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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-18
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFtKEX_xP1M
well I've spent thirty five years of my life trying to disrupt a single specific market on the software market for computer aided design software or CAD software because worked in this field since I was literally a teenager and along the way it started three different companies the cat software my first company promise you've probably never heard of on my second company solidworks side it started nineteen
ninety three with the goal of disrupting a cat marketplace and providing a new solution to cat users around the world and we succeeded in doing it solidworks I think truly disrupted the market over the twenty years almost twenty years I was there solidworks rose to our have millions of users create billions of dollars in revenue in billions of dollars in value and most importantly I think
in have improved the way that millions of products around the world been designed and manufactured that's most the most gratifying part of destruction but after twenty years that's all works I could see that the market was ready for a new generation US Russian and so I left and I started a new company called I'm shape with the goal to once again I just dropped the cat
marketing do something good for the design teams in the world this time built on cloud web and mobile technology to respond to the needs of modern product design team now I'm not sure if anyone knows too much about CAD software some do it's don't you feel kind of infer along the way what it's about so I'm here today to talk to you about how to think
like a disruptor %HESITATION to fit the theme of the day of disruption what have I learned in my thirty five years in the cat market about how to think what kinds of thinking process seeds to disruptors use whatever I used and one of the companies the many other companies I've seen a board member and adviser at many other companies and I'd like you I've observed some
of the biggest companies in the world disrupt markets too and I'm trying to bring all that to bear to inform me this morning and talking to you about what I see as the ingredients to thinking about all thinking like a disruptor and organize my comments and three aspects of thinking about well disruptor destruction one needs identification how do we find problems and needs in the world
to ideas and solutions and three execution because it's not enough to have an idea you have to actually go and build so let's start with needs great disruption solves needs or problems in the world and the thing I tell you about needs is they all come from people to see needs and problems in the world you don't look at technology look at people my father told
me as a kid he said John no matter what you do in life you must learn to deal with people think about people he was so right because even though so many of the disruptions I've been part of and so many of the ones that you might be about are driven by technology for sure the problems that we solve are always people so to think like
a disruptor you have to become almost like our our a radar scanning system of emotions and reactions of people starting with yourself in your own experiences yes a consumer of products as a user of services but also observing the other people around you insult my motivation to start solidworks was not only about CAD techno or the emerging windows see it was also driven most strongly by
looking at kat users I would visit users and I'd see them using the old generation of software and sometimes the users would tell me how happy they were with the software they didn't say they were having problems but I could see the problems so consumers users of things sometimes not even now sometimes so complain but sometimes they won't complain though just live with the problems they
have and talk about a matter factly a disruptor thinks about those I thought about those I would watch them using the system and then they'd they'd show me how easy something was but it took twenty one stops and they had to write down notes on a piece of paper like that's not that easy or they talk about how affordable it was but I could see it
cost a lot of money and so I could see in them the need for for software that was easier to use that was less expensive and that was really motivating to me and starting a solid works with I'm shape same thing I'd visit twenty years later I was visiting solidworks users and I'd see that as teams had become distributed worldwide the old fashioned windows software the
software I'd built twenty years ago was no longer so easy there is constant problems with license codes and install and service packs and upgrades the expense of the software twenty years ago it seemed like a like affordable was now very expensive to users and sharing data was really hard they were trying to send files all over the world now something we had never imagined when we
built solid works I saw an opportunity to solve these problems but only if we would start from scratch and use the latest in cloud web and mobile technology and that led me to leave solidworks and start all over again with on shape you know maybe it maybe crazy I try again to disrupt the same market button deed that's what I'm are that's what I'm doing that's
one try deal we think we're in the middle of disrupting the cat on shit we got a good start and %HESITATION and it's coming along nicely so it starts with user it starts with understanding needs needs you feel yourself and need to observe and other people in the world second key way you need to think like a disruptor is when it comes to scene ideas and
solutions so you you have a feeling for a problem in the world now you have to come up with a solution okay sure we all know to be creative and looking for solutions but I want to talk to you about a few other things one is to be curious in the world be curious about learning about things and what I want to tell you is particularly
to learn about things that don't seem to matter okay things that don't seem to be important to any particular problem at hand but just in your gut feel interesting go ahead and spend time learning about them are a E. it was key to me and starting solidworks that I had spent years bombproof prior to solidworks plane with plain with windows based PC needs the new windows
operating system in PCS and I say playing with because it my business that I was working an old cat company I would explain to people how interesting these or at the PC in windows nature John why are you playing around with that that stuff doesn't matter in our market I am and what I learned %HESITATION in my own experience is of course it turned out to
matter a lot whose today all almost all professional CAD runs on windows PC's but at the time in nineteen ninety three some of you are so you weren't even born yet are you you you you really this is the advantage of being older by the way when you're older you get what we in the cat business called a prospective view on things and you can see
that just as a justice twenty you know twenty years ago armed people %HESITATION everyone's using unix workstations and today you're gonna look at me like unix workstations you know what are those you and someday when you'll be up here giving a talk like this you say windows P. season people go windows PC's water wells and so anyway though the pointers I was playing around with these
