Mingle with a fast growing startup

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This Monday I was invited to a mingling event at the head office of Northvolt, via the female engineer network Malvina on KTH. Northvolt is a start-up within the energy sector, aiming to build Europe’s largest lithium-ion battery factory. The founders of Northvolt have their backgrounds in Tesla, and working there they got the idea to start a company for large-scale manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries in Sweden. There is no battery factory like this in Sweden today but with our well-developed industries and low energy prices, it is a very good country for this. The thing that I found very interesting with Northvolt is how this startup is determined to grow into a fullscale manufacturing company within the coming five years.

Northvolt focuses a lot on product development of their batteries, but they do not really innovate anything new. What they do know is that the future demand for lithium-ion batteries will be huge, as our society will use more renewable energy, electric cars and home storage systems for energy. They know there will be a market for these batteries, and now they rush through the start-up phase in order to start their production on time to meet this growing demand. In some way, it reminds me of the simulation game that we have been playing in this course. Their strategy is to offer the greenest batteries on the market since they predict that a competitive advantage in for example the electric car sector will be to offer products with a low lifecycle CO2 emission. They will do this by keeping most parts of their supply chain in Sweden, where they can have full control on their emissions and ethical standards.

I was super inspired by this event and I felt like joining this type of company would be a great way to be an intrapreneur, since none of the employees at Northvolt follows an established “know-how” at the moment – they all get to discover how they shall work to contribute to the success of Northvolt.

Intopreneur-2

In the entrance of the office, there were pictures of the future factories of Northvolt. Having this very clear goal visualized on the wall felt inspiring, and I noticed that all employees were proud of the company they are developing together!

Wish you all a good day!
Sara

 

How to let Recruiters know on Linkedin that You are open to new job opportunities

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I am writing about this topic since i am currently looking for an internship for the next spring and i was thinking it can be useful for you and your friends to know how to let rectruiters know on Linkedin that you are open to new job opportunities.

One basic way to let recruiters know that you are open to new opportunities is through the “Headline” section of your LinkedIn profile. This section is usually reserved for your professional headline, but you can also use this section to notify employers that you are looking for work. You can specify the field you want to work in, the position you are looking , the length if it is an internship for example and also the region you are searching in.

But what i think is the most effective way to find a job opportunity is the new setting that LinkedIn recently introduced within their Jobs section that allows you to convey your interest in new job opportunities to recruiters on LinkedIn. You can navigate to this setting by clicking on Jobs > Update Preferences > Scroll down to: Let Recruiters Know You Are Open.

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You can specify the types of companies and roles you are most interested in. By setting this option on, you are potentially opening your profile to more views by Recruiters. This is also a good feature because it can be used by people who are already working in a compaNy but want to find new opportunities without worrying about their employer finding out.

But i strongly believe that you can not only rely on this to find a new job on Linkedin, and that’s why i’m sharing with you the following advices :

  • Build a complete and professional Linkedin profile
  • Add a profile picture that aligns with your role as a professional (professional clothing). It has to be good quality and includes you only.
  •  Share your current position, current school and also list all your relevant previous experiences. Write a small summary about each experience to let recruiters know what you did,and what skills you got from it. Also, try to optimize your headline, summary, and experiences with relevant keywords.
  • Highlight your skills and main achievements
  • Ask former employers or coworkers to post a comment about you on your profile.
  •  Write An engaging summary containing your email address. Use this summary to talk about your next challenges,your dreams and show your motivation to work in a particular field. You can also use this section to clarify your work history, if your careerpath has not been linear.
  •  Develop a strong network on Linkedin : over 300/400 you start to be open to networking, and start to be visible.

With all these tips, i hope you will find the job of your dreams.
Good luck everyone.

Thanks for reading and sharing.

Anouar Mabrouki

From 0 to 1

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zero to oneOne of my key interests is self-development, so, I often self-reflect and read books that helps me along, whether that be biographies or just key insights of successful people. Since, I see myself as a future entre- or intrapreneur I signed up to take the course Entrepreneurship. Consequently, I thought it be fitting to read some books on entrepreneurship.

One of these books that I recently finished is Zero to One – Notes on startups, or how to build the future by Peter Thiel. If you’re not completely unfamiliar with entrepreneurship and the tech scene you’ve probably heard of Peter Thiel, the hugely successful serial entrepreneur and one of the founding fathers of one of the world’s most successful startups, PayPal. In the book he shares his top tips on how to create a successful business and cover topics ranging from ideation to distribution. He highlights the importance to innovate, not just copying what others have done and making horizontal progress, or going 1 to n, but rather coming up with something new and making vertical progress, or how he likes to put it – going from 0 to 1.

In a few coming posts I will share some of the takeaways from the book. Nevertheless, I would still recommend anyone even slightly interested in entrepreneurship or business to read it. Until the next post, think about the question Peter Thiel always like to ask people he interview for a job, “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”.

