This document provides an overview of Alta Group Americas and its affiliated investment funds and programs. Alta Group Americas is headquartered in Lehi, Utah and has regional offices in Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico. It operates several venture capital funds that invest in early-stage technology companies, including Alta Ventures Mexico Fund I based in Monterrey and Mexico City, and Alta Growth Capital based in Mexico City. It also runs the Kickstart Seed Program based in Monterrey and Guadalajara to support the Alta Ventures Mexico fund. In total, Alta Group Americas and its co-investors have invested over $1.25 billion in startups.
Finding Product / Market Fit: Introducing the PMF Matrix - Presentation by Ri...Rishi Dean
These slides were used to facilitate a discussion of entrepreneurial MIT alums, mainly from the MIT Sloan business school. My intention was to introduce many of the newer, leaner concepts of early stage start-up development to a group that often sees "technology first" businesses.
This presentation centers on the concept of Product / Market Fit: what it is, why it's important, and how to achieve it. I propose my "Product Market Fit Matrix" that helps to characterize the issues of the start-up and presents various frameworks that can help guide development. In a sense the Product / Market Fit Matrix is a meta-framework.
For more information please visit: http://www.rishidean.com
Part of the MaRS Entrepreneurship 101 series.
An outline of various technology business structures
Speaker: Tony Redpath
Download the audio presentation and post questions on the MaRS Blog:
http://blog.marsdd.com/2006/11/02/entrepreneurship-101-debt-vs-equity/
The Innovation Bootcamp University of California Irvine Presentation by Sanja...Sanjay Dalal
Sanjay Dalal presented the Innovation Bootcamp at University of California, Irvine, Paul Merage School of Business on January 12, 2009. This was the accelerated version of the Innovation Bootcamp. Check out: www.InnovationMain.com for the Rigorous and Intermediate Innovation Bootcamps to jumpstart innovations and build an innovation factory.
The New Rules Of Early Stage Product DevelopmentRishi Dean
These slides were given as part of a talk I gave, called "The New Rules of Early Stage Product Development", in conjunction with the MassChallenge business plan competition. The goal is to provide a lens by which to understand the forces driving changes to how early stage products are designed, developed, and delivered and how to apply those techniques to one's own product development process.
Entrepreneurship 101: Different Forms of Entrepreneurshipguest7bfe78
An outline of various technology business structures.
* Is your business going to be a consulting practice? a service company? a product company?
* What are the different needs of the different types of companies?
* Where can you get money to launch your business - should you borrow or take investment dollars?
Learn the answers to these and other questions facing a would-be entrepreneur.
Speaker: Tony Redpath, course co-ordinator and MaRS Venture Group Advisor
Finding Product / Market Fit: Introducing the PMF Matrix - Presentation by Ri...Rishi Dean
These slides were used to facilitate a discussion of entrepreneurial MIT alums, mainly from the MIT Sloan business school. My intention was to introduce many of the newer, leaner concepts of early stage start-up development to a group that often sees "technology first" businesses.
This presentation centers on the concept of Product / Market Fit: what it is, why it's important, and how to achieve it. I propose my "Product Market Fit Matrix" that helps to characterize the issues of the start-up and presents various frameworks that can help guide development. In a sense the Product / Market Fit Matrix is a meta-framework.
For more information please visit: http://www.rishidean.com
Part of the MaRS Entrepreneurship 101 series.
An outline of various technology business structures
Speaker: Tony Redpath
Download the audio presentation and post questions on the MaRS Blog:
http://blog.marsdd.com/2006/11/02/entrepreneurship-101-debt-vs-equity/
The Innovation Bootcamp University of California Irvine Presentation by Sanja...Sanjay Dalal
Sanjay Dalal presented the Innovation Bootcamp at University of California, Irvine, Paul Merage School of Business on January 12, 2009. This was the accelerated version of the Innovation Bootcamp. Check out: www.InnovationMain.com for the Rigorous and Intermediate Innovation Bootcamps to jumpstart innovations and build an innovation factory.
The New Rules Of Early Stage Product DevelopmentRishi Dean
These slides were given as part of a talk I gave, called "The New Rules of Early Stage Product Development", in conjunction with the MassChallenge business plan competition. The goal is to provide a lens by which to understand the forces driving changes to how early stage products are designed, developed, and delivered and how to apply those techniques to one's own product development process.
