…Oy, I am already grown up! Bummer.

Anyways.

Here’s something cute that y’all do not know about me, and something that I had myself forgotten until recently: when I was 7 years old, I dreamt of starting my own company called The WeiWei Company. Extremely creative name, I know, and very adorable, ha-ha…

However, I did not know what this Wei-corporate would do to generate revenue, only that it would be a huuuuge company in which I could be the biggest boss who got to boss everyone around, sit in a lavish office and use as many post-its as I wished on a daily basis (I was obsessed with post-its during that time, or actually anything that could stick to a vertical surface…) The fact that I do not know what any of my imaginary or real-life-still-non-existent companies/projects are going to be about has always been a problem (which is why I had set aim on climbing the corporate ladder instead). Therefore, I am so glad that I took this course.

From already the first two lectures, I gained a very valuable insight into what entrepreneurship is really all about, and most importantly, how the process of an idea generation is “supposed to” be like. I thought, “now I could actually come up with a decent idea, or any idea at all!”. I was relieved. And throughout the course, not only did I get a good foundation to generate potential ideas but I also learned more thoroughly about the more difficult and roll-up-your-sleeves necessities for creating further value with whichever idea I would come up with in the future. Such neccessities include e.g. pitching, finding investors, writing a business plan, and so on. I had almost no idea about such things before and had only heard of these terms in very entreprenurial-lingo, meaning that I did not get much of what people were talking about at all. But having done the more theoretical part (what is x, y and z?) as well as the practical part (attending events, idea sketches, pitching in class), I feel more confident and pro now when it comes to entrepreneurship. Nowdays, whenever a friend or acquintance says “I wanna start my own company”, I go and think very enthusiatiscally: “Oh, I really know how you can do that! Maybe I could too!” instead of the good old “… …. This is off-limits area for me.”

And entrepreneurship for me is about making the world a better and more efficient place, and then create more value and make the idea, company or organisation grow. It is also about starting small and getting the chance to be creative and do and shape something that you feel 110%  passionate about, like the fashion-loving ladies at Sthlm Tech Meetup who started My Closet Room, or the outdoors-enthusiastic college kids who wanted to plant trees through selling t-shirts. It’s not always about making big bucks, although it is a very nice bonus as well as necessity that comes along with a successful entrepreneurial practice.

Furthermore, another thing that I learned was the importance of a great business partner or business team. I feel really lucky to have found my team members (Go Dreamgineering!) Danny, Peter, Raquel and Lenny. They are smart, down to earth, reliable and fun to be with, as well as people I could see myself working with in the future, and why not for a startup 🙂 But no one can achieve greatness on their own, something I have learned the hard way. You have to be in a team with people you click with, the marriage and soulmates type of relationship, but applied to a platonic business context. You have to be able to lead the team as well, even though you are not the official leader. This means being able to assess the team members’ different strengths and personalities, and bringing them together in a perfect symphony… Yay! And if I ever start the WeiWei Company, you bet that there will be no bossing around.

Lastly…well, lastly, I feel that I need to stop writing and start doing things to keep my learning curve growing.

Diversity is the key.

At the first class on 1/9 Serdar tell me this thought when I was about to form a team with some friends from Asia. Then I join Dreamgineering which is the best group in the class! Our group members are from five different countries: Sweden, Spain, Taiwan, United State and Germany. It’s great to work and discuss with them, and I learned a lot from each of them. Because of the different background, we can always come up with something interesting and creative by brainstorming.

You are not selling. You want them to buy!

It’s important to find a pain, especially the pain, discomfort, or dissatisfaction that you have, and solve it. Not to think about “selling, selling, selling” all day. So don’t focus too much on how to make money and focus instead more on solving their needs and pains.

Networking!

We can’t put too much emphasis on the importance of networking. Personal social network is very valuable to people, especially for entrepreneurs. Sometimes it can do things that money can’t. More, it’s skillful to help others get connection, just like last time what Serdar did to let two acquaintances get connected in the Fika. I thinks it’s goof that this course encourage us to meet other people.

