Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Lou Guercia, CEO of Scribe Software (Part 5)

But I would think that there’s tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs to kickoff very specific use cases within an industry or between a couple of technologies and build complete solutions. For example, something around the idea of connecting SMS types of technologies to other forms of broad-based marketing such as email, analytics between SMS campaigns, and web analytics.

These are things that are consistent with your mission of creating a million entrepreneurs. One or two people, if they apply themselves, can use the infrastructure that is out there and just dig in to find certain use cases and solve discreet problems that in many cases don’t involve big data or the Internet of Things. They just solve specific problems in an industry or a certain size of business that have to do with, in some cases, working with rather small data – very simple things that would help returning veterans who come back from war, or sick people, or consumers who are trying to figure out what service they would like to procure. These are things that just one or two people can do that would collectively and individually make the world a better place. I would encourage technological entrepreneurship to pick something very small. Don’t try to solve the whole problem. That’s a good business opportunity.

Sramana Mitra: I think you make a very good point. There are a lot of niche problems that can be solved by small teams – one or two people – that have a good handle on technology and good domain knowledge in specific niches. You can build some very nice companies based on that principle. I always say there are many more $5 million, $10 million, or $20 million ideas than multi-billion dollar ideas.

Lou Guercia: I see that you spent a bunch of time at MIT. My former chairman at my last company set up an entrepreneur venture at MIT called Deshpande. We used to talk a lot. We used to talk about not going big fast. We used to talk about putting a lot of paint on the problem. Solve it in a way that when you hear that you’re competing against IBM or Oracle, you relish the win.

The data in our name will only be associated with customer data. It won’t be the Internet of Things data or the big data. What’s wonderful about the technology over the last 10 years in the cloud is that one or two people can do something fabulous. My suggestion is go out and solve a problem and use a network of mentors. There are a lot of problems out there. It just depends on how big you want to find them. I’m a think-little-but-make-something-happen kind of an entrepreneur. That’s my view as to what I might suggest to your organization.

Sramana Mitra: Very nice talking to you. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Lou Guercia, CEO of Scribe Software
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