Emerging Tech Spotlight: AI Impact
Velocity. The greatest tangible impact of AI on an enterprise is the velocity boost on every element of the organization employing it.
I was invited to moderate a panel on AI at the Latinx MBA Association Summit with Roberto Medrano and Rob Muro. Roberto, CEO of Beachview Capital, is a cybersecurity pioneer, board director for dozens of tech companies, and former tech executive at HP, Polivec Inc, Finjan Holdings, Avnet Technology Solutions, and Sun Microsystems. Rob is the Senior Director of Technical Product Managment at ServiceNow with executive experience at Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Siebel. ServiceNow is an AI first, cloud-based, workflow automation platform that enables enterprise organizations to improve operational efficiencies by streamlining and automating routine work tasks.
We shared our personal stories of hard work, resilience, and family values before engaging in the twin topics: 1) Innovation Trends and the Business of AI, and 2) Impact on and Opportunities for us as Individuals and Communities.
Measuring Traction for Tough Goals
How do you know that you are on track for large aggressive goals?
Founders, if you are asked to set 2-3 milestones for your startup within a 6-12 month timeframe, what would they be? Customer targets? Revenue levels? Geographic expansion? Capital raise? How would you know if you are on track on a monthly or weekly basis? Would you use the same targets allocated in smaller achievable chunks? If you do, would these mini-targets tell you if you are on track for the vision you have at 12, 24, or 36 months?
Meaningful milestones and performance metrics reflect what you are trying to understand about a specific aspect of your business model within a defined time frame. They are most useful when serving as actionable pieces of information.
Derisking Ventures through UX Research: A chat with GV’s Michael Margolis.
How can you find your TAM and validate your product-market fit if you don’t know who your bulls eye customers are? UX research is a way to accelerate the learning curve of startups and derisk the investment.
We had another great session of my H4H impact venture incubator course at Columbia Business School this term. Michael Margolis, UX Partner at Google Ventures (GV) joined us to chat about the key takeaways of an effective research sprint to improve the success of a venture.
Michael shared with us highlights of his approach developed over his vast experience working with Uber, Slack, Foundation Medicine, One Medical, Flatiron Health, GitLab, Lime, Kindbody, Gusto, Blue Bottle Coffee, StockX, Cockroach Labs, and Nest. These are all companies known for effectively scaling based on maximizing the value of their customer/user experience.
Should Startups Care About Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Does SEO matter for an early stage company focusing on building social media connections first?
It does. Founders, how do you think you get visibility in the sea of social media posts? The strategy that goes into social media optimization is at the core of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the online viral result of everything you do online and offline to match your customer’s pain point to your solution.
TAM/SAM/SOM The Meaning Behind the Metrics
Founders, you may be struggling with calculating and interpreting these familiar concentric circles. Let’s begin with the understanding investors would like to derive from them.