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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS198

California-based Interval Research Corporation did just this. The
company equipped its 20-something-year-old whizz-kid computer
designers with gloves, weights for their arms and legs, plus spectacles
with clouded glass so that they could experience at first hand what it
would be like for the elderly to operate the physical controls of the next
generation of televisions and other electronic equipment.150

All in all, the power of prototypes should never be underestimated.
Gary Mueller of Internet Securities, Inc. summed it up eloquently when
he described the reaction of an early prospect: ‘The client was like a kid
in a candy shop. It was one of those moments when you know you’re
really on to something.’

Gary Mueller and Internet Securities, Inc. –
selecting a venture to suit his needs151

Gary Mueller’s launch of Internet
Securities, Inc. exemplifies good practice for the idea

development process in general. In particular, it demonstrates best
practice for coarse-screening multiple ideas ahead of a more detailed
evaluation of those with the most all-round promise.

Gary Mueller graduated with top honours in biology in 1988 from
Harvard College and won a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to Germany
and Eastern Europe. His presence in Berlin in 1989 when the wall came
down brought home to him the significance of the opportunities involved
in regenerating Eastern Europe. He turned down admissions to a
number of top medical schools, including Harvard and Yale, to work on a
number of privatisation projects in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union with the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

His family’s background was in entrepreneurship – his grandfather had
established a manufacturing business, his father had set up a packing
plant and his mother had founded a store. His uncle had either run or
set up seven different businesses. Studying an MBA at Harvard Business
School was a logical next step for Mueller.

As a summer job after his first year at business school, Mueller joined
a group undertaking privatisation work in Poland. Given that no database
service existed which had information on publicly traded companies in
Poland, newspapers and word of mouth were often the main sources of
information. As Mueller himself expressed it: ‘There is a paucity of