This lecture was delivered to undergraduates at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering for the course on How to Form New Ventures in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

1. Duke ECE 490L: How to Start New Ventures in
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Poornima Vijayashanker
poornima@femgineer.com
Jeff Glass
jeff.glass@duke.edu
Akshay Raut
ar118@duke.edu
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2. Introduction
• Story of how this course came to be!
• Pratt ’04 - ECE/CS
• R&D Engineer @ Synopsys
• Founding Engineer @ Mint.com
• Founder & CEO @ BizeeBee
• Founder of Femgineer.com
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3. Agenda
• Syllabus for this course
• Goals
• Unlisted goals
• Today’s lecture: Ideation
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4. Syllabus
• Lecture - Class Participation
• Readings - Quizzes
• Labs
• Final project
• Office hours: TTh 3-4pm CIEMAS 3431 & 3591
• e-mail listserv: duke-ece-490l@googlegroups.com
• Texts: Lean Analytics
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5. Goals
• Goals
• Commercialize your idea
• Understand market research
• Customer discovery and development
• Dynamics of teamwork
• Explore financial models and fundraising
• Unlisted Goals
• Participate in the Duke Startup Challenge
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6. Resources
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7. Advantage of being an engineer.
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8. Ideation.
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9. Resist the urge to build.
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10. Romantic period.
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11. “Value in a startup is validating learning not
creation of stuff.” - Eric Ries, Lean Startup
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12. 1. Come up with a hypothesis.
2. Figure out what you want to measure
3. Run an experiment.
4. Measure results from experiment.
5. Learn.
6. Move on to next hypothesis.
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13. Uncertainty.
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14. Limited resources.
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15. Learning
ReleasingBuilding
Balancing act.
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16. Can apply to ANY business.
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17. Let’s get started!
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18. Purpose of this class is to help Goldilocks...
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19. No idea!
Too many ideas!
Is this the right
idea?!
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20. Where do ideas come from?
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21. Creative Minds.
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22. The idea fairy.
Past experiencesPassions
Pains
Reading
Conversations
Interests
Hobbies
Digesting
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23. Don’t jump into building...
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24. Ideation Philosophy
• Don’t fear thought crime!
• Put a team together
• Make a list of people to reach out to: mentors, potential teammates, experts, influencers.
• Don’t fall in love with an idea!
• Fall in love with the process of generating and executing on ideas.
• Realize that ideas evolve.
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25. More on Thought Crime
• Get another company to steal your idea.
• Tell them your idea!
• Execution is key.
• Eventually someone will steal your idea if it is good.
• Market leader.
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26. Two Paths
Invention
understand advances & limitations
in technology & create a
commercially viable product
e.g. transistors v. vacuum tube key
to modern day electronics,
incandescent light bulb vs. candle
and heating oil
Re-Invention
improve upon an existing product
e.g. Mint - Quicken
e.g. Tesla - Hybrid
come up with a new take on an old
concept
e.g. Twitter - telegram, sms
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27. Invention
• List new forms of technology that interest you
• Understand the limitations
• Potential application
• Existing technology
• Why is this so popular?
• What are its limitations?
• New forms of technology
• How does it outperform existing technology? Saves money/time, takes up less space, more
reliable, longer life, higher quality.
• What is limiting it from becoming popular? Regulations, additional R&D, additional infrastructure,
change in behavior?
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28. Re-Invention
• List 5 things you have thought of improving.
• Who faces these pains?
• Have they tried to solve the pain themselves or are there solutions that solve
these pains?
• For each existing solution list why it rocks and why it sucks.
• What are some related pains?
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29. Techniques.
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30. Duke ECE 490L
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31. Mind Mapping
• Visual outline of information
• Ground rules
• 1-2 hours per session with breaks.
• Don’t discount of judge any ideas!
• Take your time & don’t rush.
• Capture all ideas and connections.
• MindMeister
Supplemental Reading: Mind Mapping Guidelines
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32. Example of a Mind Map
Blog
Education
Consulting
Online Offline
Entrepreneurship Engineering Business Engineering
Brainstorming various
directions to
take the business
mind map
Co-WorkingTwitter
Build prototypesMarketing
Analytics
Spotlighting
women
Startups
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33. Review
• Ideation
• Invention & Re-Invention
• Thought Crime
• Techniques - Mind Mapping
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