Probably most EIT students reading the title of this blogpost knew instantaneously that it had to be me writing it – as I either talk about the importance of diversity in tech or am attending events about diversity/women in tech most of my free time! And even though I am always happy to talk about why I personally believe diversity in tech is important in this blogpost I would instead like to share all the amazing resources available to (international) women in tech in Stockholm: events, meetups and groups I engaged with over the past 10 months. I am hoping this list might be useful for those staying here or coming back later during their studies!

CodePub

What is it? A meetup organised by Netlight (an IT consulting firm) that is open for beginners as well as professionals. Every event has a different topic ranging from Machine Learning to UX design and participants always have the chance to do some hands on work while eating, drinking and making new friends.
Link: meetup group

Pink Programming Sundays

What is it? As the name suggests it is a series of events that always take place on Sundays and every time hosted by a different tech office in Stockholm. There is always a short technical talk and an intro to the hosting company but for the rest of the day one can either work on their own coding project or help out with others’ file enjoying the food, drinks, productive office space and great company!
Link: facebook group

SUP46 FemTech

What is it? SUP46 is one of the largest co-working spaces in Stockholm and it is also one of the most active tech-event spaces hosting events almost every single night! They also have a series of events called “FemTech” where a panel of female VCs and entrepreneurs share their experiences. In addition startups that have female founders also get the chance to pitch during the event.
Link: SUP46 facebook page, previous event

Women in Tech Conference

What is it? Every year on International Women’s Day (March 8) there is a huge conference hosted for women in tech in Stockholm – and the tickets are completely free! No wonder this year they sold out in less than 10 minutes… The event was a full day of inspiring as well as technical talks accompanied by a small career fair and followed by a reception.
Link: facebook event

Women in Tech (Stockholm)

What is it? Not a physical meetup but a Facebook group with great resources and event suggestions for all women in tech globally, but mostly focused on happenings in the Stockholm area.
Link: facebook group

Women@EIT

What is it? A little bit of self promotion here but we actually have our own community for female students at EIT. This year we had several events in Stockholm including an Arduino workshop, 3D modelling workshop, pitching workshop and an afternoon where we invited female entrepreneurs to talk about their experiences. Next year we will have events at other EIT locations as we are hoping to strengthen our community through engaging in educational workshops together.
Link: facebook group

Of course this list is not exhaustive and I am not suggesting to attend all of them all the time – and in addition there are also so many inspiring tech events in the city for all genders. However, I think that as women studying and working in technical fields we can benefit from a strong community and to me personally it was incredible to be part of this inspiring female community in Stockholm!

– Dori Palfi

doraepalfi@gmail.com

Recently, I came across an amazing and mindblowing movie: ‘Joy’, which is inspired on the real-life story of Joy Mangano. I would like to share the story and take-aways from the movie (Spoiler Alert!).

Joy

Joy Mangano was born in 1956, in New York. Her father was running a metal garage and mother was a housewife. From a very young age, she started making innovative things. While working at an animal hospital as a teenager, Mangano devised a fluorescent flea collar for cats and dogs to make them easily visible to cars at night (A company put a similar product on the market the following year). She graduated from Pace University with a degree in business administration in 1978.

Life was a mess

However, all these good things were suppressed by the efforts she had to take and sacrifices she had to make for her family. After graduating from pace university, she had to work as a waitress to support her family, which now consisted of her mother, father, grandmother, husband, and three kids. Her mother and father had constant problems with their relationship and eventually, she got divorced too.

The idea

She was a maker, and was meant to do better things than what she was doing. She knew that she was not going to give up and this is when a life changing event happened. She was invited on her step-mom’s sailboat for a party, where while drinking wine, some glasses fell on the ground. While cleaning the mess with her mop, she tried to rinse the mop, only to find glass shards in her hands. While suffering through the pain, she thought about an innovative idea that can remove this pain for all the people who go through the same horrendous and arduous process of rinsing the mop. She designed a mop that self rinses and which can be cleaned in a washing machine.

