In Search of Unicorns

FountainBlue’s November 3 VIP roundtable was on the topic of ‘In Search Unicorns’. Thank you to this month’s participating executives and to our gracious hosts at Western Digital. Below is a compilation of ideas and thoughts from our conversation.

Our executives this month had extensive experience with both large companies and with start-ups and even investment/corporate development experience. They had the following advice regarding the search for unicorns.

• No matter where you are in the start-up-to-enterprise spectrum, remember that:
  • Companies big and small are challenged with integrating new technologies and solutions into their offerings in order to stay relevant to their customers and keep up with market demands.
  • Leaders from start-ups and companies need to balance their desire to manage innovation from within or create innovation at start-ups and get integrated into the enterprises. 
• Work efficiently and effectively, within the environment, culture and ecosystem you’re in. 
• The flexibility and excitement of a start-up might be better than the stability and resources of a corporation and vice versa, depending on your current objectives and perspective. Choose the best option for yourself and be open to re-evaluating your selection.
• Develop a comprehensive plan for creating, nurturing and growing technologies and ideas organically from within a company, and also strategically identifying and integrating start-ups worthy of acquisition.
• Find adjacent technologies and markets for current solutions so that you can expand into new areas.
• Create and manage an ecosystem of partners to support development and business expansion goals.
• Keep passion and innovation alive, even when a company gets big and processes slow down how quickly things can get done.
• Watch how the Terrible 5 (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, FaceBook) are impacting other companies in your space and respond accordingly.
• Ensure a culture fit with potential acquirees to increase the likelihood of a successful integration.
• The hiring of quality technical people will challenge the growth trajectory of companies big and small.
• Focus first on the trend, then on the people who can create a solution to address that trend, and then on the idea.
• When creating a new solution in the same market, having the same clan of co-founders makes sense. When creating a new sector and market, recruit from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences and help the team work together.

Here are some hot new areas to watch for:

• Machine Learning and AI solutions which automate reporting and processes
• Technologies and solutions around self driving cars 
• Fitness and health-tech solutions for the consumer, but perhaps paid for by insurers, companies, even the government
• Hardware and software solutions which leverage open source modules
• Aggregating, managing, organizing, searching, storing huge volumes of digital content
• Practical wearables which are also disposable
• Device/IoT security and management
• Edge computing as the evolution of embedded computing
• Block chain use cases in finance, healthcare, transportation etc
• Integrated services and solution will be more prevalent than individual devices/units/sales

The bottom line is the unicorns are not born overnight. There are plenty of technologies and leaders who have the potential to become those billion-dollar-unicorns. Actually achieving that unicorn status will take collaborative, systematic execution on plans extended periods of time, riding market waves and serving customers over five to seven years.

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