What start-ups should do to grow in the near future? Mr. Pierre Kladny gives three key advices to start- ups for finding the right direction to survive and enlarge. Entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience, Mr. Kladny founded his first company at age 23, started and sold 4 companies successfully in the technology and consumer goods sectors. Today he is managing partner at a boutique private equity and M&A firm, ValleyRoad Capital.
Mr. Kladny, speaker at the Readiness for (Private) Funding panel at our IOT360 Summit, now answers our questions about his experience at IOT 360 Summit.
Which were the main contributions that IOT360 Summit has brought to the global discussion on IoT?
The summit has allowed experts in the field of IoT to exchange on current trends and best practices. It has also allowed some lesser known actors to showcase their know-how and technologies.
What should start-ups focus on to significantly grow in the near future? In which direction should business projects move according to the future developments of the Internet of Things?
Regardless of the field or sector, start-ups should focus on:
- Lean structures, stay small and flexible, hire outside of payroll;
- Customer “pain”, who are your customers and what are their pressing needs, how can you solve their problem, how much are they willing to pay for a solution? These are absolutely essential questions.
- Deliver, don’t over-engineer. Focus on minimal acceptable feature sets (MAF).
More specifically for IoT, the number of field applications is so vast (traffic control, agriculture, medical, surveillance, traceability, etc.) that projects can move in any of these directions. Probably the current most pressing concern is traffic management, but that is a governmental issue and governments have little money and a political agenda.
What are your main expectations for the 2015 edition of IoT 360 Summit? Would you suggest any issues to be discussed?
Yes, I think the legal, moral and security aspects of data transmission, collection and analysis should be a big topic, which experts both from academia, government agencies and the private sector.
