Today I read an article about the KTH-started company called Mentimeter. They just got accepted into 500 startups accelerator. This is a huge deal for any company and a great opportunity the reach new heights and evolve as a startup. http://breakit.se/artikel/1510/mentimeter-antagna-till-prestigefylld-accelerator-i-usa
But this got me thinking. This is not a huge idea. This is a couple of students sitting in class and realizing that raising your hands to answer a poll is not working as well as it could. People were afraid of being wrong and looking silly, or people just followed the pack, or something completely different that made the voting unreliable. Instead of complaining about this, like many others do they said to themselves, “this can’t be that hard to fix”.
I believe these exact words are the beginning of a lot of startups. “This can’t be that hard to fix”. It does not have to be something complicated like re-inventing space travel, I’m looking at you Elon, or a complicated social network to unite the world. You just have to find something that could be made a little easier and there you have a base for your start-up.
I suppose a good way to start entrepreneuring is to keep a list with you at all times where you write down whenever something bothers you. And one shouldn’t be afraid to write something down just because you can’t come up with a solution there and then. You can figure that out later…
Mentimeter also kept a blog during their early days. It’s fun reading about the development process and thoughts they had. For example they were used at the iiS (Pernilla Rydmark) organized “Internet days” back in 2012.
http://blog.mentimeter.com/swedish-top-domain-foundation-se-choose-mentimeter-to-strengthen-the-audience-experience-at-the-internet-days-conference-2012/
More reading:
https://www.kth.se/forskning/artiklar/vi-vill-gora-moten-roligare-1.479146