Lesson from ME2603

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I like that this course has been in such a small group, it makes it easier to get to know other students! I also like that  it has opened my eyes to the startup community and to many of the inspiring entrepreneurs out here. You learn a lot by just talking to people who are driven and risk taking, it reminds you that there is a lot out there if you just have the courage to grasp it, or like Daniel Isenberg wrights in his text called “The 2-Minute Opportunity Checklist for Entrepreneurs,”

“Fruit- low-hanging or otherwise- are opportunities only if you can reach them and want to reach them.”

/Erica

Future innovation

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In the end of the course I think you can look at changing markets in a different way.  This is one thing I will take with me from this course. I therefore found it interesting to dig into changing industries and new innovative services.

Kaashyap shared this on Linked in : https://www.olacabs.com/ola-air

He writes “Ola taxi service in India like Uber here. They released a Video on March 31,2015 promoting that they have started the point to point chopper rides from anywhere to everywhere in India.”

I had never heard of this! I really found this interesting since there is a big room for competitors to take advantage of new innovative services like Uber and Airbnb on the market like now. They have changed the industry climate and opens up for innovation.

Do you think they can be a real competitor for taxi-companies like uber?

So how is Uber really positioned? Is there a chance to compete with them? The economy of scale is probably not that high since the fixed costs are allocated to drivers and individuals. The brand and systems are probably the main drivers so it should be a good chance for competition to grow. Maybe these local solutions are the strongest competition since they can customize the idea.

I think it won’t take to long until we see new businesses like this. Maybe with a local touch to it. Hopefully this can kick-start a new era of services that will revolutionize traditional industries like this.

Next step for your app idea (Part 2)

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When you are launching an app, these two parallel processes apply (just like any other product)

  1. Make a great product
  2. Spread it!

So your programmer is now developing the product. It is your job as the entrepreneur/business dev to spread it.

Note that if you’re building a user-based app, i.e. an app that has to have users for it to be valuable, you have to spread it decently BEFORE launch and make a sign-up list like you see on www.Netty.se . Imagine if you’d download Tinder and there was nobody to swipe or you go to Blocket and there is nothing to buy.

A way of spreading the app just before launch is building up a hype e.g. telling the media about the launch. For Netty, media-hype is too early. We have to get creative and spread Netty in other ways to reach students & entrepreneurs.

Side note: New for students. Swipe right on a company = subscribe on the companies student-internships/masters/job-openings!

A more popular term for being creative is Growth hacking (finding ways to grow without expensive traditional marketing). A big part of it is online marketing and making win-win cooperations with others.

If you’re launching an app, read about how other app-startups has “hacked” growth!

Here’s some of the things I am up to while the development is taking place…

  1. Developing an Online marketing strategy with our Online marketing intern
  2. Making three different pitches with our Biz dev intern (One for students, one for entrepreneurs, one for investors)
  3. Applied for Business challenge and STING test drive. Got an KTH-I coach.
  4. Of course, attending every event with my Netty t-shirt 😀 Also attending an SSES workshop soon.
I got way to excited when I got it at night to not take a pic :D

I got the shirt in the middle of the night. I was way too excited to not take a pic to share 😀

…while both of us are studying for exams. If you have any product idea related to events, read important experience below!

 

 

LEAGAL STUFF ABOUT EVENTS

You already know about Netty’s Mingle mode which is the part when you swipe entrepreneurs and companies.

But we’re also going to have an Event mode.
Say you are going to the next Happy hour at SUP46. You can find your event, press “Attending” and enter a code you got from SUP46.
=> You’ll get access to pre-mingle (swipe) with all of the participants of the event! So when you get there, you know who you want to talk to. Furthermore there will be a poll section where the organizers can collect data e.g. “How was the speaker ?” etc

I have gotten four requests already from event-organizers who want to beta-test it at their events! Event-organizers love it.

BUT…
Did you know that it’s illegal to post someone else’s events if you can make a profit out of doing it?
Apparently I would be breaking the law if I’d spontaneously post an event. I have to ask.
But as you can imagine, this law is only there to protect the big companies. Every start-up event organizer is happy for you to post their event. However the big companies would not be happy about it because they don’t want to risk their reputation

Until next time!
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EDIT: Just got accepted into STING Test drive despite a record number of applications! 😀

Tips – Venture Project Paper

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Our group sat down to discuss what may be the most important when writing this Venture Project Paper and one of the things that we all forgot about at first was the inspiration from the recommended articles in this course, some of them are really relevant when writing your business plan, you get a lot ot tips from people about the structure and what is most important when writing.

My favourite articles from this course are:

Guy Kawasaki- The Art of the start – He gives 5 smart start ups tips that are very helpful.

Paul Graham – Start-ups in 13 sentences – He gives 13 notes on what is important when starting a company.

Coleen Debaise– Why you need a Business Plan – It helps you understand why you are doing this Venture Project Paper.

Go check them out and get inspired!

Helping a start-up

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I have been giving feedback and talking with a start up. The start – up name is LUP and you can find them at KTH (Student Inc). They are three guys that started an app with a map in side where you can see loading zones adjacent to the cargo shipping address. I have been working with them before with our student consulting firm called Cane Consulting.

So what we did was giving feedback on what kind of value this would give to people and who their targeted segment should be.

To summarize it you can say that the targeted segment is not everyone it is all the people who works with driving big trucks and deliver (or more likely all delivery companies). They are the targeted segment because they are the once LUP is satisfying or helping with a problem. For the delivery companies using LUP’s app will save them a lot of time to find the right shipping address immediately.