windows species a lot of disruptions are combination of a a problem plus a technology that didn't matter until it dead okay so windows PC's don't matter to the cab market until it dead alright and we see this in arm and not in other stories like like uber which is been mentioned a couple times today you know mobile phones and GPS they don't matter the tax seems
until a debt you know internet search you know an internet search engine that it mattered to the newspaper business that it until it dead so if you worked at a newspaper and you were fooling around with internet search engine people say why are you doing now well turns out Google of course redefined the entire market for ads and greatly disrupted not just newspapers but all of
at based publishing I mean you see it over and over again with I'm shape I had spent years before really thinking about starting on shape I'd spent years experimenting playing around with open source software with web web browser HTML and Java script with learning about internet speed why was I learned about internet speed I don't know it didn't seem relevant to the cabins but I was
interest okay so don't be afraid to learn about things that don't matter and I encourage all you to go out and pick something that doesn't seem to matter to anything you're doing but just interests you it doesn't have to be technology either you can spend time you know you can go to a crafts fair on Saturday morning and see someone making something and ask them what
are you doing what it what where did that come from what tools are using what's new in your world be naturally curious all the time and you may find the you develop ideas for disruption that involve tying something that doesn't matter to a problem that you see in your world another thing about idea generation now emphasize is don't be afraid of bad ideas too often where
we're trying up front to to think that %HESITATION I came up with an idea but must be really bad yeah I'm looking for the good ideas we think of bad ideas and good ideas as being opposite ends of some spectrum and mediocrity in the middle I'm not implying I'm mediocrity I'm just saying you know I mean our skies natural thinking that a bad idea good idea
I don't see the world that way I think bad ideas live in the same neighborhood as good ideas and they both live very far from mediocrity you know I mean so like like think of it like a giant hoop earring or something bad ideas and good ideas success and failure like metastable states that our neighbors from each other and I think some of the worst ideas
I've ever had are very close to some of the best ideas for you know and so so get comfortable with brainstorming about lots of ideas and don't worry if they're good or bad because some of the great entrepreneurs in history had a lot of bad ideas Steve Jobs but you know who built the great products at apple he had also built the next computer which many
of you have never even heard of go look it up and I will I heard someone tell me that after next immediately after Max he would go lecture at Stanford or something in the students would be very uninterested almost laughing about what he had done and instead of a scene his obvious great I'm another way to put it is I think visions and hallucinations look the
same and to try to build and how you know I mean things that you you're sure are the way the world's going to be in things that turn out to be more outages they look and feel the same so get comfortable in that job zone generating lots of ideas don't worry about deciding up front which are the good or the bad ones %HESITATION I like I
say I have a first company that I built and we didn't end up it wasn't a failure but it wasn't a huge success wouldn't disrupt the world but the idea looked and felt very similar to the ones for solid work Sir on shipped self don't be afraid of of thinking of of crazy ideas then finally one talked about execution %HESITATION to to often people just stopped
at the scene a problem thank you idea they don't go on exit to be a disruptor to think like a distraught a disruptor you have to shift into pakcik it's very different than just I sometimes the the %HESITATION obstacles can appear impossible starting solidworks people told me you're building an entire new cat system this week in nineteen ninety three and I'm like yeah we're gonna build
should tightly new cats system people thought it was crazy so so what I do I got started building you know I mean have funding at one two year with no funding by the way I just built it in my home with some cofounders our and we took a step we started we said let's get windows running let's get some of the basics reading what's gonna prototype
okay and we we started moving we were waiting for someone else to do something we work finding excuses why not to do it to this day I'm convinced that many other people probably saw the same opportunity solidworks they probably had the same views I did about the windows PC being the future of cat I'm but they did act on and the end people say oh you're
you're you know you heather a great vision for saltworks or some guy I tell people I think the vision was obvious I think if we mean by cofounders get credits because we decided to do some same with on shape this time around it's a huge job we're undertaking it takes years I'm as yeah sar I think Whitney said earlier about how you have to to to
be patient in the early days as you come up that curve you often have to have a lot of perseverance to get through we did with solidworks we did with I'm shape now regained rewards of it in the market as people use the product and %HESITATION Talisker eight stories about how valuable it is to them but this persistence to execute that I've seen in my career
and I see in in other disruptors disability to stick this to order that's to acts that is sort of at odds in some ways with the with the kind of creativity that I just talked about any idea phase where the the radar scanning of the needs and problems identification phase and so to some degree as a disruptor you have to be flexible enough to one day
be thinking of wild ideas user needs and then enter into this long struggle of building your product and it's usually a struggle that's normal it's usually a roller coaster ride that's normal you know Ben Horowitz sought whose mark injuries since %HESITATION he are he talks about this in his book the struggle most entrepreneurs most disruptors go through the struggle know that it's normal when you've done
it before you can say sky like being on a thrill ride first time it's while the second time you say okay I know I know I'm gonna get a little sick is we go up and down the the rise and fall that's normal the other thing I want to say about execution is don't worry about being first okay too often we worry well I don't want
to start working on this because because someone else you are doing it don't worry about that look at the great examples in the world like look look at Facebook anyone remember my space before you people thought my space with that yeah yeah was the social network with Facebook him up I mention Google search but was Google search the first search engine no there was altered beast
which looks like it only market the iPod okay the I pod those you're old enough to remember before the I pod existed there was the real the real MP three player was very popular I mean I know you younger people don't know us but so so don't worry you don't have to be the first but you do have to be okay you do have to take