Yesterdays session

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Getting investors might be a crucial step for your company. Therefore it is very important that the presentation is well done. I noticed that it was harder than I thought to present things such as the situation of the market, market competitors as well as future visions. When I listened to other presentations I noticed that many people thought they had a presentation that was very clear, but as an investor, it was hard for me to get a good insight of the company. I felt that it was hard to know if the company only mentioned the positives but not the negatives. Did they hide anything?

I realized that it takes alot of work to be able to make a good presentation for investors. Because it is a presentation for people that are risking their own money on you, it is important to show them everything they need to know and to feel comfortable in investing in your company.

Because of the hugely limited presentation time, this was a very hard task. But I feel like it was a good experience to have gotten a reduced presentation time. You need to be prepared for this when making your presentations for your future company!

 

Simon

Sales for start-ups

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Hi everyone! Good work with the presentations today 🙂

Yesterday  I went to an event arranged by Start-up Stockholm. It was a 60 minutes course in sales for start-ups, mostly focused on B2B sales. I want to share my key learnings from this course with you:

  1. Make sure that you express what you can give your customers in terms of creating value for them. And always introduce yourself in terms of what value you offer rather than your formal title. An example that was brought up was that the course leader himself says that his job is “to help people start companies”, rather than saying that he is a business advisor. This should be a top priority in your elevator pitch.
  2. Start to sell via your network. Make sure that all your connections know that you have started a new project/business and see if anyone knows someone that would be interested in what you offer.
  3. When selling for a start-up, you have to be able to handle all the noes. Because you will not sell to everyone, but keep up the good faith and keep on selling! (And in case your product/service doesn’t sell, that is a clear indicator that you need to change strategy.)

Start-up Stockholm arranges a variety of lectures and also offers one-on-one counselling for start-ups. I did not take any picture since it was such a small class.

http://www.startupstockholm.se//

Evaluation on ME2603

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So, the course ME2603 Entrepreneurship has now come to an end and it is somehow sad. It has  been a course that has most likely made many of us students to feel more comfortable presenting pitches, talking about our ideas and getting feedback on them, but most importantly making new connections.

As a medical engineer, I do not have that much of knowledge in entrepreneurship and everything that is connected to it. That is why I chose this course, to learn things that are outside my comfort zone and to know where to go whenever I get an idea in the future and where to put it forward. I have now begun to go to events (which I would never have done if it wasn’t because of the course) and it has been such a good experience. I have meet people from my field, but also people who have a totally opposite educational background. Also, I volunteered at SUP46 and got more engaged in schoolevents.

To conclude, I have not only learnt about what entrepreneurship is but also to start networking, going outside my comfort zone, meet with people who are successful in their fields and to grow as a person. I really do recommend this course to everyone.

Educate yourself!

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“Success in the twenty-first century depends on street smarts, not book smarts.”

– Dale J. Stephens, founder of Uncollege.org

If I had to name one big take away from this course ME2603 – it would be “Educate yourself!”. Right from the start Serdar told us that instead of asking too many questions via emails and LinkedIn we should rather put our “google skills” to use. The fact that the lecture slides were not available on Bilda, but sometimes could be found on Slideshare is a good example for that. The comprehensive but in some cases contradictory and outdated course overview information added to the need of organizing and managing ourselves instead of simply following instructions given by the teacher.

But there was also way more to it. As a substitute to a standard exam we had to engage in a lot of “outside of class” activity. This included amongst others finding and attending startup events, being active on LinkedIn and writing blog post on this very website. It was this activity which by far has taught me the most in the last two months.

“How do I even write a blog?”

– every classmate after the first lecture

By attending startup events, I became better at the art of small talking and learned how to pitch an idea to a complete stranger, as well as giving qualified feedback to others. One event which I went to was a super interesting book club meeting, a fact which lead to even more self education – before being able to attend I had to read the book “0 to 1” by the famous Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel which contained several valuable learnings for me. Thanks to a friend’s tip I soon picked up another book with the title “The education of millionaires” by Michael Ellsberg. This book stresses the importance of educating yourself outside and beyond university and definitely got me thinking. Thanks to my experience from the Entrepreneurship course I could relate to a lot of claims the author made and in return began to understand better why our teacher kept pushing us out of our comfort zone.

The same holds for the exercise of writing blog post. In order to deliver an appealing text, I first had to teach myself how to write a blog post and upload it on a wordpress page. And you never know – this could very likely be a super useful skill in the future.

As a disclaimer: I personally had profound knowledge in entrepreneurship before I started the course. Otherwise I most probably would have been able to learn even more in class. Nevertheless I am happy with my choice of taking this course and I’m absolutely certain that it will benefit my future life and career.

