Lessons Learned: For Next-Generation Entrepreneurs Ying-Dar Lin 林盈達 August 20, 2013

Lesson I – Well-Told Story 10% will survive and 2% will IPO. Don’t think yours has higher chance. Be the first or the best, not “me too”. Pick the new or unsettled battle field! Chance for later comers? Redefining the market! The lower the barrier, the fiercer the competition. Barrier of the business model: technology, capital, or management? Selling products is often more difficult than developing them. Many kinds of sales channels: local vs. global, retailer vs. system integrator vs. tender, brand name vs. ODM, etc. The more the customers, the higher the difficulty.

Lesson 2 – Untold Story Innovations come from insightful detailed observations. The world does discriminate where the innovations come from. The world is flat, but … unfortunately still US-centric. Imagine what if the ideas of Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco came from other countries. There is a marginal space for followers to be profitable. Cost-effective alternative solutions. Component providers in the background. Filing patents to wait for the market might be superior than running a startup. Commercializing your innovations demands manageable executions. There are dozens of reasons that might fail a startup: market, technology, quality, sales, management, capital, etc.