Daily Archives: October 21, 2015

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!

Hey again guys!

Yesterday I tried Spontano, a Startup from Stockholm, created to be the interphase between customers and events. I got in contact with the company’s founder Ludvig Linse through email. The venture itself is a platform/marketplace for events that haven’t been sold out and therefore have tickets left, which are then offered on the platform for a better price. Like any type of last minute booking sites its target audience is spontaneous, hence the name Spontano. The Website itself targets mostly young active people, therefore the founder was excited to try his new ideas and interphase on me. First we got to try a different website layout, and gave him so pointers why it was good and what was less good.
After this I tried Ludvigs own website which was different in many ways. He wanted me to give him feedback of the customer experience. So what I did was more or less playing around with his sight for 20 minutes and went through all the steps.

And I was impressed. I myself have worked with startups trying to create good working websites, and it always sounds easier than it is. There are always things that the creators haven’t thought about because they are too close to the creation themselves, but in this case I was not able to find any big glitches. It is impressive to have created this in such a short time and I believe that this venture could be very successful if they get its product out there even more.

After trying this I contacted an acquaintance of mine. Who I remembered had created something similar. I did the same for my friend as for Ludvig, I tried his venture as well. It is very similar to Spontano in many ways. That is why it got me thinking of it as I reviewing Spontanos website. It is called Heyeventand it is a platform for events in general. It connects all Facebooks events and enables you to easily find those close to your location. This Startup is the same age as Spontano, but instead the founder, Jonatan Heyman has gotten a lot of traction abroad. The Startup is really successful.

This is also obvious in the customer interaction on the site. You notice right away that the person that wrote the code behind the sight has worked on venture projects before and has created many websites. Here as well, I could not really be of that much of help as I had hoped in the beginning, as the products themselves were already so good. The layout is very modern. The only negative feedback I gave was that the website was a bit to crowed. That it is similar to the new Facebook, too much happening, advertisements everywhere. This compared to a favorite of mine, apples website. I know they cannot reach this completely as Jonatan has a very different product. Nevertheless, I said that he had consider changing the layout a bit earlier and therefore though my feedback on the matter was interesting.

I gave Jonatan as well as Ludvig the feedback about signing up with Facebook. This is just a laze man’s way to solve a coding/interaction problem. I am not a fan of signing up with Facebook, because it only empowers Facebook, no one else earns money or gains anything form this. And it creates a deeper, ‘Big Brother sees you’ issue. All the information that these two sites and many more, give to Facebook is then stored and sold. Nevertheless, I know that many of their customers are lazy and like this feature. So therefore I also understand why their websites carry the feature.

Something that struck me is that both this websites are into delivering events. Spontano those it towards a niche market and HeyEvent towards a broader mass market. It might be beneficial for them both to meet up and discuss merging. I believe this would probably be hard to convince them to do as they have worked alone with their projects, their ‘babies’. Nevertheless, they aren’t really competitors. Hence a merger could empower them both in a growing new market.

https://www.spontano.se/tour

http://heyevent.com/

Yeseterday evening me and my colleague Jonas had a private work shop with the PR guru Thomas Brenemark, former vice president at McCann, who helped us establish a sustainable business plan and examined our current strategies. It was very fulfilling and inspiring. If you ever have a chance to listen to him I can highly recommend it! He could not stress enough the importance of the three base questions every company facing. What, How, Why. I have posted before at linked in this video, but I really recommend you all to watch it again and take it in for your own projects!

https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=sv

Furthermore he helped us identify different types of people in society who we should aim our selling to. As mentioned tones of times at the lectures durng the course – find your customer segment!

And for your breakfast tomorrow, watch this and get some understanding for energy 😉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ

Sun to you all

I’d like to sum up the two events I’ve attended, since I am active within the renewable energy market I decided to participate in two events I participated in, they were however not public events but for those who were restarted in a renewable community I signed up in about a year ago. They were held in Austria as I made a short comment about in linked in, the first one was only involving solar energy and the second was about electrical charging. It was a great experience to meet other startups from around Europe were we shared a lot of information regarding the various possibilities due to the different energy climates, i.e electricity price, subsided and political influences. Despite that, since we were all from different countries experiences were happily shared, and regarding to my earlier post regarding our current issue finding a sustainable installation partner we got some great insights from similar startups from Netherlands, Austria and Germany how they decided to pick their installation companies for their products.

Furthermore we saw (which I am sure you have seen in Stockholm and which I didn’t know before what it was before) this amazing invention.

