Author Archives: Priori17

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!