Entrepreneurship 101: Different Forms of Entrepreneurshipguest7bfe78
An outline of various technology business structures.
* Is your business going to be a consulting practice? a service company? a product company?
* What are the different needs of the different types of companies?
* Where can you get money to launch your business - should you borrow or take investment dollars?
Learn the answers to these and other questions facing a would-be entrepreneur.
Speaker: Tony Redpath, course co-ordinator and MaRS Venture Group Advisor
Don't Quit Your Day Job - Launch While WorkingTai Goodwin
12 Steps to launching your business part-time. Stop waiting for the stars to align and pursue your your passion now. You can launch your business while working full-time. Don't think so? Others have done it - Daymond John of FUBU, Sarah Blakely of Spanx, and Lisa Price of Carol's Daughter.
The fairytale that is Apple; what can Norwegian firms learn from Apple's success story?
Presentation prepared forStavanger Chamber (Stavanger Næringsforening) Dec. 8th, 2011
This talk track was first given in 2006 on how to find new options, ideas within your firm to figure out how to win. It was done to a more beginner audience on how to think of themselves as innovators and to have some basic tools to start.
The Profit Pendulum: How Entrepreneurs Can Stop the Futzing Failure SyndromeRob Schultz
Are you caught in the Forever Futzing Trap?
That's when your business never gets ahead, because you're always delaying doing what will actually bring in money until after you:
Update my website with a fresh new look!
Add this cool new video thingamabobber to my sales page!
Rewrite my eBook to reflect my "new outlook"!
Take this cool new class I just found out about that will "change everything"!
The problem is: You are always discovering new things. This will always be true. And there will always be "one more thing" you feel you must do before you're happy getting your offers out there.
Here's a flash: That's a fast road to ruin.
Successful business owners learn to launch and integrate their discoveries at the same time. In fact, its the reason WHY they are successful. If you'd like to be one of them (instead of constantly "getting ready" to be one of them, you need this:
Don't Quit Your Day Job - Launch While WorkingTai Goodwin
12 Steps to launching your business part-time. Stop waiting for the stars to align and pursue your your passion now. You can launch your business while working full-time. Don't think so? Others have done it - Daymond John of FUBU, Sarah Blakely of Spanx, and Lisa Price of Carol's Daughter.
The fairytale that is Apple; what can Norwegian firms learn from Apple's success story?
Presentation prepared forStavanger Chamber (Stavanger Næringsforening) Dec. 8th, 2011
This talk track was first given in 2006 on how to find new options, ideas within your firm to figure out how to win. It was done to a more beginner audience on how to think of themselves as innovators and to have some basic tools to start.
The Profit Pendulum: How Entrepreneurs Can Stop the Futzing Failure SyndromeRob Schultz
Are you caught in the Forever Futzing Trap?
That's when your business never gets ahead, because you're always delaying doing what will actually bring in money until after you:
Update my website with a fresh new look!
Add this cool new video thingamabobber to my sales page!
Rewrite my eBook to reflect my "new outlook"!
Take this cool new class I just found out about that will "change everything"!
The problem is: You are always discovering new things. This will always be true. And there will always be "one more thing" you feel you must do before you're happy getting your offers out there.
Here's a flash: That's a fast road to ruin.
Successful business owners learn to launch and integrate their discoveries at the same time. In fact, its the reason WHY they are successful. If you'd like to be one of them (instead of constantly "getting ready" to be one of them, you need this:
An introductory talk on entrepreneurship for engineering students. Drucker's purpose of business, Blank's Customer Development, Moore's Crossing the Chasm, and Martin's Knowledge Funnel, and Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas
Product management in an era of disruptive innovation Nagarjun Kandukuru
[Made at SP Jain, Mumbai. Aug 2012]
We live in an era of massive disruptive innovation. More than at any other time in history of industry, we are witness to the massive upheaval of established incumbents – and their replacement by aggressive upstarts. Depending on your point of view this sea change provides massive opportunity – or a terrifying existential threat.
This new reality places substantial burdens on managers. Historical tools of product management are obsolete – and there is an attendant critical need for new practices.
