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.
Pingback: grandpashabet