Start-Up: the book

My sixth article in the newsletter Créateurs about high-tech success stories: Swissquote. I am leaving Silicon Valley after purely American stories with Adobe & Genentech, then followed by Europeans in SV (Synopsys, VMware) to talk about a pure Swiss success!

Mark Bürki and Paulo Buzzi are the two founders of one of the nicest Swiss (not to say European) success stories: Swissquote. No link to Silicon Valley, no venture capital, an exception to what I am used to promote. “Just a” local online bank launched in 1997 as a spin-off of a software service company, Marvel, which was founded in 1990. Bürki and Buzzi did not launch their start-up in a Garage like HP, Apple or Google; worse, it was in a cellar! The beginnings were not easy, salaries were not always guaranteed…

The USA played a role however. At a conference in Boston, the two founders discovered a new promising platform: the Internet. Sitting at a tiny booth, the founder of an unknown start-up, Amazon. Later, a contract with the IOC, the International Olympic Commitee, for the design of their web site, gave the much needed cash to Marvel. Marvel had also specialized in financial applications and Bürki could see the potential of the Internet for the consumer of stock and financial news.

With a Zurich-based bank as a financial partner, Marvel launched Swissquote in 1997. The beginnings were very encouraging and at that time, most investment banks were competing for the fast-growing start-ups to be quoted on stock exchanges. Swissquote went public in 2001 with less than CHF20M in sales and a huge loss. The future would not be as nice as the pre-IPO boom and the burst of the Internet bubble threatened the mere existence of the company. But Bürki and Buzzi were not part of the mass of entrepreneurs who disappeared as fast as shooting stars. Decisions were tough, many employees were fired but Swissquote survived. In 2009, its sales were about CHF100M with a net profit of CHF35M, and its market capitalization was nearly CHF600M.

In August, and then in November 2006, I had invited the two founders to share their entrepreneurial experience on the EPFL campus. They had explained the importance of a vibrating ecosystem, as they had enjoyed it in Lausanne during their studies, years before. “When we were students in computer science”, Bürki noticed, “the sixty or so students in the department belonged to about twenty different nationalities”, a diversity that can be found in the best technology clusters. Without any business training, they learnt how to manage a company with two hundred people. The two founders are convinced that you learn these things by doing. Two founders. Another important topic. Your co-founder can challenge you with the right questions that a lonely founder may not solve easily.

Bürki also mentioned the vital role of the dream by quoting, in a rather surprising manner, Che Guevara: “Be Realistic, Ask for the Impossible.” As a reminder of their beautiful years at EPFL and also as a sign of their success, Marc Bürki and Paolo Buzzi took in 2008 a typically American decision by creating an endowed chair in quantitative finance.

It is an exercise I usually like to use as an introduction to high-tech entrepreneurship: give me the name of 10 big sucess stories, and I mean (for example) the name of 10 public companies, which were founded as start-ups in the last 40 years. Usually, it is quite easy to give American names, and more difficult to find European ones. So the tables below give such names for IT first and for biotech second.

I had done the exercise in my book in 2007 but some companies such as Business Objects or Sun Microsystems have been acquired. Here I add the sales and profit numbers to the market caps and the number of employees.

What is striking I think, in addition to the difference in order of magnitudes is the difference between foundation to IPO year. Biotech is slightly different, though I am not sure it is fundamentally different… It is however interesting to notice that time to IPO is much more similar between the two continents in biotech than it is in IT.

Here is my fourth contribution to Créateurs, the Geneva newsletter, where I have been asked to write short articles about famous success stories. After women and high-tech entrepreneurship, Adobe and Genentech, here is Aart de Geus, founder of Synopsys.

Aart de Geus was born in the Netherlands in 1954. At the age of 4, he moved with his parents to french-speaking Switzerland and in 1978, he graduated from EPFL, the Swiss Institute of technology in Lausanne (where I currently work). He then moved again to the USA and got his PhD from the Southern Methodist University in Texas. After a few years with General Electric (GE), he founded Synopsys in 1986, raised $15M of venture-capital before Synopsys went public (in 1994). In 2008, Synopsys had 5′600 employees, $1.3B in sales and a $3B market capilalization.

