Monthly Archives: October 2016

In a couple of hours (at 10 a:m) the live stream link from Shenzhen Maker Faire and Chinese Factory Tour will close.

Through this link it was possible to follow on a walk through of the Shenzhen Maker Fair for two days. The stream link also gave an opportunity to be in a Chinese hardware production environment, without having to be there. In Shenzhen most of the iPads, iPhones, Amazon Kindle, and Nintendo hardware is made.

We know for a fact that streaming-technology is used to distribute material through all types of event, such as video games and sports. For me, the production-stream was a new one. Is there a demand to get live streams on walk through in factories all over the world? If so, who will be the innovator to quickly follow Twitch’s concept of distributing a platform for humans that have the interest to live stream and chat about production related topics?

The course started with an assignment to come up with a venture idea. The experience of having to make a pitch at the beginning of the course was inspiring and helped us to be creative. It was also meant to show us that no idea is silly and it can be actualized.

During the duration of the class we have had a mixture of lectures and invited guest lectures. The guest lectures were based a lot on the experiences that they have had or either building a company or the impact they made.  The lecture on how to raise capital was one of the most interesting. We got to learn about different ways of raising capital and their pro and cons. During the normal lectures by Serdar, i learnt especially that a business model is as important as the product you are trying to sell. If you have a bad business model and a good product it would affect your business profitability. The market target at the beginning is also important. Identify a small area and start from there and learn from the initial stages. Serdar examples was always very helpful in understanding the point he wanted to share across.

I learnt a lot on the simulations. It was like running an actual business where all the decisions you make would influence the business performance. At the end of the simulation game, COMPU had the best total performance but we learnt that decisions have to be made on facts. We did not calculate the total market size and therefore we increased too much our total capacity.

We managed to do well in the small projects, making a profit in the coffee sales challenge and raising capital for our simulation game. The venture project is the last part of the course that is currently ongoing.  Overall I managed to go out and attend start-ups events, give feedback to start-ups, make pitches, sell coffee, conduct a survey and run a virtual company.

On Tuesday I went to the Stockholm Hardware meetup, which took place at the “Things” office on the campus of our university KTH. “Things” is the Hardware department of the Startup incubator “Sting”. The topic of the evening was biohacking and med tech.
After the initial mingling with food and drinks the first speech started, which was recorded and can be rewatched under this Link (once it’s uploaded) together with all the past events.

Biohackers

The first speech was on biohacking itself and how people can benefit from modifying their bodies. The biohacking community is differentiated in four groups:

DIY-biologists
The Do-It-Yourself-biologists make use of the new democratization of Biotechnology, where anyone can easily do genetic analysis and experiment with bacteria using products like for example the Bento Lab.

Quantified-self
This describes the idea of measuring your own body to get as much data as possible and therefore learn more about yourself. For example, Blood levels, Sleep cycles, Brainwaves, Body temperature… All things that can be measured given the right tools. An example of these measuring tools can be found at the end of this post.

Bodyhackers
People who don’t want to artificially modify the body, but who use methods of the Quantified self in combination with Bodybuilding to bring their bodies to extreme performance.

Grinders
People who insert Implants or other modifications into their bodies, either for looks (see image above) or to gain new abilities. These implants can be for example small magnets that get implanted into the fingertips to give you a magnetic sixth sense. Another widely spread example is a small RFID Chip (radio-frequency identification) that is embedded in Biocompatible glass and then implanted into your hand. It stores information and can be used to open your house door or pay a bill. During an event they had organized, people could get these implants for free and the demographic spectrum was very wide. Some seniors had the implant for not having to worry about losing their keys anymore, and some young people just wanted to transmit their Twitter handle with the swipe of their hand.

Hardware VC

The second speech was by a Venture Capitalist who invests a lot in different Hardware startups. He said that even though there are so many purely digital startups growing out of the ground, the hardware startup scene is still very active. He believes that they can contribute a lot to making life easier and better for many people.

He had spent many years in China and said that moving to the city of  Shenzhen will drastically increase the speed of product development of electronic products. One week in China is like a month in the West because they have the network of electronics suppliers right at their doorstep. This enables them to run three-week iteration cycles for phone prototypes. For more information he recommended this documentary by WIRED.

Diabetes on autopilot

The last speaker was a guy, who had been living with Diabetes for years and still struggled with calculating the correct amount of Insulin needed at the right time. So he designed a small computer that reads several of his bio-signals and calculates the right dose of insulin which is then sent to his insulin pump, that he always carries on him. This development made his life a lot easier in the last few months because he doesn’t have to pay that much attention to his diabetes anymore and he also wakes up in the morning with his blood sugar levels perfectly in order.

 

And here is the promised gadget that uses quantified self technology: A headset with attached cat ears, that measures your brain activity and then display the level of your focus by either directing the ears to the front or have then wiggle around aimlessly.

