Help Older People
My idea is to create a laundry network in Poland which help elderly person. After 60’s many of us can’t do some actions. One of this actions is doing laundry. We can help them one way. Human arrive to house of elderly person a take dirty clothes and provide clean. This business don’t need large capital on the beginning. Society will get older in Poland and this a path in developing this idea.
In tough competition and a 24/7 world it is easy to set your focus on the next task at hand and forget what has been achieved. So here I give you three good reasons to make a pause and celebrate the win!
/Erica
Hi all,
When I went back home from our last Entrepreneurship lecture on Tuesday, I bump into an advertisement in the metro showing a picture of ‘random guys’ (i.e. not model- bodies guys lol) wearing branded underwear. The motto was ” the underwear for PERFECT men”.
It first made me smile a bit but after thinking about it, it is actually quite a smart marketing strategy! People can identify themselves to those ‘normal guys’ and do not feel ashamed not to have a “perfect body” in the meaning that we all have in mind according to today’s society dictates (beach body/skinny/muscled)
To link it to our lectures, I would say that getting to know who you are addressing your advert i.e. who is your customer is a key step in the marketing strategy of a company!
An other company who has tried to follow the same trend marketing wise is Dove with their whole campaign putting forward everyday women. They have put a video as well showing how make-up and softwares like Photoshop could massively change the image given in the spot!
Since I missed Tuesdays lecture I read an article on innovation and made a short PPT summary of it. For you who have hard finding an idea of how to start, this is a great article! Read it here https://hbr.org/2003/03/finding-your-innovation-sweet-spot
My summary: InnovationSweetSpot_CatrinAronsson
Last week we were asked to discuss where some of todays technologies are going to be in five years. My group and I were given “Big Data” as subject.
What we came up with was that in five years, Big Data is likely to have increased to an even larger amount than what we have today. This would probably lead to a greater need of storage systems, thus new research concerning this. It could also imply new job opportunities as well as new user platforms. What was discussed was that in health care, where Big Data is used more and more, it could lead to better tracking of patient, doctors and diseases. However, an increase in Big Data, and the use of it, will most probably come with some or several problems, especially concerning personal data.
The task however, was not to give the right answer to where Big Data will be in five years (who could really?), but it was to guess and anticipate. If you are an entrepreneur, this is one of the basics to have a chance to success. To have an idea of what the market will look like in five years, and to base your product (or idea o product) on this, is what can make you competitive.
You want to hear a secret?
Last week, KTH innovation sent me a ticket to Stockholm Tech fest.
What they didn’t know was that they accidentally also sent me a ticket to the super-VIP hangout BEFORE the Tech fest.
(I’m not talking about the VIP dinner, but the VIP hangout that took place before that!)
I wasn’t even aware of it myself, even though they’d ask me
– Are you a speaker or an investor?
– (Me:) umm, I’m just a student…
—
Being in a room with only investors felt kind of alienating, but at the same time, of course I felt like I should take advantage of the situation. I didn’t know how, but I just made sure to talk as much as I could.
The last conversation of the day happened to be with a student of Handelshögskolan who started J12Ventures, a company that invests in Startups. He told me
“I’ve had so many ideas the last 6 months, and all I’ve been wanting to do is to network with KTH (technical-) students. But I’m isolated at handels and there isn’t really an event
between KTH and Handels…”
Having trained my ear to listen to “pains”, of course I saved that sentence in my brain-RAM as we continued the conversation. I later thought of arranging an event between Handels and KTH. Then I applied the concept of always “thinking bigger” as Micael told us at his talk.
Should we really be limited by events in our possibilities to network?
Why not make an app where you combine LinkedIn with WhatsApp?
I call it Virtual Networking…
The main concept being that you can “Create a room” (representing an event), and in there you can chat everyone else in the room. You can also see every other conversation in the room, and jump into conversations. You can of course chose to chat privately, Skype and exchange contact information (kind of like you exchange business card).
I went on to pitch the idea to a friend who works at STING (the best Startup incubator in Sweden if I remember correctly), who thought it was an interesting idea and supported it.
—
Michael (our last speaker) told us to “Think big”. Well, I already know that, right? I originally learned it from Tai Lopez, a wealth mentor. That’s why I want to make an app instead of an event…
But why not take a step further and make the app not just for business networking, but for everything. Like reddit! The difference being that Networkr is in real-time and more
interactive.
So what do you think. Should I go with niched or not?
Remember: “If you try to satisfy everyone, you won’t make anyone happy” – Serdar Temiz
PS. Can I use Networkr as my idea for the cource?
I guess everything started when I came to KTH, only to discover that innovation is possible, and people like you are doing it!…
I’ve lived in the suburbs of Stockholm my whole life. And not the good kind. The kind where drug dealing is common and theft/shooting happens every once in a while.
But I was a good boy. I was smart they said. I got good grades and my future would be bright.
That was the view of everyone except my Father. Not because of something personal to me, but because he was not a (business-)optimist. So I grew up thinking that it is
hard for everybody except the wealthy 1 % who controlles everything. I would become a doctor, get a job/house/kids and that would be the best I could do.
