Helping and trying a Startup: Plick

Lately, I have seen many ads of startup second hand-apps, especially on the subway so I thought I would give it a try share my experience and hopefully get some extra cash! For over a month ago I downloaded the app Plick from Appstore and created a profile by simple connecting to my Facebook account. I have created ads before on sites the Blocket a for 6 years ago and must say that this was much easier and straightforward!

My first impression was that it felt very similar to Instagram, you can follow people and people can follow you and the profile layout. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Next step was to upload the pictures of the product I wanted to sell, and I got some useful advice on things to consider when taking a photo. The lightning and background make a big difference and they advise you to also take a closer picture of the product. They also recommend giving a short description, hashtags, size etc.

 

                                      

Hopefully, someone will find my beautiful dress that is up for 200 Kr!

So my conclusion of the app? I really liked the app and idea, a smart, easy and sustainable way to sell and buy clothes. My only concern is that my ad has been up for a while now and no one has shown interest yet. I’m wondering if it might be because there are not enough active users or if my dress is not attractive enough?  

I did some research and got to know that Plick has more than 20 000 active users and there are a lot of competitors on the market like the sites Tradera and Blocket, but also other startups like Shpock (10 milj users in EU and 0,5 milj users in Sweden) and Sellply (backed by H&M). 

To be successful in this market segment I think it is important to have strong market shares and invest in marketing to get the most active users. And in that way, I am helping Plick (and my dress) now by giving it some attention here in the blog!

Using the app is for free now so Plicks revenues are low, but Plicks plan is to earn money in the future by charging a 10 percent fee when a customer uses Plicks embedded payment service to sell a piece of clothing. I however, think that they have to have more influence on the market before taking charges, especially if their competitors are offering this for free otherwise they will just lose users.

So guys create an account and you might found something cheap and beautiful like my dress!

/F

 

 

        

 

Hi there!

Since I forgot to put up a blog post of last event I figured I’d put both of the events up in the same post to avoid occupying the a whole page on Intopreneur. The events I attended was the Stockholm Food Movement and IoT Innovation Night. I’ll avoid getting into too much detail since I believe you’ve already read the previous posts and instead I’ll be sharing my own thought about the events.

Stockholm Food Movement

Stockholm Food Movement, October 18th

As previously mentioned by Johan, this event was about the issues concerning the problems about food in our world. Some starve while others are overweight. There were a couple of presentations like the Gaia team, Matsvinnet among them. I found the event very interesting and informative since most of us know that food is a well discussed issue, but the only ones who’re able to solve this is, in fact, us entrepreneurs with our innovative ideas. The fact that there are so many ideas that you’ve never actually heard of makes me kind of happy and inspired to figure out my own solutions. Although I won’t be approaching the food market, I sure want to solve other problems and deliver my own value propositions.

IoT Innovation Night

IoT Innovation Night, October 9th

As you might have read from the other students attending the event, this event was all about the Internet of Things. There were multiple companies working in the area who presented themselves and we were also told how to get in touch and the possibilities of getting funded by the European Platforms Initiative, IoT-EPI for short. I personally found this event to be the most fun out of the two I attended as I have a huge passion for the digital development in general and the fact that the event was held at Norrsken House. Ever since Jessica from Norrsken presented Norrsken in our class I’ve wanted to start developing some of my ideas to try to better peoples daily lives.

Both of the events has been really inspiring, with the IoT one topping my list, and I get more and more excited about walking down the entrepreneur road on my own. Maybe one day I’ll manage to get a funding from Norrsken and that you’ll see me presenting on one of these kind of startup events in the future.

Take care!

Dan

Menitmeter provides a mobile app for polling during presentations. You can create questions to which your audience replies with their mobile devices or laptops. Feedback is provided in a visual form, in real time. I tested the app because I think it can be useful in university. Students will feel more involved and motivated by enabling them to contribute to presentations. It is a welcoming change compared to the classic lecture format. Of course it is not something new but I wanted to see the differences to other solutions and provide freedback to them. My conclusion:

You can easily register online on their website (https://www.mentimeter.com/).  Mentimeter is fully web-based which means no downloads or installations required. That’s really good. On their website they are writing that you can use Mentimeter completely free of charge, no credit card needed to get started. It is free, but after a few minutes a I saw that it is a limited version. You can create only two questions for example, otherwise you have to buy the Basic or Pro Version which is quite expensive I think (https://www.mentimeter.com/plans). But it is possible to test several functions (Multiple Choice, Image Choice, Word Cloud, Qui, Scales, Open Ended, Matrix etc.) with the free version. What I am excited about are the diversity of these functions. The teacher can for example let the audience rate statements on a scale. That’s a quick way of getting useful data and analysis of trends and progress. The website visualize the results in real-time. This works especially well. But I think the opportunities to design the slides could be improved. Compared to PowerPoint there are only a few elements. Of course it is not the central function of their product but for the price they charge it has to be better. All in all Mentimeter is certainly a new way of doing presentations. It can be used to create great interaction. But the prices for the offered product is in my opinion not justified.

