How well do you know your competition?

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This piece is derived from David S. Rose speech at this TED Talk. David Rose a serial entrepreneur turned serial investor is also the CEO of Gust.

Everybody has competition. There has never been a company that doesn't have competition.Even if the competition is the old way of doing something. I want to know exactly what your competition is, and then that will help me judge how you fit into the whole operation over here. But then, I want to know how you're special.

If I know what your competition does, how are you going to prevent your competition from eating your lunch over here? And then all this ties into the financial overview. And you have to have -- you can't do a VC pitch without giving me your financials. I want to know three and, you know, a year or two back, or as long as you've been in existence. And I want to know three or four or five years forward. Five is a bit much. Probably four is rational.

And I want to know how that business model that you showed me on a product basis is going to translate into a company model. And, you know, how many widgets are you going to sell? You're making X amount per widget. I want to know what the driver is. We're going to have 1,000 customers this year, and 10,000 next year. And our revenues are going to go this, that and the other thing.

And so that gives me the whole picture for the next several years into which I'm investing.And I want to know how the money you're going to get from me is going to help you get there. You're going to open an offshore plant in China, you're going to spend it all on sales and marketing, you're going to go to Tahiti, or whatever out there.

Startup Turkey also hosted David S. Rose and below is his talk at the conference.

https://vimeo.com/121111560]]>