Bob Dorf: "Entrepreneurship is a life, it’s total dedication!"

On june 1st we start SKOLKOVO Startup Academy classes and the first kickoff module will be hold by Bob Dorf, Startup Academy mentor, serial entrepreneur and co-author of The Startup Owner’s Manual. He allocated 5 min in his schedule and answered our questions about Startup Academy and entrepreneurship.

-What people would you like to see among your students?

-I’m hoping to see passionate young entrepreneurs who understand that startups don’t go in a straight line and who are ready to work harder than they have ever worked before in their lives, to make mistakes that they have never made before, to learn from those mistakes, to get punched on the nose, to be knocked down, to stand up, to wipe their nose and get back to work with energy and excitement of their business idea. That is what really characterizes a great entrepreneur.

- Projects in what sphere are most interesting for you?

- To be honest, I enjoy a wide range of projects: from physical goods and manufactory to retail and Internet. But I guess the most exciting and interesting projects are web and mobile startups, where you can get so much feedback from your customers so quickly, and change things in a day or evening, to react to the feedback and keep involving your product over and over again. So, the speed of change, speed of learning of web and mobile startups, generally, make them the most interesting.

- What is more interesting for you: to find a new business idea or a new business model?

- I think finding a new business model. You see, many new business ideas come from a dramatic change in a business model. Taking a piece of software that isn’t being sold so well and deciding, “well, we’ll give away the basic software and get people excited about the basic software and then we’ll sell them add-on features or long time subscription and things like that” and so, it’s a business model change, not a product change. So, sometimes the greatest leverage comes from changing a business model, and the opportunity to do that is very exciting. It is not really up to us to decide whether a new business idea is a great idea or not, it’s up to the customers. And whereas the business model change you can sometimes take further risk or be more creative.

- How may people should it be a team? Who is needed except for an idea-creator?

- Well, unfortunately in startups having an idea is the easiest part. Anybody can have an idea, it’s all about execution. So bringing the idea to life, getting the feedback, learning from the feedback and changing the business idea based on what you learn from your customers. Any single person really can’t do that effectively, you need a team that includes an idea generator, but also someone with a very strong technical or software development background, and someone with a sale or marketing background who is glad to go out and find customers and opportunities. So, generally, the most successful teams are those of 3 people: a sales/marketing person, a founder or an idea generator and someone with strong technical abilities.

A full list of of Startup Academy teachers and mentors you can find here. By the way, SKOLKOVO Startup Academy starts on June 1st, so if you hurry up, you can succeed to get in the first intake!