The document provides tips for entrepreneurs from Microsoft's Emerging Business Team in France and the UK. It discusses building a lean startup approach with incremental deliveries and iterative testing. Entrepreneurs are advised to delay design decisions, fail fast and early, and validate their minimum viable product and market hypotheses quickly. The document also covers effective pitching, partnering with large corporations, and networking strategies.

1. Entrepreneurs: Several Practical Tips to Help
you with your Business
Blaise Vignon / Bindi Karia
Microsoft Emerging Business Team
Microsoft France and Microsoft UK

2. Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking

3. A little bit about Bindi

4. Bindi career to date
Graduate 1996- 1998 – 2001 2002 2002- 2004 2005 –
1996 1998 2001 2004 Present

5. A little bit about Blaise
Polytechnique nVidia
Stanford BCG
Insead Microsoft
Engineer by training
Microsoft employee by vocation
Startup guy for the love of it

6. Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking

7. Microsoft ♥’s startups!

8. Why are we here?
Microsoft BizSpark is a program designed to provide software startups all the resources they need to build
successful companies and connect them with a community of experts.
• 47,000 startups and 2500 + Network Partners worldwide, in 112 countries and 9 languages
• 2,600 startups and 150+ NPs (UK) ; 1,000+ startups and xxx NPs (France)
In a nutshell, Microsoft ♥’s startups!
Software
• Full featured development tools and production for 3 years.
• Free Windows Azure computing time for 16 months.
Software
Support
• Professional technical support from Microsoft: Email support, Managed
newsgroups, invitation to BizSpark Camps.
Visibility
• 2 Free MSDN Support incidents.
Support
Visibility
• Profile on BizSpark Connect.
• Promotion on BizSpark.com.
• Offers and Events on BizSpark Connect.

9. How BizSpark Works
University
incubators,
government Investors Entrepreneur and
agencies industry associations Hosters
Network Partners sponsor Startups
Startups join BizSpark™
Visit www.microsoft.com/bizspark to learn more

10. CASE STUDY: (France)
Leader in European Social Gaming
$1-2bn market in 2012
Market Size Forecasts ($bn)
Founded 2008
80 staff
$7.5M funding in April 2011
Premium hits including GooBox
(+10m users) and Pyramidville
Source: Think Equity (2010); eMarketer (2010); Business Insight (2010)
(+5m users) 11

11. Global Social Games
Company Overview
WEBSITE:
www.kobojo.com Kobojo was created to give a social dimension to classic games and online
applications. The company was built on the belief that games are fun, but can be
LOCATION: even better when played with friends. Its products are designed for social
Paris, France networking sites, such as Facebook, to facilitate human connections and bring
people together. Five million users play Kobojo games monthly
YEAR FOUNDED:
2008 Why It’s One to Watch:
MARKET SPACE: In less than two years, Kobojo became one of the most popular gaming sites in
Entertainment Europe and earned a spot among the top 5 European companies in the social
gaming industry.
INVESTORS:
Self-funded
Kobojo founder Vincent Vergonjeanne competed at the 2004 Imagine Cup, where
his team captured the top prize in the software design competition. Other
EXECUTIVE TEAM:
Vincent Vergonjeanne, CEO members of the Imagine Cup team are now part of Kobojo as well.
Franck Tetzlaff, COO
Sébastien Monteil, CTO The company uses the agile development methodology to rapidly produce
Philippe Desgranges, Executive Producer games. This approach has attracted 41 million users since 2008 and continues to
pull in about 5 million users monthly.
AWARDS:
Featured at CES, Microsoft Booth, January The Kobojo game Robotz is running in Facebook and is hosted on Azure.
2011
Named to the Guidewire Group’s Innovate!100 Kobojo is well known for a sophisticated analytics platform for evaluating game
List, December 2010 play and optimizing for attracting highly networked users and driving
Winner, European BizSpark Summit, 2010 monetization. Kobojo’s goal is to be the global Zynga working with studios in
each of the target geographies to create engaging, local, social content.
JOINED BIZSPARK:
August 2009

12. Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking

13. Lean Startup
In short, it is like many
Software engineering is
other startup functions
• Highly creative • Marketing
• Very interdependent on co-workers • PR/Communication
• Loosely coupled • Business Development
• Product design
The learning from Software Engineering
have been applied to broader fields

14. A sad statistic
Proportion of New Businesses
Founded in 1992 Still Alive By Most startup failures are due to
Year. running out of money before
having the right product
There can be other (WCR,
founder shoutfest, litigation)
But not in the context of this
talk 
Source : Illusions of Entrepreneurship
Scott Shane (US Data, all industries)

