Author Archives: Birk

Here is some thought that I have had true the course.

I chose to take the course because I wanted to have more knowledge and confidence about starting my own business one day but it ended up with so much more.  The way the course was structured is different than many other courses at KTH and that made me first skeptical but now afterwards I am really surprised how much I learned.

The areas I learned most in:

True the years at KTH I thought that I was good at pitching my ideas and a lot of times in group works my ideas was the once that the group continued working with. But pitching an idea for investors is something else and you need to see it from the investor’s side and say what they want to hear. And sometimes the idea is not the most important thing but your presentation and commitment will make the investors interested. One detail I learned is that you present your idea/company as soon as you enter the room and it’s important to act profession all the way.
Marketplace thought me how to it is to start and run a company. How all the acts are affecting the outcome and you always need to think one step ahead. Personally I been thinking about starting a smaller company and not establish worldwide as in Marketplace but I it probably works the same way to run a smaller company.

Go to the startup events made me a better on mingle and open up my eyes for a whole new scene that I didn’t know existed in Stockholm. I got great inspiration to listen to start up projects that mad it and to see that when they started they were student just like me.
To sum everything up we had make the group project where we got to use all the knowledge we learned from the course.  I great way to see what’s needed for a startup and how it is to work in a group. Also interesting to work with students from other programs at KTH and exchange students to see how they solve problems.

When I was searching for startups to help I was looking for startups in an early stage of their developing stage. My thoughts were that my feedback would be more appreciated in an early stage where changes are easier to do.
I have a couple of friends that is into startups. One of them is my old classmate Markus Wallentin. During a course he toke last semester they came up with an app called Stagecast. The app lets the user turn there cellphone into an interactive element that and the audience and the artist can communicate in a whole new way at a concert. I had a sit down with Markus and he explained the app. Markus didn’t want to reveal too many features but the app is going to be able to do two things.

1. The audience is going to be able to play the same sound from their phone at the same time to get a feeling of a surround system.
2. Audiences are going to be able to live stream from their phone. Users are then going to be able to look at the different live stream and get a total unique view even if they couldn’t make if to the concert.

During the sit down I gave Markus some feedback on the areas I have knowledge in. Mostly in the UX field and how they could do the app more user friendly by removing and adding some elements. Markus liked the feedback and wrote it all down to the next meeting they were going to have. Markus also explained that the hardest part right now was to convince the investors that Stagecast is a great service. But due the lack of investors and money they can’t launch the product and try it out in real life. So I gave Markus contact information to one of my friends that work on Marshall and we are now hoping they can do some collaboration and a launch party. Stay tuned on what’s going on true their webpage http://stagecast.se/.

My other friend, Camilo Blomqvist, is one of the guys behind the services Tutero. A online homework help that connects the student with the teacher in a digital classroom. This is a project they have been working on for the last two years and they are really close to launching. Camilo is a successful entrepreneur with some other projects and have invested in this new project but have also help to code the homepage. In their office I got to try a beta version of service. It service worked great but it was some smaller things they I, as a teacher, thought could have be better. Camilo was grateful for the feedback and was looking forward to have me as an online coach. If  you want to know more about Turero and when they launch sign up on their newsletter on http://tutero.com/.

/Birk

 

In the last couple of weeks I have been presenting our venture idea for 5 people to get some feedback. I am in the group that have the idea to put the NFC tags on public transportation that will give the passenger entertainment during the ride.

When I choose the people to interview I had in mind to get people with knowledge in
– Technology (2 persons)
– UX and startups (1 person)
– People without knowledge in earlier mentioned topics but that rides the bus/subway (2 persons)

The age of the participants where from 22 to 38 years and all live in Stockholm. I used a semi structured interview method but the questions divorced a little depending on the participants.

The feedback from the technologists was positive. They though that it will not be any problems with the technology due it already exist for other products today. And they couldn’t see any bigger problems with the software either. We continued talking about the advertisement and who the costumer would be and what the market looked like.

The second meeting was with an expert in the UX field but has also had a successful startup in the textile industry.  She explained that making a user-friendly app and to have the right logarithms to show the right news/entertainment in the app is probably the key to success.  And from and entrepreneur point of view to test in an early stage, maybe on only one bus, to get numbers on how many actually use the service.

The last two people I interviewed was friends that uses the public transportation on a daily bases. My questions here where more open about the transportation itself and what they did on their journey.  They both admitted that they are using their phones a lot and are mostly looking at entertainment. They both had a positive attitude against our idea and said they would us it if their phone had a NFC reader.

So the feedback was definitely different from who you asked. And that’s kind of obvious because of the knowledge in the subject. But that’s also really important when developing a product, to get feedback from all potential users.

The idea overall will not change but we will defiantly have the ideas in mind when we develop the concept!

STHLM TECH MEETUP

On Monday evening I went to the STHLM TECH MEETUP at the Hilton Hotel at Slussen. From reading all the other blogpost you probably already know what the meetup was about. But hey! Don’t stop reading here, you will have a chance to win €1 million if you read my blog post! STHLM MEETUP had invited H&M and Nordic Makers to talk about what they think is important with startups and what they are looking for when they invest in startups.

