Daily Archives: October 12, 2016

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!