Recently, Netscape and Ning founder Marc Andreessen did an hours worth of Q&A at Stanford on everything from consumer electronics to venture funding.  One key component he mentioned for start-up success was the idea of 10X.

To quote:

Is there a 10X change happening in the technology landscape?  Is something 10X faster or 10X cheaper or 10X better?  And if it’s not 10X then we as VC’s and entrepreneurs have to ask ourselves is it really worth doing?  ….For a new company to exist it not only has to bring a product to market but it has to be so much better it punches through the sort of status quo.

Great advice and an easy litmus to apply to new ventures.  One thought to add would be the idea of morphing a concept until it gets to be 10X better.  If you comb through different tech success stories, you’ll see that companies typically had an idea, got a bit of funding, and then got to Plan B where they really hit their home run.  The first idea or prototype certainly wasn’t a 10X improvement.  Why most tech start-ups blow up is they spend all their money without any room for Plan B.  A solid market validation exercise would help narrow the bull’s eye (more on this in upcoming posts) and solid metrics for evaluating success are key to leave a little gas in the tank to pivot the strategy.

Note: I’m a huge fan of Stanford’s eCorner website.  Not only do they have great speakers come in, you can download and watch the videos for free through iTunes.  The quality of the speakers is impressive and the diversity of topics makes it so almost anyone in the startup/tech arena can find something of interest.  Get the experience of being on the Stanford campus with none of the overhead.