The world is big, go explore!

We were encouraged to attend startup activities in Stockholm For these few months, I have been to 4 activities :

1. ”Entrepreneurship on Campus” held by Stockholm Innovation & Growth (STING)

2. Cultue Festival about startup in Vaxholm – NyföretagarCentrum.

3. Stockholm Startup Weekend Bootcamp

4. Entrepreneur Creation in Royal Coin Cabinet

I met different awesome people, learn to brand new thoughts and listen to many different stories. I didn’t notice that the world is such a big and interesting full with amazing people and beautiful things.

And the last thing I want to mention is that the student-teacher interactions in Sweden is very friendly. That really surprises me. As an international student from Taiwan, I know it’s not easy for students and teacher to have such intimate and good interactions. But in this course, we have a teacher who ask us to have coffee or lunch together, answer our questions patiently after and during class, and voluntarily offer time four discussion. Thank you Serdar, a friend-like teacher!

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// Danny Huang

 

#Dreamgineering – we make dreams come true.

As the course is about to come to an end I would like to wrap up what I am taking away from this course and what I have learned. After reading some of the blogs listed in the reading list I decided to make it a 10-things-to-learn in an Entrepreneurship course list.

  1. Everybody can be an Entrepreneur: No matter how old you are, no matter how young you are or in what life situation you find yourself in, there is always a way to create, design, develop, invent something new and bring it to market. All you need is a lot of passion, patience and persistency (maybe you could call this the 3P-Model for Entrepreneurship 😉 )
  2. The only thing that is important are your customers. They know what they need, what they want and what they will pay for. So only focus on their feedback and get it as soon and as often as possible. Greetings exam question 12 today…
  3. It is all about socialising: When you want to be an entrepreneur you have to establish a close personal network, talk to people in oder to get new ideas and see what relationships there exist between different fields.
  4. The small things work best: I know this is a good line to be riddiculed for but I will deal with that. When you are an Entrepreneur you have about one minute to capture the attention of a possible investors, customers or co-founders. In these situation always the short, simple statements stick with you, no matter if they are mantras or tag lines.
  5. The world is full of awesome ideas and people. We have met so many awesome People that you can learn from and marvel. Karin Nilsdotter (man I would like to go to space), Gregg Vanourek (Triple Crown was maybe the most memorable guest lecture) and Erich Joachimsthaler (he just knew what he was doing) are just some.
  6. You are just a great team away from success. Maybe the second most important thing after finding and listening to customers is Assembling a great team. Unless you are Steve Jobs you can’t think of everything and do everything on your own. Let someone help you; only make sure it is the right person.
  7. Nothing is godgiven, you can learn everything. You do not have any great ideas? You do not know anything about creating a business?  You are not good at networking? Who cares? Nobody was born perfect. Just make an effort and improve. But I guess that is true for everything in life.
  8. Just do it.  Nike is right. If you have an idea and you feel really passionate about it. Just start and get going. Everything else will fall into place.
  9. You are not on your own. There are so many opportunities, People or companies out there that will help you with the development of your idea , provide office space, provide personal consultation and so much more.
  10.  I guess in the end you just say thank you for the course.

#Dreamgineerin – where dreams become engineered

 

  1. Oscar, US citizen. International student of aerospace engineering. I met him by chance, because is a friend’s friend. As he studies another field of engineering I thought that could be a good opportunity to start my feedback report.

I realized that there is a real pain in the use of public transportation. And he gave me another idea, just in case we want to go deeply finding other devices, to use the same technology, keys, necklaces and other common objects could be a good option.

I wouldn’t change my main idea, because the bracelet is more ergonomic BUT, definitely I will use it to expand the business in the future, because we could have “the key which open everything” and implement every magnetic use in the same key/ (necklace).

 

  1. Hélène, French friend. I met her in the very beginning of my stay in Stockholm, “networking” and socializing in the welcoming activities organized by KTH and BEST.