I feel like this device stands representative for the entire evening: Super nerdy but highly interesting. I will definitely come again, especially because the topic of next month’s meeting will be “Wireless” and I have a direct connection to that with my Sound Hub idea. So signup here and join me on November 16th for the STHLM Hardware Meetup #8.

 

So yesterday I went to a other start-up event, after having my family over and sleeping on a camping mattress  for almost a week it was easy to say that I was tired. But just like the previous time I got really energetic and went home with tons of energy. So let my now begin by giving a small summary of the geast speaker and pitch workshop that where held at 19@19 in the SUP46 building.

The guest speaker was Austin Nicholas who calls himself Entrepreneur and Trust Architect. He gave a interesting presentation on how to accelerate your start-up. He spoke a lot about how a person should have the entrepreneurship DNA and he even gave a fun site where you can check what kind of entrepreneurship DNA you have (https://www.bosidna.com/dashboard) I am not sure how accurate a test of 10 questions can be but it is fun to look at anyway.

He also talked about how Microsoft, Virgin, Dell and Apple where all founded by people under 25 heading into a recession. This is quick in contrast with what Sadar told us about starting at any age but he has a point on how a recession can be a great climate for startups. With the enormous trend in startups and some can say a sort of recession this is THE moment to accelerate or start your startup.

We also talked about how entrepreneurs think diverent from your average factory worker. How a factory worker thinks he knows everything he needs to know while entrepreneurs are constantly looking for there Joda’s and mentors. And also a fun comparisons he brought up was how factory workers are always working towards their pension while a entrepreneurs never thinks about retiring, and why should you if you are doing something that you love? Also he told us that a factory worker only wants to invest in stuff to enriches himself while a entrepreneur invest in his team and people. Invest in people so they grow so much that they want to leave the brand but make sure they are so committed that they wouldn’t. Some great stuff to think about.

We also did a pitch workshop with the main goal to raise awareness and show your passion in stead of a just talking for 1 minute and boring a person into making a fake phone call. One thing I liked best that we had to start with giving a bad pitch to a random person to show how it shouldn’t be done. And he was right that I didn’t get what problem the person wanted to solve or what his sollution was, something with software development. The second pitch we had to do our best to show the product or service that we where pitch, the person in front of me was a lot more nervous than the previous one but she managed to tell be all about the marketing she could provide. And the last one we should try to talk as less as possible about our product and focus on the driving force and passion that made us want to do what we do. Even though I don’t really know what made Eva’s photography diverent from the others I am quick sure that if I had a baby or child I would hire her to make some photo’s  of them. It was funny to also see the progress in my own pitch even after 3 times with diverent angles of attack.

To summarize everything, it was again a fun event that made me want to keep participating in similar events in the future. And that free wine helps with the networking

When I started this course I hadn’t got any idea of what we were going to do even if I had the overview of the course on the KTH website.

I came to this course because I wanted to know more about entrepreneurship and to know how to deal with a new idea from the beginning until its released to the market.

Contrary to the other courses the most of the work was done outside the meetings class and we had to organize and work in teams. That was a great experience because I was in a group with people from 5 different countries and during the project we learned from each others. I already had a great experience as a project leader in a team of 8 engineering students during 7 months. We were working with a real client and we had to deliver a product at the end of the project. I used to be the project leader in almost all my groups projects and this time I had the opportunity to test another role and see how it goes when I am not leading and how the others are leading the group. And I can say that it is really useful for my next projects.

I also learned that we have to go outside our comfort zone, as Serdar said “go out and talk to people”.

I don’t use to go to events and it was a great pleasure to see how useful it is. We can talk with the others and exchange our ideas without any judgements. We can help them by giving them feedbacks and they can help us building our idea.

The guests we had during our classes is something to keep for next year even if it’s not the same course it’s always interesting to learn about their career.

The last but not the least, I never wrote any blog post and I was reluctant at the idea to write one during this course. But writing a blog post after an event helped me review what I actually learned during this event and after almost each event I wrote a blog post J

URB-IT

Urb-it is a relatively new start-up that recently launched an app with the same name. Urb-it is essentially a network of employees that are stationed all over Stockholm. Their job is to deliver you your product only hours after you have ordered it. This is possible by creating partnerships with physical and online stores all over Stockholm.

Even though the company is not doing very well financially (30m SEK in losses last year), it is important to remember that they launched 2015.

The app is still very basic and there is definitely room for improvement. As of version 1.2, the main screen that you get in to shows you the different brands that they have a partnership with and if you swipe to the left, you can see some of the products that these brands offer. The purchase doesn’t happen within the app, instead they link you to the product page at their partner’s website (for example, FIFA 16 can be bought at SIBA).

The second function of the app is that you can follow the purchase you’ve made in real time.

