Lesson learned

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I did not have any expectations at the beginning of the course. I was merely interested in what the basics of entrepreneurship were, and to know what tools entrepreneurs use today.

The course did answers my questions, but in a different way than I expected. Instead of reading books, we improved our skills together in the classroom, helping each other out and discussing interesting topics, which was a good way of learning. We always got back to topics we had discussed earlier, which in my opinion is very important, as one understands the importance of every single aspect.

One thing in particular was the importance of listening to your customer. Even more important is first to identify who your customers are, and then listen and understand what their demands are. This is vital for becoming successful.

Everybody embraced Serdar’s approach very good, and therefore the lectures were interesting to follow. The guest lecturers were good too, as their topics were heavily connected to other themes in the course. Also, I believe that the simulation game is a good tool to quickly see the bigger picture when it comes to entrepreneurship.

I want to thank Serdar for this time and wish him good luck in his future courses, and at the same time I would like to thank everybody else – let’s rule the world!

Trying two start-ups: Off to the gym!

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When I chose which start-ups I wanted to try, I focused on two things: 1. One physical and one digital product. 2. Products addressing the same type of customers. At last, I chose Pandy Protein and Fitocracy.

Pandy Protein

Pandy Protein is protein candy developed in 2016, by student from KTH. Protein products are appearing like never before. Whether it is protein snacks, extra protein milk, protein sodas, and so on. A popular trend, which one should always ride on. In just a couple of month, their Facebook page has over five thousand likers. I ordered my Pandy from Gymgrossisten.se. Here we see their first smart move. Where should they sell their product? Of course on a platform where their type of customer often visit. Your local Hemköp probably a smaller presentage of gym freaks than sites like Gymgrossisten and Svensk kosttillskott, where Pandy is also available. A smart and probably cheaper move by the Pandy crew.

Furthermore, in this industry the nutrition facts are very important to display in a clear and honest way, which I think that Pandys does, both on the bags and on their Facebook page, where they also have been answering questions regarding their nutrition facts in a good way.

So what did I think of the actual product? The candy actually tasted great. The value here is very clear. Eating candy without actually feeling unhealthy, but the opposite. Just like several other new products, like ProPub, these products become very popular very quick. So how could they improve? Perhaps by introducing new flavours.

You can buy the product here:

http://www.gymgrossisten.com/1/sv/artiklar/pandy-protein-candy-80-g

http://www.svensktkosttillskott.se/tillverkare/pandy_protein

Fitocracy

Fitocracy is a fitness app, as the name reveals. What differ Fitocracy from other all the other fitness apps is that it is formed in a way that it is a game, and a social network at the same time. By completing quests, you earn points to level up. Make friends, give them some motivation.

I must say that this app was better than most fitness app that I have tried during the years. The interface is always important in these cases, and Fitocracy is a winner here among its competitors. The page for creating exercise routines and the social platform is easily navigated and the gamification is indeed an interesting approach.

The app seems to contain some bugs and tend to be slow sometimes, if one should complain on anything. I guess some users would complain about number of functions (too many in that case), but with the intention of being both a social platform and game at the same time, I think it is unavoidable.

StartUp-event: Sthlm Tech Meetup

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Today, I attended Sthlm Tech Meetup. Mr Tyler Crowley, a very energic compere, welcomed us into the big auditorium at Hilton Slussen.
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A lot of people attended the event.

Mr Crowley started of by telling us about the number of startups raising money in Stockholm today, numbers that have grown a lot since the event started. The number eight doubled since the first Sthlm Tech Meetup. All these numbers prove that the startup scene in Stockholm has evolved to something greater.

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Oscar, Andy, Nassif & me.

Later on Mr Crowley and his colleague presented some of the companies that raised money this year. He pointed out that a couple of years ago, representants from all these companies would be on stage, but now they are so many that not everyone get their own slide in his presentation.