FEEDBACK:  One of the advantages comparing with the competitors could be that bracelet could be cancelled with your phone in an SL office or machine if you lose it or if it is broken by having an automatically registration on the system when you buy it (with a code number). With this registration, it will be possible safe your credit days and to re-charge it at home.

Although we have been learned that family and friends opinions are partial based (because of the bonds) I think this is a good quality for the product to take into account and to make it more attractive, so I would use it.

 

  1. Dreamgineering team members. I found them in the Entrepreneur course. We are an international team (each member lives regularly in a different country)

Pointed out that a very well done designed should be done, very ergonomic, different sizes and with the possibility of customize it (as the normal cards).

I would change my idea, from the very basic one (like a mockup) to this more visual and attractive one, because as the target leaves in Sweden, and swedes care a lot about the design, would be a bad idea not offer this possibilities to the customer.

 

  1. Serdar , Entrepreneurship teacher.

Due to the 1st assignment and meeting (doodle) We got interesting feedback about the customers, and narrow the segment. Actually not all the users of public transport are the ideal target customer. Instead we have realized, discussion between #Dreamgineering members that, we should focus on sporty young people (15-40 years old) because those are more open to technological and application changes and are more used to fitness devices so they can find our product easily attractive.

I would change my idea into a bracelet to open gym doors, maybe in university “hallen’s”, and if it is successful try to make one bracelet to open doors and locks everywhere (also in Public transportation system).

 

  1. My Klint. We met her when we were visiting Student Inc.

I was talking with the manager about the idea. She seemed interested on it and she asked me to do some basic research: There are similar devices in other cities or countries? There are products with the same applications in other sectors?

So the feedback got wasà Yes. Sadly or hopefully (I don’t know now how I feel) there are other devices in other cities quite similar. A bracelet with a very ergonomic design used as an access device for one gym in San Sebastian, Spain.

I would change my idea, “rubber bracelets to access restricted areas without using uncomfortable cards””, because, as we have read in the course readings, if there are competitors in the market is because the idea is good and there is a real pain and customers willing to buy/use it.

It’s hard to believe that his course is about to wrap up. Just wanted to give some closing feedback and reflect on the last couple of weeks.

I can definitely say that Serdar, you brought in some great speakers that really connected with us aspiring entrepreneurs. Also, the personal stories that you shared both in and out of class really hit home. I hate to say this, but I think our conversations outside of and after class have made more of an impact on me than your lectures. And thank you start for making us blog and establish online presence because that has been something that several folks have urged me to do and I can see the potentials of it now. The next step for us all is to start our own websites.

I have to admit – my expectations coming into this class were high. I was hoping for more practicality and doing. I was hoping for more “entrepreneurial experience.” But I have realized that that’s what courses like “Execution – Running Your Own Company” and “Ideation” are for. Although I was not quite satisfied with the actual substance of this course, I have begun to realize (especially as I am skimming back through the readings) that what this class has truly taught me is two things: passion and execution.

Nothing will just fall out of the sky as much as you would like it to happen. They just won’t. An idea really is useless until you execute. Talk is cheap. Really. And to have idea without all your heart and soul fully in it will most likely never make it.

To keep it short, it is time to go out, try things, and execute. Even if one fails, there is much to be learned. And so what, sometimes failure is the greatest teacher. Let’s go make things happen!

Following in the footsteps of my fellow Dreamgineering pioneer, Lenny Boldin, I would like to get some quick feedback on my idea, the Draincoat. I have received some advice and feedback from some folks and will share quickly here.

Tom Magnergård (business coach of KTH Innovation) – Among all the ideas I pitched to him, he questioned whether this was my true passion or not (I have been searching for something to jumpstart my entrepreneurial career, to have a track record so I just have a list of ideas written down but I haven’t taken action on any of them yet). He actually recommended me, if I did choose to pursue this idea, to narrow my target market down. He is a cyclist and advised me to look into fabric for pants that would direct water off the front laps because it is so exposed to precipitation.

Tore Hanssen – I first pitched my idea to my fellow American the day after I thought of it. He is from Seattle and also wears a raincoat. He liked the idea but he was just probably being a good friend. From our brief discussion it didn’t seem like there was a burning need for a raincoat of this sort, even in a place like Seattle where there are plenty of wet days each year.

