software and you are successful it won’t be long before many “me too” products are competing against you. If you were your competitor trying to steal market share, what strategies would you consider?

4.       If you prove the market and gain a sizeable user base how will you compete when a larger competitor enters? They will have deeper pockets, more resources and a better brand. Many larger firms will let newer entrants prove a market before deciding to enter. Some will try to acquire their competitors. Others will simply engage in nasty price wars to drive out the small competition. It will be even worse if they don’t come. That means there really is no market in the gap after all.

5.      What barriers to entry are there? If none, how long can you generate a decent profit? In short, no barriers to entry means the chance to make high margins is not very long.

6.       Do you have a target niche you plan to go after first? Govt, industry and research is quite broad. What does your perfect customer look like? I read a fantastic book called “Crossing the chasm” by Geoffrey Moore. A key point in his research is that entrepreneurs need to be very selective and pick a niche they can dominate before attempting to compete in other markets. Attempting to please everybody may bring in more revenue in the short run but really hurts your ability to develop a sustainable competitive advantage over time. It takes a lot of discipline to research and then limit your enterprise to a narrow niche in the short run. 

In my next post I’ll share some key learning’s from New Venture’s BC seminar series I attended earlier this year. The series was dedicated to start-ups from the investor perspective.

Managing the media

April 18, 2010 By in mba, Personal, QuakeAware Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Attention readers! This post is longer than usual. As some of you may know, a product I have developed with class mates has featured prominently in the local media here over the past two weeks. I was interviewed by Global TV last weekend. I am going to share my perspective and our team’s experience of working with the media  over these past few weeks.  All in all, it was  enjoyable, nerve-wracking, time intensive but ultimately rewarding experience.  

But first some background. As part of our MBA program I was part of a team tasked with developing a product that would serve the local community. We were inspired by the tragic events in Haiti. Team QuakeAware decided to leverage our technical and new-found product management skills to build an iPhone app. (We aim to deliver versions for the Android & Blackberry platforms shortly) Our app helps residents prepare and react to earthquakes if they ever hit our local city in Richmond, BC. 

The media first heard about our product through the director of Public Relations at Segal Graduate School of Business. He attended two presentations we had given. He seemed to immediately grasp the potential of the product and made contact with the media. You can check out our first interview with the TV media here if you like. The entire clip lasted a full five minutes. As we gained more experience with the media we would come to realize we were even luckier to feature for so long on prime time TV.

What made this interview particularly challenging was how little time we had to prepare. Ryan appeared on national TV after only three hours sleep, kept awake by those awful energy drinks. He had no idea what the questions would be and answered in real-time. Thankfully everything went well. Ryan did a fine job in the circumstances. You can tell he was nervous but who wouldn’t be! His phone seemed to ring non stop for four days fielding calls from radio and TV stations requesting interviews after his success. It was incredible!  

As Ryan spent more time on the air you could tell he gained in confidence. The media was friendly. He was more polished in his answers. It was great! Other team members were eager to feature on TV. It made sense to give everyone a chance. The problem was that Ryan was often the only one who could appear on the TV in the time frame required during the day (he works nights). When the media call, they have a tight deadline to manage to. Are you available or not? For example, in the last round of TV appearances we needed to be available within forty-five minutes. If you are not available, events quickly move on and you are less likely to feature again. Fortunately another opportunity came up where another group member Dylan (AKA Jesus in our group) was able to appear. Dylan works from home and was able to respond to another last-minute request. You can check out the clip here.

 

CBC did an amazing job of presenting the power of our app for us. It also helped that Dylan was excellent. A key difference was that this TV interview was recorded. If mistakes happen, no problem, you can just shoot the clip again. I am sure Dylan must have felt a little  pressure. I doubt it is as daunting as being interviewed live though. Ryan was very confident that the interview had gone well and so it proved. He was a now a bit of a pro advising us on various aspects of the process having done this several times. In my opinion Dylan’s interview gave the most favorable impression of our work.  This clip lasted two minutes.

The second last of the interviews to date took place last weekend. You can see the 60 second clip that featured on the Sunday evening Vancouver news below.

As you can tell from the chronology the interviews on the TV at least were becoming shorter. I wsa selected to represent the team for this interview. There was twenty-five minutes of footage taken. Only sixty seconds made the final cut. If you check out our Facebook Fan page you can see the photos we took of the first part of the interview. The camera man spent around ten minutes taking close up shots of Kelvin (our finance guru) using the app connected to large monitors. Unfortunately, none of this material made the final news. Then it came to my turn. I thought a reporter was going to show up for the actual interview. This never happened. Instead I was talking to the wall (literally) pretending I was being interviewed. It was surreal! That said, because we were recorded there was less pressure. That didn’t stop me from forgetting most of the features of our product to my chagrin. Apart from that this minor detail the interview went  well. One could say, this was the easiest of the three interviews to date in the sense that it was not a really an interview at all. In fact, I could probably have prepared the questions and answers had I liked. That evening when I first watched the clip I was very disappointed. There was no footage of the app at all. There was a brief intro and then a thirty-second ”elevator pitch” from me. I had no idea that this was all that would feature. In hindsight, we were very lucky. If there was any thirty seconds that should have featured, this was it! The feedback over the next few days was overwhelmingly positive though.

Incredibly then another massive earthquake struck in China. Another request for interviews came from CTV. This time we featured for approximately fifteen seconds at the end of a segment dedicated to earthquake preparedness for BC schools. I don’t have a clip to share with you at this time. I’ll upload it later when I have access to it.

All in all QuakeAware has featured on prime TV for five or six days over the last two weeks. This has created incredible mind share for us. For example, several colleagues at work had heard of our application. On Tuesday a random attendee at an innovation event  I went to advised us that he had heard about us on the local radio. We have requests coming from people all over the lower mainland, including Vancouver island and as far away as  Seattle, Southern California & Taiwan to deliver an app to them. What an opportunity! I will tell you how we progress in future posts.

For now, I will close with some key takeaways from the past few weeks.

  1. You have to be ready at any time for an interview. Simply put, without Ryan’s availability at a moment’s notice we would never have received the publicity we did. Our policy has been to do whatever it takes to respond to the media’s request for an interview. We are more likely to feature as a result.
  2. Be prepared. Know the format of your interview if possible. If open-ended questions are asked be sure to make them count. This is your big opportunity to get your message out!
  3. Have an elevator pitch. Know it inside out. It would have been nice to be armed with a FAQ and a product pitch before the media momentum took off.
  4. Realize you have little control over what appears on TV. Footage is edited back at HQ. I had unrealistic expectations of what footage would appear. For example, I made a request to get volunteer assistance during the interview. This was never going to make it into a sixty-second slot.
  5. Media momentum is hard to manage. Once it begins, you just have to roll with events as they unfold.
  6. Like everything in life, you get better with practise. Don’t be scared. Just do it if you get the chance. We were fortunate because we have a great story to tell. The media were eager to help get some good news out.
  7. Don’t peddle fear. We have made a conscious decision not to try to scare people unnecessarily. I think this helped us. People react to fear but it breeds cynicism and contempt as well.

Thanks again for checking out my blog. I will try to get back to my weekly schedule of posts. This has been hard to do given recent events.

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