The Wanna/intra/entrepreneur Anti-portfolio!
Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
VC’s have anti-portfolios for opportunities they passed on. Similarly every Wanna/intra/entrepreneur has an anti-portfolio of ideas that they had conviction on and didn’t take action for some reason.
I don’t mean any random idea that passed by people’s mind but an idea they had conviction on based on a unique market insight (Secret) much earlier than most people and yet didn’t get it off the ground. Here are mine:
Plug & play home security cameras [2005]:
Successful companies since then: Ring ($1B exit to Amazon)
Context: I was working on computer vision based retail analytics in 2005. Our company was building computer vision algorithms to run on security cameras that we could install in retail stores.
Industry Trends: The camera industry was moving over from co-ax cable based cameras to ethernet/wifi cameras making installation cheap. Camera costs were dropping from $500+ to $99. Software interfaces were switching from desktop apps to web browser links. Camera configuration and management was becoming lightweight through a web browser.
Secret Insight: Every home would have cheap wifi cameras for different purposes: nanny cams to start with.
Missed opportunity: Computer vision algorithms were nascent and challenging to scale in real world scenarios. I pitched my CEO to pivot the company from doing computer vision for retail analytics to building consumer security cameras / software for homes. I did not have the skills to persuade and didnt persist with the idea. Ring sold for $1B to Amazon.
Cheap Point of Sale devices [2007]:
Successful companies since then: Square, Clover
Context: I was working on computer vision based retail analytics in 2005-2010. Our company was building computer vision algorithms for retail analytics and we were working with POS vendors like NCR to integrate POS data with video.
Secret Insight: At that point NCR was selling custom POS systems for thousands of dollars. PC form factor was rapidly shrinking and prices were falling fast. POS devices were moving from custom software to running on PCs.
Secret Insight: POS systems would become cheap commodity hardware with great software.
Missed Opportunity: I once again pitched my CEO to pivot the company from doing computer vision for retail analytics to building cheap POS systems leveraging off the shelf small factor PCs. I didnt get a positive response and I let it go. There was a second wave of innovation in this space with iPads, iphone that has reshaped the market.
Grocery delivery [2009]
Successful companies since then: Instacart
Context: I spend many nights in grocery stores working with contractors to install cameras that were used for retail analytics to help grocery stories and brands make store layout decisions. I used to watch employees stock shelves and this seems like the biggest waste of time - workers unpack and stock shelves for people to walk along stores to pick them up. Then I’d think about store design and layout to help consumers shop and realize that grocery stores were way too crowded and disorganized. Why not have grocery store workers pack up groceries for shoppers instead and have customers pick up or have groceries delivered.
Industry trends: Hardware to help personal shoppers navigate stores fast and shop for multiple people at the same time was taking off. Safeway stared to have employees have with hand held devices shop for their delivery services. They didn't need separate warehouses, they just used their existing stores for delivery as well. Store inventory systems were starting to get better.
Secret Insight: Grocery stores will become warehouses for grocery delivery.
Missed Opportunity: Safeway and Giant had started their own delivery services on the east coast. My assumption was that the grocery stores themselves would lead in the delivery space. I hadn’t imagined that their infra wouldnt scale and the key lever would be delivery and shopping being outsourced to part time employees. Either way I missed on taking this bet on myself.
Coding schools [2010]
Successful companies since then: Codeacademy, Lambda School / Bloom
Context: I was quitting my job at the retail analytics company I was working and was exploring ideas. I could code computer vision algorithms reasonably but did not build full stack web applications. I was looking to find the coding academies
Industry Trends: Having grown up in India I knew that Aptech and NIIT which were part-time coding academies bootstraped the Indian software industry (1990-200) and created a supply of software engineers way before computer engineering schools spread like weeds (2000-2010). Nothing like that existed in india. The in-person, cohort based, lab / practical work of these academies was critical to their success.
Secret Insight: Cheap out of school software bootcamps will accelerate the number of software engineers in the world.
Missed Opportunity: I wanted to copy a startup idea that was already successful in India and build it in the US. I still believe this is a huge untapped opportunity but I didn't take action on it then.
No Code tools [2014]
Successful companies: bunch of them valued over $1B
Context: I had been a PM at Yahoo for 3 years and I still had a lot of ideas that i wanted to test out. I had just taken the Big Nerd Ranch iOS bootcamp so that I could build my own iOS apps for the ideas. I started to wonder half the B-school peeps and so many other people want light weight ways to test out their ideas by putting together components and configuring them. Or people should be able to build mini-applications that are very specific to them.
Industry Trends: bunch of interesting tech changes that were making cross platform dev possible and awareness of product management practices to validate ideas.
Secret Insight: Most people will build tools that are custom to their workflows using no/lo code tools
Missed Opportunity: This ideas kept coming back in my yearly review and I didnt act. The first company that dipped their toes was IFTTT and now there are a number of companies and this space is so well broken down from landing pages to full apps.
In all of these examples the common theme is that I had identified a secret before it was common knowledge and I let the inspiration perish or I lacked the persuasion skills. There are both examples of intrapreneurship where I could have played a role in changing the trajectory or the company I was working for or started companies that could have transformed industries.
You are all probably sitting on ideas that you have unique insight. Acting on those ideas could change the trajectory of your company and your career.