The app itself is fluent without any bugs or other issues, which is always positive. However, I would’ve liked to be able to make the purchase within the app itself. Other improvements may be that the app shows you the things it thinks you want (after you’ve been using it while). Hopefully, they will improve these things as they go on. And I want to finish with a sidenote; when visiting urb-it.com, there is only a link to Apple Store for the app, which I think is incredibly unprofessional since there are so many Android users out there.

INFORMERA – TRÄFFSÄKER INFORMATION

The second app I tested was Informera – Träffsäker information. The purpose of this app is to give people correct information about important things like emergencies, broadband status, electricity status, heating status, water, traffic etc.  These will be based on your current position and other pre-determined positions like your home. Furthermore, there are groups you can join that will give you information just about them (for example, Gävle Fastigheter). However, the app is currently in a very early stage in hope of a launch. I found it really difficult to understand how you would do certain things, like joining groups. The functionality doesn’t seem to be there yet. There is a section inside the app that allows you to give feedback to the developers, which is really smart.

Overall, I think the idea is good, but here is huge improvement needed since there isn’t even an Android app available. However, I hope that these will be taken care of ahead of the launch.

– Andy

 

Nowadays, we hear a lot about entrepreneurship but I think most people don’t really know what it is actually about. I was one of them and that’s why I decided to attend this course at KTH. It was a good opportunity for me to get some knowledge on it.

At the moment, I’m not planning on launching my business but I am glad that this course will be useful for me anyway.

First, I’ve learned a lot about how an idea becomes a business, how a company grows, and so on. I had little knowledge about fund raising for example and it was really an interesting content of the course to me.

Even if we don’t want to be an entrepreneurs, we will likely have interactions with entrepreneurs, and it is always good to know how they work. During the event STHLM TECH, a representative of H&M talked about why they are looking for entrepreneurs to stay innovative and competitive. This example shows one more time that big companies and small ones can be strongly related. Moreover, I had some work experiences in big companies which I enjoyed. Intrapreneurship is for me important for companies and it could be a nice experience, which combines work in big companies launching a new idea. I think the “entrepreneurship spirit” I discovered in this course can be similar doing new projects for companies.

Even if I wasn’t really enthusiastic about going in start-ups events, I actually enjoyed it. It was a new experience for me and listening to all these entrepreneurs was really interesting and inspiring! From now on, I might go to startups events from time to time because I realize how interesting it is and I am more curious about it thanks to this course.

The best part of the course was the simulation game according to me. I learned a lot from this game which was even more detailed and complete than I expected. Moreover, I enjoyed working as a team, thanks team Ace! : )

Making presentations in English, doing a speech for selling your idea were other good experiences of the course.

Finally, it was really interesting to listen to all your ideas!

I wish you all the best! And whether you decide to be an entrepreneur or not, don’t forget to enjoy the music!

An interesting thought to start with, could entrepreneurship be the solution to major problems like the planets climatic predicament, the water problems being faced by developing countries, health, hygiene, low life expectancy. Somehow every startup meet I have been to is just the same routine of talking about this brilliant idea where there could be potentially “random number” of consumers and eventually a “random number” of profits. Is there something that we are missing out on? Entrepreneurship could also mean breaking the convention to the societies aspect of just being able to come up with new things. I am sure that entrepreneurship is a solution towards a cleaner, greener and healthier tomorrow. So why haven’t we thought along those lines. This does sound critical of what we have done so far in the course, but i am just putting forward this question that we as future entrepreneurs should take the future into consideration.

There are a few notable people who have taken the idea of entrepreneurship to another dimension. One such person coming to my mind is Elon Musk. The man could have been comfortable with the amount of money he received from Pay-pal. He rather invested all of it into three different ventures, two of which was into renewable energy and that is making a massive difference. Now I can say that we had lectures about what to do when one had an idea, means to gain investments, decisions to take at crucial junctures between the start and the possible success of a company. But never were we told that entrepreneurship could be an answer to the numerous problems our planets facing today.

“A lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them”. This was one of Steve Jobs greatest quotes and Apple has always worked along this. Nobody ever knew that they’d want a phone without a headphone jack , pun intended. But this is the beauty of entrepreneurship perhaps not in the case mentioned before. If you could break down that one quote and just translate it into one single word, the word has to be IMAGINATION. Now that’s what he actually suggested. Imagination is the way, I know most of them gets to see these wonderful ideas over Facebook, like the water bottle that collects atmospheric air and condenses it to get water. Now that can be used and using technology it can be improved to solve water crises. Unfortunately though it is quite difficult to raise capital with such ideas and that is eventually where we loose the plot ( that is just a thought, correct me if I am wrong). The fact that we have this incredible academia to help us out through the technical difficulties we could be facing should gives us a hope to pull out a new tomorrow, a cleaner and a beautiful tomorrow.

Would be interesting to know what each one of you think about what I wrote.

#random