Ideas are worth nothing until implemented

Even though the idea was disruptive it did not became an overnight success. She had to first make a prototype, which she made by several iterations in her father’s garage. Later she came to know from her father’s lawyer about a company that had a patent for the product and so had to pay a royalty for that. The company itself was manufacturing the product for her and so she had to pay them for manufacturing as well. Moreover, they kept on increasing the price of manufacturing from time to time and all these troubles landed her in a debt of about 100000$.

Tried to sell on her own – Failed

First she tried to sell on her own by approaching shops to keep her product in their shop. But the shop owners claimed that they don’t want people to buy a costlier mop just once and use it multiple times, rather they want people to come back and buy a cheaper mop many times. After this failure she tried to sell the mop on her own. So she packed her mop, a bucket, a piece of her kitchen floor and her children, and she set out to show people what a mop “could” be. She spoke with anyone who would listen. But still couldn’t manage a good number of sales.

New Opportunity

Then she came to know about an opportunity to sell her product on QVC, a famous on TV product selling company, from her ex-husband. He also set her up with a meeting with QVC where she pitched and got accepted to be sold as a product on the channel. QVC asked her to make 50,000 products for her show. Again, she had to take a second mortgage on her house to fulfill the production demands.

First attempt – Failed

QVC choose a reputed salesperson to sell her product. But due to difficulties in operating the product live on show, she could not make great sales. Joy was broken, and was forced to declare bankruptcy by her family members. However, she was not going to accept defeat so soon.

Second attempt – Record breaking sales

Joy went back to QVC to get a second chance to prove herself. And she successfully convinced the QVC team that she is the one who should be on screen to demonstrate that product. The moment was here: ‘Household product 375… 3 … 2…. 1… Action!’, all the lights and cameras were on Joy. She gave a splendid performance by letting people know that their was a need for the mop and sold 18,000 mops in less than a half hour. This was the moment that made Joy Mangano what she is today.

And now

All this was just the beginning, for both the Miracle Mop and Mangano’s success. In 1999 Mangano sold her company, Ingenious Designs, to the parent company of the Home Shopping Network (HSN), and she stayed on as the company’s president. By the year 2000, her company was selling $10 million worth of Miracle Mops per year. She has since sold millions of Miracle Mops and has created scores of other products, such as Rolykit, Huggable Hangers and the Piatto Bakery Box and also owns more than 100 patents.

There were many people who tried to pull her down and few who tried to support her. However the things that kept her going was her determination and her belief in the product. It was not that she got success in her first attempt, but her persistent attempts made her successful. If someone asks me the definition of hustler, my response would be undoubtedly “Joy Mangano”.

Source: http://joymangano.com

On 22 April 2017, I have the opportunity to attend Start Up Day 2017 (I know, Start Up Day again). A few students have shared about their experiences at the Start Up Day, especially about what they have learnt from the talks, but I realised nobody did talk about the workshops that was held at a separate studios. Hence, I will be talking about what I have experienced from one of the workshops which Start Up Day offers as well.

I first attended a Pre-Pitch Workshop where coaches from different organisations such as Slush, SUP46, Sting and Wave Ventures, helps participants to improve their pitch. During this workshop, people learn how to write and structure their pitch and train how to pitch prior to their pitching during lunch hour. I was fortunate to be able to interact with one of the coaches and he had helped my friend in refining his pitch. While it is important to fit every information regarding why and how about the new idea, it is also important to not forget about passion. I think that it is crucial that people speak with passion and that will capture the audience’s heart.

Following which, I attended the open pitch which was held during the lunch hour. During the hour, participants have the opportunity to pitch to the audience and at the same time receive feedback from the judges. Having heard more than ten pitches and their respective feedback, there are some of the common mistakes made in the pitches. For example, some people lack a catchy name for their ideas, and this made it harder for the audience to remember their idea.

