SAAR GUR

As my friends know…I am an avid kiteboarder. My industry friends have shared that in the past few years, SUP has come out of nowhere and become bigger than windsurfing, kiteboarding, and a number of other water sports combined. Some folks think SUP may even become bigger than surfing. The folks that I talked to see three key reasons for this growth that can be a great reminder for entrepreneurs trying to build mass market product successes:

1. Easy to learn, Hard to Master - Most people look at a SUP and think they can stand on the board and hold a paddle…no problem. There is no major instruction or training required to get on a board and to try the sport. And there are no major safety issues that you can get wrong and hurt yourself. Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari) claimed this theorem in video game design: “All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master. They should reward the first quarter and the hundredth.” From a commercial perspective this is important because resorts can buy a SUP and expect people to try the product and have fun immediately. In contrast, if they buy windsurfing gear…most people will shy away from trying it as there is too much for a newbie to learn upfront about the gear, and how to use the gear, before the user gets any payback.
2. Large Addressable Market - Wind sports require wind. Surf sports require waves. You can SUP in the ocean, lakes, ponds and rivers. If you actually run the math…my guess is that the geographical addressable market becomes 1000x greater on a global basis for SUP than a wind or ocean sport. Or as my friend described in one word on SUP’s success: “Walmart.” What he meant is that SUP can be sold in any Walmart in the country, and they are.
3. The Magic of New Product Categories - If the product is different enough…it will attract users and magic. New categories are like the wild west. There is an attraction and magic associated with them. Products need to have non-linear improvements to define or redefine a category and create magic. (a) New categories create new celebrities/pros who are able to uniquely take advantage of that new product or platform. With any new sport or platform, there is room for new pros, experts, celebrities to be born. Youtube celebrities are different than Twitter celebrities, who are different than Pinterest celebrities. And it feels awesome to be an expert is something.(b) Humans want to create. There is an attraction to the unknown and being the first to figure out the new tricks and directions you can take something. In the SUP example, many of the tricks and applications of SUP have yet to be explored or defined. River rapid paddling seems to be one of those unexpected areas that people are most recently exploring with SUP:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSaOnQCOiNk

Curious what you think. Hit me up with any reactions or thoughts at @saarsaar. And happy paddling… :-)

“Look at every path closely and deliberately.  Try it as many times as you think necessary.  Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question…Does this path have a good heart?  If it does, the path is good.  If it doesn’t it is of no use.” - Carlos Casteneda

Evidence suggests that dinosaurs did not go instinct immediately but lived another 300,000+ yrs after the asteroid hit earth.  Good to remember as we analyze the impact of new disruptive technologies on traditional media companies, venture capital, employment, etc…  

Sometimes it takes awhile for traditional businesses undergoing massive change to die (not always).  

Example:  The 2011 estimated revenues for the YellowPages business was $23.4 bn with 71% of this as traditional print revenues (non-digital).   

(Thanks Salil Mehta for the analogy/discussion today)

Paul Freedman (Altius) told me a fascinating story today of how USC changed from a no-name Los Angeles commuter school to a top education brand:

1. They first built a program that would attract the top students around the United States: Film (leveraging their location close to Hollywood).   

2. The thing that they didn’t quite expect:  Once the top kids from a high school went to USC… the next year when the new seniors were applying to schools and had seen prior top students go to USC, they applied and decided to go as well.  But the kicker:  They did not go to the Film school, they just enrolled in the general program.     

3. Over time, as more and more top kids went to USC, the school was tranformed to a top brand.

I realize I am simplifying the story…but the insight from my fun conversation with Paul today: 

As more and more top high school students stop going to College as the logical next step after high school….the snowball starts to grow in size and scale….more and more students will start blazing the path of not going to traditional colleges after high school.   And before you know it, a very large % of talented students will pick an alternative post-high school path for their education….

Education is clearly getting disrupted…but once the norm changes amongst high school students that top students have viable other alternatives…the dam is going to break…

And plenty of new startups in education (including CRV’s Udacity) get to suck up the demand from the students blazing this new path…

p.s. - This is close to home…I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA and went to University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Looking back, I had never even heard of UW until a friend of mine, a year ahead of me went there…And once I visited her, I could visualize the path…

:-)

From Dumb and Dumber:

Lloyd: What do you think the chances are of a guy like you and a girl like me… ending up together? 
Mary: Well, Lloyd, that’s difficult to say. I mean, we don’t really… 
Lloyd: Hit me with it! Just give it to me straight! I came a long way just to see you, Mary. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances? 
Mary: Not good. 
Lloyd: You mean, not good like one out of a hundred? 
Mary: I’d say more like one out of a million. 
[pause] 
Lloyd: So you’re telling me there’s a chance… *YEAH!* 
- Lloyd and Mary from Dumb and Dumber