Author Archives: Daan

4th of september I was at a Stockholm startup social, at Hornshuset, organised by “stockholm startup weekend”. It was interesting to hear different ideas from different people. One person was developing a new type of smart card, the type of cards that we use for our bank and SL. It turns out there are many “levels” of intelligence on these cards and that the ones we use in daily life are fairly “dumb”, a great number of “smarter” prototype cards exist which have far greater abilities. Another group of guys was working on communication that occurs between companies. I spoke to Sebastian Bensusan, who is currently developing software in order to greatly improve communication. Many people believe that through email, skype and whatsapp our communication problems have been solved. However, communication amongst companies can often be slow and painful. This is where Komunike provides the solution. Especially filling in and signing forms, to make this go quicker and easier. If you´re interested you can contact these guys through their email (http://komunike.se/). It would save a lot of time and hassle if we wouldn´t have to print our contracts, sign them, scan them back in again only for other people to repeat this procedure. The technology exists to this, it is now just a question of applying it in the right way. 

http://komunike.se/

A number of weeks ago I attented a “fuck up night” at SUP (Start Up People Sweden), next to Gallerien shopping centre. There were a number of speakers there who did not talk about their succes, but about their failures . This was really interesting, and you could really see that the entrepreneurs had learnt a lot from really doing their best to make something work, but then failing. A big reason for many of the ventures to fail was that their target market (and the rest of the world) was simply not ready for their product. These were mainly high tech products. One of them was a really good MP3 player, a number of years before Apple came with their iPod´s. They made me think of two entrepreneurs in Holland, working on their company called “Sunuru” (derived from Sun Guru). Their technolgoy was based on installments that improved the geometry of the solar panels, so that the panels would always point towards the sun. Their main target market was the USA. They underestimated however that many people in America simply do not believe in climate change, and even if they do they are often not prepared to take measures against it. Perhaps in the future they will start believing in it and take action, but not yet. This is another good example I think of being “ahead of a trend/wave”. I personally see a big “wave”  in sustainable transportation in urban environments, and specifically cycling equipement and facilities. It is my dream and goal to play my part in this, but I can see that as the situation is now the world is not ready for it yet. It will take many years before a “cycling culture” will take a foothold in many big cities (Copenhagen and Amsterdam excepted), and before a favourable market is there which entrepreneurs can exploit.

The central message is that money is a very poor incentive for coming up with good ideas and creative solutions.