IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2015 - 53

that the customer retains his or her
market position.
If the approach is to offer a complete solution and to compete in the
market for the value that the new capability/functionality enables, then
your goal is to capture the end customer. You are now no longer worried
about disrupting the market leader-
in fact, you want to do exactly that.
For instance, you may now have a
chance to completely change the way
that value and services are delivered,
integrating IoT, communications, mobile and monitor graphical user interface, geographic information system
integrated viewing, and cloud-based
power device management into what
has traditionally been a power converter solution. You can now offer
more by way of function and performance than traditional solutions and
can solve the customers' existing
and nascent problems. To achieve

this, you need to fully understand the
market, your competitors, and especially your customers. You also need
to build a broader range of competencies including marketing and sales.
This approach may allow you to move
much faster and to become positioned as a much larger company. As
you achieve increasing levels of success in the market, the market leaders will begin to view you as a viable
acquisition candidate. This approach
also allows you to reject the acquisition path and to continue to grow the
company with venture capital.
There are many paths to success
for you as an entrepreneur. The path
chosen depends on what your objectives are. Some possible objectives include developing a lifestyle business,
developing a key new capability and
exiting with a quick sale, or building
a new transformative solution company that has a significant impact on

one of the major issues identified earlier in this column. There is no right
or wrong answer, you just need clarity
in understanding your personal goals,
and you need a lot of luck.

About the Author
Deepak Divan (ddivan@varentec.
com) is a National Academy of Engineering member, an IEEE Fellow,
and a past president of the IEEE
Power Electronics Society. He is a
professor and the director of the
Center for Distributed Energy at the
Georgia Institute of Technology. He
also serves as the founder and chief
scientist of Varentec, a company
focused on grid edge control that is
funded by clean-tech venture capital
firm Khosla Ventures and investor
Bill Gates. Varentec is his third startup company.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2015