Heping Start Ups – Operates 2

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Hi,

Since before the start of this course, me and Fredrik Nordström has been involved in a Start up by a couple of KTH students from our program. It began before the summer when we first heard the idea and had some heated discussions with the founders regarding the project and continued after the summer we where asked to operate two of the companies, which we said yes to.

The idea in short is to identify craftsmen markets where, above all, the communication between customer and contractor is undeveloped (websites that are unprofessional, no clear “hits” when searching the internet etc) and where it’s believed that new companies can enter and earn market shares.

So since the beginning of september we operate a company that suplies lands for your garden etc, called Gräsbolaget (that Fredrik has written about earlier) and a company which does drainage and earthwork, called Svenska Markspecialisten:)

We entered the companies in the middle of high season and much of the work up till now has been about making sure that the day to day operations work and that we can manage the customers we get. But now when the season are coming to its end (the frost bites hard soon), we are going to start focusing more on developing the strategies of the companies for the spring. This includes contacting future and existing partners (which we have talked about a lot in this course), talking with suppliers and figuring out price plans.

And we also would like your help!

If you have the time, please go to our websites (unfortunately everything is in Swedish since our market is Stockholm..) and give feedback on whats good and whats missing/can be improved:)

http://grasbolaget.se

http://svenskamarkspecialisten.se

Oh and one more thing! If you do a Google search and find the websites that way, don’t click on the ad-link because we are paying for every click and we want to save them for possible customers;)

Looking forward to your feedback/thoughts!

/ Emil

Twitter-pitch

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Hi guys,

Hope your weekend was good and that studying for the final exams in all your other courses is going well!

A couple of days ago I stumbled over a interesting tweet, labeled #140pitchen. This is something the tele market company Telenor initiated to “clean” the Swedish internet for the best entrepreneurial ideas. The campaign makes you, in 140 characters or less, pitch your business idea to three Swedish angel investors (Magnus Winberg, founder of Pricerunner, Susanna Falkengren, known from Draknästet and Karolina Räntfors, founder of Tic) by using the hashtag, and then the angels respond to your idea.

The angels had control over Telenor’s twitter account (the campaign is over now unfortunately..) and if they thought the idea was interesting they asked you to send a email to describe the idea further.

I thought the campaign was really cool but it got me thinking, is this all just a marketing trick from Telenor or what do they want to get from the campaign?  Also is 140 characters enough to describe an idea?

I think so. In a intervju one of the angels (Magnus Winberg) said that “it dosen’t have to be a complete idea, rather to capture my, and the other angel’s interest, by pinpointing a specific problem”. This is something we have talked about a lot in the course and it is nice to hear it from a real angel investor as well. In this way you don’t have time to present a business modell or describe your competitors like we did in our elevator pitch, but maybe it’s enough? Also this might be the new way to introduce your idea to investors (not using twitter necessarily). Because how often do you meet with a investor in person? Maybe you have to send something (email or post on linkedin) in written form and make it short enough so the person receiving it dosen’t throw it away.

I scrolled thru the tweets and got surprised to se responses from Telenor’s account (from the angels) on virtually every tweet! Some of the ideas got the respons “I don’t understand” while other got the respons “very interesting, please send me an email and describe more” (witch must be pretty cool to receive from a angel investor!).

The best tweet i read was simply, “UBER for tattoos”, without further explanation:) That tweet got the respons “now you got me interested! Email me an describe more”.

So, what do you guys think, will there come any businesses from this campaign or is it just a market trick and is this the new way to introduce your ideas to investors?

All the best!

/ Emil

PS: Since the campaign is over (and it was in Swedish) I didn’t post a link but you can search on the hashtag #140pitchen if you want do read som of the ideas and responses.

Functions, is less more?

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Good evening!
In several of the lectures so far we have talked about removing/replacing functions in existing products to create new products and from that create businesses (e.g. the example with the very simple phone). The key here is to identify something redundant in a product and identifying a group of people that can be your costumers when removing/replacing this. And also remember what Serdar says “you can’t make everyone happy” when knowing who is your costumer.
Also have in mind what was talked about in the latest lecture with MVP (minimum viable product) and to figure out what is the lest amount of function you need in your product to attract costumers.
Well here is an idea/product that, in some way, does the opposite:)
http://www.projectara.com

The idea is to let the costumers customize the phone by selecting which functions you want to have. For example if you want better battery but no camera you just replace the camera function with a larger battery, and so on. They also market the product as the costumer group is every single person in the world (well almost), with the phrase “designed exclusively for 6 billion people”.
ara
So here is my question/point. Is this smart or dumb?
You can say that they are removing functions with the possibility to choose to make a super simple phone with nothing but a screen and a huge battery. But then again there are several options which gives the costumers many functions to choose between.
Also is the costumer group really 6 billion people? Hardly since the phone still requires som level of technical knowledge, and also I assume that the product won’t be cheap.
Overall I think the product is cool and I won’t ba surprised if I sometime will own a phone like this and I like the concept of “choosing the functions I want”, maybe this is somewhere in the middle of “to many functions” and “to simple”?
However, in cars we seam to want as many functions as possible at the lowest possible price? So is less more?