Monthly Archives: October 2016

In the last couple of weeks I have been presenting our venture idea for 5 people to get some feedback. I am in the group that have the idea to put the NFC tags on public transportation that will give the passenger entertainment during the ride.

When I choose the people to interview I had in mind to get people with knowledge in
– Technology (2 persons)
– UX and startups (1 person)
– People without knowledge in earlier mentioned topics but that rides the bus/subway (2 persons)

The age of the participants where from 22 to 38 years and all live in Stockholm. I used a semi structured interview method but the questions divorced a little depending on the participants.

The feedback from the technologists was positive. They though that it will not be any problems with the technology due it already exist for other products today. And they couldn’t see any bigger problems with the software either. We continued talking about the advertisement and who the costumer would be and what the market looked like.

The second meeting was with an expert in the UX field but has also had a successful startup in the textile industry.  She explained that making a user-friendly app and to have the right logarithms to show the right news/entertainment in the app is probably the key to success.  And from and entrepreneur point of view to test in an early stage, maybe on only one bus, to get numbers on how many actually use the service.

The last two people I interviewed was friends that uses the public transportation on a daily bases. My questions here where more open about the transportation itself and what they did on their journey.  They both admitted that they are using their phones a lot and are mostly looking at entertainment. They both had a positive attitude against our idea and said they would us it if their phone had a NFC reader.

So the feedback was definitely different from who you asked. And that’s kind of obvious because of the knowledge in the subject. But that’s also really important when developing a product, to get feedback from all potential users.

The idea overall will not change but we will defiantly have the ideas in mind when we develop the concept!

As many other of you I attended to STHLM tech meet, where I got to meet a lot of people from class and also experience som real elevator pitches and several great presentations about start ups. H&M, EQT and Deutsche Bank  are just some of the names among the companies that held presentations and attended the event. This was all taking place at Hilton Slussen and it was really crowded, and it was hard to even get a decent spot to stand, even though we were over a half an hour early…

The presentations were all very interesting and it was a great experience to listen to many different elevator pitches. Some of them better than other, but I will especially remember the person who sort of called himself Steve Jobs, even though his pitch was regarding a mobile game based on wikipedia…

The most interesting thing from the event that made the most impact on me was how the manager of renowned MMA star Alexander Gustafsson presented how they as a team started to invest in tech. start ups. Of course he presented several reasons why they have chosen to invest in this industry and the ones he emphasised the most was:

1. It’s the future (-A bit of a cliché, but still an important reason)
2. Important for his brand (-Interesting take on brand management…)
3. They think that the mindset of entrepreneurs are similar to Alexanders mind as an athlete (A thought I have had myself as many of the characters of an entrepreneur are so similar to the dedication you need to perform as an athlete)

Point number 3 is certainly my favourite since I have heard some of the ground rules about being a successful athlete before. I have been active in cycling at elite level and our team manager were always clear about the sacrifices we had to make to become better and more successful. –Actually, the points were pretty much the same as the warnings that we got presented in a lecture about entrepreneurship….                    (fast prototyping customer development mockups, http://www.slideshare.net/SerdarTemi )

The past Thursday  I went to the ProductTank Sthlm that took place in SUP46, and it was a really good experience. I found the event in the web of SUP46, and I met mostly with Product Managers of different Start Up from Stockholm.

The event stared with a cocktail where the people could meet each other, and then were expositions of some Product Managers (PM), who gave their view of how is to work like a PM.

One thing that I like a lot is that the most of the expositors said that the motivation of their job is in that a good work could improve the service (and why not, the life) of thousands of people. For example, Marcus Kohlberg, PM from Spotify, said that he thinks that with his job, he was helping to bring music to the world.

Another thing that was mentioned a lot of times was the importance of have a vision of how you dream that your service or product would be in the future. Siam Choudhury, PM in ACast, told us that the most important thing is to have a roadmap tied to the company goal, and to be focus on that, so a big challenge is to have a clear goal, that everybody knows and share them.

In the same direction, Stina Redemo from Benify, putted a lot of attention in her key learning “get everybody involved”, that mean the importance of involve to the hole team in all discussions from the beginning, everyone is important to reach the goal that the team has.

A final learning that I would like to mention, is that when you are leading a project you have to be versatile, know how to relation with different kind of people and professions, and make that all these different persons work for the team goal. Is not too important know the how, in that position the important thing is to what is the goal and why.

