At Google’s first Google for Entrepreneurs Day held in Sydney, the Australian branch’s Engineering Director Alan Noble highlighted three issues that upcoming startups should look at if they wanted to be successful.
Noble said that there has never been a better time to become an entrepreneur and for them to follow their passion.
“For many businesses, the internet has […] levelled the playing field. You can reach users and invite them as partners seamlessly,” Noble said at the event today.
“It’s never been easier to run your business, than it is today. You can move your core infrastructure and IT to the cloud in ways that […] you couldn’t do five years ago. You can now focus on the core idea — the thing that really differentiates your business.”
While Noble highlighted where Google can obviously help, he also had more general advice for those who wanted to know where to kick-start their startup, stating that, while there’s always a lot to work on, there are three issues that are necessary to get right: problems, users, and teams.
Problems
At the heart of every startup, Noble said that there must be a problem that must be solved.
“That’s sounds like complete sense, doesn’t it? But many great products start with the simple recognition that there’s a problem — something is broken, something can be done better, something can be done faster,” he said.
Noble said that many of these problems could be found in everyday life if entrepreneurs were attentive, but also imaginative.
“Definitely don’t worry about chasing the competition. Look for new ways of finding and doing things.”
Noble pointed to Gmail as an example of solving a problem (integrating search into email), but finding a new way of doing it.
“We didn’t simply bolt a search engine on to an existing mail client. We could have done that and said, ‘There’s this great desktop client out there.’ But we didn’t. We essentially imagined a whole new product from the ground up.”
Users
Number one on Google’s list of “Ten things we know to be true list” — essentially, the company’s 10 commandments — is to focus on the user…
Read more: Michael Lee, ZDNet