“Self-education is the key to upgrading your mind and your life.”

– Matt Mullenweg, Creator of WordPress.org

 

Progress through Networking

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This is a short story illustrating how networking is so far the most powerful tool to progress I have encountered.

Recently we had a guest speaker in our entrepreneurship class (ME2603) and she mentioned the SUP46 Startup Café as a good place to connect with people. Since I was looking for startup events to attend and also for feedback for my venture idea I decided to follow my own advice and just “be present” there. (Check out the article here)

Putting yourself out there

When I entered the café it was rather empty and i took a quick look around before chatting up someone standing at a table. It turned out, that this person was Lana Kaupuza, the receptionist of SUP46. I explained to her the reason for my presence: to collect feedback and find people who might help me with the development of a prototype for my venture idea, the Sound Hub. (See the website here)

After explaining the idea to her she started coming up with very useful feedback and ideas for improving the business model. She also gave me several tips on how to proceed, which events and institutions to go to and even gave me a tour of the SUP46 office.

While talking to other people and collecting feedback on my venture idea I ended up helping some people from a start-up called “Nosto” in the presentation room to set up their Background screen for an event they would host that evening.

When I articulated to Lana how happy i was to get to meet all these interesting people and getting all this positive feedback she said something that stuck with me:

“There is really just two things that we have control over: Attendance and Attitude”

Networking Success

Shortly after leaving the building I started getting invitations to several Facebook chats…

Turns out Lana had asked on her Facebook if anyone was interested in helping with a project including electronics and Bluetooth and then connected anyone interested with me.

Me with my new partner

Me with my new partner

From one of these chats emerged a meeting with a guy named Shehryar Khan, a software developer at Ericsson. We met today in the Startup Café and had a quick chat about where I was going with the project and how it could be realized before he agreed to help me with the development of a prototype using an Arduino Development Kit.

This result was beyond by wildest expectations and I’m very excited to see the further development.

What can you take from this post?

  1. It’s proof that simply showing up at the right place and talking to many people can yield great results.
  2. It shows the power of networking and creating the kind of connections with people that make them happy to help you.
  3. If you feel like getting ahead with your project, but there is no start-up event happening at the moment; just got to the Startup Café at SUP46, you wont regret it!
Broccoli soup at Startup Cefé

Broccoli soup at Startup Café

PS: The Startup Café also offers very tasty food.

An example of innovative development of an old product

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Thinking of innovation gives me thoughts about developing new products or services based on recent inventions or discoveries. Unfortunately that makes one forget about other opportunities to innovate something old that already exists on a “mature” market like developing new ways to offer, manufacture or advertise an ancient product. That kind of innovation is something that Mackmyra, a Swedish brand of whiskey has developed and based their business model on. The company is blooming and is noted on OMX Large cap and has today a stock market value of 105 MSEK. The business model is “low tech” but still pretty innovative in my opinion…

The company offers whiskey slightly above the price of an average bottle of “water of life” to customers sold in stores and they also sell larger amounts of whiskey in casks to restaurants and bars. BUT, the innovative side of Mackmyra is that they offer undeveloped whiskey in casks to private customers, which means that anyone can buy their own barrel of whiskey and have it aged in Mackmyras storage until it is finished i.e. aged correctly. In this way they differ from other liquor companies on the Swedish market because of their way of selling a product. This could be a great business opportunity as they offer a product combined with a service that provides great customer value. This makes the product much more of an experience as you get the benefits of being a whiskey maker without having to invest a lot of money. -You get to choose the characteristics of your whiskey, you will own the product during the time its aging and you will be able to treat yourself and your friends with hopefully great whiskey when the time is ready. This is an innovative approach of selling whiskey and I’m not sure if this is innovation in its true form, but since it is revolutionizing for the Swedish whiskey industry I would at least say that this business model really is innovative.

Do you have any examples of something similar in terms of ideas and innovation for traditional markets, or do you oppose my opinion regarding the innovativeness of Mackmyra..?

Big Data in five years?

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Last week we were asked to discuss where some of todays technologies are going to be in five years. My group and I were given “Big Data” as subject.

What we came up with was that in five years, Big Data is likely to have increased to an even larger amount than what we have today.  This would probably lead to a greater need of storage systems, thus new research concerning this. It could also imply new job opportunities as well as new user platforms. What was discussed was that in health care, where Big Data is used more and more, it could lead to better tracking of patient, doctors and diseases. However, an increase in Big Data, and the use of it, will most probably come with some or several problems, especially concerning personal data.

The task however, was not to give the right answer to where Big Data will be in five years (who could really?), but it was to guess and anticipate. If you are an entrepreneur, this is one of the basics to have a chance to success. To have an idea of what the market will look like in five years, and to base your product (or idea o product) on this, is what can make you competitive.

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