Feedback on Venture Project

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I have discussed our Venture Project with some potential customers. Based on the feedback from the class I have chosen to expand the service we will provide to include all services, not just hair cuts, because it will make the service more useful and more customers can benefit from the service. We have also chosen to include all appointments available but with the option to provide a discount for a time that is close in time. So this will be a booking system for all types of services and you can sort them by area.

People I have asked for feedback have been  two hair dressers and a masseuse near Stadion in Stockholm and 3 regular customers and this is their feedback:

2 Hairdressers and a masseuse: They think it is a good idea, it would help them to have a good booking system where their customers can find an appointment. The possibility of dynamic pricing is very limited today but only one of the hairdressers I asked thought it was a good idea. Her salon was a bit more high end than the other salon and it did also not really have the possibility of drop in because it is almost always fully booked. The other hairdresser said that this was a good idea as for a booking system but that he wasn’t interested in dynamic pricing because he had drop in. The masseuse thought it was a good idea because this would be like marketing.
3 Customers: Appreciate an easier way of finding services in the surrounding area. This might increase competition between service provider because it it easier for the customer to compare the services and the prices. Require that many join the service for it to be beneficial for all customers.

To get reliable feedback more extensive interviews need to be conducted but this has established the need for this kind of service on the market. None of the people questioned have any budget responsibility but the hairdressers and masseuse thought it would be reasonable pay a small fee on every purchase to finance this kind of service. The potential customers that were interviewed are all friends and family which might make their feedback extra positive.

The improvements suggested are good and have been included but with a larger target market it will take longer before this service have a big share of the potential market but I absolutely think that it is possible!

/Erica

 

 

Kickstarter most founded

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Since Pernilla Rydmark (Internet Foundation in Sweden ) visited us on a lecture I have been obseced whit Crowdfounding and Kickstarter. I have put a lot of time and thinking in what makes some projects more successful then others. What I have realised is that I do not understand a thing why people think the way they do!!

I mean there is a lot crazy and strange projects among the most founded Kickstarter projects. If you go to Kickstarter you can read about the “toplist” but I am going to meansion some of them in this blogpost, just to explain what I mean by“strange and crazy projects” getting a lot of money.

One popular project is the “Exploding Kitten”, Pernilla Rydmark talked about this project and so summarize it is a card game for people who are into kittens and explosions and laser beams and sometimes goats.

Almost a third of all projects are games like WARMACHINE, Ghostbusters, Robotech etc. What’s up with all this gaming? Is it that important?

Lesson learned from Exam

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One question from the exam was to explain what an intrapreneur is. I did not know this question, it most have missed us talking about it in class or any other time someone mentioned intrapreneur instead of entrepreneur…

Therefor I started googling the main differences and things entrepreneurs need to know about intrapreneurship.

While an entrepreneur should see the company as a vision from starting point to end; the intrapreneur is a facet of this broader vision. The intrapreneur works within the company to solve a specific problem. Intrapreneurs are the drivers of innovation within companies.

Like entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs take risks and find more effective ways to accomplish tasks. An intrapreneur is a skilled problem solver that can take on important tasks within a company.

Meeting with a founder

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Today I had a meeting with the founder of Dreams.

His name is Henrik Rosvall and he was kind enough to answer all my questions about how he got the idea for his business and the journey so far. We got stuck on the subject of recruiting (co-founders, business angels, venture capitalists and employees) for quite a while and he pointed out the importance of your gut feeling. He explained that he had recruited some people with the perfect resume but without him feeling that it was right, and it had always been a terrible decision. You need the right competence sure but the personality is even more important!

As a rule of thumb when he is bringing people into his business is: If you feel that you could go with this person to dinner and have a nice and fun time – it is right!

Thank you for your great insights and inspirational person Henrik!

/Erica

Feedback

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Saved the best for last:

I really liked this course, and as I told you (Serdar) in the beginning I’m recommending it to my friends who study here at KTH. In general, as said before, I really like the layout of the course and I would prefer if more courses were hands on like this one. I really enjoyed the guest lectures, and I thought it was brilliant to take in people of experience on each topic of the course. Of course not all of them were perfect, but I liked how hard you judged the guest speakers and that you spoke your mind after the Sandbox presentation.

I know that you wanted us to get out of our comfort zone and get up off our asses in this course. This I also liked, because you should push yourself to do new things every day. Nevertheless, maybe for the future, this part should have a set deadline, so procrastinators, like myself, do not end up doing them at the last possible minute. Even so, I really liked going to the events, and to be honest I wouldn’t have gone to these if I didn’t have to. And perhaps I’ll go again, especially to Sup46, I got a lot of great connections and I think just going there could lead to something great.

In a way, I also liked that we didn’t get all the information right at the start of the course. Sure, it got a bit stressful sometimes, but it also taught me more about real life issues involved in a venture project. Everything else in this school is so structured, and if you want to work with a venture, it really isn’t. This made me think more critically and therefore I also enjoyed Serdars emphasize on us having to believing in our own opinion.

Even so, I have some suggestions of improvement: I have tried to use Linkedin more and more, but still I missed a lot of course information because (in my opinion) Linkedin has restrictions, such as notifications. Therefore, I would have preferred information being put up on some other site. I cannot really think of a site of my head, as bilda neither is the best. A possible solution could be a Facebook group as this course is so dynamic, but I am not sure that this would agree with everyone.

This course has thought me a lot, probably more than the rest of my courses here at KTH combined, because now I know I want to pursue my dream of becoming an entrepreneur!

Thank you Serdar!