Thomas Casteele emphasizes the importance of having a clear vision to guide your ideas when forming a startup.Thomas uses several case studies and examples to explore the successes and failures of various companies. This content was produced for the 2014 Brussels Fall semester of the Founder Institute by Founder Institute mentor and serial entrepreneur Thomas Casteele. Check out Thomas's Linkedin to learn more: https://be.linkedin.com/in/thomasvdc

1. Vision & ideas
Brussels, 19/11/2014

2. WE SHOULD
TALK!

3. Use data to
improve
advertising

4. Becoming wealthy
Creating a community
Getting critical acclaim /
Becoming industry leader
Changing society, industries

5. €€ ?

6. • Scalable (virtual component)
• High margin
• Recurring
• Business (life) critical
• Value for multiple stakeholders (platform)
• Small amount per transaction

7. Will your market position be
defensible 10 or 20 years in the
future?
Can you create breakthrough
technology?
Is now the right time to start
your business?
Are you starting with a big share of a
small market?
Do you have the
right team?
Do you have a way to distribute
your product?
Have you identified a unique
opportunity that nobody sees?

9. « when a management with a
reputation for brilliance tackles a
business with a reputation for bad
economics, it is the reputation of the
business that remains intact »
w. buffett

10. sequoiacap.com/ideas

11. 5-year sales growth of +4900%

12. “… unleash a new wave of Internet
disruption that decentralizes the entire
economy”
Vision!
“Blockstream has no clear roadmap on
how it will turn an open-source
software engineering project into a
corporate money-maker. Instead,
investors took a leap of faith.”
WSJ 17/11/2014
€ 21 mio investment
from Reid Hoffman, Jerry
Yang,
Eric Schmidt, Vinod Khosla
& others
Vision?

14. www.type22.aero