Saludos!

At the beginning of this course I had a problem: I didn’t have a clue on where to look for start up events. The solution, however turned out to be very simple: just by asking and tagging along with friends from the course I rolled into a lot of different startup events! And I love it. This week alone I attended two successive events organised by STHLM Tech on Monday & Tuesday and could have gone to more of them if it were not so that this is also a busy time at university.

Kevin Armbruster (from Sound Hub) told me about this startup event going on in the Hilton Hotel in Södermalm (STHLM Tech Meet Up, about which already a lot of blogposts have been written). Hastily taking the subway to location I was just in time to see three pitches receiving obliterating feedback on their performance, Dragon’s Den-style. This night must have been very educative for both these companies as well as for the attentive listener, since the companies promoting their ideas (albeit good ideas) made some very unprofessional mistakes in the way they presented themselves. Short summary of the lessons learned:

• First of all: have a product? SHOW IT!
• If mere showing doesn’t suffice, never assume that your audience understands what you’re talking about.
• Make sure you have a clear idea of what you are offering
• Make sure to have a clear explanation of what you are offering.
• Always think twice about the name you chose for your product.

After the pitches we decided to stick around and talk a bit more to the other attendants – good new habit. This allowed us to get feedback on our pitches for our own venture ideas as well as meet some other interesting people: two co-founders from Trayce.io and a VC investor from Vancouver. Furthermore we got word that the day thereafter there would be a startup event at SUP46 (I was very eager to go there after the stories I had heard), which I attended very shortly.

STHLM TECH MEETUP

On Monday evening I went to the STHLM TECH MEETUP at the Hilton Hotel at Slussen. From reading all the other blogpost you probably already know what the meetup was about. But hey! Don’t stop reading here, you will have a chance to win €1 million if you read my blog post! STHLM MEETUP had invited H&M and Nordic Makers to talk about what they think is important with startups and what they are looking for when they invest in startups.

The event begun with inviting the UFC fighter Alexander ”The Mauler” Gustafsson manager. He talked about the importance of Alexander’s future and that are looking for when they are doing investments in startups.

Next up was H&M. They are having two categories they want to develop and therefore looking for startups in. The two categories were sustainable fabrics, other/new ways to reach the costumers like Sellpy.
Important factors they were looking for in a team were that the team members complement each other and the energy when presenting the ide. You should be able to feel the energy once the group enters the room.

I’m surprised that they didn’t bring up the innovation challenge they have together with KTH. The challenge is about to come up with a new innovative solution to make the fashion industry more circular and more environment friendly.  They will choose five winners that will share the price of €1 million. Here’s your chance to get your startup founded!
More information at: https://www.kth.se/innovation/nyheter/kth-partnering-global-change-award-to-reinvent-the-fashion-industry-1.669039

Next up on stage was Nordic Makers. The group consist of 10 ex entrepreneurs who makes investments in startups. They both do investments as venture capitals and as a group. They are most interested of startups in the northern countries and have a budget of 1-2 million/startup to invest.

Some learnings from the event:
– How you present your ide is crucial, not only how you present it but also how you act.
– Make sure to try your ide in an early stage.
– Numbers, investors are more interested in data then what the product is or going to do.
– Make sure to have a good team that complete each other.

Cheers! / Birk

Hello everybody!

Last Monday, I attended the STHM TECH MEETUP event at Hilton Slussen together with Andy, Marcus, Oscar, Birk and Ninos, where we also met other classmates. As many of you have already mentioned, the event was packed and all seats where sold out. Which got me thinking about how much interest and commitment for entrepreneurship we have in Stockholm.

The event started by showing some statistics about the development of star ups in Stockholm, the figures were really good, showing how great results STLM has achieved in the recent years. The event continued with some success stories and different investors explaining what they are looking for before investing their money.

Representatives from big companies such as H&M, EQT, Deutsche Bank  and Nasdaq went on stage and expressed how much focus they have on the Nordic Start-Up Market. Furthermore, we got the chance to hear how athletes such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Alexander Gustafsson approach their and investments. People from the audience had the chance to pitch their ideas, which I found was really cool.

The event really inspired me and I realaized that Stockholm is definitely one of the best cities for being an entrepreneur. I strongly recommend you to attend the next Tech MEET UP event.

Hi!