Product management doctrine was based on a core principle best described as “Big up-front design”. The assumption was of a predictable future that could be analyzed – and planned for. Emphasis in this paradigm was on executing according to the plan. However, an analysis of the historical success rates for new business innovation has demonstrated that this process has been, at best, an abysmal failure.
New practices have emerged to enable product managers to adjust to a world of uncertainty. These are based on the premise of fast response to change rather than big up-front planning. They are predicated on documenting business models and conducting focused experiments to validate key assumptions. New practices and concepts have emerged: Customer Development, Business Model Canvas, Lean Startup, and Minimum Viable Product.
In this presentation, we introduce these new concepts – and describe how they can be integrated into new practices of product management that are effective in dynamic and disruptive environments. We provide an overview of the structure and application of these practices and their associated tools.
Presentación de Luis Rivera para la jornada "Financiación de empresas digitales" celebrada el pasado 14 de diciembre de 2011 en Madrid.
Organizada por ICEX, Plan Avanza, Vendes en Internet? y adigital.
Skate to where the puck will be - cliche or axiom?David Jones
Case study of one Australian's startup's pivots in the volatile market of eCommerce and fraud protection. Highlight things tips/traps for startups in competitive landscape, blindspots of technical founders and some unique challenges/opportunities for Australian startups.
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
SAP Sapphire 2024 - ASUG301 building better apps with SAP Fiori.pdfPeter Spielvogel
Building better applications for business users with SAP Fiori.
• What is SAP Fiori and why it matters to you
• How a better user experience drives measurable business benefits
• How to get started with SAP Fiori today
• How SAP Fiori elements accelerates application development
• How SAP Build Code includes SAP Fiori tools and other generative artificial intelligence capabilities
• How SAP Fiori paves the way for using AI in SAP apps
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
3. GROUP AMERICAS
Alta Group Americas
•Headquartered in
Lehi, Utah
Alta Ventures Mexico Fund I
• Headquartered in Monterrey
• Regional Office Mexico City
Alta Growth Capital
•Headquartered in Mexico City MEXICO
•Regional Office in Monterrey Kickstart Seed Program
•Support for Alta Ventures Mexico • Headquartered in Monterrey
• Guadalajara
3
7. Most Startups Fail?
Why is this acceptable?
Source: Small Business Trends Published 2008. Data from Bureau of Census
7
8. $400,000,000 - Direct Investment 7 Funds
$850,000,000+ - Co-investors X
$1,250,000,000+ - Total Invested
X
X X X
X
X X
X
A ER pr ise
O
X
8
9. “Most successful entrepreneurs I’ve met have no
idea about the reasons for their success. My
success was a mystery to me then, and only a
little less so now.”
- Bob Metcalfe, 3Com -Inventor of Ethernet
9
11. Doing good things…
Building alpha & beta versions of their products
Writing marketing materials
Hiring sale teams
Business development deals
Talking with analysts
Talking with customers
Building prototypes
Etc…
11
12. Scale It
Nail It
The Big
Scary
Chasm
Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards
Confidential Copyrighted Training Materials: Do Not Distribute
November 4, 2011 12
12
13. Most new products and businesses don’t fail in the market scaling
exercise, but in pre-chasm stages in the…
The Early Phase
Black Hole
13
13
19. 19
Entrepreneurs are doing good things, but *
not doing them in the right order. More
than 80% of the time entrepreneurs are
ignoring customer demand the right
product mix until after they have started
to scale their business.
* Harvard Business Review: Beating the Odds When you Launch a New Venture by Clark G. Gilbert and Matthew J. Eyring
19
20. Premature Scaling
Building products before you nail the pain
Writing marketing materials before you nail the solution
Hires sales teams before you know how to sell
Spending money before you understand the business model
20
21. Based on the Waterfall Product Development Model
Test Sell
Identify
Create Build product, product
product
product alpha build to
opportuni
specs product beta customer
ty
product s
21
22. Build Now, Sell Later How NOT to build a business 1.0
Reinforced in most universities & VCs by the business plan class
Discuss with Perfect the
/ raise Find a product
Entrepreneu money from location, and add Sell the
r has a idea friends, develop the features for product
family and product broad
fools appeal
22
23. Product Development Model Based on execution not research
“Midnight “Feature Lock- “Sales Pipeline
Genius” Stage in” Stage Problem” Stage
Discuss with / Perfect the
Find a
Entrepreneur
raise money
location,
product and
Sell the Russian
from friends, add features
has a idea develop the product Roulette
family and for broad
product
fools appeal
“Escalation of
“American Idol”
Commitment”
Stage
Stage
23
24. Entrepreneur Begin with the
Identify
has a idea Identify Customer!
