Daily Archives: October 20, 2016

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