Today I want to write about what I learned from taking this course. To begin with, I think the course was very unique in several ways, at least to me, compared to other courses at KTH. For instance, I have never blogged before and certainly not as part of a course, so this was and is an entirely new experience. However, I was already a user of Twitter and I definitely encourage everyone to get more active on there, especially here in Sweden! It’s an easy way to be part of a community!

So, what did I learn? I will write about three aspects which I think cover the course material.

• Presentation skills: We had a total of four presentations (Elevator Pitch, Simulation 1 & 2 and Venture Project) and as I was heading home yesterday, after the last two presentations, I reflected upon how different they were and the course really highlighted that presentation is all about context. To improve your presentation skills, you need practice, practice and even more practice…so I’ll take the experiences from all four presentations with me!
• Simulation: Although I don’t think that the simulation is very accurate in describing reality, I definitely appreciated the insight in tech companies and the overall overview of all departements; marketing, manufacturing, finance etc. And as Serdar mentioned yesterday, it’s always nice to have heard the words and seen the work done, even if it’s within a game.
• Venture Project: So obviously, we are still working on our Venture Project. Since we continued with my idea, I really enjoy to see the development from really just an idea I thought of on my way home to the whole concept of business model, market strategies, target group and so on. And I definitely encourage you to share your idea with others and really reflect upon their criticism. I had a good chat with Marcus Nilsson where I admitted the need to change certain aspects of the business model. So thank you Marcus! 🙂

And finally, thank you, Serdar, and the class for another happy experience at KTH! See you!

As many of you, I have been in contact with start ups in many ways, in lectures, as a user or just as a spectator in general. But this autumn I have been in very close contact with a pretty interesting start up project as one of my closest friends has got the responsibility to run the whole project himself. This has meant that I have been having to hear about all of the problems and challenges he is facing and also the thrills of his many possibilities, even though we have been hanging out under the circumstances where talk about work/school is very far away. Needless to say, he is living and breathing his project and all of his friends and family have to put up with it…

As they are in the early stage of the process seeking funding at the moment I wont present the name of the app/idea/company, but the service they provide is local news in an application for iPhone/android (The name can be exposed when they have approached investors). They have already developed an available application to be able to measure the performance on a small test market to show investors some useful KPI to be able to move the business forward. The organisation consists of 4 software developers and my managing friend, and the founder has invested enough money to cover all of the expenses for 6 months, wherefore the funding stage is very crucial.

My impression of the application itself is very good since the interface is user friendly, easy on eyes and easy to use. The problems I see is more related to the whole concept due to the fact that there are certain things that obviously are not decided yet. Therefore I will present some things that I really think can help them improve their KPIs.

1. The target group seems very wide according to the content. A great target group can lead to many users but a low click rate.
2. No clear borders in the map function (where the user can choose location for the news)
3. The lay out of the advertisement does not match the application. The confidence in the product will be higher if the general impression is more complete, which could lead to more loyal “users”
4. The revenue streams will mainly consist of advertisement between the news which could lower the value for the users and poison the experience…
5. The name of the application is not related to the idea, content nor provided value.
6. No marketing research have been made, wherefore the company should initiate such a thing before deciding which KPIs to choose

Since I have gotten a lot of insider information about their business I have had much more insight than the general customer of their services, but I think that my points are important to consider before continuing to investors. It will certainly be exciting to see where this start up ends or takes off, and hopefully I can tell you a bit more about the company in detail in a couple of weeks!

As many others I as well, went to the STHLM TECH event yesterday. I believe that after reading the others nice posts you get an idea of what the event was about. The most important thing I took with me from that evening was how important the presentations/pitches are and also the execution of them, if not even more important. Here are a few key points to think about:

1. Storytelling
2. Focus on the main idea
3. Leave all the features to later
4. Show the potential  market
5. Practice, practice and practice
6. Keep it “light and airy”
7. Pitch to someone that hasn’t heard of the product, do they understand?

These are the main things I took with me, maybe I forgot something? Do you have a proposition of something more important?

Venture idea

I also want to thank Tanvi for presenting our venture idea so well!! <3

She got really good feedback on the presentation and the execution but there were also a few question marks that was raised that we have to think about and take into consideration going forward.

1. Can we access the data
2. We need evidence that people will pay for our service
3. Are people willing to enter their information, do they trust us?
4. Will the hospitals trust our information?

I am really exited for this project and to see what we can come up with in the end.