Then I started at KTH and I couldn’t help but to get fascinated by the innovation that is done by “regular people” and youths. People just like you and me! Being exposed to talks and events at school, I felt that the more experienced were very encouraging. I guess I was so fascinated because I had so low expectations.
I happily dwelved into the startup world by going to events where I found out that it is a rather small community, and everyone knows each other. Even though I was busy with studies and web design, I took the position of being a Brand ambassador for two startups. I am now the Brand ambassador at KTH for Venture Cup.
The whole time has been like a 1-year-journey in a flow state. Novelty, new challenges to overcome & room for personal development are always found in the Startup world!
Next year, I am the project manager of Entrepreneurial Days here at KTH which you are invited to. But even earlier than that
Join me at SUP46 today
https://www.facebook.com/events/581650585306870/
(I was planning to post sooner but I was busy recruiting)
PS. You must know about Venture Cup! Far too many students have an idea but think that they are too young/inexperienced/incompetent to execute. That is most likely not the case.
Venture Cup is Swedens biggest competition for ideas and Startups where you can win 260 000 SEK. Talk to me if you have an idea, there’s tons of free support to get 🙂
Micael Widell made sure that everyone brought something home from his arsenal of experiences.
For me was the pointer that
“> 50% of your funding should go to marketing”
I’ve actually built an ecommerce myself. www.inEar.nu
I did it last summer, and a big component why was to learn to make websites. I was mind-boggled by the amount of people who are self-learned web-designers. The programmer at one of the Startups I was an intern for said that he sold his first website before being able to make websites, later going home and learning to do it. Indeed even Daniel Ek (founder of Spotify) did the same thing as he reported at the interview at Tech fest.
However the main purpose of making the site was of course to make a profit. But I wouldn’t regret making it if it didn’t. The outcome?
When I had the cheapest prices on the market, I usually got around 3 orders per day. I did this even though profits where non-existent to create an awareness of the brand. When I later increased the prices, I got nearly zero visitors.
Everything Micael said made sense to me and just hammered home the belief structure I’ve gotten through the experience! An ecommerce is a place where you want real
people to spend their real money. You can’t expect them to do so without good branding and marketing.
—
Over the past year, a big reason of being an incomplete online-entreprenour was the lack of knowledge regarding the importance of marketing.
inEar.nu was one example, I have another example (which I’ll share later perhaps). Now I won’t make the same mistake with
Studieportalen.nu and StartupJournals.eu ! (not yet launched)
—
Something I remember from a recent seminar by JT Foxx (Worlds #1 wealth coach) on branding.
“Prada can buy a bag for 50 dollars, put their name on it and sell it for 5 000 dollars.
Would that work if you write your name on it instead? Most probably not.
Why? Because of branding!”
And not even a great product saves you the effort of marketing/branding! E.g Elon Musk gave 20 $ to the first users of Paypal. Up to an amount of some billions! (If I remember
correctly)
So always expect to put a lot of effort in marketing and branding and make place for it in your budget!
Here’s a rather old but interesting article The Guardian posted about social entrepreneurship and the phenomena in Sweden. It states that swedes traditionally are innovators but the concept of social entrepreneurship is new to the country. When talking about innovation in this digital era the recent sparks as Spotify, Skype and Soundcloud are some of many to be mentioned. But what about social innovation?
The link to the article: http://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2013/jun/04/social-entrepreneurship-rise-sweden
Why this interested me is that they identified a trend in the Swedish landscape: social problems have traditionally been a responsibility of institutions rather than individuals. An example of this is policymaking in order to solve the most pressing social challenges.
However, this trend is about to be broken and social challenges can be treated by using social innovation that changes the entrepreneurial landscape. This is now on a rise and there are government initiatives that are catching up with the changes by supporting these entrepreneurs. One example is The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (http://www.tillvaxtverket.se/ovrigt/englishpages.4.21099e4211fdba8c87b800017332.html).
So my thoughts are from an entrepreneurial perspective: what are the future trends to be broken? How can you be one step ahead and create business ideas that fulfill needs that haven’t traditionally been solved by entrepreneurs?
I have had one constant question during these first 3 lectures/seminars. Namely “What about the entrepreneurs that don’t break new ground? The ones that don’t sell their start up to google for 100 $ million.”
The definition of an entrepreneur is as follows:
“An individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes.”
So yes, “commonly an innovator of new ideas”. However according to the broad definition, a barber is also an entrepreneur. Not a very innovative one, but non the less an entrepreneur. Regardless on what you wish to achieve, these “unsexy entrepreneurs” are often discarded in the discussion of entrepreneurship.
A start up here from KTH have realised that you can entrepreneur and innovate within areas which are to the naked eye boring. The start up’s core business idea is to start business in areas where no one is currently innovating and move in with business ideas and methods that will conquer the market. An example of their output so far: http://grasbolaget.se. With this company, they simply sell grass and plant it. That’s it. But with a much more standardised working process and better digital marketing they are in a good position to conquer market shares and make profit. Who would have thought you could entrepreneur in selling grass?
Just something I wanted to throw out there. Anyone want to start selling paint? 😉
