Stockholm, 08/09-2015

Today Micael Widell, the co-founder and CPO of online marketplace website Fyndiq held a very interesting lecture at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). I was caught up with his presentation. Not because of his charisma, but more due to the entrepreneurial spirit he was breathing.

His main focus at the presentation was the 6 different phases his startup had made through. Here is some of the notes I took from the presentation:

Diffrent phases when building companies

• Phase 1: Decide to do it
Going in full time is important.

• Phase 2: Find a project and co-founders.

• Phase 3: Get serious
Think big. From PowerPoint to MVP
Finding first investors
Launch!

• Phase 4: Build and iterate product
Launch means nothing, the work starts here
Need for more money
Bold Decision to expand organisation
Lots of spent learning money
Good API +  good Marketing+ Key partnership resulted in traction.

• Phase 5: Early traction
Trying to keep up with growth
Strain on organisation
Paying off technical debt
Putting up processes and workflows
Trying outsourcing of key functions

• Phase 6: Expanding the organisation
Hiring department heads and HR ppl
Find people who reflect founders’ spirit and personality
Shift focus from exit to building great organisation
Founders less and less essential to daily operations

The most interesting phase according to me is phase number 1. Decide to do it. I think that many people out there have had some kind of idea they’ve believed in and wanted to go for. But at some point, we feel insecure. We don’t want to take that last step out of the airplane before free falling. We have our education, job, house and maby family. Risking so much, for something you really can’t forecast the result of, would just be stupid in a rational world.

But the world is not rational, and if we don’t take risks, we won’t achieve anything. With this sentence I don’t mean that one should jump of school, quit his job and sell his apartment for the first idea one thinks will be “it”. But think about how many other great companies there would be today if more people with great ideas just would dare to take that phase 1 step.

/Amir Marandi

Hey everyone,

Durring the last lecture we talked about how to make things simpler, how to add less details. This made me thinking about that and I realised that I saw something a while ago which had something to do with that. There is company which is called Phonebloks. It’s founded by a Dutch guy which did his thesis about it. He found it really strange that we just throw away our mobilephone or computer when some little part is broken and that the electronic waste keeps on growing. He invited a mobilephone which is made out of blocks. So that when one thing breaks or gets old, you can just replace it and keep on using the same phone. That the phone is made out of blocks also means that you can adjust it to your needs. So when you want to keep it simple you take a bigger battery for instance and keep out other functions. The principle is clearly explained in this video:

But he realised, he couldn’t do it on his own. So he searched for other companies which could help him in developing his ideas. He found multiple companies which are working on it or want to make different parts for the mobile. Phonebloks is going to try and connect all the companies.

I found it really interesting how he managed to get so much media attention and I liked his clear and informative videos. I hope you like it too.

Regards,

Tim Buzink

Hey Guys!

I was just  curious to see and find on the internet the proportion of female entrepreneurs within the entrepreneur pool . I could only find the French proportion that is of only 1/3 of the total entrepreneurs! I am more than keen to find a more general number for it!

So why do we have more male entrepreneurs than female entrepreneurs? This question can definitely be extensively discussed (maybe as a group project?) but here are some highlights I personnaly think that could affect women’s decision to be an entrepreneur :

• Women tend to analyse more and be perfectionist : starting a entrepreneur adventure is a lot of uncertainties and questions without answers which can be scary
• As a group effect, female entrepreneurs could not feel support by her peers if she is this only female entrepreneur (cf dancing video we’ve seen in class!)
• Women are afraid of being unsuccessful and fail
• May be harder for a women to find the right work/life balance. Being an entrepreneur is a full time job consuming a lot of time and energy!

As a piece of reflexion, please find below 2 links sharing examples and advice from  10 successful single momentrepreneurs :).

http://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/239018

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248772

Cheers,

Celine

I found this interesting article which I think summarizes a lot of what have been discussing in the classes. The author of the article describes what is important to think about when you first have an idea for a start-up. He includes questions about the funding, the market, the product and the business model which are all subjects which have been discussed during the time of this course. The most important thing a take with me from this article is that you should try to kill your own idea, if that is possible there is no point of spending more time on it. It might not be a fun thing to do but if the idea survives these arguments it will be much easier to continue to work on it. And one thing I’ve learnt from this course is that working on an idea as an entrepreneur will take a lot of time and energy; and it would be really pointless to have spent all that time for nothing.

Many of the questions are similar to what we are writing about in our venture papers, so if you’re not done yet take a quick look on and you might get some new ideas.

A couple of weeks ago the guest lecturer Albert Bengtson from  Apple asked us a question which got me thinking. It was: “What do you think having a job would look like in the future?”

At least in Germany, my generation is known as the “generation  internship” due to the need of experience you need, when you want to apply for a new job. In order to meet the job requirements of certain career fields, inexperienced job applicants need to absolve a  lot of a internships. This was not always the case and belittles the  value of education which certainly generates a problem: If you do not have job experience, you will not get a job. If you do not have a job, it is hard to get experience. Thus there is a need for internships (according to the industry). Doing internships can be fun and rewarding for a short time. But if you are paid little or even not at all, it can be frustrating after a while and lower the attractiveness of actually working for someone else in general.

Furthermore, if you compare the consistency on the job market from two decades ago with today’s standards, it is hard for me to imagine to have one job for the rest of my life. Regardless whether I would like it or not, this scenario seems to be gone forever. A lot of people are thrown out of jobs (certainly also because of the financial crisis a couple of years back) and forced to learn new jobs. Ergo the ones who adapt fastest, will have an advantage. Being able to adapt and coping with new things seems to be a crucial part of being a successful entrepreneur.

Robotics and computers in general are going to automate simple and even difficult tasks to a level where human accord labour is not required anymore. Highly skilled professionals with a broad scope will be the profile of many job descriptions. (Who has not alredy heard of the so called “T-shaped” professional) The needs will shift and being on the forefront of this development instead of longing for the ‘goog old days’ will probably pay off.

Additionally more and more people seem to have the dream of being their own boss. This is what I perceive as the main motivator for entrepreneurs to take the risk and try to exploit an opportunity. Entrepreneurship also enables the entrepreneur to develop a product or service which is produced with own resources and skills. Since the probability for an entrepreneur to be successful is closely connected to their motivation and interest in their product, this work has the potential to be far more rewarding than a random job, carried out for someone else.

Combining all these observations, I believe that some kind of entrepreneurship will be the norm in a few decades from now. Fostering your own skills and knowing how to sell them will be a crucial aspect of work life. Big companies will most certainly still exist but the way people are employed will probably change. After all, regardless of what will come in the future, we will experience a major change.