Actionable Insights into the World of Indian Startups

I first started writing about Nokia and RIMM back in 2009 and wrote a series of articles that predicted the demise of Nokia and RIMM.   It has been over 2 years and I felt that we need to revisit this and see how these predictions worked.

Here is a chart that shows the 5 year drop in value for Nokia  from a high of $150B in 2008 to hovering around $15B :

RIMM is a similar story whose market cap dropped from about $80B in 2008 to $7B now.

The biggest lessons to learn for startups from these companies are:

1.  Great Product and User Experience is everything

2. Innovation today = design + technology + great execution + people

3. Never get comfortable with your position in the market.   your competitor may be a new entrant you were least expecting to be able to disrupt the market you play in – typically other startups or in this case manufacturers of Computers (Apple) or the worlds leader in Search (Google)

Related Reading:

1.  Looking into the Crystal Ball – Will Nokia be able to survive?

2.  The musical chairs at Nokia

3.  RIP Nokia N-Gage

4. Nokia – The story of an awesomely innovative company getting out-innovated

5.  Apple iPhone profitability surpasses Nokia