Check out my idea sketch and all feedback will be much appreciated!

Idea Sketch

Subtraction is one of the four approaches to product ideas. But after listing the essential elements of the product, it’s not so easy to find out which elements should be removed to make a good product.

How about removing almost every key elements of the product?Here comes NoPhone!

NoPhone (1)

It’s common to see friends or family sitting in a fancy restaurant waiting for dinner to be served, but they barely talk to each other. They are too busy swiping their smartphones and sending messages to people in their social network.

Nowadays, many people are addicted to their smartphones and will be very insecure without seeing them; some even have “Nomophobia ” which means they will be in great fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Therefore, probably a non-phone can cure people for their addiction of smartphone and force them to stay connected with the real world.

 

Here are some interesting testimonials on the website that Serdar showed us today:(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nophone-usa/nophone-0)

“I used to sleep with my phone in my hand, but my night terrors would cause me to hurl it across the room in an unconscious panic. With the NoPhone, I can still enjoy the comfort of holding a phone in my sleep, without waking up to a shattered screen. Thanks, NoPhone.” -David H 

“With the NoPhone, my eye contact skills have improved 73%.” -Whitney R 

“Because of the NoPhone, I haven’t drunk texted my ex boyfriend in one whole week.” -Craig G

 

This phone has no basic phone functions, no camera, no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity and so on. You don’t need to upgrade it from time to time, and it won’t break your heart when you accidently drop it on the floor. However, it encourages people to pay more attention on their direct environment and forces people to socialize with others. So, it actually has some surprising functions.

Subtraction is one good way for idea generation. But who will come up with the bold move of removing all the key elements to make a useful product?

Think outside the box, imagining the wildest thing. Sometimes you may come up with great ideas!

//Danny Huang     #Dreamgineering

 

While talking to Serdar last week I was reminded that one tasks of the course was to get and give feedback to others. This includes those  who may be in another group than oneself, so that one can profit from one another. Following that thought I decided to post my idea for a new businees here and hope to receive as much feedback, comments, suggestions, critique as possible. As we learned from Karin Nilsdotter it can be very beneficial to cooperate and learn even from your competitors, although that is not the way I see the participants of this course. To present my idea I thought I would follow the assignments we had during this course.

The idea sketch is as follows:

  • What is the venture? Describe the product(s) or service(s).

 

The idea is to open a supermarket that offers all products other supermarkets offer but without disposable paper or plastic packaging, thus addressing the problem of waste disposal before it arises. You could call it “pre-cycling”. Goods are kept in “bulk bins” from where they can be put into (glass) containers. So e.g. the noodles that are usually either packed in a plastic bag or in a cardboard box will be kept in these “bulk bins” out of which you take them and put them directly in your own tupperware or glass container. So that all the waste that is produced just to allow you to take predefined portions of a certain food will be removed. Additionally it will promote local products from around Stockholm or at least Sweden whenever that is possible.

  • How is it related to your field of specialisation? Explain briefly.

 

I am studying Energy and Resource Management. Implementing this idea allows us to save energy currently used to dispose of waste and valuable resources used for packaging.

  • What is the customer pain/problem (or delight) you will address?

 

Swedish people are portrayed to be very eco-conscious. Nevertheless we rely too much on packages to fulfil basic needs endangering the environment. The problem of waste disposal is becoming more and more evident and ways to tackle it are desperately needed.

  • What is the target market? Be clear and focused. Identify specific customer segments.

 

The customers will be well-situated, eco-conscious inhabitants of Stockholm, possibly in Östermalm. Previous customers of the Farmer’s market, coop and people who want organic food will be the target market. It will also appeal to patriotic Swedish people who want to support the local farmers and economy. The age group will probably be over 30.

  • Name the three most important competing or substitute products or services.

 

  1. Innovative, new ways of waste disposal.
  2. Established supermarkets that copy the concept as part of their venture.
  3. Farmer’s markets where local food is offered.
  • How is your venture better than its top competitors and substitutes?

