Tag Archives: Jiamin Deng

On wednesday the 8th of october, some guest speakers were invited in the last lecture of ‘Ideation – Creating a Business Idea’ by Gregg Vanourek. First David Johansson, a life entrepreneur with a lot of interesting quotes and explanations about the true entrepreneur. After the break three short speakers: Nathalie Ahlstedt Mantel from Ashoka Scand, Mohamud Osman from Mitt Liv and Maew Osataphan from SE Forum.

I want to share the story of the first speaker with you. David Johansson, a formal KTH student, is co-founder of Swedish Bar Systems, set up a start-up ‘Secure Mailbox’, another start-up ‘Growyn’, won the SSES Business Plan Competition in 2005 and finished third in the Venture Cup in 2006. Also he is the founder and CEO of ‘Happyr’, a start-up that helps people discovering their potential and finds the perfect job-match. ‘Be yourself and hire with confidence’.

Happyr is a recruiting platform that matches great candidates with jobs they’ll love. To give this an introduction, David defined seven states of entrepreneurship:
– Passion
– Confidence
– Uncertainty
– Doubt
– Solitude
– Purpose
– Happiness

How David started his start-up ideas was passion, he did other stuff (like exploring what he could do) than the stuff he should do (like going to lectures). Passion for him means exploring (himself), push (himself), and the tendency to know more about everything he is interested about. And he is interested in a lot, so knowing more was a very big thing, curiosity is a good drive. Try to make something out of your passion and enjoy it! For example, if your passion is making enormous excel sheets, then try to find people that don’t share that passion and be successful together. Passion is about the stuff that makes you forget about anything else, this will make your journey start!

Confidence makes you go in the right direction, don’t let people who say ‘no’ stop you. Here I like to refer to a quote of George Bernard Shaw: ‘People who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those who are doing it’. Also your mom probably says it’s a bad idea and says you should just get a normal job like everybody else. If you’re confident (of course for a good reason), stop listening to your mom and start the execution of your venture!

Confidence goes together with certainty, but uncertainty is a terrifying catalyst for action. Face it and don’t push uncertainty. Certainty will start to grow. It is always important to ask yourself the big questions and don’t be blindfolded for information regarding uncertain factors.

Then doubt, the worst thing about it is that it may work against yourself and it can even be destructive. David and his cofounder had different views about aspects in the venture sometimes, they didn’t want to heat up the discussion so heart for the company first and don’t think about it. They focused on other stuff instead and this almost kills their venture and partnership. David says that doubt is like a sickness, with a good immune system you can avoid it and safe your company. So be honest and true to yourself and have some faith.

If you’re an entrepreneur, prepare yourself for being alone. You have to work a lot, so less time for friends, so maybe this results in fewer friends, but hopefully better ones. Also, if you don’t feel at home in the environment you’re working at, you’re probably not the only one. More people are in the same situation, so try to help each other in the times that you’re starting up your own company. And as a leader you should be comfortable that other people lead their own parts of your business. ‘Lead others to lead and you will never stand alone’.

The most important thing when it comes to running a business is purpose. It is the drive for people in your team and for people who want to be in your team. You want people that have more in common with you than just launch the product or service. A shared purpose is the foundation for success, so find people that share your purpose.

And last happiness, happiness is giving you the best working conditions. Happiness does not lie in your goal, but in the achievement of it. You can’t put happiness into your bank account and you can’t touch it.

David also gave us some tips to think efficiently: experience helps you and you can make decisions quicker when you have more experience. He recommended us to watch ‘Mondo Enduro’, a documentary about a trip around the world on a motorbike in the worst way ever. The participants faced so much difficulties and challenges and that made it the experience of a lifetime!
(Link to the video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZi9c8QF6E0 ).

But experience is not everything, when you become older you will have less energy, so use it now while you have it!

