Daily Archives: October 18, 2016

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

Yesterday I went to an event called FemTech hosted by SUP46. It was an event created by women for women. During the evening we got to hear the stories of some successful women in tech:
– Frida Emilsson, Co-founder & CMO at Worldfavor
– Victoria Bastide, CTO at Lifesum
– Jane Walerud, Founder & Investor at Walerud Ventures. (Jane is a Business Angle, some of the companies she has helped become successful are Klarna, Tobii, Lensway)

These three women told us about their journey within the tech startup world. We also got to listen to 3 startup pitches by: SEVN, Simply Events and BlueCall.

I really appreciated the event. It was great to mingle with women only and to hear the stories of three successful women in tech. One interesting thing that I reflected about was when the panel discussed if they had ever experienced difficulties in the industry because of their sex and while Frida Emilsson and Victoria Bastide had not face any challenges in terms of equality Jane Walerud had. She told us about when she was younger and she had been offered a lot of short cuts to the top by older men and what they wanted in return was often sexual services. I think that Jane was the only one to experience this because she is a bit older than the other ladies in the panel and that men back in the days were less feminist than today. It makes me really glad that the other two women (Frida & Victoria) have never been faced with any kind of issue concerning sex equality, maybe it means that the younger generation of men are becoming more and more feminist compared to the older generation of men.

It was truly amazing to see so many women on the event (I think we were at least 150 women there), knowing that they are all interested in tech and startups. I hope to see many more women in the tech industry in the future and I hope to be one of them!

 

Picture: Jane Walerud (Business Angle) talking about why Sweden is a good place to be an entrepreneur: there is much to gain and not much to loose (your childrens education is free, pension you’ll get anyhow, healthcare is free etc).