Dave Stubenvoll Guest for “Origin & Evolution of New Business” Oct-26-2011

Our “Book Club For Business Impact” promises actionable insights for entrepreneurs and change agents, drawn from the panelist’s experience and informed by the book’s content.

Dave Stubenvoll, CEO of Wowza Media, joins the discussion of Amar Bhide‘s “Origin and Evolution of New Business” this Wednesday October 26 at Noon PDT.  Click  http://skmbhide111026.eventbrite.com/?discount=WowzaMedia
to attend at no charge.

A co-founder of Wowza Media Systems, Stubenvoll has over 23 years of experience in enterprise and consumer products and services. Prior to Wowza, the fifth new business he has developed, Stubenvoll served as an Entrepreneur in Residence/Senior Director at Adobe Systems and previously managed mergers and acquisitions. Stubenvoll has also held senior management positions at Intuit, and was President of GALT Technologies (an Intuit subsidiary) and was a co-founder and CEO of Freeworks. Stubenvoll, who holds two patents, earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University, his JD from Boston College and an MBA from the Carnegie Mellon Graduate School of Industrial Administration.

We interviewed Dave Stubenvoll in 2008 where he highlighted the impact of “Origin and Evolution” on his startup planning process:  “Founder Story Dave Stubenvoll of Wowza Media”  What follows is an outline for the discussion, including key excerpts from the book and some prepared questions for Dave.  The audience is free to ask their own questions at any time as well.

Key Takeaways We Expect The Audience to Gain from this Roundtable Discussion

• Understand How to Probe / Explore
  • Uncertain and Ambiguous Opportunities
  • Emerging Markets
• By Taking Risks That Are
  • Large Enough to Allow You To Learn
  • Small Enough You Can Afford to Lose

Background:  Key Diagram from book: “Irreducible Uncertainty, Investment, Expected Profitability”

Amar Bhide on the “Entrepreneur’s Irreducible Uncertainty”

“Entrepreneurs who undertake uncertain initiatives face a wide spread between desirable and undesirable outcomes, but they cannot quantify the odds they face or even fully anticipate the possible results. The uncertainty is irreducible to the degree it cannot be resolved without undertaking the initiative by prior testing and research.”

Questions for Dave Stubenvoll: How did you assess the risk in starting Wowza Media? What did you do to mitigate it?

Amar Bhide on Niche Markets

“Serving niche markets not only allows entrepreneurs to start a business with limited funds, it also limits the competition they face from well capitalized entities…
Therefore, the bootstrapped entrepreneur in a niche market faces direct competition mainly from other undercapitalized businesses.”

Question:  You entered a market that Adobe already had an established lead in, was there a niche that you focused on? How did you determine where to focus?

Amar Bhide on “High Uncertainty / Low Capital”

“Promising startups cluster in market niches characterized by high uncertainty generated by technological, regulatory, or other such exogenous changes or by the amorphous nature of customer wants…High uncertainty and low capital and opportunity costs create a ‘heads-I-win-tails-I-don’t-lost-much’ proposition for entrepreneurs.”

Question: How did you calculate the opportunity cost of market exploration

Amar Bhide on Ambiguity

“Ambiguity is known to be missing information or not knowing relevant information that could be known.”

Question: When you started what was the “known to be missing information? What key information did you discover that was relevant to making Wowza a success?

Final Questions From Audience

Please join the discussion of Amar Bhide‘s “Origin and Evolution of New Business” this Wednesday October 26 at Noon PDT.  Click  http://skmbhide111026.eventbrite.com/?discount=WowzaMedia to attend at no charge.