3. Roald Sieberath
Formation
Ingénieur civil en informatique
Business : Solvay IACE,
Stanford EPGC, Louvain MBA
and business
Entrepreneur
Startup coach
23. Myth :
a startup is a company, smaller
And should be managed in a similar way
24. Reality
A startup is a different animal
A company solves a known problem
A startup solves an unknown
problem
Management science is not (as)
relevant
25. Facteurs positifs
• Rigueur (?)
• Fast learner
• Travail en équipe
• Ingenire = trouver une solution
• Construire un modèle ; exécuter
26. Engineer lies…
“Everyone loves ‘cool ideas’ and new
technology.”
“I need to go-it alone to assure quality and
elegance.”
“We need to get functionality maximized
before we focus on customers.”
“Marketing is fluff and selling is black magic.”
“A good engineer hates unpredictability and
risk.”
“We can’t worry about making money until we
get it built.”
“Outside funding causes loss of control and
undue pressure to deliver.”
37. Build It And They Will Come
• Only true for life and death products
– i.e. Biotech Cancer Cure
– Issues are development risks and distribution,
not customer acceptance
• Not true for most other products
– Software, Consumer, Web
– Issues are customer acceptance and market
adoption
37
38. If
Startups Fail from a Lack of customers
not Product Development Failure
Then Why Do we have:
• process to manage product development
• no process to manage customer
development
38