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.

 

Last week I tried out the software of the startup “LiveShop”. Based on my personal experience I want to write my impression.

The startup is helping companies bring their products and services to the internet in entirely new ways. Therefore they created a enhanced video chat where customers can interact with agents face-to-face, while products and service plans are displayed dynamically – by a stroke of the agent’s fingertips. On their website there is a possibility to test their solution. You just need to enter your email address and they schedule a live -LiveShop demo just for you. I tested their product and gave them a feedback. The ability to present products and services, fill out forms and sign agreements is really good. The design is functional and inspiring. That is why their solutions looks really professional. The graphical content was displayed through hand gestures such as swipe to flip and pinch to zoom. The agent simply clicked with his fingers to drag and drop products, forms and files on the screen. They showed me all the functions without any problems. What is really good that they create individual designs and functions for their customers to make sure that it meets their individual expectations. I think their solution is great because it can be used for many business areas. I could not find anything to criticize.

Would you also like to see how LiveShop works in action. Just enter your email address at their website and they will schedule a live -LiveShop demo for you (http://www.liveshop.se/)

 

Live Shop

On October 10th I went to my second event at “jayways” Stockholm office where I got the chance to learn all about future technology and also to try out the gadgets that will radically transform the way we think. First I want to give a brief description about jayway and then write a reflection with regard to new technologies.

Jayway helps their clients anticipate the future, evolve their business and play a meaningful role in their customer lives. Their local studios combine creativity and technology to transform ideas into realities on mobile, web and in the cloud. Every year they are hosting a event in Stockholm, Malmö, San Francisco, Copenhagen to talk about future technologies and how that the world is changing in many ways. They also discussed how to use them to improve businesses.

For me, it is still amazing to see what possibly will happen in the future. Expected changes due toIMG-20171011-WA0005 machine learning, virtual reality and augmented reality, digital assistants and wearables can completely change our life. As you see an avalanche of new technology coming our way.  Some of them makes sense but the world faces great challenges. It is considered that many jobs are at risk, critical data will result in a fierce battle for customers and market shares and finally the danger of producing an artificial intelligence. The responsible use of these new technologies are more important than ever. But they also offer a variety of possibilities. They showed how cities can change by autonomous driving. It can improve the flow of traffic as well as road safety. Moreover parking spaces, which are no longer needed, can be used to make the cities brighter and greener.

Other subjects covered at the meeting were digital assistants and home automation. In the session “digital assistants” they talked about the history of digital assistants, discussed if they really are useful and took a peek into the future with digital assistants. With regard to home automation they gave an overview of the options that are available today and then showed how we can write your own code to connect anything to our smart home.

At the end of the event I played with several gadgets and technologies. The event showed me the range of opportunities are broad to build a start-up. We are living and working in very exciting times, in which innovations are implemented from ideas into reality at increasingly faster speeds. That offers wide-ranging possibilities for entrepreneurs!!!

 

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In the following I would like to write about my impressions / my personal conclusion about the course Entrepreneurship (ME2603) and also suggestions for improvements.

As Serdar Temiz said in the first lecture, this won’t be a usual academic course. That means there a lot of different tasks and challenges. We were forced out of our comfort zones and had to present several things which, unfortunately, happens all too rarely in university. But during my internship at Volkswagen in the product management I realized how important it is. We also had to work with different groups, discuss things and cooperate with each other.

One point you are confronted with is self-organization. Serdar wanted to show us how real life works. For example, if the projector does not work, you have to be able to present without your slides. Furthermore, it must be taken into consideration that you are prepared with back up material to answer question after your presentation. I have had the same experiences during my internship.

Another point I want to mention are the guest lectures. During my time in university I heard a lot of really boring guest lectures. What I really like about the course was the diversity of people, Serdar invited. To be honest also in this course were significant differences related to the quality of the presentations. But some were really inspiring and had an encouraging and motivating effect.