 

    1. What is most important is that it is more eco-friendly than other supermarkets and supports the local farmers and industry. It combines the convenience of supermarkets with fresh, package-free products from farmer’s markets. Also, waste disposal is redundant if one does not produce waste.
  • How will the venture generate revenue? Be specific.
    1. The way to generate revenue will in essence be the same as in every other supermarket but since new contracts will have to be drafted with producers and suppliers, and since mainly local products shall be sold the prices will be little higher than in other supermarkets. An additional way is through offering recyclable glasses and bags for sale or rent to carry the goods home in case of a spontaneous purchase that did not allow for bringing personal containers. Government subsidies are also imaginable although subordinate.
  • What are the three biggest risks for the venture?

 

  1. People are not willing to change their shopping behaviour.
  2. As found in literature: lack of focus by the founders or an insufficient business plan.
  3. The willingness to pay higher prices to help preserve the environment or in other words the “eco-friendliness” of the Swedish people is not enough for positive revenue.

 

After a screening from Yuwei – thank you very much again 🙂 – it was possible to get a more comprehensive overview of the situation and I identified some major points that need to be addressed. The new perspective I got was as follows:

Based on the screening it is safe to say that the overall potential of the product is relatively good. However, there could be a potential convenience problem. It may be that there are better-off alternatives to carry the goods home i.e. reused textile-plastic-hybrids. Further research needs to go into that direction.

In general more product evaluation is needed as a next step, including establishing a contact network with the right supermarkets, distributors and experts on the area for more thorough and useful feedback on how to develop the product further. The upside is that increased eco-friendliness in the supermarket industry/sector is definitely needed and there hasn’t been enough initiatives to do so, so far.

A crucial deficit of the business is my lack of experience and of a network in that area. Therefore it is of the utmost importance to address that, get in contact with experienced people and establish partnerships maybe even cooperate with one of the big players like Coop and in the worst case settling for opening a side brand. However the potential to assemble a team is there. Definitely time and research need to go into that.

Additionally another issue is as always the money. As a next step a business and a revenue model need to be set up. It should then be possible to find potential investors, however the lack of network and experience is problematic since the needed amount is relatively high.

To sum up the potential is there, but work and time is needed to first and foremost establish a network and gather an experienced and motivated team and doing research as the key milestones and then go on with developing a business and revenue model followed by finding suppliers, a location, marketing and actually building and opening the supermarket.

 

Thanks to feedback from Axel I gained new insights into the venture. A thing that should be investigated into is the possibility of using bio-packaging. An idea of how to do this can be found here:

http://www.trueactivist.com/16-year-old-invents-sustainable-bio-plastic-from-banana-peels/

 

I attend to upgrade the progress of the idea here as it hopefully will evolve due to input from other course members. I hope to receive some feedback through this post and in turn will be happy to provide feedback to others who post there ideas here on this blog.

I look forward to hearing from you and thank you very much for your help.

#Dreamgineering

We had a special guest in  our class– Karin Nilsdotter! She is the CEO of Space Travel Alliance and Spaceport Sweden.

Being a pioneer of commercial human spaceflight and people’s gateway to the mysterious space, Spaceport Sweden has already pushed the limit above the sky!

 

“Why do people want to explore space?” asked by Karin in class.

“Space is a platform for innovation.”

“Because people are curious, they want to find something new.”

“In order to find more resource”

“Our planet is about to fall apart…”

All of them are right. And from astropreneur’s point of view, another important reason to explore the space is that the dreams of space-exploring make all the other business ventures seem very microscopic by comparison. So that’s why many people are obsessed with sky.

There is a lot of development in space but not so much innovation. The thing that Spaceport Sweden is doing right now is quite an innovation. The world does need something new right now. Furthermore, it arised people’s attention in space industry. For example, KTH has just set their space Centre recently for space research and technology.

And because of the inspiring speech, many people stayed in class and asked Karin some questions.