15. The longer the project, the likelier the
failure

16. ….because the less clear what success looks
like
60
% of project requirement changes
50
40
30
20
10
0
10 100 1,000 10,000 100,000
Project size (measured in function points, yes, we know…)

17. …but do we know why projects should be big?
Only 13% of
features are used
often

18. … and designing the wrong thing is easy…
(We do not always know what the customer will look like)

19. Project (and startup) management can be like
this

20. Inefficient way of working
The « break-down and specialize » management method
leads to much waste:
Stock of useless functionalities, High cost of coordination
documentation and communication

21. Agility proposes a different management
paradigm…
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Source: http://agilemanifesto.org/

22. Important Agile Principles
Customer
satisfaction Collective
is the main goal commitment
Measure to Intrinsic
objectivize quality

23. …so we should delay design decisions as
late as possible
Incremental
deliveries
Iterative
deliveries

24. Fail fast, fail early
As we are delivering fast, we can harvest
positive and negative feedbacks
As we accept changes, we can take into
account these feedbacks and adapt our plans
Feedback is more precious than perfection

25. Agile Marketing
Imagine and
Generate demand
validate the MVP
Cu s t omer Cu s t omer Cu s t omer Company
dis c over y Val idat ion c r eat ion bu il ding
Validate market
Accelerate!
hypothesis

26. Business Model Canvas

27. Some great books…
http://institut-agile.fr

28. Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money – The “Perfect Pitch”
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking

29. That Chance Meeting…..

30. ONE Minute….or four floors….

31. And if you are pitching on stage?

32. Three to five mins MAX

33. WHAT? HUH? HOW?!?!?!

34. A simple formulaic approach:
Value The Your
Proposition Problem Solution
The Business
Your Team
Marketplace Execution
Business
Model

35. Your Value Proposition
• Simple, short, memorable, no insider “jargon”
• One-two simple sentences, that even “granny could understand”
• Remember, they don’t necessarily understand your industry!
OR

36. The Problem
• What are you trying to solve for your future customer
base?
• How many have that problem?

37. Your Solution / Technology
• Unique? USP?
• Concept / Alpha /
Beta/ Execution?
• How Meeting your
customer needs?
• Do Demo – but
*beware* of live
demos!?!
• They will ask
questions
throughout!

38. Your Marketplace –
• Market Size and Competition, your USPs

39. The Team
• Who are you? What have you
done before? Do you have
the right skills?
• Who do you need to hire
longer term?

40. Delivery Delivery Delivery!
Core Business Metrics (i.e. acquisition, activation, retention,
conversion, revenue)

41. Show me da money!!!
• Direct:
» SaaS
» Freemium
» Subscription
» Licensing
» Consulting
• Indirect:
» Advertising
» CPA / CPM
» Partnerships
» etc etc

42. Maybe then, you will get that second meeting!

43. And, don’t forget….

44. Great Resources for Practice Practice!
• Pitching in the UK • USA
» UKTI Pitch Workshops » DEMO Conference -
» TechCrunch events http://www.demo.com/ (launch or pitch)
» Seedcamp » TechCrunch Disrupt -
» BizSparkCamps http://disrupt.techcrunch.com/
» BizSpark Summit » Guidewire – Innovate Conference / Pitch
Slams
» NE England??
• How to’s:
• Pitching in Europe
» Guidewire – gscore
» Le Web Startup Competition http://guidewiregroup.com/services/g-
» The Next Web Startup Competition score/
» European BizSpark Summit » 500Startups -
» Start In Paris/Lyon http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/h
» Startup weekends ow-to-pitch-a-vc-aka-startup-viagra-how-
to-give-a-vc-a-hardon
» Search on Slideshare www.slideshare.com

45. Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking

46. Navigating the mysterious world of engaging
with large corporates “Swimming with Whales”
Who do you approach?
Understand your needs from them
Understand that contact person's internal objectives and
needs
Find the appropriate balance between persistence and
aggressivenes
Be prepared for your meeting.

47. Desired outcome

48. Agenda:
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking

49. Keith Ferrazzi – never eat alone

50. It’s not what you know, it’s *who* you know

51. Pay it forward!

52. The Genius Of Audacity…

53. Don’t be a Networking “Jerk”

54. Who do *you* really want to meet?

55. Cold Calling is so “Old Skool”

56. Be yourself! 

57. And finally, “Where’s Waldo?”

58. Agenda in Summary
1. Who are we?!
2. Why are we here?
3. Building your plan and lean approach
4. Raising Money
5. Effective Partnering with Corporates
6. Effective Networking