Minimum Nail the
(based on Monetizeable (customer
Feature Set (of Product…
core Customer Pain centric
the customer)
competency) approach)
Deliver breakthrough customer centric
innovation.
24
30. More efficient launch process…
Efficiencies have driven down the cost of a startup.
$3-5 Million in late 90s = $50-300k today
Greater access to Seed Capital
EC2 - Amazon Web Services
Open source
20X number of consumers on the internet since 1997
Distribution through large social platforms
30
33. "...most often the very skills
that propel an organization to
succeed in sustaining
circumstances systematically
bungle the best ideas for
disruptive growth. An
organization's capabilities
become its disabilities when
disruption is afoot."
Clayton Christensen,
The Innovator's Solution
33
38. 149 ACCLERATORS
Only13% have an exit
The top .5% of accelerators have 85% of
the exit value
48% have not received any funding for
their companies
38
40. Incubators 1.0 (Dot Com)
1980:
12 Networked Incubators: Hothouses of the New Economy
Published: October 2, 2000
Authors: Morten T. Hansen, Henry W. Chesbrough, Nitin Nohria, and Donald N. Sull
2000: A successful company like Yahoo! is inundated with business proposals from
hopeful start-ups. When there is a wealth of opportunities, there is a poverty
of access because so many entrepreneurs are chasing so few potential
1000
partners, all of whom are extremely busy.
January 25, 1998
8 New Start-Up Incubators
for Business Proposed
40
51. Less than $20K investment
2-10% equity
Talent identification – Hacker News
No office space but office hours
Guaranteed follow on
Networking but not mentoring
Alumni Value = $7.78 billion*
Avg. worth of Ycomb company $45.2M
* Forbes April 2012 51
52. “For some reason more things than usual broke when
we jumped from 66 to 84.” – Paul Graham
Y Combinator Winter 2012
class shrank from 84 to 50.
Lowered follow on
investment from $150,000 to
$80,000
52
63. 63
2.
Systematic Innovation
3. IP
process
Documentati
on, Creation
Environments & Access
1.
Entrepreneur
Observation
-
of Market Pain
Inventor
4.
Community
Building/Net
working
5. Capital
63
64. 1. Get into the Field
2. Change or Fail Fast
3. Brutal Intellectual Honesty
4. Keep it Simple
5. Start Small
64
65. Paul Ahlstrom
Married, six kids, a golden retriever
Live in Utah & Mexico
Co-Author “Nail It Then Scale It”
Innovator, Entrepreneur, Investor
Founder Alta Ventures Mexico & Alta Growth Capital – Mexico
Founder KickStart Seed Fund & vSpring Capital – Utah
100+ investments over the last 12 years.
Ancestry.com, Rhomobile.com, Senforce, Aeroprise, Altiris, Juxta
Labs, Convert.com, Mural.ly
BYU - BYU Grad, BYU Rollins Entrepreneur Center
University of Utah & Ohio State- Board and executive committee of
the Technology Commercialization Office
Endeavor Mentor & ENLACE E+E Mentor - Mexico
65
Editor's Notes
Capital Emprendedor/Aventura Story
How often do we approach Startups like the seat of the pants entrepreneur.
If entrepreneurs have enough money, they eventually get it right… don’t they?Pareto principle named after Italian economist in 1906 Vilfredo Pareto, 80/20
Why it is acceptable in our industry to have an 80% failure rate? In which other industry in the world is this acceptable? Most VC’s aren’t increasing the odds of success
Most new ventures die before they even reach the chasm.Book Crossing the Chasm addresses how to cross the chasm.Paul asked Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm, how to companies can get to the Chasm. His answer? – “I don’t know.”
What drives entrepreneurs? There is an deep need to create, but once we build something, we will defend that creation… whether it is the Mona Lisa or Frankenstein.. It is still our baby.
