It's a team effort - not a solo performance
With the Aalto Venture Garage packed almost full Mårten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL and the current CEO of Eucalyptus took stage. He started with success, a topic almost as difficult for Finns to handle as failure.
Mårten told the audience that he has always had this feeling that he's going to be successful, even as he admitted to being lazy at the same time. In his opinion success springs from three interconnected factors:
You have to believe in yourself
You must have supporters who have decided to believe in you also in times you yourself dont
You must build a team where different individuals support each others disadvantages
So it's of utmost importance to pay attention into the team building. There are always some kind of hardships ahead of you, so you should have people who don't need to be managed all the time thus letting the team to tackle real business challenges. Therefore every startup should have the "Magnet of Talent" who attracts those people you don't need to manage;
"You can listen as many Mårten Mickoses as you like but when you start your own company you are the only one who knows what to do"-M.M.
Who is going to buy your product and why?
Of course Mr. Mickons wasn't born successful. He got there by building and running businesses, and when it comes to this, our good guy from the Valley has a lots to say. First of all, you should get at least some assumption of that ((WHAT?)) before starting a new business.
Mårten pointed out some most common mistakes the first time entrepreneurs make when starting their business:
No focus on target market
The market for the solution is only temporary
Thinking it's good that there are no competition
The customers problem is not big enough,
"We are okay If just 1% buy"
Believing customers behave like you do,
Not taking input and weak signals seriously
When you live abroad, you get a different perspective on things back here in Finland. And Mårten had clearly expressed some of these.
First of all, what we necessarily don't realize, the Nordic countries have a head start when it come to business. Unlike many more individualistic or "cutthroat" nations (say India, Britain) we get trained to work together. Nordic people are also used to doing things by their own and living up to their promises.
Mr. Mickos ended with a strong statement that Finland has to wake up now and to realize its minimal place in the globalized world. Everyone else is building, growing and innovating much faster and we are fast loosing the edge we still have- We need to act now if want to maintain our welfare and prosperity!
Aaltoes Talk with Mårten Mickos from Aaltoes on Vimeo.