Sonny Vu’s first company, FireSpout, was acquired by AskJeeves. Later, his second company, AgaMatrix, raised tens of millions of dollars. Finally, Vu moved on to found Misfit Wearables, which turned out to be an even bigger success: one of the most well-known wearable brands, it got acquired in 2015 by Fossil for $250 million.
How did he come up with these million-dollar ideas?
Vu says that they always focused on building products that would be based on some sort of scientific breakthrough. Thus, for instance, they built a product based on machine learning before machine learning even became a thing.
He goes on to explain that they “…liked to work with things that are hard to reproduce. Something that gives us an unfair advantage on a technological basis.”
This advantage helped Vu beat the competition and get in the lead ahead of time.
How did he validate these ideas?
By analyzing the market.
Whenever he had an idea, he did market research to see whether there was truly a need for the product he had in mind.
However, he adds that an idea isn’t worth anything without the right founding team to drive it. And that’s why he insists on the necessity of teaming up with people who are more competent, smarter, and just as driven as you.