According to him, « Everybody from Europe who comes to the U.S. or Canada is looking to discover something ». In his case, when he arrived to the USA, he was lucky in being assigned as a graduate student to Ron Rohrer “He took a liking to me. […] Rohrer essentially gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted within the graduate school research facilities”. Rohrer became his mentor. He learnt how to manage a team, a know-how he changed in a management style. “everybody counts on the team and there’s always a role for everybody, which produces an ecosystem that manages itself.” He recognizes it is as much luck as destiny.

He also shows how difficult it is to predict anything: “In fact, I’ll tell you a story. In 1978 or ‘79, I attended a conference in Switzerland of leaders in the field of electronics, or microelectronics. They all agreed on 2 things. Number 1, electronics was going to be a big deal and would move forward for many years to come. Number 2, one micron was the hardest barrier that we would never move across. And [laughing again], those same people who made the predictions are the ones who made 22 nanometers happen!” and he adds: “The lesson here: whenever one predicts the end of something in high tech, there’s always a twist or new perspective that makes a new breakthrough possible.”

Aart de Geus, a born entrepreneur?

The art of metamorphosis…

Aart appreciates complexity and metamorphosis. Everything is important and everything changes. In the early days of a start-up, ideas and people matter. When you have an idea, what do you do? “First, you write a business plan. Then, you ask, is it ethical? Is it okay to do that? How do you go about planning the business so as not to go up against GE?” Well, according to Aart, “there’s a simple answer. You write a business plan and propose it to GE. After all, it was clearly their IP. Period.” GE not only backed the idea but invested in it. Money and values are essential at that stage.

But the baby has to grow. The teenager will have to develop the products, sell them to customers. This may be a tough crisis. Does Aart feel lucky to have survived? “Luck favors the well prepared,” and added that a fortuitous combination of management, graduate students, geographic location, viable business plan, and marketing expertise were augmented by having the “right technology at the right time.”

Back to EFPL in 2007.

… with the risk of becoming a dinosaur !

The adult age means processes, experienced managers so you need to survive the tornadoes that Geoffrey Moore describes so well. Aart summarizes these permanent metamorphoses through a parallel management of teams, customers, investors, products and their cycles, but also managers, leaders, implementation. All these things are interdependant and it is often underestimated. In a talk he gave to EPFL in 2007, he showed the history of Synopsys acquisitions in the form of the animal below! His sense of humour was certainly very useful. This sense of humour hides the humbleness of the individual who succeeded without giving any lesson. If there is one lesson in all this, is that you must try, be curious and flexible. Success may come.

As usual, I finish with my beloved capitalization table and charts.

Sources :
-Aart de Geus at l’EPFL (vpiv.epfl.ch)
-Peggy Aycinena (www.eetimes.com)
The Aart of Analogy is alive and well at Synopsys -2001
The Aart of Analogy Revisited -2009

Next article: A Swiss in Silicon Valley

Not only is The Ultimate Cure a good novel which describes the start-up life, the venture capitalists and what it costs to be an entrepreneur (and it reminds me of Po Bronson’s The First $20 Million Is Always The Hardest) but it is also a great novel, about human nature and what drives us in life. Here it reminds me of Swiss rising star, Martin Suter and his psychological thrillers. Most importantly, it is a great pleasure to read.

Author Peter Harboe-Schmidt has done a really nice “oeuvre”. Here is just a small piece:

“Take your start-up as an example. Why did you do it? If you analyzed the pros and cons for doing a start-up, you’d probably never do it. But your gut feeling pushed you on, knowing that you would get something very valuable out of it. Am I right?”
Martin speculated on why he was so drawn to a world that at times could appear to be no more than sheer madness. Like a world parallel to real life with many of the same attributes, just much more intense and fast-moving. People trying to realize a dream in a world of unpredictability and unknowns, working crazy hours, sacrificing their personal lives, rushing along with all those other technology based start-ups. Medical devices, Internet search engines, telecommunications, nanotechnologies and all the rest competing for the same thing: Money. To make the realization clock tick a little faster.
“Funny you should say that,” Martin finally said. “I’ve always thought of this start-up as a no-brainer.I never tried to justify it in any way.”