Read more about Happyr here: https://happyr.com/ (site is in Swedish)

Martijn Legêne

(edited, 12-10-14)

Some time ago (before I came to Stockholm) I met a very interesting couple during a hitch-hiking competition in the Netherlands and Germany. First, a guy who picked us up in my hometown. He worked for Microsoft and had a lot of interesting stories to share with us. His main point was mostly that it’s not really important what you know or what you can do, it is more important that you know the right people and you can improve your knowledge and skills in a later stage. Because we had such a great conversation (yes, we students also had quite a lot of experience and lots of stuff to talk about) from where he picked us up, to his work in Amsterdam, he called his wife in Amsterdam to bring us further and help us gaining distance in the hitch-hiking competition we were in. This woman was at least as much interesting as her husband. F

rom now on I’ll skip the story about the hitch-hiking (we became 3d place) and continue of how we kept in contact and did an interesting test for her.

She is calling herself rebeL wiTh a Cause within her company (Raad Van Stuur), because she helps organizations to grow to a trustful and entrepreneurial environment. She helps to let people go out of their comfort zones and gives them energy.
She helps people to get to know themselves better and how they should use their capacities. This was also what the test was about, it was called ‘Discovery with CompeTalent’.

We were going on a mission in Utrecht, a city in the middle of the Netherlands, with minimum information and without smartphones. The first part of the test was individual, just to find some stuff and places in the city and find the other players in the test. Then we made teams ourselves and split up for the assignments in a later stage of the test. We received cryptic descriptions about places we needed to go to and there receive the next instructions.
Before the test we needed to fill in a survey about ourselves, the main point about this was that the organizers could via this way figure out what kind of person you are and how you can help other people with your capacities. From those capacities I got to know myself better, I didn’t know most of them before.

What the organizer knew was how the test would have ended, which teams would be formed and which way we thought about the descriptions we received. The test was not about winning or being back first, it was just about confirming their survey. Afterwards we talked about the test, and again a lot of the conversations happened as the organizers expected because of the survey.
This whole test may sound a bit blurry, but long story short: You have some (entrepreneurial) capacities you might not know, you maybe can’t call them skills or knowledge yet, but they are useful for sure! Go out and find yours, maybe entrepreneurship is your big capacity and you can develop them into one of the most important skills of your life!

Martijn Legêne

Hi everyone!

Talking about business model canvas I would like to share with you a work done by me and my friends in Italy this year.
We had to write a business plan for a Californian startup (with Italian origins): this firm wanted to launch in europe (our investigation regards only Italy) a diet product already approved by FDA in  U.S.A.
The first step was indeed to draw a first version of the business model canvas.

At the beginning we didn’t have so much knowledge  about the product (it was not an our idea…), so it was difficult to undestand the possible value proposition and the other parts.

After few weeks and some researches we change the canvas

We change the customer segments: the previous two segments (Middle age and Health conscious people) became only one single segment, and a new one was added (customer with age & weight diseases).

The changes occured also in other parts in the third version of the canvas.

Pay attention only to the channel part, you can notice that we added pharmacy like a possible channel, that’s because our research showed us that in Italy similar products use this channel.

The final version went under a deep change!
Our interviews pointed out that in Italy the people trust only in dieticians advices, if a physician say them that they have to purchase a certain product they will buy, and through the pharmacy.
So also our customer segment completely changed.

You can notice other changes, but my example want only to show you how many changes in the canvas occur during the time,especially in the important areas; and this was only a student work in 6 months.

Thanks, I hope that you like this simple example!

P.S. I’m sorry for the small pictures 🙁

Last evening there was “expertnight” in the SUP46, a place in Stockholm where they help startups in various activities, the most simple is to give them a space where to arrange meeting and to do networking with other people.

The topic of the event was “mastering conflicts”, in fact lot of conflicts arise during the startup life and we have to be able to manage them.
The panelists of the evening were: Gustav Nisser (Serial Entrepreneur), Per Jonsson (Everyday) and Gustav Aspegren (Adprofit). Nils-Erik Jansson (Jansson & Norin). They all shared their experiences telling some interesting stories.

