Princeton University Computer Science Department

Computer Science 448 Innovating Across Technology, Business, & Markets Jaswinder Singh

Spring 2012

Midterm Paper

Last edited: Tuesday, April 3

Final Papers Due: Friday, April 13, 11:59 P.M. -- Submit

The midterm paper will be a "living paper". That is, we will add a couple of sections to it later in the semester as we cover the relevant topics (you will not, however, modify the current submission when you add the new sections; those will be additional pages). The paper will be graded based on the following criteria:

• Crisp writing: to the point, corporate executive summary style writing is encouraged; don't caveat too much, and don't try to be polite or complete in covering all bases
• Quality, Creativity, Originality and Clarity of Thought: choice of company/product in light of questions asked, thinking out of the box, coming up with interesting, original solutions and ideas and non-textbook points of view, clear thinking and exposition
• Judgment: The choice of company, and especially the richness of the issues it exposes per the questions below. So please think hard about that up front.
• Realism: The realism of the company's situation and the issues you examine. All companies have challenges and opportunities, and they are usually very specific to the company itself.
• Domain knowledge in technology and business: demonstrating deep understanding of technical and non-technical issues; researching on the Web to acquire knowledge is strongly encouraged
• Choice and exposition of Tradeoffs: the section on design and technical tradeoffs will carry more weight, so we encourage you to spend more time on it -- we are looking for specific tradeoffs that make business sense, and that don't have an obvious answer
• Language: good writing in general
• References: citing relevant material, can even be online resources

We don't want you to write a lot. But we want you to think a lot. Please read the questions below, and then think hard about them in very specific terms with regard to a very specific hypothetical company/situation. We encourage you to do research while choosing your company/hypothetical situation. Your choices here will be a major determinant of how well you satisfy some of the below criteria, and hence your grade. A great paper will have spent a relatively small amount of time writing, relative to the amount of time spent thinking and researching.

Submission Instructions:

Your paper should be submitted as a PDF file using the link above. Submissions for the current paper as described below should be no more than 8 pages, using 11 point font and single spacing, with one-column formatting. The page limit includes references, figures, appendices, everything. It does not include the extra page described in part I below.

There are two parts to the midterm paper. The first part should be no more than 6.5 pages, and the second part no more than 1.5.

Part I:

You are the co-founder and CTO of an e-Commerce company with about 30 employees. By eCommerce, we mean companies the provide something to consumers (physical goods or virtual goods/media) for which consumers pay. These companies are not purely advertising-supported. Examples are Amazon and Netflix. Facebook is not an example. You may choose the types of products that the company sells online, and what is/are the special sauce(s) of the company, whether in technology, in the capabilities of the product/offering, or in the approach to the business. However, you must assume that (a) the offering needs deep technology, and is not just about putting products up on a web site and being able to sell them, and (b) while the number of customers now is small, the offering is being built to be able to support hundreds of millions of customers. Please spend time thinking about what might be a good company (real or hypothetical) to choose based on the questions below. Your choice, and the richness of issues it exposes, will be an important part of your grade.

You may choose a hypothetical company or a real one. If the former, research the marketplace in that area and make some realistic assessments about it. If the latter, read about that company and understand some of the key issues they faced or must have faced. In either case, address the assignment below in the specific context of your company and its specific products or offerings and their challenges/opportunities. Remember, generic answers that reflect the wisdom on the Web or of the pundits are not what we are looking for. The more specific your insights with regard to specific products or specific situations and settings, the better. This should include not just mechanisms that are well suited to your product types, but also aspects of where your company is succeeding and failing currently, and how that informs your thinking on the issues below. The goal of this exercise is to put yourself in the mindset of a CTO of an actual company (real or hypothetical), and to think about what you would do and the arguments in the context of your particular business and company. This is what we are looking for, and this is what you will be graded on. We cannot emphasize this enough.

(This paragraph describes the proposal which you've already submitted. You do not need to resubmit your proposal with your paper.)

To that end, please use an extra page (not counted in the page count above and not part of the board memo below) to state some key assumptions about your company that you are making (of the sorts above, but anything you think is of interest and relevance) and that will inform the content of your memo below. This should include not only company specifics and specific issues raised by the type of products or offering you've chosen to provide, but also current strengths and weaknesses of the company, its product/offering, its technology and its organizations.