They went on and talked about (famous) people’s investments in tech startups. Names like HM’s Stefan Persson was of course mentioned here, but I was more surprised by other one – like Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Alexander Gustafsson, the Swedish MMA-star. Thomas Ghassemi, the manager of Gustafsson, was brought up to the stage to talk about Gustafsson’s recent investments. It was very different and interesting. Mr Crowley later asked the audience if any of their startups would interest Gustafsson, and a couple of people got to chance to tell about their startup in a couple of sentences. An interaction that I liked!

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The huge crowd

Adam from Nasdaq later talked about how Stockholm startup scene was becoming mature. The increasing number of IPOs a proof of that!

A talked with a couple of people regarding their startups ideas, and some had really great ones. Some had already started to make their idea become reality – inspiring us to do the same.

See you tomorrow!

Venture idea – Feedback

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During these two weeks, I have been collecting feedback on our group’s venture idea. In my personal opinion, a great step forward for the public transport operators. An entertainment platform, only accessible through NFC tags in Stockholm’s public transport by using a smartphone or tablet. Sound cool, doesn’t it? Here is a summary of the feedback I received:

  1. I tried to collect feedback from five person with different background, here is a description of the people:
  • A friend with no academic background
  • A friend halfway through his studies in Computer and System Science
  • A colleague from the marketing department of my current job
  • A student (and friend) from KTH
  • A man, much older than the four above. Age ~50.
  1. The feedback was in general very good. I realized that the description of the actual product is very important. As I was about to describe it to the last person, who lucky was the older man, I already knew which aspect that would be harder to explain, and already had adjusted this explanation, which maybe is the goal of this exercise. Anyway, all the younger people though that this idea was great and that they absolutely would use it was a part of the city’s public transport. I got a lot of feedback on the content of the website, and how companies could advertise here. The older man was a little more But he admitted that it was a great and modern product that probably would be used by the majority of the younger population but also by a big portion of his generation.
  1. This was very interesting to observe. I noticed that the two persons with a tech education asked the more advanced questions, about the actual execution of the idea. My colleague, a talented marketer, had his focus on the actual content. The older man addressed the question of easy functions and interface.
  1. The idea will not change after this, but rather gave me further motivation to continue working on this idea. What I actually learned was, as mentioned before,that the description of the product has to a very clear one; to travelers, companies with content on the platform and potential future investors.

My recommendation to those of you who have not collected feedback yet – try to be as diverse as possible when choosing these persons.

Birth of Entrepreneurship: Mesopotamia

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You might think that entrepreneurship was born in the times of the industrial revolution. It is true that the word entrepreneur was coined in the sixteenth century, but we see that the concept of entrepreneurship arose long before the birth of Christ. Sometime in second millennium BC, between the rivers of Euphrates and Tigris, in the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian civilizations, enterprises were born.

The city of Babylon was in great need of entrepreneurs, because it was not rich in natural resources. The word for these Mesopotamian entrepreneurs, or merchants, was tamkarum. They wanted to create an export surplus of metalwork and textiles to obtain raw material as metal, stone and other that there was not much of in the south of Mesopotamia.

800px-tablet_of_shamash_relief
The ancient Assyrians and Babylonians were famous for their knowledge in astronomy, but they were hard-working entrepreneurs too.

Assyriologists have in recent years found what they call temples of enterprise. The temples of Babylon were owned by rich families. But these temples, and its’ big land, lacked workers and animals to make it really productive. The solution was to lease out the fields and workshops to farmers. In exchange for producing textile, beer or other products for export, these farmers were given a payment in either cash or goods.

The entrepreneurs were much respected in Mesopotamia. The term tamkarum often meant some form of connection to the temples. Most of them belonged to an upper class family. But just as today being an entrepreneur meant taking risks. Some succeeded, some did not.