Following a long phone conversation with a Swiss entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, I received from him an email where he put his thoughts. They are indeed quite interesting and he authorized me to publish them:

“It’s a bit depressing to see that things change slowly (I had that intuition already)…

On a philosophical standpoint, I was thinking while driving my car that one of the issues is self-confidence.In the USA, everyone is raised with the idea that “anything is possible”, the “American dream”, to the point that it is sometimes stupid and annoying… On the contrary, in Switzerland, anyone wants to do things well and the culture is more about “this is not possible” or “I do not know how to do this”. But to be an entrepreneur, you must not be afraid of trying, of being far from perfect, of doing things in fields you do not master and sometimes even “quick and dirty”. It is the opposite culture of the Swiss craftsman who is a perfectionnist, the “travail bien fait”)… In summary, it is important to learn by doing things such as:

- Who to raise money, wher to begin?
- How to negotiate a shareholder and investor agreement?
- How to deal with partners?
- Learn how to negotiate
- How to work with Head Hunters, Lawyers, Customers…?
- How to build and manage a team? - How to hire a sales team (a tough thing for an engineer). By the way, what are marketing, sales, operations?!!

- What about productization, schedule, specs, qualification?
- Where to find distributors?
- etc…

All this can not be taught in schools, I am not sure it is covered in an MBA. I am not conviced it can be taught anywhere. According to my experience, an entrepreneur does not stop doing new things, quite badly the first time and hopefully better and better with time. One should not have the negative attitude of never trying difficult and risky ventures, which does not mean one should launch or fund unrealist projects… There is a fuzzy line between arrogance (one should know its own limits) and dynamism of a good entrepreneur.

It is certainly a bad thing that engineering schools do not provide enough about marketing, accounting, legal elemts in the curriculum. But this is also true in teh USA, by the way!”

I was yesterday in Grenoble for a round table on the Nouveaux Conquérants:

The topics that were discussed were very similar to the comments above: self confidence, uncertainty, risk taking, passion, and success & failure.

Another interesting illustration about the differences between America and Europe: growth in the US and UK biotech. The full account can be found in Nature Biotechnology and my friend Andre mentioned the blog Corante where he read about it.

The conclusion of this blogger is:

“What I found interesting about the editorial, though, wasn’t these conclusions per se – after all, as the piece goes on to say, they aren’t really a surprise [...] No, the surprise was the recommendation at the end: while the government agency that ran this study is suggesting tax changes, entrepreneur training, various investment initiatives, and so on, the Nature Biotechnology writers ask whether it might not be simpler just to send promising UK ideas to America.

Do the science in Great Britain, they say, and spin off your discovery in the US, where they know how to fund these things. You’ll benefit patients faster, for sure. They’re probably right about that, although it’s not something that the UK government is going to endorse. (After all, that means that the resulting jobs will be created in the US, too). But that illustrates something I’ve said here before, about how far ahead the VC and start-up infrastructure is here in America. There’s no other place in the world that does a better job of funding wild ideas and giving them a chance to succeed in the market.”

I just read two reports about innovation. The one in French is very deep (see my post on the French part of the blog). The one in English is also full of interesting lessons and learning. “What is the right strategy for more innovation in Europe? Drivers and challenges for innovation performance at the sector level” was published last June by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research. (Direct link to pdf file)

The authors try to differentiate innovation with sectors and geography (economic advancement.) For example “The data show that firms in economically less advanced member states are less likely to be innovators than firms in countries with more developed economies such as Germany or Sweden, and if they are innovators they are more likely to be technology users.” and “It has also proposed a new classification of industries that is based on the characteristics of entrepreneurship and a broad concept of innovation that transcends the conventional R&D-based classifications.”

I like some of the conclusions such as “Knowledge acquisition from external sources is of particular importance in sectors with large shares of technology users, whereas R&D activities are important in sectors where firms that are technology producers prevail. […] For firms based in countries that are at a distance from the world technological frontier, technology transfer and non-R&D related innovation activities are extremely important to promote innovation. […] On the other hand, for firms located in countries on or close to the technological frontier, intensive innovation activity is a driver of competitiveness. In order to maintain a competitive edge firms need to invest in R&D, acquire and adapt new technologies.

