Page 102 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success

CHAPTER FOUR

The Pull of the Market

Attach to Your Customer,
Not to Your Idea

“The greatest danger for a new venture is to ‘know better’ than the
customer what the product or service should be.”

—Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Apple founder Steve Jobs predicted its impact on society would rival
that of the personal computer. Its inventor, Dean Kamen, believed
cities and towns would be redesigned around it. “It will be to the car,”
he said, “what the car was to the horse-and-buggy.” And legendary
venture capitalist John Doerr promised that its maker would be the
fastest company in history to reach a billion dollars in sales.1

In December 2001, in one of the most anticipated launches in
commercial history, Kamen and his backers unveiled the Segway Per-
sonal Transporter, a revolutionary alternative to walking or driving.
The two-wheeled, magically balancing Segway was a technological
marvel, ten years and $100 million in the making, and it had wowed
riders in super-secret tests. A gleaming production facility sat ready

American Management Association • www.amanet.org