Until now, you have been managing the engineering organization, but you and the CEO (who is also your co-founder) have just hired a VP of Engineering who will now manage product delivery and will report to the CEO. In discussing your role and the needs of the company with the CEO, you have proposed that the company create an "Office of the CTO", reporting to the CEO. This Office will consist of a very small team of senior people, who will report to you. The CEO is intrigued, but realizes that the company's board is not very well educated with regard to the role of the CTO. Their incoming belief is that the key functions at this stage are engineering and customer acquisition: "You need to build it and you need to get customers to buy." There is a board meeting soon, at which a few key elements of the company's strategy need to be presented and discussed. The CEO thinks that this board meeting is the appropriate forum for presenting the idea of the Office of the CTO. As a good CEO, or at least the kind that boards tend to like, she believes in never surprising board members at a board meting. So she wants you to create the following overall document to be submitted to the board of directors as pre-reading for the board meeting. Unlike most boards, this one is made up of college professors, so they are willing to read an eight-page single-spaced document ... The document should contain the following sections (with some guidance for length next to each):

Business Strategy: (~ 0.75 page)

• a brief overview of your offering
• the market opportunity it addresses and how it does so
• the key challenges and opportunities of operating in this market
• the business model, i.e. how revenue is made
• key business or operational differentiations from competitors: in pricing, business model, operational areas such as shipping, any non-technology barriers to entry, etc.
• key challenges for the company: areas of greatest strength and weakness, in product, technology, organization, and talent

Customer Acquisition Strategy: (~ 1.25 page)

• How did the company seed its initial customer acquisition, i.e. how did it obtain its first 50-100 customers
• What did it do to grow from 100 to 1000 paying customers
• Given where you are now, what customer acquisition strategies do you think are going to be most effective, for the next level of customer acquisition, and then for the level after that. Assume that you have 100 customers that currently use your service and give you revenue, that the next level is 1,000 customers, and that the level after that is 1 million.
• What goals have you set for each of your customer acquisition strategies, and how will you evaluate their success or failure
• What product support or technology support will you need or do you plan to harness that is critical to your customer acquisition strategy(ies)
• Would you outsource marketing for customer acquisition at this stage, e.g. to social media experts? Why or why not?
• Please note that simply saying "friends and family" or "brand advertising" or "word of mouth" "viral marketing" is not good enough in itself. The choices you make and the reasons for choosing those vehicles must be specific to your product/offering, and you must be very specific in the actual types of viral or social media or brand or other marketing that you believe is most relevant (and why)

Product Strategy: (~ 1 page)

• differentiation in terms of technology and product capabilities, barriers to entry in these areas
• where the company currently is in its progress, in light of the status and strengths/weaknesses you assumed above
• what the next three top priorities are in the product area, and why. Explain in some depth, and again in the specific context of your business and offering and its realistic situation.

Organizational Strategy: Office of the CTO. (~ 1.25-1.5 page)

• A rationale for why an Office of the CTO makes sense to establish at this particular stage of this particular company.
• A description of the key positions within the Office of the CTO (your key reports), and what areas each will own. A rationale for why these positions belong in the Office of the CTO rather than in other groups. Also, a description of the areas that will be owned by the VP of Engineering.
• A description of the areas that others will own but the Office of the CTO will work closely with, and what that relationship will look like. In particular, address how the architecture, science, product manager, development manager relationships will be worked out in this overall organization, and how that differs from the current situation.
• Anything else you want to say about this role/office.
• Please be sure to make your answers very specific to your company and its situation or strengths/weaknesses as you defined in your assumptions. Please avoid solely generic responses

Hiring/growth Strategy: (~ 0.75 page)

• A description of the current engineering and product management organizations, and how the company plans to grow them over the next year.
• Justify the approaches you will take and why the are appropriate for your company. e.g. will you have distributed locations or not, and if so for what functions and under what circumstances.
• Discuss the key philosophies you will use have in hiring in each of the technology, operational and business areas (they may be different or the same), and why

Product and/or Technical Tradeoffs: (~ 1.25 page)

• A description of three major technology or product related design decisions that will need to be made by the company in the near future. For each, state the major options and their pros and cons very objectively, and then state your proposed option and explain why you plan to choose it and what the risks with it are. Explain in some depth, and again in the specific context of your business and offering and its realistic situation.
• You need to be specific enough and give sufficient technical and business related details, and yet keep your target audience (non technical board of directors) in mind.

Part II: (~ 1-1.5 page)

Think hard about, and then list, the top ten useful lessons you have learned in the course so far. Especially things that you didn't really know or hadn't really thought about, and that you think you will carry with you to use in the future. State the source of the lessons (guest speaker X, professor's lecture, reading Y, etc), and why you think if was valuable (if self-evident, say so).

You will be judged not only on your choices but also on how you ranked them and on the answers to the "why" question.