Of course all this is not obvious and may be counterintuitive. Look at Cisco in the USA, which does A&D more than R&D (they acquire start-ups and then develop). Is Cisco at the Frontier or not?

In terms of national policies, an interesting lesson: “The results show that the impact and the magnitude of these factors vary greatly across industries and countries. In fact, most variables can have either a positive or a negative influence depending on the sector. For the energy sector, the ICT industries and the aerospace industry public R&D subsidies have a positive effect, whereas R&D spending by the government seems to crowd out R&D investment in the textile, chemical and ICT industries.” I see a slight contradiction here but…

Then the authors address the issue of human capital: “Engineering and science skills contribute directly to international competitiveness” and “the returns to higher education will be higher for countries farther away from the technological frontier due to the greater importance of technology transfer and absorptive capacities […] On the other hand, in countries that are on or close to the technological frontier accumulated knowledge and experience are a precondition for sustained innovation performance and growth.”

On the competition side, they explain: “Competition is based on the interplay between the creation of novelty and imitation, i.e. between exploration and exploitation of opportunity. […] Firms that compete mostly with less advanced firms, have an incentive to reduce their risky R&D investments, as they are easily able to keep a competitive advantage over their rivals without incurring the cost of R&D investments. On the other hand, if they compete with firms with similar technological capabilities, they have an incentive to invest more in R&D, as this is a means to explore new opportunities and market niches and therefore set themselves apart from their competitors.

About the gazelles, the fast growing companies: “… a count reveals a significantly higher number of gazelles in the new member states of the European Union than in other EU countries. […] Statistical analyses show that in the more advanced economies of the European Union (continental and northern countries) fast growing firms are mostly of the creative entrepreneurship type and they also have a significantly larger share of turnover from product innovations. For gazelles in the southern European countries and the new member states innovation is much less important.”

Among the challenges for Europe, here are some scary elements:

-          There is the danger that firms will increasingly relocate their research activities to countries where conditions concerning human resources and scientific infrastructure are better.

-          For technology intensive sectors the problem is that they are not able to hire enough top level science and engineering graduates or attract the best-qualified engineers, scientists and specialists from abroad to their industry. These problems are particularly severe for new and fast growing firms that cannot rely on a long-standing reputation to attract people with top level qualifications and skills.

-          For firms carrying out high-risk research, for young and small start-up firms and for firms facing extraordinary growth opportunities the lack of financial resources constitutes a serious problem. New financial instruments tailored to the needs of emerging firms remain underdeveloped in most EU countries.

The Ditchley Foundation is a strange thing for a non-British I assume. I attended in mid-May a workshop on Innovation where gentlemen (and not many women as it is common in technology) discussed about innovation in a beautiful18th century castle!

The discussions were relaxed, friendly but serious and passionate. The main lesson I learnt is that clearly innovation is still seen as a process for established institutions and not really as what start-ups do best. For those interested in a refreshing view on the topic, the synthesis produced by the chairman of Ditchley is of real interest and available online.

Too much organization harms Innovation

These are the title and subtitle of a brilliant paper (inFrench only) by Julien Tarby in the Nouvel Economiste dated June 5, 2008. His article echoes my worries about innovation in Europe. His analysis is really interesting. Among other examples, he quotes:

- Samuel Kortum et Josh Lerner: 1 euro invested in venture capital has a 10x return over 1 euro spent in the traditional R&D of companies

- Pascal Picq, a paleo-anthropologue, who develops the evolution theory applied to the enterprise: start-ups which adapt to survive are Darwinian. “Unfortunately the French education system remains Lamarckian, and considers that organizations improve in a development scheme (administration, big companies). It is the country of the planned projects (planes, trains) and not of disuptions. This culture of the norm does not tolerate variability, trial and error and it induces the development of the [existing] fields of excellence and not the creation of new fields.”

If you read French, and because it is free, you shoud run and download it!

I had the pleasure to be interviewed on the book “Start-Up” by Doris Obermair. The text is available in Spanish as well as in English in the magazine If… La Revista de Innovation : Más pasión y sueños, menos infraestructura y experiencia (english version)

and the video (in English) is available on the web site Infonomia.

Finally, I will attend the Ifest conference on July 10-11 to talk about the topic of my book. Because of the diversity of the attendants, I think it will be a great event.