Behind the veil: how the Microsoft Emerging Business team works

Some members of the Microsoft Emerging Business Team (Don Dodge, Dan'l Lewin, and Sam Ramji) have started blogging recently, and more will start soon. They have also generated a mostly positive reaction from the community. Here are just a few of the comments:

Brad Feld, on Don Dodge and Newsgator

Rick Segal, on Don's Napster post

Phil Stanhope on Don and Sam

A comment on Dan'l Lewin's ZDNet article

Because of this recent visibility and interest, I thought it would make sense to give a thumbnail sketch of how the team works. It doesn't describe everything we do, but highlights the systematic elements and themes -- the standard processes -- that we use.

On-ramping: focus on venture-funded companies, but try not to miss anyone
We take a regular feed from VentureSource that informs us of new venture-funded companies or major events and load it into a tracking tool (more on that later). We also get a large number of referrals which we enter manually.

Tools and analytics: Sweat the details, and also see the big picture
We capture a lot of information about each company and store it in a tool/database that provides us with flexible query and reporting. We use the tool to log and track a company's funding, officers, product, business model, market successes, and alignment with our product and sales teams. The data is the basis for a quarterly analytics report, which shows funding, exits, trends, news and predictions -- aligned  to provide market data and insight to key folks inside Microsoft, espcially our Cororate Development and Product Development teams.

Portolio Management: understand the companies, their market and opportunity
We work directly with startup companies, VCs, and a number of teams inside Microsoft. In order to provide some depth of insight, each member of the team specialises in (manages) a market sector, or portfolio. Portfolios are based on a standard IDC taxonomoy: business intelligence, mobility, infrastructure (communications, management, storage), application development, collaboration, consumer, enterprise line of business (horiozontal appls like SCM, CRM, SFA, ..) and vertical (manufactuiring, public sector, retail, ...). Each portfolio manager is familiar with (sometimes expert in) the companies, dynamics, and opportunity in each portfolio. Portfolios map pretty closely to Microsoft product groups too, so portfolio managers lead discussions with our product teams on the companies and dynamics of their portfolio.

Opportunity Mapping: nothing replaces insight and good judgment, but good processes help avoid lost opportunities
It's possible to be systematic at identifying opportunities for partnering with startups. The portfolios I mentioned above are just the root nodes of a tree structure. For example: Collaboration: Real Time: Instant Messaging: Security. In other words, the leaves of the tree are more precise market sectors -- or opportunity areas. We meet regularly with product and sales teams to identify how our product plans match market demand, and where we foresee the need for partners -- or acquisitions. Capturing this information in our tools (for example, identifying that the Collaboration: Real Time: Instant Messaging: Security is a future hotspot) means that we can easily match companies with opportunity. 

VC relationships: understand the sponsors
Each person on the team is also the primary contact for a number of VCs. We ask for their advice, we help them with their portfolio companies and, when they ask, we share our view on a number of topics: their portfolios, our portfolios, Microsft product plans, and opportunities.

Making connections: use all possible resources
Last, but not least, there's a lot of energy, opportunity, and programs for partners inside Microsoft -- from the standard partner programs, through access to early versions of new products, to close relationships with product development and sales teams. An important aspect of our job is accelerating and improving how startup companies connect to these assets -- but without duplicating them!

Of course, all this is great in theory. It's a little more organic -- OK disorganized -- in practice. but we are refining and improving all the time.

So, what's the best way to kick these processes in gear? Here are a few suggestions to help us help you or your company:

• Join the Microsoft Partner Programs. Start here. This isn't just motherhood and apple pie. There's a boatload of resources here-- from free software to co-marketing . Plus, it gets you on mailing lists, invitations, etc. and is a practical pre-requisite to almost every operational interaction between us.
• Show us how your product helps our customers, and how it helps them use our products better. Case studies and success stories excite everbody: development teams, marketing,and sales.
• Exploit the leading edge of our product line -- where it makes sense for your customers and your business. In many ways our competition is our last release, so helping us show off the value of new features -- in, say, Vista -- really helps us. We havea lot of products, so choose carefully here. Don't narrow your market and don't let us randomize you.

All this said, there's no substitute for passion, experience, judgment and instinct. The goal of standard processes like these is to make the obvious automatic, and give us the time and confidence to exercise our judgment and trust our instincts.

So, last, and perhaps most important, help us keep the communications clear. Ask for our advice and help. Be clear about what you really want, and be realistic. Kick us if you think we aren't listening.

Please comment or email me with suggestions and recommendations on how we are doing, and what we can do better.

Thanks

Comments

[Chris Westfall]

Thanks for the insightful post. This reinforces both what we're already doing and what we need to do more of...