The simple ideas – “This can’t be that hard to fix”

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Today I read an article about the KTH-started company called Mentimeter. They just got accepted into 500 startups accelerator. This is a huge deal for any company and a great opportunity the reach new heights and evolve as a startup. http://breakit.se/artikel/1510/mentimeter-antagna-till-prestigefylld-accelerator-i-usa

But this got me thinking. This is not a huge idea. This is a couple of students sitting in class and realizing that raising your hands to answer a poll is not working as well as it could. People were afraid of being wrong and looking silly, or people just followed the pack, or something completely different that made the voting unreliable. Instead of complaining about this, like many others do they said to themselves, “this can’t be that hard to fix”.

I believe these exact words are the beginning of a lot of startups. “This can’t be that hard to fix”. It does not have to be something complicated like re-inventing space travel, I’m looking at you Elon, or a complicated social network to unite the world. You just have to find something that could be made a little easier and there you have a base for your start-up.

I suppose a good way to start entrepreneuring is to keep a list with you at all times where you write down whenever something bothers you. And one shouldn’t be afraid to write something down just because you can’t come up with a solution there and then. You can figure that out later…

Mentimeter also kept a blog during their early days. It’s fun reading about the development process and thoughts they had. For example they were used at the iiS (Pernilla Rydmark) organized “Internet days” back in 2012.
http://blog.mentimeter.com/swedish-top-domain-foundation-se-choose-mentimeter-to-strengthen-the-audience-experience-at-the-internet-days-conference-2012/

More reading:

https://www.kth.se/forskning/artiklar/vi-vill-gora-moten-roligare-1.479146

 

SUP 46 Event

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sup46

Hi everyone,

A few days ago (29/9) was the FemTech event by SUP 46. Among their startup-event, this was the most relaxing setting this far.

The event was a follow up on a successful session earlier this month, was anybody there?

The event
The evening was moderated by Jessica Stark (CEO & Co-founder for you that may not know). It was an encouraging spirit the entire evening with guests as Adiba Arney. What I thought was interesting to share was her work with non-profit public agencies. They educate and create relationships with the technology and start up community. There is a possibility that they will post a video that summarizes the event and I would recommend you to take a look if they do so. It will probably be on their facebook page but I will link it here if I see it.

My greatest insight during this evening was the discussion that rised about feedback. Under the presentation Adiba pointed out the importance of being able to treat feedback as an entrepreneur in order to develop and succeed.

Discussion and insights after the event
A discussion followed between me and a girl named Johanna that just finished her studies at Stockholm School of Economics. That led me to break down the concept of feedback when it concerns entrepreneurs. I came up with a few points I regard as important to have a successful feedback exchange.

  1. Transparency and visibility of idea – having people observing, trying and analyzing you product/service
  2. Channels of interaction between customers and internal force – How easy it is to give input and feedback to the entrepreneur/start-up
  3. Collection of feedback – how to gather and store feedback
  4. Active response – how you ensure the feedback is lifted, discussed and affects the organization
  5. Feedback in return – to make sure you encourage feedback from the customers

How I will take this with me
This is some points I will take with me to my startup and our business. We have already built up a system for gathering feedback after projects and activities but we need a more consistent way of storing and following up on feedback. I will start a project in our internal system that has a place to keep and track these ideas and also put it on the agenda on our monthly meetings to discuss the feedback we’ve gotten.

Do you have any other tips?