Big Picture

During my work career I have been fortunate to work with lots of different kind of entrepreneurs, professors, researchers, VC´s and public financiers. When I have discussed entrepreneurship and growth venturing with them, I have found out how many different views and approaches there are.

In many discussions, the entrepreneurs, researchers and public financiers have been talking about the business and product details such as technology, R&D processes, marketing, market entry strategies, possible pilot sites and so on, which amazes me. For me it does not make sense to concentrate on details if the big picture is not clear. With the big picture I mean business fundamentals and essentials of a company, which include answers at least to the following questions:

a) Who are my customers?
b) What is the market pain I am solving?
c) Why are the customers buying my product or service?
d) How am I different from my competitors?
e) How do I produce and deliver my product?
f) How am I going to make money out of the idea?

It is essential to define clearly answers to these questions when having a new business idea, even though the answers may change while launching the business. When the answers are found, it is time to start digging deeper, go into the details. From my discussions I have found out that VC’s are quite good at crystallizing what they need to know about your business before making the funding decisions. They have learned it by trial and error in their previous investments. Because of that, one of the best ways to start thinking about the new business idea is to have a look at the VC presentation templates available and use that approach to build the big picture of your business. When the big picture is clear, all that needs to be done is to find, build and acquire necessary parts and solutions for your business. It will not be easy, but it will be rewarding.

Like most people know, Finland is lacking of growth ventures. From my experiences I can say that there are lots of great inventions and products that could be huge global businesses. But for some reason the Finnish entrepreneur’s mindset is not targeted to become a global market leader. I think that this is caused by our own business environment, which is not optimized for startup companies.

Sometimes it seems like outsiders treat and think the entrepreneurs and companies as ‘subjects’ or ‘raw material’ that needs to be molded or shaped, and use their expertise to be successful growth venture. Most people think that without this molding or shaping it is impossible to be a global success. When this issue is brought up everyone says that it is not true, but still most of their actions indicate otherwise. One of the key reasons to become an entrepreneur is independency and ability to influence on your own work. The Finnish entrepreneurs quickly learn how to operate in this environment or think that they can not become global growth ventures without the help of many different organizations. Of course this is not true. Luckily great but rare Finnish exits have been made by companies that haven't been dependent on business development organizations.

The biggest lesson I have learnt so far has been that despite the details that are necessary to be sorted out, the business fundamentals and business case need to be clear and always on mind. The business case helps to make decisions between different options and choices and tolerate the insecurity entrepreneurs need to face when targeting global markets. Moreover, I have realized that market understanding is more important than I previously thought. All the answers (customer needs, competition, partners etc.) that are needed for building a business case have to come from the market place. I also believe that most people can build a growth venture. All that is needed is passion, will to learn new things and courage to desire big things that may not be accepted in the social environment.