IMG_7539

“Do we need knowledge about the space to be in a part like Spaceport Sweden?”

“No. I think being an astropreneur or entrepreneur is about having the drive of passion about what you do. And it’s about what you ally with. ”

“The most important thing is that being passionate about what you do and to have courage to do it. It’s hard work; if you don’t love what you do, you won’t have the perseverance.”

Done a lot of sports in her life,Karin said that  running a start-up is like running a marathon. You need to practice. You need to get out even though it’s raining. Sometimes you need to race because you have competitors right behind you; but you also need to work together with your competitors because there is a pushing point and you have to support each other.

 

I truly learned many things and be motivated by the speech!

Everything starts with the first little step. So, Don’t be afraid of failure.

Probably our next adventure starts here!

IMG_7542

 

//Danny Huang     #Dreamgineering

Hey world! Alright, bare with me, long post…my fingers had been itching badly for a good amount of time…This was my only cure 😉

Anyways. Having collected some feedback for my pitch and idea sketch, and gone through the course’s reading list, I feel like if I have immersed myself even more into the world of entrepreneurship. And most importantly, I think I understand what makes a startup successful in the long run: a good, sustainable and solid business model (something I was never too aware of before…)

Having myself done a pitch as well as listened to other very inspirational pitches, I get now that the pitch is really only the first step, which is getting investors. (Money is goooood.) The rest of value must created through a good business plan.

And about the pitch – I learned a few things of what to do and what not to do, and most importantly, how to start your pitch (-with what you should start with). Start with a problem, and state the problem in a way that others can connect and relate to it, even though they might not. Many of the best pitches from Thursday had a story and the story had a problem in it. “One night I did A and B, and I realized that C was missing […] And if I did D, it would solve C!” What was also good about some of the pitches was that they stated the market size, or at least the amount of people experiencing the problem, thus both identiying and quatifying the customer segment.

However, what is easy to forget when telling about your business venture idea is the revenue model. This is probably the one thing that the investors are the most interested about. I never understood this before, but after having some of the course’s articles about business model generation, I finally get that no matter how good or innovative or awesome or glitzy and whatnot your product is, without a good business model or revenue model (i.e. it won’t be profitable), the whole thing is untimately use- and worthless.

The thing is, who doesn’t want to make more money? Creating value for shareholders is all that matters in the universe of good business. That’s what comes after an innovation that makes the world more efficient and changes previous human behaviors. Think of Apple’s iPod and iTunes. Read this article (http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/18/innovation-business-model-leadership-managing-products.html) and you will understand what I am trying to say: Technology improves the world, but the ultimate underlying fuel and driver of the world is after all economic gains. Or does anyone disagree?

To get some post-pitch inspiration (I mean who knows, I might do a REAL pitch one day…) and to prepare myself a little for my third startup event this Monday (The Balderton Pitch Battle), I decided to watch some Dragon’s Den clips.
Here is the chosen one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3jiZXpVBoM

In this video, the pitchers are around my age, with a business idea very typical of college kids. It is therefore quite relatable for me. I also personally feel strongly about CSR. I agree with the lady dragon  that CSR is the future and that the paradigm should now shift towards a world where social responsibility is a necessity and something obvious if we human beings want to sustain ourselves for another century at least. Business Schools should really start teaching these things… Hopefully not just a “fad”.

csr

And to the Business Model importance. The pitchers were mostly asked about the the costs (how much is it gonna cost us to plant a tre for each dollar of sales), the profits and so on, once again proving it to me that hey, here’s a pretty good idea, but it won’t be anything unless we can move forward and spread it and profit from it.

It’s not that the latter is more important than the former, just that, both can’t really survive without the other. A good business model can prevent competitors from eating you alive through for example imitating your idea. A good business model will also make your business strong enough to stand on its feet and spread further. And, just as stated in Osterwalder’s business model canvas, key resources and channels are a key part too: the pitchers’ own tree farm, the lady dragon’s nisched marketing company, relevant ofshore contacts in Hong Kong etc..

Hmm, wonder how profitable this tree-t-shirt business got in the end..