Why it is that occasionally
the David's beat the Goliaths
Why is it that occasionally
the big companies that have
economies of scale
fail versus the little
guys? What are the relative
advantages? And actually
particularly in Europe, if you
ask entrepreneurs why they're
successful, this is a very
self-effacing European
thing in my experience, they'll
say, 'I was just lucky.'
But the truth of the matter is
we make our own luck
and start-ups turn
big companies inertia into their
Achilles heel
and scarcity breeds
innovation. We're all creative
people and when we need to
be, we're more creative
So I'm reminded of this lady
I saw in Islington the other
week. She didn't have a hands-free
kit. She was creative
We do this collectively also
This is a wonderful photo
from the Philippines. People
being creative collectively
avoiding standing
and queuing.
By the way, I have a question. I
imagine it's because in Northern
Europe our feet would smell too
much to do this, but that's probably
a different story.
So we have wonderful creativity
that comes from scarcity
or lack of resources
but increasingly, as we've heard
over the last 24 hours
we have technology and for
me, the way to bring this
to life is this image
I desperately wanted one
of the first Macintoshes. It's
very ironically cool
now, but this would have cost $2,500
in 1984 when
it was created.
My mobile device has
the processing power of 284
of these. It would have cost $700,000
to match it in 2004
about $2 million
in today's money. So we're
walking around with these super-computers
as you've heard. So we want to
look at that creativity
look at the technology and what
it unlocks and there are three
traits we'd love to share
with you today and for each
trait, a brilliant founder
from a European start-up
will share some thoughts
So the first thing entrepreneurs
do to make their own luck
is that they actually love
their customers.
It's amazing, but this can
be differentiating. I'm
reminded, I often have met
big companies and I've thought, 'Goodness
me, I think you've fallen out of love
with your customer.' It's probably
the greatest leading indicator
of companies that will struggle
Profits are a lagging indicator
Empathy for the customer is
a leading indicator.
A wonderful example from
Ideo, where I worked before
is this short video
so can someone shout out and
tell me what this is a video 89 00:02:47,750 --> 00:02:47,090 of?
That's right, some of you have shouted
it out. This is the experience
of a patient in a hospital
If you go to the board
of a healthcare provider and you show
this image and say, 'What is it?' they
often don't have a clue, but this
is the experience of their customers
This is the only truth. Net
promoter score is valid
but this is what
it's really like. This image
was shot by a designer who
spent a whole day going
through the hospital experience
checking in, and the thing that blew my
mind about this project
was he was only asked twice
why he had a camcorder strapped
to his head.
Now, it's a clear reflection
of the fact that someone, somewhere
in this system has lost empathy
So the first thing great start-ups
do is they love their customers
and Fred from BlaBlaCar
will join me on the stage shortly
to share some thoughts on
how they approach that
The next thing that start-ups
do is they launch things
in order to learn.
They don't spend all their time
optimising behind closed
doors. In truth, in
the past you would often judge
a start-up by the size
of its business plan, the weight
of pages of its business plan
At Google Ventures we see
thick business plans less and
less. If anything, I think I'd
be suspicious that people
had spent their time writing that
rather than testing stuff out
in the field, because the answer
is rarely in the building
and it's simply because the
world is complicated. Start-ups
are not a linear journey
from A to B. They're a series
of unanswered questions and the
sooner you get out there
and have those questions answered
the better.
One of the things that reminds
me of this, I actually had
yesterday, so I joined Matt and
amazingly I did the run with
Mo Farrah, which was an amazing
experience for me but I noticed
yesterday morning something
in the Grove just behind here
which urban planners would call
a desire path.
So this is the route that everyone
including Mo Farrah by
the way, took.
I imagine the architect
of the Grove would call us
all idiots, lazy idiots
because he was imagining-, or she
was imagining that we would walk
all the way round this, do a 90
degree turn and then come
back.
The real world's not like that
The only truth is how we
actually behave.
There are big scale versions
of this. One is here, not so
far, in Islington
This is Highbury Fields. I
imagine the council imagined
we'd walk all the way round this
path round the outside
but most people cut straight
across. When you're launching a product
or service, this is the only
truth. It doesn't matter if
you make paths, it's how people
use it that matters and
actually Doug's talk this morning
inspired me and I've sort of been scrabbling around
to try and change the narrative
slightly, but this is a wonderful
example. To me, Google is
beautiful because actually it's
the desire path. The clutter
is taken away and it's the
cleanest desire path to
have your question answered
and I wrote this presentation
while the election results
were coming in last week
and I was sat there and I was shocked
by the exit polls. Suddenly
we were told actually Labour
was going to have a catastrophic
night and
I thought to myself, 'I wonder if Google
can teach me why that might be
true?' So all I typed
in was 'Why?' You can see
the top results here. Firstly
'Why vote Labour?' It
make me think perhaps people
said they'd vote but actually were wondering
what it stood for. Secondly
amazingly, 'Why not to vote
UKIP?' but then third, 'Why
vote UKIP?' and I wonder
whether this is a reflection of the
fact that people didn't really know
what the parties truly stood
for. Maybe this is more accurate
this desire path that you see
up here would have taught us more
than some of the polling that
happened the weeks before. So
the second thing we're going to talk about
today, Jane from Sugru
is going to share some thoughts
on launching to learn. Get
your product out there. The
answer is not in the building, you
have to get it out there to discover
the truth, which is how customers
use your product and the third
idea that we'd love to share with
you
is that great entrepreneurs iterate
relentlessly.
People too often talk
about a business having a
runway.
An amount of money or amount
of time is not relevant
what's relevant is the number of
cycles of learning that you
have. So if you iterate
faster, you learn more
and this, I think, is my favourite
example. We imagine how this
works in the digital world
very easily.
This is an analogue version. I
met an entrepreneur in Boston who
wanted to open a restaurant
and he struggled because he didn't know
where the restaurant should be
or what the menu should be
So he bought a white van, he
drove it to a different location
each day and wrote a new
menu on the side.
It's the quickest iteration
for a restaurant I've ever seen
He now has a chain of them called
Clover Food Labs in
Boston and we see larger
companies do this, Twitter, we
forget, but tweets was
an iteration based on
what consumers said, as were
re-tweets. This was the first
use of a hashtag on record
in 2007
I wanted to close out with just
a reminder of what we've
discussed today, that agility
that honesty and that love
for the customer and it can be
incredibly impactful. One of
my favourite examples of all
of this is this message
that was put out in 1991
Many of you will know that's Linus
Torvalds and it's the birth
of Linux and if you look
how it's tracked in the years
since then, these to me
are all desire paths
All these different flavours of
Linux are people scratching
their own itches. So the
final image for you to take
away isn't actually a desire
path, although I apologise
because you're all going to see desire
paths absolutely everywhere
after this, so my apologies
for that. That's not the one that
inspires me. The one that
inspires me is this one
which is in a housing estate
in Islington and the reason
it inspires me is I imagine
the estate manager historically
if they weren't open-minded, would
have put up tape around this
You can imagine sort of police tape
He didn't do that. He laid gravel
I feel that's our job when
designing new products and services
is to spot the customer behaviours
and lay gravel to enable
them. Thank you so much for taking
the time. I hope you all gained
as much from it as I did, so
thank
you.