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Author Archives: krissytgp

Alan Braverman Receives Distinguished Service Award at his Alma Mater’s 50th Anniversary

Posted on November 10, 2014 by krissytgp

Alan Braverman, co-founder of The Giant Pixel Corporation, moderated a panel discussion at his alma mater, The University of Illinois on October 24, 2014. The panel focused on entrepreneurship and touched on topics like the evolving attitude towards entrepreneurship in the Department of Computer Science, staying in Illinois versus moving to California to work in startups, and starting a company straight out of school versus working at a larger company to get some real world experience.

After the discussion, he received a Distinguished Service Award from the University of Illinois’ Computer Science Department.

John Pletz from ChicagoBusiness.com wrote a great article about Braverman and his time in Illinois.

Read the Article »

Sobo was featured on Product Hunt!

Posted on September 29, 2014 by krissytgp

Hey Giant Pixel Followers!

The Giant Pixel’s newest product, Sobo Social Soundboard, was featured on Product Hunt last week! Be sure to check it out, vote for our product, and leave a comment about it as well!

Vote for Sobo on Product Hunt! »

Why Frameworks Matter

Posted on September 29, 2014 by krissytgp

A few weeks ago, INC magazine ran part 1 of a six-part series from one of our founders Alan Braverman, that tracks a new Giant Pixel business from idea to launch.  The first article in this series focused on how The Giant Pixel decides on what ideas to actually pursue.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the framework Alan referenced in the article so wanted to answer the 3 questions I got asked the most.  Hopefully this will provide clarity and help others going through a similar process.

Question 1:  Why do you have a structured framework around deciding on which ideas to pursue? Isn’t this restrictive?

The Giant Pixel is built so all our employees will be eventual founders of companies born here. To that end, we encourage everyone on our team to submit their product ideas (via a lean canvas).  Since people can sometimes get emotionally get attached to their idea and fall into the trap of stating “We can build this!” vs asking “Should we build this?”, we wanted to create a process that helped remove emotion from the decision and provided a uniform analytical framework.  Borrowing on my experience as a technology investor, we created this TGP new idea evaluation framework so we have sufficient data points to allow us to make an informed decision about which product(s) to pursue.

Question 2:  How do you determine market size and why is it relevant?

For a lot of entrepreneurs, market size data is one of those things you only start paying attention to when you frantically need to include it for a VC pitch deck.  The reason investors and I find this important is because it provides insights into the size of the opportunity and potential growth prospects for your company or idea.  No one cares about the exact number you come up with for your market size.  What people do care about is a) your addressable market is large enough to matter and b) the underlying trends in the market suggest positive growth indicators.

There are multiple ways to approximate market size.  If you want a quick and dirty number, you can search online for industry / research publications that may have some relevant metrics.  Be aware though that the source of the information is paramount (always show the source).  Not all data is created equally and making sure you’re getting data from reliable sources that outline how their methodology is critical.

If you want to get more detailed use a bottoms up approach to build market size.  Instead of just googling “market size for x”, and restating their number, think about methodically building up your market size with a series of assumptions.  You will find this a useful exercise that helps you understand who your potential customers are and what key assumptions you need to make. Check out this link for a good walkthrough of this process.

Question 3:  What’s the point of building a financial model at such an early stage?

The financial model I create for each company is not intended to be an in-depth projection of financial results. Its a quick and dirty projection of how the business model may work with some sensitivities built around major assumptions (i.e. what happens to revenue if we charge a customer $xxx instead of $yyy).

The major purpose of this exercise is to highlight the key levers (# of subscribers, cost of various tiers, annual user monetization, etc) of the proposed business model.  It also helps make clear, that in order to hit certain revenue targets ($1M, $5M, $50MM, etc), what is it that we need to believe.  This enables us to think realistically about whether we think this product is scalable and highlights the main risk factors we need to be focused on.

Hope that is helpful. If people have more questions about any part of our TGP framework, please let me know and I’ll be happy to discuss.

By: Kunal Agarwal

When you can build virtually anything, how do you decide what to create?

Posted on August 26, 2014 by krissytgp

Alan Braverman discusses the criteria that is used by The Giant Pixel for deciding what to build next: “Giant Pixel’s strike team of programmers, designers and marketers start with a simple, age-old technique: the power of lists. We maintain a big list of potential projects contributed by individuals or emerging from brainstorming sessions. We kick the ideas around internally, refining some, eliminating others, and always adding new ones.”

“We review them at weekly meetings, eventually pick one, and crank out a prototype. The process is continually repeated, generating multiple embryonic startups gestating in parallel. Successful ideas grow into independent businesses that are spun out of the studio, and failures are discarded.”

Continue reading at Inc. Magazine » 

How a Serial Entrepreneur is Challenging the Way Startups Launch

Posted on April 15, 2014 by krissytgp

Lydia Dishman at Fast Company writes: “A tech startup veteran, Alan Braverman is set to disrupt the way new software companies launch. Here’s a look inside The Giant Pixel Corporation’s Studio for Startups.”

Continue reading at Fast Company »

Giant Pixel Launches Startup Studio For Tech Company Creation

Posted on April 14, 2014 by krissytgp

Jonathan Shieber at TechCrunch writes: “Giant Pixel is launching a new startup studio to create mobile-focused application companies. Based in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, Giant Pixel is one of several companies looking to change the ways in which entrepreneurs and investors think about starting up businesses. The company is the brain child of seasoned entrepreneurs and angel investors Alan Braverman, Elliot Loh, and John Cwikla.”

Continue reading at TechCrunch »

Giant Pixel Startup Studio Looks to Crack the Code of Parallel Entrepreneurship

Posted on April 14, 2014 by krissytgp

Michael Carney at PandoDaily writes about Giant Pixel’s startup studio model: “But there’s another slightly less common model of parallel startup building that arises more often when its founders are entrepreneurs themselves rather than investors, and want to continue building, only in bulk.”

Continue reading at PandoDaily »

Start-up Studio Spins Ideas Into New Businesses

Posted on April 2, 2014 by krissytgp

Laura Baverman (no relation) at USA Today writes: “This week, Alan Braverman,  John Cwikla and Elliot Loh will announce their new start-up studio in San Francisco. The Giant Pixel Corporation has a team of developers and designers coming up with new start-up ideas, creating prototypes and testing them with potential users or consumers. So far, they’ve built the mobile app Antenna, which recommends talk radio and podcasts based on what you like (as Pandora does for music), and a project management tool for software developers. A third project is a secret.”

Continue reading at USATODAY.com »

A Short Video about The Giant Pixel’s Custom Concreteworks Reception Desk

Posted on April 22, 2013 by krissytgp

The folks at Concreteworks write: “Studio O+A wanted to incorporate a reception desk in the Giant Pixel office design but did not want a traditional relation with the receptionist. Instead they wanted to engage with the individual, have them be part of the office.”

Watch the video at ConcreteWorks » 

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