Something that could be improved is the venture simulation game. I really liked to play the game and my group was also really successful. On account of the fact that 45% of our grade depends on the results of the venture simulation game, I would have liked to discuss the results and also decisions during the game. It would be interesting for me to re-evaluate important decisions, hear strategic intention of the competitors and also answer the question what conclusions can we draw with regard to the final results.

It was my first course at the KTH and also an interesting experience. For me it was welcoming change compared to other courses I had in Germany. Moreover I got an inside view in the start-up scene here in Stockholm. Of course not everything ran to perfection, but all in all I am satisfied with my choice to have selected the course Entrepreneurship.

Best regards

Timo Reckfort

 

 

 

Two days ago I went with Timo Bunk to Europe’s largest event for startups. It takes place the first Monday of each month in the Hiltion Stockholm Slussen Hotel. Usually, three lucky startups pitch a special guest live on stage and the audience chooses which startup joins the investor for dinner afterwards. On Monday evening only two startups presented their pitches. I want to write about my impressions in general and also about the two pitches.

In the first hour the investment companies (Draper Esprit, Wellstreet) have been interviewed. That was not so interesting for me. In my opinion the focus should be on the startups. That’s the reason why I just want to say some general information about them in two sentences. Since 2016, Draper Esprit has raised over $1B to become one of the biggest and most active investors in Europe. Starting less than 2 years ago, Wellstreet has already made 36 investments making them one of the Scandinavia’s newest and also most active investors in seed and early stage startups. Now I want to present the two pitches.

  1. Pitch – Live Shop

Live Shop enables the in-store experience online by bringing the power of real people to companies’ websites. They believe that nothing is stronger than the personal meeting because it leaves no room for misunderstandings. The applications allows companies to enable a personal meeting with their customers, look what are you talking about, drag and drop interactive objects on the screen and to take things step by step forward. They are also able to analyze the data before, during, and after the video-call (http://www.liveshop.se/).

The investors criticize the technical aspects and problems regarding to such a solution (plug-in, software, live streaming). Moreover there are many competitors on the market, which are offering identical products. I have also heard form solution like that before and there seems to be nothing which differentiated them from other alternatives. They also did not mention their selected target customer segments. That was my first impression but for a comprehensive and differentiated evaluation of the application I need more information.

 

  1. Pitch – Valossa (Video Artificial Intelligence)

The second startup built video artificial intelligence. That means, that they created a system that understand videos like people do. It recognizes faces, it identifies objects and places and it listens to the dialog and audio, so that it can actually tell you what your videos are about. That means it extracts and analyzes information from multiple information pipelines. This creates comprehensive interpretation of key elements in the video. Moreover it categorize the video in different segments. So the system automatically extract a lot of data on your video content that was not reachable before. In the past it was a manual task. Now you can use the software to improve discovery and recommendations of videos, or it allows advertiser to target moments in videoclibs that are more relevant to their products and services. They provide their service to media entertainment companies and the advertisement side as well (https://valossa.com/).

If you ask me the idea seems to be great because it can used for several things. For example, Netflix can analyze in more detailed way what kind of movies you like to watch. Also in sport it can be used to analyze tactics and how successful they are. So it open-up wide fields of applications.

With a clear majority the audience chooses the second startup (Valossa) as the winner. For me it is also a well-deserved winner.

On Monday I learned how difficult it is to present your own idea in such a short time and convince the audience. The startups have to pay attention to several things and be prepared for several questions. To summarize, the event was a great experience because I learned a lot for the future.

 

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Additional Information:

  1. Next #STHLMTECH Meetup: 6. November
  2. Startup Matchmaking (Find your co-founder, build your team, or join a startup): October 16 ->Tickets link: www.eurpo.com
  3. Stockholm Innovation Scholarship: innovationsstipendiet.se
  4. Interesting article: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Start-Ups? (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/09/sweden-startups/541413/)