After the elevator pitch we had in class I took some time to review my idea and get some feedback from last year students. I thought I’d share this with you since you all might have thought on this when stepping into the venture project. I pitched my idea from the four perspectives below and was given feedback accordingly:

What is the problem? I identified the problem as for me, gym services today don’t offer the flexible training form I am asking for.
Feedback: This could have been taken to a more general perspective. By combining personal experience (“I”) with the more general problem (“you”) it can capture the interest of the audience even more.

What is the idea? Flextraining as I named it is a service to offer you flexible training through an online gym membership that enables you to book passes and activities at any gym or sport club you like. Secondly, the monthly pay rates are set from the activities you actually attend, and therefore, are variable. Feedback: A more visual description of the idea can be in order to fully grasp the service in such a short time.

What makes the idea unique? I mainly devided it into 1. it is the first service to offer you activities at both sport clubs and gyms without being committed to one gym enterprise. 2. The monthly pay rate is set from the activities you actually attend instead of the a fixed pay rate like regular gyms.
Feedback: Could incorporate key words to make it more tangible.

What’s my business model? In the short time I divided it into two parts: Revenues and costs. On revenues I related it to the monthly customer payments and regarding costs I discussed the potential partnerships with gyms and sport clubs with the trade of new customers.
Feedback: Maybe push for the collaboration and potential of the market more since you just have a short time to widen the interest of potential angel investors.

Key Take-away: What the feedback gave me in general was the need of focusing on capturing the potential angel investor’s interest. From my point of view this would have meant incorporating some vital key words to build a story that both captures and tells the story of the idea. In my case this could have been “flexible”, “gym trades”, “customized offer” for mentioning just a few.

Have you got any feedback or learned anything from the elevator pitch that could be valuable when going forward with the venture project?

Hello all!

During Friday’s team exercises and discussions about how to act under various circumstances when working with a partner or in a team, the opinions somewhat differed in the class. Not much, but a little. For example there were discussions about responsibilities and ways of handling things in case of unexpected events.

What I have posted below is a short article that describes 5 necessary steps to build an effective team. These steps doesn’t necessarily answers the questions raised during Friday’s exercises but they certainly cover one of in my opinion most important aspects; clarification and realisation of what and how much that can be achieved through successful teamwork. More specifically these simple steps made me think about the importance of being of a common opinion within the team before the actual work begins.

BUT, mainly I consider these steps useful to just read through and think about when working with the venture project. Although the article is from a leader point of view, seeing these steps from a group perspective reminds me of some things that are important to effectively work in a team.

Here’s the article: http://www.inc.com/peter-economy/5-steps-to-really-effective-teams.html

//Mattias

Yesterday I stumbled across an article with an interview with 91-year-old entrepreneur Jack Nadel. During the last 70 years he has been able to achieve a sustainable success in a wide range of different industries worldwide, creating millions of dollars in profits. In this article he shared his three most valuable lessons to know when starting and managing your company.

These are his lessons:

• Find a need and fill it
• Don’t let your ego get in the way
• Most successful entrepreneur aren’t geniuses

All of these lessons seem quite simple and I don’t think it’s anything revolutionary for anyone taking this course. But reflecting a bit more over the meaning of these lessons I realized that we maybe look at it in the wrong way. We want to hear some complex and complicated lessons because we think this is something complex and complicated. But in reality all of us could start a company just by finding a need and filling it and never doubt ourselves.

/Felix

In most courses, you get specific information on what your project should be about and some information on what you have to do for reaching different grades. What I like about this project is that nothing is given to us. We don’t have any specific “problem” to solve. We have to come up with an business idea by ourselves, we have to agree on that idea as a group and form the project group together.

I think its a great exercise for real life situations. Entrepreneurship is not all about getting a great idea and earn money. This stuff are things all entrepreneurs have to deal with. You need to formate your group. There is no teacher who will tell you what to do and there is no facit.

You could have a great mind, but if you are not able to lead the company of yours, you will not succeed.

Hi all,

I found this thing called Techstar while reading about accelerator companies online. Techstar is a global eco system that is built for entrepreneurs all over the world. Techstar provides accelerators, venture capital and an enormous entrepreneurial network. They encourage people to build their businesses wherever they live and invest in you as an entrepreneur and not necessarily the business that you are in.

I think it is perfect for entrepreneurs to be able to visit such events where they can get the chance to meet with other entrepreneurs and also get the chance to be funded. According to Techstar 89 % of the accelerator companies are still active or has been acquired which I think is a quite good number. Currently in Europe they have programs in Berlin and London but hopefully (if they consider all tech startups) they will host a programme in Stockholm as well.

Check it out!

Listen to this interview with entrepreneur Christofer Engman who is founder of three IT-companies. He is giving some advices on how to become a successful business leader. The video is only 8 minutes long! 🙂

The article has listed 13 sentences which look easy to understand but they are very meaningful.

The first is to pick up good cofunders. I really have some thoughts on it. I planned to start my company but I needed to find a cofunder. My best friends seemed best choice, actually I had no better choice. We have a lot of differences in the personality and attitude of doing things. Sometimes you should consider it very cautiously. Best match always facilitates process of having things done.

Even though there 13 sentences as recommendation you as startup don’t think so much, which can make you afraid to make choice, i.e. don’t let 13 sentences be your burdens and worries of your startup and choose some of them to compensate your weakness and encourage you.

// Zhen Li

I was a bit confused this Friday because I thought the lecture would focus more on the venture project. I have a hard time figuring out what it is concerning and what is expected of  us. I have talked to some people in class and I have gotten similar responses and concerns. Then I started to think, maybe this is the point. Perhaps Serdar wants us to figure it out ourselves or as a group, to simulate a real life scenario of creating a startup? Because it is always hard to know what to do next when creating a startup.

Today we had a nice group work assignment during the lecture. The discussions regarding the situations which could occure when you are starting up a business were fun to do. Maybe for the next time a somewhat complexer company as an example can be usefull, because problems with a orange juice car can relative easily be solved. But nevertheless, the outcome of the discussions were good and learnfull.

After that we had to built the highest tower out of one piece of paper. That assignment was really fun, because our proces described a possible start-up perfectly. At the start we already saw that we were not going to make it with a length of two papers, because everyone was trying that. We decided to go for all or nothing, so we tried to make a tower with a length of three papers. We didn’t succeed and our tower collapsed. You also see this very often with start-ups. People try to be the very best, but just a few succeed in that and the other start-ups fail.