 

There are several places for entrepreneurs to work at in Stockholm. Usually entrepreneurs pay monthly for a place to work at or else try to be productive at a cafeteria. Paying a fee for a place to work in might be expensive but at least you’re not surrounded by other people having fun and you don’t get the strage look from the cafe employee.

 

(By the way, if you’re looking for a cafe to work in, you can search for a location that matches you’re preferences about wi-fi, location, price, etc. in https://workfrom.co/)

However, there’s a new place in town where entrepreneurs can not only work in but also get inspired by keynote speakers, be helped by other successful entrepreneurs and enroll in some education programs: CHANGER’S HUB.

Changer’s Hub is located in Botkyrka, more specifically in Fittja, which has the highest percentage of first and second generation inmigrants in Sweden. Changer’s Hub aims to give these youngsters the opportunity to demonstrate their capacity to innovate and create value for others. Who knows, maybe Botkyrka can become the next Brooklyn!

Having heard about Changer’s Hub mission, Estanislao, Felix and I went to its opening. We were excited to listen to their founder’s as well as to Faje Gani, chief of Twitter Nordic. However, when we finally managed to get there, the event was held in Swedish!

Hi everyone!

Yesterday I attended an event by the Prins Daniel Fellowship about inspiring people to become entrepreneurs. Prins Daniel himself – husband of crown princess Victoria – was the main speaker at the event. Joining him was three prominent entrepreneurs speaking about their experiences within entrepreneurship: Cristina Stenbeck from Kinnevik, Anna Omstedt Lindgren from MedUniverse, as well as Saeid Esmaeilzadeh from Serendipity Innovations.

IVA hosted this event and adjoining lecture to inspire young individuals to develop and pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. It aimed to discuss ideas, experiences, possibilities, and tools that are extremely helpful when you want to evolve your idea or company. The speakers spoke about their experiences and challenges as well as answered open questions from the audience.

Prins Daniel
The prince spoke about his perception that entrepreneurship is everywhere in society and business. He mentioned the importance of crossing academic and business disciplines to create new valuable ideas. He stressed his belief in the younger generations and that importance for young people not to give in to the fear of failure. He also talked about the fact that most of the time it is not a new idea in itself that investors invest in, it is in fact the people that are invested in. He also pointed out that it is a splendid time to start businesses when you are studying, since you often can find time easier than if you work full time.

Cristina Stenbeck
Cristina Stenbeck is a world famous intrapreneur who took over a large share of the responsibility in the huge Stenbeck media empire when she was just 24 years old. She is the daughter of the Swedish entrepreneurial legend Jan Stenbeck and is a major figure within Kinnevik Investing. She has played a main role in the successful digitalization within the vast telekom sector. When she stepped in at the age of 24, the company had 15 000 employees, today the number of employees is above 80 000. She has been a part in the investment of two billion Euro to create the e-commerce market that we have today. As an example she invested early on in the e-commerce company Zalando and has worked closely with them since the beginning of the company.

Her recommendation for new entrepreneurs is to find a niche that is focused on the future. She stresses the fact of social entrepreneurship and that Swedes have a huge advantage in social entrepreneurship that they can and should export abroad. The Swedish trademark is strong and our culture of sustainability is profitable. She also says that “The perfect time to start a business does not exist, just do it”.

Anna Omstedt Lindgren
Anna Omstedt Lindgren is an entrepreneur who started in the dot com era. She talked a lot about her first business and how it developed. She was the cofounder of Tasteline, who later evolved into a part of the now big company Mathem. The difficulties her company faced were mainly related to getting an analogue world to go digital. They struggled with everything from finding a name and domain name that customers would “approve” of, to suppliers that did not want to go digital but rather keep sending out post. Today Anna works with digital patient cases in her own company. Her core team is extremely diverse with people from all around the globe and one of her recommendations is just to make sure you have diversity to get new mixes of ideas. She says that especially as a woman, it has been very good for her to start her own companies as she that way has not had to fight the gender fight the same way as women who climb the career ladder the usual way.