All are working hard to innovate, but few can give me the definition of innovation.Innovation means connecting your invention with the customer (putting it in context)
Most people don’t know what their core competency is. If you don’t know what your core competency is, then go work for someone else until you have identified your inner genius. Not everyone should be an entrepreneur, that is OK.
Clark Gilbert & Matt Eyring.Why do entrepreneurs misprioritize their activities? That is how they have been taught… human nature… investors also contribute to the problem.Too much money, too early encourages premature scaling.
This is where Nathan and I connected. His PHD research and my street level observationsDoing good things, but doing them out of order. What is the right order and process we should follow to have consistent success?
The difference is the companies are leveraging and building off of their core competency.Known problems, known core competencies
Entrepreneurs are working on “unknown problems” and this model was developed for “known problems”, unknown customers, business models and no established distribution channels.What’s the difference? Unknown problems, unknown core competencies, unknown customers, unknown business models, ???Entrepreneurs are following in the footsteps of established companies, without understanding they are playing a different game. Unknown customers, no validated pain, no existing channels, unproven business models,
Once you have your idea, set it aside for a minute and start listening to the voice of the customer. (Does your product or idea address a monetizablepain? Validate your hypothesis of customer pain, solution and business model before building.
New model + less expensive resources makes it exponentially easier to iterate on Startup hypothesis until you get it right.
Year 2000 number: European Commission, Enterprise Directorate General, Benchmarking of Business Incubators, 20002, http://www.cses.co.uk/upl/File/Benchmarking-Business-Incubators-main-report-Part-1.pdfYear 2005 number: http://www.nbia.org/resource_library/review_archive/0807_02a.php
Quality first world problem
Early-stage investors are not afraid to do later stage deals, place greater amounts of money and syndicate with more investors. As with any classic disruption, the low-end of the market is moving upstream.
http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators
81 years earlier in 1877 – Thomas Edison learned the same lesson 1877 (it was year he invented the phonograph, his first “useful invention”
The phonograph wasn’t his first invention. That was a vote counter in 1869 (at the age of 22) Took him 8 years after his big failure to come up with his first success.The chairman of the committee, unimpressed with the speed with which the instrument could record votes, told him that "if there is any invention on earth that we don't want down here, that is it." The slow pace of roll call voting in Congress and other legislatures enabled members to filibuster legislation or convince others to change their votes. Edison's vote recorder was never used.
Ten years later he invented the lightbulb. Pictured around 1879, The year he patented the light bulb – 32 years old
The Edison versus Tesla productivity scorecard:Innovation output. Edison had received 1093 lifetime U.S. patents while Tesla had received 112. Although some of Edison’s patents (perhaps many of them) were bought or stolen, this is a huge number. Since Tesla wasn’t taking much money from Edison and only worked for him a short time, there is no way Edison could have stolen many from him.Innovation success rate. Almost 100% of Edison’s patents were tied to commercial successes while Tesla’s number was similarly high in the early years while working for Westinghouse then plummeted to about 20% after he went out on his own.Capital productivity. Edison built up sophisticated laboratory operations, employing some of the best and brightest people in the world, with Tesla among them for a while. Tesla built up similar labs while involved with Westinghouse and when on his own. The difference is that Edison did not hesitate to scale down or close operations from time to time as his organizational needs changed to remain solvent. Tesla had his creditors closing them for him.Labour productivity. This is one of the greatest differences between Edison and Tesla. Edison always had several people involved with his projects while Tesla generally worked alone. Tesla might have had extremely high levels of personal productivity at times, but Edison had the advantage of having a virtual army at his disposal. For example, Edison was able to accumulate over 5 million pages of organized records while Tesla had relatively few and they were not as well organized as Edison’s. Edison and Tesla both had legendary work ethics, but only Edison had it instilled at an organizational level.Media output (the Google Test). A quick Google image search of “Thomas Edison” generated 123,000 returns while the same search of “Nikola Tesla” generated 35,000 returns. Edison and Tesla each had the ability to engage the media in their day although Edison had the upper hand in this regard too.Network productivity. This is the Who’s Who test. Edison developed close relations with some of the most powerful and influential people around in his day, including Henry Ford, while Tesla also knew such people but tended to alienate most of them over time.
Process based innovationAligned vision and methodShared vocabulary and process Environment to improve and collaborate