Monthly Archives: April 2022

This evening me and Emilia Björnfot attended The UK Startup Conference 2022, this was a 2-hour event with 22 different speakers all talking about startups.

The event talked a lot about the UK startup scene which was very interesting since I’ve mostly read about the Swedish start up scene. They mentioned the big government support for the startups in UK following the pandemic, they went on to mention that this is something that all major startup areas today have one thing in common: they all had large government support.

Another interesting thing they mentioned was how hard it is for startups to find their first funding and the need of the first investment. This was interesting since we had a visit from Emma Buratovic from Hidden Dreams this week who works with these types of investments and talked in more detail about the process of choosing which ideas to invest in.

Finally they also mention how important it is that opening a bank account is relatively easy which was interesting since I was what Serdar shared on LinkedIn, regarding how hard it is to open a bank account in Sweden. 

Today I attended the UK Startup Conference 2022 along with Svea Fredriksson. The event was held via zoom, therefore we decided to attend together to enable a discussion in order to gain a deeper understanding.

The funding has increased for startups and there are million startups in the UK at the moment. They started off by talking a bit about why the UK is such a good place for startups. According to the speakers the UK offers a benign environment that supports startups with good networks that give support to startups. They have a good regulating framework especially around data and so on, which guide the startups. It is also very easy to open bank accounts. I wanted to compare this to Sweden where it is apparently (according to Serdar) quite hard for foreigners to open bank accounts. The process of actually registering a business on the other hand is, according to Drivhuset, relatively simple.  

Lastly it is also a very ”mixed” or diverse country where many different perspectives meet and mix. This is a very important point, as different perspectives, I belive, can find different hidden possibilities.

When asked about interesting sectors to look out for is fintech as well as lawtech. They referred to the excellent and world-class Universities which help strengthen that platform in the UK. This is really interesting, showing how the whole society acts as the basis for how the startup market will look like and how important it is to not only work with investment opportunities, but also have a well functioning society.

Next, Valeria Vahorovska talked a bit about one of the challenges about startups. She talked about priorities and balancing the group. This I believe resonates very well with the challenges we are facing in class. Our group works very well, but everyone has quite a big workload and trying to prioritize can always be difficult. 

Some other founders also talked about scalability. They talk about very early understanding the customers in order to attain the reach they want through the optimal value proposition. They also talked about always iterating and always improving. My main takeaways from this is that you are never done, you constantly have to convince your customers 

All in all, the conference was very insightful and there were an abundance of speakers who all shared their views. I’m happy I attended!

Hi everyone!

Yesterday I participated in an event at a company that mainly operates within the niche of digital management consultancy. In less ambiguous terms, this means that they primarily help companies grow their digital presence as well as their online sales success. Practically, this includes work such as UI/UX tweaks to increase conversion rates and order volume, SEO, increasing the amount of visitors through Google Ads and similar services, etc. 

This particular event was centered around digital growth strategies and providing a general overview of the primary areas within that. While this perhaps isn’t strictly within the realms of startup and entrepreneurship, I thought that I’d share a summary of what was presented as developing these skills and understanding the area better may still be highly relevant and applicable when trying to develop and grow a small company or startup dependent on an online presence. Within this text I’ve bolded some key words, highlighting their significance within a digital growth strategy.

To begin with, a digital growth strategy is commonly divided into smaller and more tangible parts by describing transactions through a simple equation:

Offering + Traffic + Conversion = Transactions

The three first parts make up the main topics that I’ve written about below. By choosing to improve one, or several, of these, the transaction volume should increase, meaning higher revenue. 

Offering

The most essential part of a company’s offering is developing a well-thought out value proposition. A value proposition should be a statement summarizing why a customer should choose your product or service, instead of that of a competitor. Initial development of a value proposition can be through an outside-in view, where potential customers are first identified, then their needs are mapped to support a hypothesis on how to create value by addressing these customer needs. By using an inside-out view instead, the analysis is inverted and starts with value creation.

Following this, customer groups should be segmented based on common attributes that define a need for a different type of customer-company relationship. It should also be known what customer group is the most important, as well as if other stakeholders need to be adressed. 

The information from this customer mapping process should then be used to identify how your company creates value by addressing the customer needs. In markets with heavy competition, core value drivers and differentiating aspects should also be thought-out in order to coordinate these with the correct customer groups.

The single most important point of the offering and above paragraphs is making sure that the company’s value offering is aligned with actual customer needs.

Traffic Acquisition

Traffic can be divided into two main categories, organic or paid. Organic traffic is composed of people visiting the site through non-paid sources, e.g. a “normal” Google search or visiting the website url directly. Paid traffic contains website traffic from paid sources such as ads, or placements on other websites. 

Increasing the organic traffic is usually done through what’s referred to as SEO, Search Engine Optimization. Primarily, SEO focuses on improving the actual website content, the foundation and UX, as well as external links. Some perks of using SEO is that it usually brings good ROI as well as organic traffic being the majority of web traffic. 

The customer journey is usually divided into four stages, with the primary internal goals below.

