Monthly Archives: September 2015

Here’s a rather old but interesting article The Guardian posted about social entrepreneurship and the phenomena in Sweden. It states that swedes traditionally are innovators but the concept of social entrepreneurship is new to the country. When talking about innovation in this digital era the recent sparks as Spotify, Skype and Soundcloud are some of many to be mentioned. But what about social innovation?

The link to the article: http://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2013/jun/04/social-entrepreneurship-rise-sweden

Why this interested me is that they identified a trend in the Swedish landscape: social problems have traditionally been a responsibility of institutions rather than individuals. An example of this is policymaking in order to solve the most pressing social challenges.

However, this trend is about to be broken and social challenges can be treated by using social innovation that changes the entrepreneurial landscape. This is now on a rise and there are government initiatives that are catching up with the changes by supporting these entrepreneurs. One example is The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (http://www.tillvaxtverket.se/ovrigt/englishpages.4.21099e4211fdba8c87b800017332.html).

So my thoughts are from an entrepreneurial perspective: what are the future trends to be broken? How can you be one step ahead and create business ideas that fulfill needs that haven’t traditionally been solved by entrepreneurs?

I have had one constant question during these first 3 lectures/seminars. Namely “What about the entrepreneurs that don’t break new ground? The ones that don’t sell their start up to google for 100 $ million.”

The definition of an entrepreneur is as follows:

“An individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes.”

So yes, “commonly an innovator of new ideas”. However according to the broad definition, a barber is also an entrepreneur. Not a very innovative one, but non the less an entrepreneur. Regardless on what you wish to achieve, these “unsexy entrepreneurs” are often discarded in the discussion of entrepreneurship.

A start up here from KTH have realised that you can entrepreneur and innovate within areas which are to the naked eye boring. The start up’s core business idea is to start business in areas where no one is currently innovating and move in with business ideas and methods that will conquer the market. An example of their output so far: http://grasbolaget.se. With this company, they simply sell grass and plant it. That’s it. But with a much more standardised working process and better digital marketing they are in a good position to conquer market shares and make profit. Who would have thought you could entrepreneur in selling grass?

Just something I wanted to throw out there. Anyone want to start selling paint? 😉

Stockholm, 08/09-2015

Today Micael Widell, the co-founder and CPO of online marketplace website Fyndiq held a very interesting lecture at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). I was caught up with his presentation. Not because of his charisma, but more due to the entrepreneurial spirit he was breathing.

His main focus at the presentation was the 6 different phases his startup had made through. Here is some of the notes I took from the presentation:

Diffrent phases when building companies

• Phase 1: Decide to do it
Going in full time is important.

• Phase 2: Find a project and co-founders.

• Phase 3: Get serious
Think big. From PowerPoint to MVP
Finding first investors
Launch!

• Phase 4: Build and iterate product
Launch means nothing, the work starts here
Need for more money
Bold Decision to expand organisation
Lots of spent learning money
Good API +  good Marketing+ Key partnership resulted in traction.

• Phase 5: Early traction
Trying to keep up with growth
Strain on organisation
Paying off technical debt
Putting up processes and workflows
Trying outsourcing of key functions

• Phase 6: Expanding the organisation
Hiring department heads and HR ppl
Find people who reflect founders’ spirit and personality
Shift focus from exit to building great organisation
Founders less and less essential to daily operations

The most interesting phase according to me is phase number 1. Decide to do it. I think that many people out there have had some kind of idea they’ve believed in and wanted to go for. But at some point, we feel insecure. We don’t want to take that last step out of the airplane before free falling. We have our education, job, house and maby family. Risking so much, for something you really can’t forecast the result of, would just be stupid in a rational world.

But the world is not rational, and if we don’t take risks, we won’t achieve anything. With this sentence I don’t mean that one should jump of school, quit his job and sell his apartment for the first idea one thinks will be “it”. But think about how many other great companies there would be today if more people with great ideas just would dare to take that phase 1 step.

/Amir Marandi

Hey everyone,

Durring the last lecture we talked about how to make things simpler, how to add less details. This made me thinking about that and I realised that I saw something a while ago which had something to do with that. There is company which is called Phonebloks. It’s founded by a Dutch guy which did his thesis about it. He found it really strange that we just throw away our mobilephone or computer when some little part is broken and that the electronic waste keeps on growing. He invited a mobilephone which is made out of blocks. So that when one thing breaks or gets old, you can just replace it and keep on using the same phone. That the phone is made out of blocks also means that you can adjust it to your needs. So when you want to keep it simple you take a bigger battery for instance and keep out other functions. The principle is clearly explained in this video:

But he realised, he couldn’t do it on his own. So he searched for other companies which could help him in developing his ideas. He found multiple companies which are working on it or want to make different parts for the mobile. Phonebloks is going to try and connect all the companies.

I found it really interesting how he managed to get so much media attention and I liked his clear and informative videos. I hope you like it too.

Regards,

Tim Buzink

Hey Guys!

I was just  curious to see and find on the internet the proportion of female entrepreneurs within the entrepreneur pool . I could only find the French proportion that is of only 1/3 of the total entrepreneurs! I am more than keen to find a more general number for it!

So why do we have more male entrepreneurs than female entrepreneurs? This question can definitely be extensively discussed (maybe as a group project?) but here are some highlights I personnaly think that could affect women’s decision to be an entrepreneur :

• Women tend to analyse more and be perfectionist : starting a entrepreneur adventure is a lot of uncertainties and questions without answers which can be scary
• As a group effect, female entrepreneurs could not feel support by her peers if she is this only female entrepreneur (cf dancing video we’ve seen in class!)
• Women are afraid of being unsuccessful and fail
• May be harder for a women to find the right work/life balance. Being an entrepreneur is a full time job consuming a lot of time and energy!

As a piece of reflexion, please find below 2 links sharing examples and advice from  10 successful single momentrepreneurs :).

http://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/239018

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248772

Cheers,

Celine