Master conflicts is a necessary capability in the startup work, that is because time uses in fight is time lost in handling customers. There are different kind of conflicts.
The first ones are with your partners in the venture, at the beginning all are aligned with the same ideas, but then everyone evolve differently: someone don’t want to be part of the company anymore, others could have new ideas, new aims for the ventures. These problem are normal, they usually emerge due to a lack of communications between partners, it’s very important to keep talking with your team mates over time, arrange regular meeting and so on. If there is not solution left and it is impossible to keep working together you have to split; in this case it is much better if you have some split agreement written before, in order to avoid useless litigations.
Another kind of conflict is the one with your competitors, but the panelists told that in the startup environment there are not much of these conflicts, all the business rivals are very fair, the problem only arise with ex-partners who build similar ventures.
A strange and funny conflict is the one with yourself, the problem is the nowadays the people are too stressed, they have to relax sometimes. So you have to take 10 minutes per day only for yourself in order to rest your mind.
At the end the experts give some advices that I can resume in the below bullet points:
• Negotiate, don’t be afraid about the conflicts;
• Do conflict practices;
• Check-in the status of other members regularly;

I hope that these advices will be useful in your entrepreneur’s life, see you in classroom!
Stay entrepreneur stay skapa!

This evening I attended an event organized by “Stockholm startup weekend”.

The main purpose of this organization is, like you can get from the name, the startup weekend competition: a 54 hours event about people working on their ideas and trying to set up a simply structure of their startup. At the beginning of the evening they explained this event and the winning team of the past year gave some tips.

After all these preliminary speeches, the main purpose of the meeting took place: a lesson, following by a workshop, entitled  “Online conversion from a designer point of view” led by Erik Ceder from Veryday.

He gave some important suggestions about how the web site of your startup should be, we can resume the concept in 4 points:
1. Credibility: it doesn’t have to contain “dark patterns” which mislead the customer, instead it has to include statements by testimonials and social proofs which enhance the brand experience;
2.Personality: the website must be playfulness (for example using a mascot), consistent and unusual in order to capture the attention of the customer;
3.User experience: we have to focus on the conversion goals, we have to drive the customers attention where we want;
4.Disposition & Layout: obviously the website has to be attractive, it doesn’t need to have too much information on the same page but it has to emphasize the most important points.

Talking about the workshop, its main task was the rethinking of the website of a very innovative product, Easystove (http://www.ezylife.com/shop/ezystove): a wood cook-stove, created to help the poorest populations, which is very easy to use. Divided in groups we have to produce a preliminary layout about the new website, created in order to sell the product to the people who do camping.

The event was very interesting, especially regarding the website tips, but the best part was to see how the designers work: it was amazing to watch how they translated their ideas in effective layouts in only one hour. They are very gifted people to take into account when you develop a startup!

Tonight I went to the event about Business Freedom and had a quite enjoyable time there. Earlier I though that it may be some speech on what is business freedom and something like your business freedom should never against national interests and there is no absolute freedom and whatever… But it turned out that it’s nothing like that and Eric is quite a humorous mentor and entrepreneur. He wants to bring energy to us and make some change in our life.

It took him a long time to realize his love for speaking of business in public.And he told many useful tools and quite a lot knowledge which is a great help to people who is going to start or is running business right now.So useful that I wrote 6-paged notes in total.

Below is some from my notes…

How to Define a Successful Entrepreneur: the company runs smoothly with or without the owner physically being around.

Inception Marketing, it’s about making value for people(make them want to buy something) instead of just satisfied what they want. A great metaphor is there is 2 ways to catch a butterfly: one is the net and another is to build a beautiful garden that they will come to you.

Choosing a Coach/Mentor:business background is important! 2 hours is enough to decide if you can sign the contract with him/her. We should hire people for the good result not just for a feeling of certainty.

Making MISTAKE: This is a big part of running business…Making mistakes is useful and necessary for growth. But it’s not simply about making mistakes, it’s to make ORIGINAL mistake, that is, never make the same mistake over and over again.

Big Mistakes: a) do not chase after easy sells like a monkey sticking to the nut. b)sell is like a date, do not only think and talk about yourself. On the contrary, make some connection. c)do not chase the clients, is you are needy they will run away.

Attraction: Same as the butterfly metaphor, success is far less of what you chase than what you attract. So you should attract your clients and make them come to you.

Standard of Successful Company: People there are strongly passionate and loving being there so much, treating work like their life.

Telling Story: Everyone likes to hear stories. So why not make your business sound like a story especially in a conversation?

DO WHAT YOU LOVE!

HOLD TIGHT if you are truly good!

Protect the trademark & chase after the BRIDE!

Other thing like ITM and inceptive story, Leon has put in his post in deail so I’d not repeat 😛 I had a great time there and will be so happy if you can also learn something from this post!