1. See

• Create brand awareness, create broad and emotional connection

1. Think

• Engage and drive relevant traffic

1. Do

• Generate action and profit (conversions)

1. Care

• Re-engage customers (create loyalty)

When tasked with improving this part of the digital experience within a project, this company usually work in the order of:

1. Current state analysis
   1. Define a starting point using available metrics
2. Identify improvement areas
   1. Simultaneously, identify quick wins that can be implemented immediately
3. Formulate a tactical growth plan
4. Implementation support

In the beginning, work also centers around the key question “How can client X increase traffic and conversions through channel Y?”.

Finally, it’s important to note that using marketing channels can be divided into push or pull activities, depending on the platform and type of ad.

• Push marketing
  • Try to create an interest in your brand/product
  • E.g. platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook etc.
• Pull marketing
  • Try to “catch” customers that are already interested in your product/a similar one
  • E.g. specific search terms ads (Google, Yahoo, etc.), customized embedded ads.

Conversions

This company usually works with another company that specializes in CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) that usually assists in projects needing this type of work. Basically, they focus on tracking digital footprints in order to investigate customer behaviour and where they “bounce” (choose to exit the website), convert, and do other things of interest. Using this data they detail a funnel from how a potentially interested person leads to a fulfilled order, identify which part has the highest bounce rate, and then start addressing that specific section of the website responsible. 

The data supporting their analysis usually stems from Google Analytics, click maps, scroll maps, user session replays, etc. Sometimes, exit intent polls are implemented on a website in order to ask users bouncing how their experience could’ve been improved.

A final thing mentioned on this part was that Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Persuasion can be used very effectively when implemented in website design and CRO. These principles may seem basic and somewhat obvious, but actually implementing them in a skillful way commonly yields highly noticeable results in terms of increasing conversion rates.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any good pictures from this event due to me sitting somewhat far back in the room.

I hope you found my post insightful, thank you for reading!

Hello guys,

Last Tuesday I attended The Nordic Startups Conference 2022, a webinar with a bunch of speakers with different backgrounds in startups, scaleups and venture capital. It was indeed an interesting event, and I would therefore like to share some key takeaways from the event, below. Please feel free to discuss and share your thoughts.

• Startups are really on a rise in Finland. There are a lot of angel investors and venture capital looking for scalable tech-driven startups in the Finnish region in particular.
• When evaluating potential investments and startup fundings, it often boils down to market, team and traction. I will evaluate further:
  • Market size is an important aspect and consists of the total adressable market, other players (competition and synergies) and if there is an opportunity to grow and win market shares.
  • The team is an important factor when making an investment decision. This is because entrepreneurship and execution come down to the people, and their competencies and ability to accomplish things. People aren’t an organization’s most important asset, but the right people are.
  • Traction is the first thing that are taken into consideration when evaluating a business from an investor’s perspective. A solid business idea should not “need” capital, since they have found a product-market fit. In that case, the business is scalable, profitable and has recurring revenues.
• Traction triumphs product. A great product is great, but without a demand, it won’t be for much use. Therefore, a startup founder must put demand first, and product second, and start building product after finding product-market fit.
• As well as business in general, a startup need to articulate a clear and concise mission, that clarifies its value proposition and answer the question “how is the product useful for people, and is it a game changer?”

I enjoyed attending the conference, and I hope that you can find great value in the points listed above. Take care!

The 12th of april was an active day. For one, I attended a zoom-event, hosted by Drivhuset, about how to start a business. The speaker gave some “soft” tips on how to start your business, like how to find a direction, how to come up with an ide etc. But there were also a lot of practical tips on how to actually register at Skatteverket or how to actually externalize your passion or idea. I found the early stages most interesting and will be going through some of what I learned during this event. 

The event was very linear and brought the listener along for the journey of starting a business and it started with the idea. One thing that was mentioned and underlined was effectuation and starting with what you have – a concept we have previously studied. The concept of the opportunity map was explained and they also pressed that you have to be agile and not expect it to go smoth and as expected – things change. 

The steps that followed were finding a target group, learning from them and loop! They discussed the importance of connecting and receiving feedback from target groups very early so as to not waste time and money on developing an idea that no one wants nor needs. The next step was prototyping and again, this has to be done early in order to avoid extra costs. They also talked about using a lean map.

Then they went into specifics on registering and taxes etc. 

My take away from this event was that I had already heard this from my teachers and I already knew this. I did however feel that this event put it in a more tangible way whereas in lectures I haven’t felt that this is information I may use myself rather than something that others have used. 

Right after this zoom-event, I went to Accigos office in Stockholm with I-sektionen. They had organized an interesting night where we got to learn more about Accigo and mingle with the cofounder and some coworkers. I found it interesting listening to the cofounder briefly talk about his journey wanting to be a CEO but not really wanting to take a huge risk and start something completely new. Accigo was founded when the sister company Centigo already existed. The founder also talked a bit about how he stepped back as vice CEO, wanting to eradicate the traditional organizational structure of having a distinct management team and giving more responsibility to the employees. 

It was nice listening to Drivhuset and learning tips on how to start your own business and then hearing someone talk about their actual journey.