Daily Archives: September 22, 2016

Growth Arena at Grant Thornton

Now I have been to my third entrepreneurship event and my passion for the subject is increasing for every time. We started the morning with a networking at Grant Thornton’s office and thereafter continued with four presentations. The topic that really triggered me was digitalization and how important it is for a business to keep itself updated and use new technology to stay in business. We also discussed Swedish school system and how a complex organization, like Skolverket, tries to fit in to the digital world.

Since it is of huge importance to always stay updated and observant for external changes here is my 4 tips for running a business successfully:

External analysis. The world is constantly changing – even faster than before and it is vital to stay updated. My tip is to use a person from without the organization to do the external analysis so your love for the company doesn’t impact your judgement, for example KODAK and NOKIA forgot about this.

Big data – Many companies use big data today without really knowing how or why. Collecting data is important but the most important thing is to have an idea of how the data can be used to have a positive impact on your organization. How can you get more customers? Do you need to change your products? How do your customers use your product? etc. Rather collect a small amount of data with a clear objective than collect big data without any really train of thought.

Find a problem and develop the solution. Do not go the other way around i.e do not construct a product/service and try to find a problem that your product solves. This will never feel 100% right.

Be brave and charge! It is hard do raise price later and also pricing your product is a good way of knowing if your customers appropriate your product.

I really recommend the book ”Get digital, or die trying” by Gilan and Hammarberg if some one is interesting of reading more about the digital take on.

During Summers 2015, I interned at a start SafelyHome as an algorithm and Android developer. The startup was in it’s initial budding stages, still developing the product for the launch (even that was in it’s initial stages). As a result, I got to learn a lot while working in the small team and as I did a good job and had command on all aspects of the technical works, I became a Core Team Member within a month. And closely observing and also taking some decision for our growth I learnt a lot about what we did right and what went wrong.

Our application SafelyHome was targeted to car and motorbike owners. It was capable of automatically detecting an accident if the driver/biker encounters one, and alert emergency services as well as the kin of the person within a minute. As another feature, we also tried to organize the unorganized sector of repair mechanics in India (Delhi during launch). Every day hundred of people die due to not getting urgent care after an accident and therefore we could save all those lives.

During our development stages before our beta product launch, we were nearly always on schedule which is very important, both for keeping the morale of the team high, as well being on time in delivering the product to be sure of the launch deadline and not rushing things towards the end or postponing the launch which both be bad for the health of the startup.

Secondly, the outreach is important. And we got a big outreach, we collaborated with the Delhi (Indian state) Government and launched our app, also getting to be able to launch at a Police Department Public Meetup and received applauds for the same. We also had appreciation in the newspaper for the work we were doing.

Moreover, the business model we had was also decent enough for a beginning as we were getting help from the government and had data and other deliverables to sell to companies (like insurance companies, private hospitals).

At launch, we had a good response for a few weeks, but after that both our daily active users as well as new people coming started going down and people started going off the platform. We tried to keep going by incorporating different features that could keep people on the application but we weren’t successful and we had to sell our data and idea, application to another company.

Accessing our failure, during the end we realised where we went wrong.

Firstly, the big reason which we failed was that we did not do a proper market research to make sure how, with what and to whom to sell. Our product was worthy, and free but it wasn’t useful to our target group because they didn’t care about an accident or breakdown happening once in a blue moon.

Secondly, though we had outreach, we failed in constant marketing to make people aware of the application and to grow. As we couldn’t go big, and didn’t have numbers to show for getting an investment, all of it combined went wrong and we ended up failing our idea.

And that is also how we understood that anyone can have a good idea, but the correct implementation is the key to success of a startup based on that idea.

In may 2015 I applied for a program named EU-XCEL to take my start-up experience further than i had done before. I felt it was time for me to do something, and it seemed like EU-XCEL was the perfect opportunity for me.
EU-XCEL is a Horizon 2020 and Startup Europe initiative which supports aspiring young tech entrepreneurs interested in co-founding new international information, communication and technology startups through scrum training and mentored virtual accelerator initiative with a focus on 5 different areas which is;  

Internet of Things
Health Informatics
Big Data
ICT4Development
Predictive Analytics
E-/M-Commerce

I got chosen as a Danish representative and was invited to to participate in a week long accelerator program in Cartagena, Spain, and here I founded my first start-up “Sproutify” in collaboration with 4 other students spreaded over Denmark, Germany, Poland and Ukraine. We wanted to make a solution that helped people with growing herbs and edible plants in the city. In the past, when thinking about gardening and farming, images of the countryside filled with rows of vegetables is what comes to mind. But the times has changed. More and more of our local food production is going on in our urban centers. In fact, according to the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture)  about 15% of the world’s food supply is now grown in urban centers. And this trend is forecasted to increase as the world’s population rising. Urban gardening and farming are mishmashes of techniques and approaches to growing and raising food in densely populated urban centers. Because of the very nature of cities, there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, but rather a plethora of solutions and practices that are undertaken by individuals, communities, cooperatives and businesses alike.

We took starting point in the fact that we are getting more people who lives in smaller areas. In European countries like Germany, 75% of the population live in urban areas and this number is expected to increase. Predictions tells us that we are going to be 10 billion people in 2050 and 66 % of them will live in the city. The space in the city is limited though and many people don’t have the space to grow plants. Many people venture into growing their own herbs and smaller edibles in their apartments, but a lot of them seem to experience issues with getting the plants to grow properly indoor.  Therefore created we Sproutify, which is a ioT based all in one solution for growing fresh herbs and edible plants at home to affordable prices with eliminating waste and reducing the environmental impact.

Today I want to shortly introduce to you the finish Start-Up Norsepower. It is “a Finnish clean technology and engineering company pioneering the generation of renewable wind energy for the global maritime industry” (http://www.norsepower.com/, 2016). It was founded in 2012 and is leaded by Tuomas Riski, a serial entrepreneur, who developed it from five to now over 200 employees. Because of another project work I interviewed Mr. Riski via Skype. He was directly willing to help us and is a really friendly person. He explained to us that they install wind propulsion facilities on huge ships like tankers to save fuel when the wind is able to achieve the impetus.

We spoke most of the time about the differences in strategy and project choosing in a Start-Up and established companies. He told us that for them, it is most important to create a market and make it growth. That includes building a good reputation and always hunting for the next project. Right now they are the only company with a proofed solution. This technology is a radical innovation and is now continuously improved to better fit the demand (incremental innovations).

There were four really interesting statements for all of us:
1) To decide whether to found the company or not, they made a market size analysis, a profitability analysis and mechanical feasibility calculations.
2) If the number of projects is really small don’t hunt for planning everything methodically, just demand feedback and stay in close contact to customers
3) Wich projects they accept and for which price is right now decided by the importance of that project. That means making non-profit work if it helps you entering a new market or getting an important new customer.
4) For them it is most important to stay flexible. That means having a company culture with the target of clean energy but also not becoming to stuck in one strategy. They achieve this by not having regular meetings but working continuously and react to environmental changes.

I hope all of you enjoyed my insight view. If you have questions just comment:)