It is not uncommon that economic historians cite the terms of commercial lending that existed in Babylon. People often wrote contracts and had a profit-sharing agreement. Here is where the Code of Hammurabi comes in to the picture. Paragraph 100 explains the procedure between a merchant and his trading agent:

“If a merchant gives silver to a trading agent for conducting business transactions and sends him off on a business trip…[and] if he should realize [a profit] where he went, he shall calculate the total interest, per transaction and time elapsed, on as much silver as he took, and he shall satisfy his merchant.”

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Hammurabi’s laws were more than just the well-known “an eye for an eye”.

Later on, Greece and Rome took many of these concepts when building their own enterprises.

Further reading: The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times by David S. Landes, Joel Mokyr & William J. Baumol.

NordicJS – not your conventional StartUp-event

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I attended Nordic JS, an event for the JavaScript community, where new and different inputs are shown and spoken about. The goal is to inspire and get inspired by others, but also with the simple goal to bring the community together, a chance not often given to nisch-communities. It was a two-day event, 8-9 September in Münchenbryggeriet in Stockholm. I attended it on the second day for a while, and many speakers where on the schedule.

Except being a conference-like event with speakers, Nordic JS focus a lot on activities. Even though I did not participate in any of them, I think they are worth mentioning, as I like the concept:

  • Techno Ping Pong – they describe it as a night with smoke machines, lasers UV and ping pong.
  • Dinner with strangers – they will pair you up with five other people that you don’t know at a restaurant of their choice.
  • Festen – the after party for the event, and also a celebration of the capital of Sweden with its wonderful techs and startups.
  • Mini Sumo Robo Clash – the name says it all, a sumo robot workshop.

The topics that the speakers brought up were different. Even though I barely know anything about programming and JavaScript it was quite interesting. Here are a few words that could be said about them:

Vitality Friedman spoke about cutting-edge responsive web design. One of the important things he mentioned was the navigation on a page. It all starts with the navigations, and therefore it should be very clear, and also not in any way disturb the scrolling. Of course he talked about phones too, and added an interesting point; most users only use their thumbs, which all developers should have in mind. The scale of logos and slogans was also something he talked about.

Lin Clark talked about”Performance in React”, React being a form of library in JavaScript. Here, the level was a little bit too high for me to get a good grip of it. But on her summarizing slide, there were four thing: (1) keys, (2) shouldComponentUpdate, (3) immutability and (4) using setState() or connect() at lower levels. Maybe some of you JS-people understand these things better!

Per Stenström was a bonus speaker. Just before lunch he had a couple of minutes, where he criticized an article by Tantek Celik which stated that curlable Java content (had to look it up: Content where you can use the cURL command tool to request the URL) can’t be found on the web with search engines. What he did was actually setting up a website himself and at the speech testing the thesis in the article and tried to find it in different search engines. He didn’’t seem too used to speaking in front a large crowd, but it was something different.

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Per Stenström walking off the stage.

Even though JavaScript is not my biggest interest it was nice to see that there were plenty of others who actually were very passionate about it and enjoyed the event a lot. I think it is a great opportunity for like-minded people to get together. We don’t hear a lot about these nisch events, which was one of the reasons I chose this one – to enlighten you all about them, because they deserve it. These people are creating the things we search through all day.

 

Possibly the greatest JavaScript conference. The speakers, city, party and all the small details in between. [1]

– Jakob Öhman — Attendee 2015

Doro discussion – Good to know

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Last lecture there was a discussion about Doro and their possibilities to last as a profitable company, as their product is considered to be for people born in the first half of the 20th century. I would here like to add something I think is relevant to this discussion. In another course, Management Consulting, we were shown a graph over the longevity of big companies today. See the graph below.

graph-long

The trend is clear, a company started today tend to have a shorter longevity (at least as a “Fortune 500” company) compared to companies of yesterday. What this shows us is that being in the top for just 10-15 years is normal these days.

Also, I strongly agree with the argument (which was mentioned in class) that if you know that you can add value for just 1-2 years, that’s enough too.