It is a solar panel on the roof that stores energy to compromise the garbage so that the garbage doesn’t have to be collected as often. I think this is an amazing product, now when I know what it does and it starts me thinking – In what other ways can solar energy help saving unnecessary costs?

Which you all a sunny autumn!

Hello readers, I am about to share something with you that occurred on Friday this week. But first let me reverse the tape and give you the entire background.

Me and my co-member Jonas started an agency with exclusive right to distribute a Austrian product called smartflower in Sweden, Norway and Finland. We found out about this product when we visited an energy fair about two years back and we were astonished how innovative this product was, due to design, effect and other functional areas. Both me and Jonas has a deep urge to change the way we produce and consume energy today in order to stay below the 2 degree Celsius limit. We find this issue being our times most devastating problem that needs to be handled: by politicians, companies and you and I, not just in Sweden but in the entire world. So we started a negotiation with the Austrian company regarding the contract and sent it back and forth between our lawyers and finally we came to an agreement, we got the unique distribution rights for this product in all the above written countries.

Let me clarify before you make any hasty conclusions. Smartflower is a stylish, innovative renewable source, however it will be more costly to install a smartflower than it would be to install roof PV modules. We are well aware about that. Furthermore due to Sweden’s low energy prices the payback time will also be longer than down at the continent. So we investigated how this product could make additional value to customers and realized that if we added the companies’ logotypes onto the pillar it will be a striking advertising space. And the world’s first branded smartflower got sold to Lantmännen and we are very happy about the outcome.

In addition, smartflower has some extra features, such as an integrated charging station for electric vehicles as well as battery storage so that the energy produced during the day can be used in the evening as well. The integrated charging stations has shown to be very appreciated among companies, for customer parking or even for employees to use.

Starting a new company will require a lot of investments in the early stages, whether you provide a product or a service. Our investments has so far remained quite low as our product is produced on demand so that we do not need a large warehouse which ties up capital. However, me and Jonas are entrepreneurs and realized in an early stage that we cannot carry this business all on our own and started looking for partners to relieve some of the tasks required. For instance we have no experience regarding installation and ground work such as build a concrete foundation to place the smartflower upon. This is where I realized that I have an old friend who works with exactly these thing and I presented the tasks we need assistance with. They were basically

• Store the smartflowers a few days before installation when they arrive after manufacturing in Austria
• Transport the smartflower to the installation location, if it is within Stockholm
• Install the smartflower and based on the surface make the best possible ground intervention to place the product on

I spoke with my friend and offered him a sum of money to complete those tasks. He presented the process to his boss who was on board and excited to try something “new”. We asked to sign a contract but the boss was skeptic regarding contracts and reasoned that he did not even write contracts with his largest employers. I thought – why not, he is my old friend and I trust him – Later to regret.

The first delivery arrived a couple weeks back, containing three smartflowers. Which by the way weights 690 kg and are 2,65 meters high – unfolded. Out of nowhere, my friend’s boss decides that he no longer wants anything to do with this project, and an argumentation started and we finally agreed that the first delivery was okay for them to store and install. This Friday the smartflowers had been there for a bit more than a week. When I got a phone call from my friend saying that his boss will throw out our smartflowers on the street unless we pay him even more for using the warehouse… and he wants it immediately. We were okay with paying some more, because so far we had a good deal that was even better than we first expected was possible, in addition we could not take the risk of him throwing them out on the street. So we gently paid and wish this will not occur again with our next partner – who by the way will be someone nonrelated and has a genuine drive to pursue these tasks.

So, what have I learned from this: starting a business with/including friends could will be fun if it works out or it could be devastating. In this case we thought we had agreed on a very favorable contact. But as time passed the only thing that closed our contract was an oral agreement between two friends. However, we were all insured incase anything would happen and if it would have to be taken further we would have the law on our side. As the oral agreement was binding and there were evidence.

So before wrapping up this extremely long post I have some additional pointers that I wish to share with the rest of you. Starting a new company is fun and challenging but how much you ever plan thing through there will always be something you miss, that will cost you time or in the worst case money. But if you tackle all obstacles that gets in your way you will get closer to your goal. Self-employment is a wonderful occupation but do not think for one bit that self-employment means freedom and that you can determine your own schedule. Now your service or product will be obligated to answer your customers’ needs at their preferred hours. But to me, even that is a wonderful feeling, someone needs something that I can provide, something that only I can do according to their preferred standards – Why else would they come to me?

