Comments for Ziad Sultan's Blog

Comment on Transitioning to Entrepreneur In Residence by sean

sean — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:56:15 +0000

Ziad - that’s great!! Best of luck. Let me know if I can help.

Comment on Transitioning to Entrepreneur In Residence by PhiloSolar

PhiloSolar — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:55:55 +0000

Ziad,

I recently found your blog and I really enjoy your writing style and the subjects you are writing about. Please continue the great work. Also, do you have blogs like yours that you would recommend to your readers? Thanks.

Comment on Comparing first-time and serial entrepreneurs by The VC answers; Raising Venture Capital: Advice for MENA Entrepreneurs « YallaStartup! Blog

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:03:15 +0000

[...] regarding the most common mistakes I see as a VC. I wrote a blog post a while back entitled “Comparing first-time and serial entrepreneurs” (http://ziadsultan.com/?p=36) that covers this question. The five main things I had identified [...]

Comment on Comparing first-time and serial entrepreneurs by Raising Venture Capital: Advice for MENA Entrepreneurs

Raising Venture Capital: Advice for MENA Entrepreneurs — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:12:57 +0000

[...] regarding the most common mistakes I see as a VC. I wrote a blog post a while back entitled “Comparing first-time and serial entrepreneurs” that covers this question. The five main things I had identified were the need for new [...]

Comment on Comparing first-time and serial entrepreneurs by Caro

Caro — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:43:47 +0000

I absolutely agree.
Especially on the necessity to include an intelligent marketing plan to any business plan. I’ll add that marketing should not be an afterthought to the actual IT idea or business assessments, on the contrary, marketing should accompany (and in some cases even lead) the rest of the plan.
It also makes sense that you would notice this in your pitches, most people in IT simply tend to ignore or ridicule the importance of knowing who your target is, how it thinks, what it wants, how it wants it, how it is paying for it, and why.

I have the perfect example of really bad marketing in a very good engineering company:
In Europe, high level management for private companies are allowed to pick their own company car as long as its price does not exceed €100′000 (data from 2004).
Maserati priced its GT at €105′000 (basic model).
Porsche priced its Carrera at €98′000 (almost full optional).

The two cars were obviously after the same target, the Maserati GT was, features at hand, a better car, in so many ways, they had luxury features that the porsche could only dream about… the price difference was a “mere” 10%, and believe me, if you removed €10′000 worth of features from the GT, you wouldn’t notice the difference.
Yet how do you think the sales for the GT compared to the Carrera?

exactly.

-c

Comment on Startups should open the customer black box by Caro

Caro — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:01:17 +0000

and since we are on the topic:

this is why I do NOT believe in Economics–> a blackbox science (based on the Utility function)

Comment on Startups should open the customer black box by Caro

Caro — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:57:43 +0000

Zeez,

your “open the blackbox” guide sounds very much like the first step of a very “target-specific” marketing strategy.

Comment on Comparing first-time and serial entrepreneurs by Startups should open the customer black box

Startups should open the customer black box — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:16:58 +0000

[...] Comparing first-time and serial entrepreneurs Nov 18 [...]

Comment on Thoughts on Patents and Intellectual Property by JaneRadriges

JaneRadriges — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:13:37 +0000

The article is ver good. Write please more

Comment on Thoughts on Patents and Intellectual Property by Ziad

Ziad — Thu, 21 May 2009 01:15:52 +0000

“Prior art” means any publicly available information/literature/product that preexists a patent and can prove that it is not valid. When you file for a patent, the patent office does a search on prior art to determine the appropriate scope of a patent, and whether the patent can be granted at all. It’s a standard intellectual property term, and I assume “art” is used in the older sense of the word. Hope this helps…