Lean Start-Ups Reach Beyond Silicon Valley’s Turf - NYTimes.com

[Owen Densmore]

Fascinating new approach to startups: http://goo.gl/p3yjk

What's really interesting is that the actual business model uses Machine Learning: develop a hypothesis (for a business) and test it using traditional ML method.  The particular startup uses AI & ML to build robotic "weed killers" w/o chemicals.  One of our Stanford ML lessons was to analyse images with "sliding windows" for feature recognition, exactly the weed vs plant logistic regression problem discussed in the article.

Quote: The start-up here points to the latest stage of evolution in Silicon Valley, the world’s epicenter of innovation. Over the years, the region has shown an unmatched economic dexterity in jumping from one industry of opportunity to another, from military electronics to silicon wafers to personal computers to the Internet.

But the business of the Valley today is less about focusing on a particular industry than it is about a continuous process of innovation with technology, across a widening swath of fields. The trend reflects the steady march of that most protean of technologies — computing — as it makes further inroads into every scientific discipline and industry. Clean technology, bioengineering, medical diagnostics, preventive health care, transportation and even agriculture are part of the mix these days for the Valley’s technologists and entrepreneurs.

The pace of discovery has quickened, not only for technologies but also for the process of finding out what companies will succeed.

 “What’s different in the Valley is that we’ve found a quasi-scientific method for reinventing businesses and industries, not just products,” said Randy Komisar, a partner in a leading venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and a lecturer on entrepreneurship at Stanford University. “The approach is much more systematic than it was several years ago.”

The newer model for starting businesses relies on hypothesis, experiment and testing in the marketplace, from the day a company is founded. That is a sharp break with the traditional approach of drawing up a business plan, setting financial targets, building a finished product and then rolling out the business and hoping to succeed. It was time-consuming and costly.

   -- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Owen Densmore]

On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 6:59 AM, Eric Renz-Whitmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

The lean startup model will be a big part of the startup theme for Tech Friday luncheons at the Complex in 2012 (announcements/info coming soon).  While it's not for everyone or every kind of business startup, it makes a lot of sense for many web/software ventures, and many of the principles are useful for different kinds of startups as well. 

Be interesting to see if more aspects of ML could be applied successfully!

There's currently a 'lean startup circle' starting up in Albuquerque (http://www.meetup.com/ABQ-Lean-Startup-Circle/) and we talk a little about all this at the Tech Council's Linked in group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups/NM-Technology-Council-1236607)

Best wishes, 

Eric

This does sound like an important idea.

BTW: Stanford will be repeating the ML class next quarter: jan2012.ml-class.org 

Andrew Ng is seriously engaged in making this class a success.  I'm sure he's using this year's class as a learning experience to improve the next.

So if anyone wished they had taken it this year, its not too late to sign up for next years.  Even folks interested in Business!

Also note Stanford has added two classes having to do with startups:

http://www.launchpad-class.org/

In this class you'll learn how to turn a great idea into a great company. We now know that startups are not smaller versions of large companies. Large companies execute known business models. They use big company tools - business plans, income statements, revenue models, etc. to help organized their execution. In contrast startups search for a business model. And all the big company tools are irrelevant in the early days of a startup. This class is not about how to write a business plan. It's not an exercise on how smart you are in a classroom, or how well you use the research library. The end result is not a PowerPoint slide deck for a VC presentation. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works.

http://www.venture-class.org/ 

How do you create a successful start-up? What is entrepreneurial leadership in a large firm? What are the differences between an idea and true opportunity? How does an entrepreneur form a team and gather the resources necessary to create a great enterprise? This class mixes in-depth case studies and research on the entrepreneurial process. For undergraduates of all majors who seek to understand the formation and growth of high-impact start-ups in areas such as information, green/clean, medical and consumer technologies. No prerequisites are necessary but the course is targeted at Juniors and Seniors. 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org