In previous articles, we have talked about the needs of entrepreneurs, the offer from the market and the level of coverage of the needs by the market.
In this article we are going to analyse why the market does not cover the clear existing needs and what is, from our point of view, the only solution to cover that demand.
We saw in previous articles that the market acceptably covers the needs of business knowledge (how to create a start-up) and of workspace. However, it has some spectacular gaps when it comes to meet technical knowledge, contact with experts, economic resources, and security on the ideas.
Why is there this lack of synchrony between demand and offer?
- Technical Knowledge.-There are two reasons for not being covered by the market: the first one is psychological, as the entrepreneurial ecosystem considers that the entrepreneur should look into the system with a perfectly delimited, clear and established idea…, and does not go through the steps previous; secondly, due to the difficulty of providing updated knowledge on any scientific/technical aspect. Cost under market conditions would be prohibitive!
- Contact with Experts to get advice and, where appropriate, make a team. As before, entrepreneurial ecosystem considers that having a trained team is one of the entrepreneur’s prerequisites. Although, in this case, establishing a system to put people with different profiles in contact would not be particularly expensive, but what is not so clear is what would be the return for the supplier who provided it
- Security that the Entrepreneur’s Idea will not be plagiarized. In this case, the market does not cover it because it has not thought of how to solve the problem.
- Access to economic resources. – Let’s think about who are currently putting the money: large institutional investors (VC) or large private investors (Business Angels). The former operates with the classic banking criteria, trying to maximize profits and minimize risks, and the latter, even using perhaps somewhat more flexible criteria, carry out their operations with a very similar standard.
As a result, to have any possibilities of achieving some funds, you have to have a MVP, a product selling in the market and wonderful metrics to entire the investors. We are not going to criticize these criteria, because for large investors who bet large sums, they can be defensible…, the problem is that there are no other players who can use other criteria, such as assuming more risks in exchange for a possible higher return, greater emotional involvement with the project, etc…
As current models do not cover these needs, there are other model that could resolve this desynchronization? Could these needs be covered by a Collaborative Model?
Note: we will leave out the security over the ideas, due to it has other types of implications and does not depend so much on the model but on the logical and technological solution used.
In last article of this series we will develop which are the main characteristics of a collaborative model, but, for now, we can focus on two of them: they are two complementary needs and the solution of each need belongs to a different individual. We will analyse every need which is not currently covered and let’s see if it is possible to cover them through collaborative models.
- Technical knowledge.- The first question we must ask ourselves is who has the knowledge that entrepreneurs need. A quick reflection tells us that knowledge can be held by individuals; we are left to find out which specific individuals are the ones who have the knowledge that interests us. From here, we must determine if they have any unmet need and how it can be covered by a collaborative system.
- Access to Experts.- By definition experts = individuals. Therefore, the need that entrepreneurs have can and, in the last case, must be covered by individuals. As in the previous case, we must find out what individuals are they and what needs the experts have in order to see if we can cover their needs as part of a collaborative model.
- Access to money.- When we think of money we all think of banks, financial institutions, investment funds…. But what about individuals? You will think about rich people, but they were already in the system -as business angels-, and we have said that they did not work as a rule. All right, but do every single one of us have no money? Therefore, the need to access money can be covered by individuals, but we must define which individuals and what need they have, in order to cover them by a collaborative system.
To sum up, the most important part of entrepreneur’s needs is not covered by current market solutions; these not covered needs can be covered by individuals who have other needs; collaborative models are based in bidirectional need-coverage by individuals. Therefore, a collaborative model may be the sought solution.
Let’s go to the last article an see what the main characteristics of a collaborative model are.
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