The event begun with inviting the UFC fighter Alexander ”The Mauler” Gustafsson manager. He talked about the importance of Alexander’s future and that are looking for when they are doing investments in startups.

Next up was H&M. They are having two categories they want to develop and therefore looking for startups in. The two categories were sustainable fabrics, other/new ways to reach the costumers like Sellpy.
Important factors they were looking for in a team were that the team members complement each other and the energy when presenting the ide. You should be able to feel the energy once the group enters the room.

I’m surprised that they didn’t bring up the innovation challenge they have together with KTH. The challenge is about to come up with a new innovative solution to make the fashion industry more circular and more environment friendly.  They will choose five winners that will share the price of €1 million. Here’s your chance to get your startup founded!
More information at: https://www.kth.se/innovation/nyheter/kth-partnering-global-change-award-to-reinvent-the-fashion-industry-1.669039

Next up on stage was Nordic Makers. The group consist of 10 ex entrepreneurs who makes investments in startups. They both do investments as venture capitals and as a group. They are most interested of startups in the northern countries and have a budget of 1-2 million/startup to invest.

Some learnings from the event:
– How you present your ide is crucial, not only how you present it but also how you act.
– Make sure to try your ide in an early stage.
– Numbers, investors are more interested in data then what the product is or going to do.
– Make sure to have a good team that complete each other.

Cheers! / Birk

 

Yesterday I went to a Start Up bar at the hotel bar the Capital. The Startup Bar is an initiative from the magazine “Starta & Driva företag” and the idea is to let people network in a relaxed and modern way to get the connections entrepreneurs need for their start up. It’s open for everyone and it’s for free.¹

The StartUp Bar is located on the roof top bar The Capital at the Scandic Continental hotel.

 

The first person I meet in the elevator up to the rooftop bar was Josefin, the founder of the StartUp Bar. I had a chat with her about the StartUp Bar and she explained for me that she felt like something like this was missing in Stockholm. She works normally at the magazine “Starta och driva företag”. A magazine for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. Josefin gave me a couple of good advises how to start a conversation and told me not to be shy to start to talk to people.

Well, to start talking to people was never a problem. Right after I entered the bar a man confronted me and we started to talk. The man’s name was Ibrahim Tannira and was a sales and marketing manager from Palestine. He was in Stockholm to look for companies that wanted to outsource software engineering to the company (Asal technologies) he worked for in Palestine. We talked about the difficulties he had encountered and how he needed to persuade his clients that what he offered was better than to outsource it to cheaper countries as example Indie. He had been an entrepreneur before he started to work for Asal Technologies and we talked about the difficulties in the beginning to get founded.
Ibrahim had rented an apartment on AirBNB from a girl called Nina. She showed up at the bar and she was an entrepreneur too. She worked on her fourth start up project now, a dating app where the persons got connected true there mutual friends and the friends got to decide what the where going to do on their date. She told me about the importance of trying the product before launce and finding the right target group.  We had a really nice talk and I got useful information.

Ibrahim and Nina at the StartUp bar.

 

¹ http://startaochdriva.se/startupbar/

/ Birk

Sweden has a history whit many successful entrepreneurs. We have many different companies in different segments which are leaders on the market. Sweden is most known for IKEA, the company that changed the way of selling and designing furniture’s. We have Volvo (yes, I know, owners are from china nowadays), leaders of safety and comfort and claims to be releasing the first self-driving car for costumers in 2017. But the sector with probably the most successfully companies is the clothes sector there probably HM is the biggest. Founded in 1947 in Västerås and have today circa 4000 stores and over 148 000 employees.  HM also owns Cheap Monday and a couple other brands that were started of Swedish entrepreneurs.

Two other successful cloth companies are WESC an Odd Molly.  WESC started in 1999 by Greger Hagelin, and has today stores all over the world and had a big impact on the fashion industry. Odd Molly, started in 2002 by Per Holknekt and is today selling clothes in over 30 countries. The list of all the prices Per won for best entrepreneurship is long.

So why am I bringing up those two guys? What does they have in common more than the clothing companies and being successful in entrepreneurship?  The both grow up during the 70’s when skateboarding came to Sweden, both have been really good at skateboarding. Per was professional skateboarder between 1980-1985 and lived together with Greger in California.
Most went well for most people that started skateboarding in the 1970s and many of them became successful in entrepreneurship.

So why is that? There is probably a hundred answers to this, they are smart, have a hug network, know the market etc etc but my explanation is that skateboarding is (at least for me) one of the hardest things you can do. You need to be fully dedicated of what you do and rise every time you fall. I never spent so much time, on anything, and got so small results. And so I think a startup is too, it going to be hard in the beginning and it’s probably not going be a smooth ride. So when Serdar tells you not to “continue working with a dog that will not hunts”, don’t listen to him, make sure that dog will become the best hunter instead.

Are you interested in those guys and Swedish skateboard and entrepreneurship history I recommend you to see the documentary “Hooked for life” by Staffan Hildebrand.