Next, I attended a talk by Niklas Laninge, the founder of Daily Bits Of who talked about the three dysfunctions of start up.

1. Making it about ego
A startup will never survive if it is about their ego. With different people only concerned about themselves, the team will have different agendas and there will be no trust in the team. This slows down the productivity in the startup as things take extra time to be done. It is never about one’s wants but how the team come together to decide what should be the priority, and then work together as a team to meet their priority.

2. All talk no action when it comes to diversity
There is a general lack of diversity in the industry, in terms of gender, age and race. Diversity in the workplace can bring about increased productivity and creativity. With a diverse workforce, there will be different perspectives present in the team offering view points which could be missed without diversity. Niklas did mention a good way to obtain a more diverse team.

• Anonymous Application Process: to avoid stereotypical judgments about others
• Standardising Testing & Interview: through personality tests and structured interviews
• Having separate evaluators: avoid bias

3. Making it about long hours
The common myth is that people at start-ups usually work long hours. However, there is no merit in obsessively long hours. It is counter productive with the lack of work-life balance. Hence, one should never obsessively praise long hours as you want your people to work out of joy and not to work for long hours out of typical norm.

In conclusion, Start Up Day had been a good event and I have learnt a lot from interacting with the many people at the event. It was certainly informative and worth attending.

I pass quite some time watching videos on YouTube, mostly TED talks, VICE short videos and “algorithm suggested” stuff. A few days ago I watched to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4pA7XlDI8&feature=youtu.be where Michael O’Leary (the CEO of Ryanair) holds a 50 min conference on Ryanair at RCSI in Dublin in November 2015 as part of the Annual RCSI Millin Meeting.

I suggest everybody to watch the video, mister O’Leary is a successful businessman that revolutionized the airline industry. He is very fun to listen hereafter some quotes from the speech as a motivational:

• “People are not your biggest asset: they are your biggest cost” – Michael O’Leary
• Q (Auditor): “How do you motivate employees?” A (Michael O’Leary): “With fear, fear works very well!”
• “It is not difficult to be cheaper than Lufthansa on the days they are actually flying and are not on strike again” – Michael O’Leary

Michael O’Leary, Image: Wikipedia

The main point that you get from the speech is that politeness matters and that nobody can remain forever a guerrilla -style start – up: even Ryanair in the last few years has changed its strategy and one of the new goals is “being nice to customers” after years of growth pushed by aggressive cost cutting and zero tolerance internal policies. This shift in strategy has boosted sales and profit (profit after tax in fiscal year ending 31/03/2016 was up 43% compared to the year before).

I find this change in strategy quite interesting and I would have never thought it would have worked when I first read in March 2016 this article on the Wall Street Journal. Ryanair is known for being a very low price carrier, that offers very low fares but therefore charges an extra price for anything the passenger might want (quite famous is a quote by O’Leary that says: “Anyone who thinks Ryanair flights are some sort of bastion of sanctity where you can contemplate your navel is wrong. We already bombard you with as many in-flight announcements and trolleys as we can. Anyone who looks like sleeping, we wake them up to sell them things”): forget about drinks, free luggage, help at check-in, etc.. Shifting to a more customer friendly approach surely involves more costs and if passengers don’t accept slightly higher prices the overall balance would have led to lower profits. However, customers appreciated the move and showed that people are actually ready to pay a bit more for some politeness and friendliness.

I think this is an important point for anybody starting a company, at the beginning a “guerriglieros” approach might work quite well (Uber has grown also by using some strategies that are not the best example of commercial correctness although not illegal, for example they were booking and unbooking rides on the app of their competitor Lyft in order to create long waiting times for real customers) but after some time it is important to shift to more polite and friendly operations since people do care about how they are treated.

Ryanair new strategy: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ryanairs-new-strategy-being-nice-1457862512

Ryanair investor report: https://investor.ryanair.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Ryanair-Results-FY2016.pdf

Lyft cancelled rides: http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-requests-lyft/index.html