Over and sun out!

 

As many other have said, this was not a usual academic course where you just need to write down what the lecturer says at the lectures and then go home and memorize stuff for getting good results at the exam.

First of all, I think it was a great idea to invite people from different stages in different companies. Of course some was more interesting than other, but you could snap up something good from every each of the presentations.

Second, I liked how we were forced out of our comfort zones at the lectures and also outside the school. We did activities where you needed to talk, discuss and in a small amount of time cooperate with each other. This made me to socialize and start networking. I also liked the thing with going to two startup meetings. It made me think about networking even more than before and I saw that there are plenty of potential out there for creating great stuff with great people.

Often, we get to know exactly what we need to do in school. Like when you were a kid and you mom and that always told you what to do, you didn’t need to worry about putting up your schedule, because other people were making it for you. This course, was the opposite. It was showing us how the real life works. We won’t have teachers telling us what to do and how to do things if we want to create our own startup. As Serdar mentioned before, you need to listen to yourself and that could be a scary thing to do sometimes. But everyone need to practice on it.

Something that could be improved is the selection of the invited guests. The most interesting guest we had I think was the man from Fyndiq. Because he had gone down that entrepreneurship rode himself and his experiences really touched me. At the same time, it is hard to get that kind of persons to appear. Most of them are pretty busy and might not have the time.

Im now even more enthusiastic about some day becoming a real entrepreneur, with all its good and bad times. I would also like to thank Serdar for the energy and effort he put on the course, and of course all the students.

 

When I was busy with my startup “ListFix”, I came in contact with Ludvig Linse. Both me and Ludvig was developing an app for the entertainment market so of course we knew who the other guy was. Ludvig is one of the founders of Spontano. The startup I choose to help.

Spontano is a digital platform for last minutes tickets to different events. They want to make people “spontaneous”. So why not put the unsold tickets of different events on a platform where spontaneous people can buy in last minute?

This time I wanted to test their web service. So I choose a free event. I tested the whole user experience chain, from how you find a event to order a ticket.

I think they have made great improvements from the Spontano I knew two years ago. The design is user friendly, the navigation is cool and modern and also easy to understand. When you click on an event, you easily find a description of the event, time and place. You choose how many tickets you want to get and then you need to login or register an account. However, people today are getting more and more lazy so its good that you can register easily with your Facebook ID instead of filling a form and then go back to your mail for confirming the sign up.

What I would like them to improve is their list of events. If they could work on to show a list of events that I actually am interested of, then I would get a better feeling of entering Spontanos website. Because right now, there are a lot of different events and most of them are not in my area of interest. So, make a more customized event list for different kind of market segments.

Also, many events are repeating ones. For those kind of events, I would like to see what people who went to this event earlier through Spontano, thought? I would like to see their rating on the event, before I Spontaniously buy a ticket.

Otherwise, I think their business idea is great and I wish them good luck. Ive also sent mail back and forth to them with my suggestions and got positive responses.

Hey guys!

Last week I went to sthlm tech and forgot to write about, hence I write it now instead. As Tim said and most of you already know it was at Hilton Hotel at slussen, so it was close to my house and comfortable. I was there early and was able to get a seat, which was very nice, because it got really crowded and some people, including some class mates had to stand by the side. It was nice to see that many people there and I can understand why, because the whole presentation was really interesting.

In the beginning presented all the big tech-investments made this week, they presented some founders and what they had created. Everything was very up to date, and it felt like being in a room where stuff actually happen, with people that push boundaries every day.

A big part of the presentation later on focused on the refugee problem that is occurring all over Europe at the moment and especially how the tech-society can help. I right away got to thinking about Sophie Lööbs idea that she presented in class during the elevator pitches. The one with the app, that gets companies in contact with refugees that specific skill set. I also read a couple a weeks ago about an effort made by the government to lower the unemployment rate. To do this they were going to invest 1,3 billion SEK, if I am not mistaken. Might be a side not I realized already during the presentation, and that those kind of innovations are not really what they are search for perhaps, but still interesting way to solve a problem that is out there.

I liked the app which was presented during this part, called “Welcome”. The idea was simple in itself, giving the user information within the app on Sweden and how things work here more or less. Even so, I saw a clear limitation with it; that you need to own a smart phone as you arrive. I don’t exactly how many bring their phones, but I imagine few refugees come here with smart phones. Still though, the main idea of the app is beautiful and I liked the part where refugees could get in contact with local Swedish people. Nevertheless, I believe it is going to be hard to get a big amount of people to use the app without gaining anything, sadly, few people volunteer to do this type of things.

