Lane Becker outlines an adaptive path to commercialization success

His career has taken him from interaction designer to serial entrepreneur to author, but it’s the name of one of his first ventures – Adaptive Path – that continues to define the way Lane Becker approaches his work.

Becker, who hails originally from Winnipeg but is now based in San Francisco, was in Toronto on Thursday for Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) 2013, where he offered a fireside chat for those interested in founding new companies and commercializing technology. It’s a trip he said he makes relatively often; in fact, visiting startup clusters in as many cities as possible was one of the first pieces of advice Becker offered to the audience.

“People think Silicon Valley is like this magical place, and to an extent it is, but also that’s it’s not replicable. I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I often hold up Canada as an example.”

Becker cited Waterloo’s thriving community of researchers and engineering talent, as well as comparable ecosystems of entrepreneurs in Montreal, Ottawa and other parts of the country as signs Canada is creating a viable Silicon Valley alternative. He also had good things to say about the role of government in providing the funding necessary to get companies launched. “That’s one of the places where Canada is really excelling.”

Besides Adaptive Path, a user experience (UX) design consultancy which created technology that later became part of Google Analtyics, and his latest startup Greater Network, Becker has since become a venture advisor with Freestyle.vc. He said his own experience in the startup space proved pivotal in helping him coach others, particularly startup ideas that failed.

“In one of the early companies I was just unable to get additional capital. I didn’t know how to really sell the idea,” he said, adding that complaining about VCs that don’t understand the value of an idea later motivated him to get better at articulating them. “I won’t necessarily say there’s always funding for a good idea, but there’s always funding for an idea that can be proven.”

Last year, with co-author Thor Muller, Becker published “Get Lucky: How To Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You And Your Business.” He said the idea came from watching situations where innovation slowed down as startups matured into real companies. Writing the book gave him greater insight, he said, into the qualities of true innovators.

“The successful people put themselves in the path of opportunity,” he said. “They get into situations, like coming to this conference, where they learn new things. They also tend to be good at making connections between things other people have been unable to connect, or that they missed.”

While he suggested product managers could probably have one of the safest – and most lucrative – career paths in Silicon Valley, Becker said he’s also seeing encouraging signs of academia connecting with the private sector. He pointed to the University of Arkansas, which frequently mixes and mingles with local entrepreneur events. “They participate in the hack days. They’re cross-pollinating ideas,” he said. “It’s great because they take advantage of the support systems  (in the private sector) that are out there.”

And while some Canadian UX researchers or entrepreneurs may see a trip to Silicon Valley as inevitable or enviable, Becker cautioned otherwise.

“Now is a good time to stay here,” he said. “You’ll have the exact same problems in Silicon Valley.”