Saeid Esmaeilzadeh
Saeid Esmaeilzadeh is a highly successful entrepreneur and cofounder of e.g. Serendipity Innovations och Serendipity Ixora AB. He was born in Iran and came to Sweden as a child. He studied chemistry at Stockholm University and his first entrepreneurial breakthrough came after he and his friend started a company based on a new glass material that Saeid had discovered in his lab. He is a academic at heart and did not know he wanted to start his own company until the opportunity came. Today his company has 1500 employees and sell to over 70 countries. Their businesses are based on technological innovations and their strategy is to avoid competition by finding business opportunities where there is no competition yet.

He has many simple but clever recommendations to people who want to be entrepreneurs. First of all he says you should do what you find fun and to find the right people to do it with. It is important that these people have skills that you do not possess. He talked a lot about the fact that you should get out and try your idea instead of sitting and trying to perfect it as you never know how the market will react. Related to this he says that you should not be afraid of people stealing your idea as it is the implementation that is the important part. It is how you create the business around your idea that is the unique and lucrative part. He says there are thousands of good ways to build a company. However, it is always important to have strong engine in driving it forward. To all foreigners and immigrant he also has the recommendation to learn the social constructs of the (Swedish) society as this brings with it a lot of contacts and opportunities. With social constructs he referred to e.g. fika, kräftskivor, midsummer, and snaps songs.

Conclusion
The event was very informative and inspirational. It made me really think about and reflect upon how I myself can move forward in the future to achieve my personal entrepreneurial goals. It captured a lot of important aspects that you usually might not think about when considering getting in to entrepreneurship. If anyone has the opportunity to attend an event by Prins Daniels Fellowship about entrepreneurship, I think you should seize the chance!

I remember this slide that Serdar showed us in the first lesson of the course, and I wasn’t surprised when I saw it.

I had heard of the startup failure rate before and I can only imagine how much work and effort it takes to create a successful company. But why do so many startups fail? 

I wanted to know why so my curiosity led me to an interesting TED-talk clip with Bill Gross. Gross has founded and incubated a lot of startups at Idealab and was searching for the answer to that question too and made a research. He gathered data from hundreds of different companies to investigate why some succeed and others fail. Gross ranked each company on five key factors and found that one factor stands out from others. So what factors counted the most?

The idea?

The team?

The business model?

The funding?

The timing?

Surprisingly, it was not the business idea of the startup that was the key factor, which I thought. It was actually the timing that was the number one key to success. This shows how important it is that the market and society is ready for your business idea. Gross mentioned for example that Airbnb was so successful because it was launched at the right time and their idea could thrive in the recession. In the hard times of recession,  people were more willing to rent out their home for strangers and the whole thing became more common. Before that people thought that the whole idea was weird. “Who would want to rent out their house to a stranger that they found online for a short period? Who would want to live in some random person house? ”

Gross also mentioned how YouTube became successful because it was perfectly timed with the launching of Adobe Flash, and this shows the importance of timing it with existing complementary products.

So the lesson learned is that to increase your chances of succeeding you have to be in the market with your idea in the perfect time when there are a potential demand, mature market, and existing technical complementary products.

 

 

 

 

 

Hello!

I know my blog is very late for the event I am going to mention, but as you would all agree last couple of weeks have had so many landmines we know as deadlines to be taken care of.

As you would have read on a previous post from Shiva and Timm, who had also attended the event, gave a pretty extensive write up on this event. So I am going to keep it short and simple.

The IoT-European Platforms Initiative (IoT-EPI) was formed to build a vibrant and sustainable IoT-ecosystem in Europe, maximising the opportunities for platform development, interoperability and information sharing. Their aim is to digitalize everything that can be digitalized and help in the growth of this thing we call as ‘Internet’. They seven projects working under them who would provide platforms, funding and other technical support to startups and entrepreneurs to develop their ideas. All you have to do is sign up for ‘Open Calls’ for one of the projects which could help you out. Open calls generally consists of submitting a proposal to one of the projects.

Link for open calls: http://iot-epi.eu/open-calls/

A short presentation was given by one of the enterprises which was helped by one of the project under IoT: Terracom. They are a business computing group whose main area of expertise are: solutions for the physical security industry and integration of IoT technology. Their project manager Natalia Oumnova gave this presentation and also gave some insights on how the IoT project can help you!

I have to talk about Norrsken house before I finish this blog. It is probably one of the coolest working spaces I have every seen. The work spaces are completely open with comfortable chairs and green plants everywhere. The whole place has an aura of peace and tranquility. The whole interior design of the building is created in such a way that you can have your maximum productivity yet at the same time feel little stress.

 

Peace!

\Vishal