The second part dealing with the refugee problem was a bit simpler. A company, similar to the Sandbox, holds a kind of Hackathon where the purpose and theme is to help refugees. I like the idea of Hackathons, I do not believe they always create direct results, even so they do always create indirect results; in contacting ambitious, driven people. So maybe they won’t solve all the issues right away, but I believe they will create a domino effect.

Later on, international investors presented how different their ‘Startup-atmosphere’ is back home and this got me thinking of what Serdar said in the being of the course. That it is always important, if not essential, to have local knowledge, having local partners that know the culture. Because, as they presented here, most of their ways of seeing or solving problems where alien to me.

The last part, as Tim wrote last week, was a bit unorthodox. I did not really agree with the investors and thought they behaved unprofessional. Nevertheless, this is how the world works, sometimes you pitch an idea and get laughed at, and it might be hard put I believe this guy, who came up on stage and went through this still trying to keep strong, will succeed if he dusts himself of and continue afterwards. It is as the question on the exam;” who should you believe?” in yourself.

We finished the exam on friday, the last finishing touches are done on the venture project report and the last blogpostes are posted. The course comes to it’s end. So now it is time to look back on the course and what I have learned from it.

To start with, it was a very different course type than I’m used to, because I’m normally busy with Chemical formulas, calculations and trying to understand everything. The Entrepreneurship course was more discussions, see the different points of view on the topic and meet people from different working fields and hear their story. I really liked that  it was different, because that was one of the reasons why I chose for this course. I wanted to do somethig different during my time abroad and explore different study fields. I was especialy interested in Economic and Management courses, because when I was busy with my study choice a couple of years ago, I realy doubted about doing something in that field. Eventualy I chose to go to the beta site and study Chemical Engineering.

It was fun to learn a lot about Entrepreneurship and every aspect of it. What are the common characteristics of a Entrepreneur, what are good thing for your Business Model, multiple ways of prototyping, how to get financing, etc. I didn’t knew anything about it and know I’m able to say I know luckely some basics.

The most interesting and maybe the most important thing I have learned from this course, is that being an Entrepreneur is not something for me. This sounds maybe stupid, because I wrote that I liked to course a lot and that it gave me an insight in the entrepreneurial world. But knowning what you don’t want to do is also very valuable. First Entrepreneuship was an exciting and new world for me. A world which gives you to opportunity to start something on your own, become succesfull and enrich the world with your ideas and products. But reading all the articles about it and especially hear the stories from entrepreneurs themself, I saw the entrepreneurial world also in another light. Frequently asked questions as: “Did you every thought about starting your own business?”, “Do you come up with ideas for problems but do you often don’t persue them?”, “Do you want to be your own boss?”, “Are you willing to take a leap of faith and risk everything to try to reach your ultimate goal?”, etc, I frequently answered with NO. An Entrepreneur however would answer most of the questions with YES. I see myself rather work at a big company, work hard and try to clime up the career ladder, than that I risk everything and start my own company. Maybe this will change in a couple of years, who knows!

Finally, I want to say that I enjoyed the lectures and the way Serdar gave the lectures. A lot of guest speakers, some were better than others, but generally they were good speakers. Serdar gave the lectures with a lot of enthousiasme and was interested in the students. I can understand why some students maybe disliked the way of how the course was given, because sometimes it was a bit hard to figure out what to do when and where to find what. It was always written somewhere and eventually you could find it and otherwise you could ask Serdar. I also liked that we had to go to start-up events, otherwise I would probably not have went to them and I really liked to events and learned a lot of them.

I want to thank everyone for a nice course, all the groups discussions and some new insights!

Regards,

Tim Buzink

 

Hey Guys,

I went to my second startup meeting at SUP46 the 19th of October. It was a seminar and mingle about “Why developing a Minimal Viable Product is the key to success when you want your company to grow fast”. It was interesting to listen to discussions similar to what Serdar has talked about in the classroom.

I mingled a bit and also met some new people. Always interesting to meet people with different skills and ambitions, because it gives you different goggles to see the world with.

The hard question is though where to draw that line about which product is your MVP. As we have talked before, it is easy to discuss such things in academical matters, but in real life you need to draw the line of where you MVP actually is. Otherwise it could be a game changer, and maybe put you out of the market if your MVP isn’t what the market craves for.