Tag Archives: accelerator

Stay on Target

Posted by holoholo on 25/04/2012 None comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2012 Spring Edition. This post is from the holoholo team, formed by Jay Hum, Gonzalo Calle and Joaquín Grech

Since becoming a member of the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2012 Spring Edition, which started on March 7, we have pitched at least once, sometimes twice a week. In addition to the formal three, five, or seven minute pitches to professors, mentors, entrepreneurs and potential investors, we have given spontaneous one minute elevator pitches to people we’ve run into or just happened to meet at various networking events. We have also recorded a pitch and posted it online as part of the application process to some accelerator/incubator programs.

Before each pitch, we spent at least a couple of hours refining the slide deck, rehearsing the presentation, and preparing answers for the Q&A session. After each pitch, we received a lot of feedback from various sources. Some feedback was positive, which was good because it validated that we were on the right path and the audience understood our product. Some feedback was negative, which was also good because we then knew that we had a gap to fill or had to describe something more clearly. Finally, some feedback was contradictory, which is not good because it leaves us wondering which direction should we take in the pitch and/or product. There is nothing worse than hearing from someone that he/she clearly sees the product/market fit and the huge upside, and then turning to someone else and seeing a confused look on his/her face.

Yesterday morning, we had a 15-minute meeting with an individual from the US who has been on both sides of the table. He has been an entrepreneur and is now a Managing General Partner and Managing Director for two venture capital funds. After we gave him the elevator pitch, he said: “Right, so it’s like a combination of X and Y, but with Z.” He immediately got the concept and said that he really like the idea. Since he understood the product so quickly, the rest of the meeting was used to discuss customer acquisition strategy and costs.

Contrast this to yesterday afternoon, when we had a five-minute pitch to a VC from Israel. After given the same pitch that has been refined over the past month and a half, the VC started the Q&A session with “I don’t get what your product is or what you are trying to do.” Something you never want to hear from a VC! Needless to say, we were shocked and taken back by this feedback, which was completely unexpected.

The more you talk to people about your idea and the more you pitch, the more feedback and opinions you are going to get. It is always much easier to criticize and knock something down than it is to build something of value that lasts. Net net, there comes a point where you have to ignore all the noise, focus on the core of you idea and product, and stay on target.

Level up with Gamification

Posted by holoholo on 30/03/2012 1 comments

Games are everywhere and an integral part of all societies. Games and competition form part of the human psyche and serve to display the mastery of a skill.

Today, most people think of the PS3, xBox, and Wii when they hear the word games. The big three along with the numerous games that are published each year form part of a very popular and profitable industry. So profitable that, according to market researcher DFC Intelligence, the worldwide video game industry is set to reach $70.1 billion in 2015 due to the combined growth of console, portable, PC, and online video games (http://tinyurl.com/3m5nrkl).

Up until now, Gen X’ers like myself, who grew up playing video games with crappy 8-bit graphics, drove the growth of video games. In the future, Gen Y’ers, who live and breathe online will drive the gaming industry. Gen Y’ers have been playing video games since childhood, and have thus been engrossed in the language and metaphors of gaming for almost their whole lives. Gen Y’ers are not the least bit intimidated by technology and innovation. In fact, GenY’ers openly welcome technology and innovation because they cannot function in or even conceive of a world without it.

Given the incredible rise of games and its mass adoption in most cultures, it is no surprise that people are more open to game mechanics in other parts of their lives. As a result, a new term or ‘buzz word’ has been generating a lot of hype and attention these days – gamification.

So what is gamification? What does it mean to add gamification to a product and/or service? What impact will it have on how we interact with brands?

Gamification is applying and/or integrating game dynamics, thinking, and design techniques into non-game activities or context. Gamification is a powerful new strategy for influencing and motivating individuals or groups, and is used to change behavior. Many businesses are now realizing that gamification can incent employees and partners to perform at high levels, improve customer engagement, and build brand loyalty.

Airlines have been playing this game for quite awhile with their frequent flyer programs. As people fly around the world, they earn points (e.g. 1.5 points for every mile flown), can level up (e.g move from gold to elite status member), earn rewards (e.g. free upgrade to first class) by completing challenges (e.g. fly three return flights in three months), and redeem points for something of value (e.g. free flight). Now tell me if you’re heard this one before: “I just flew [airline x] and the service was shit, but I have to fly with them again because I’ve accrued tons of points and status with them!” Yeah, I thought so.

The ultimate goal with gamification is to drive engagement and participation. That is, to establish a dialog and engage customers as well as get them to participate, share, and interact in some activity or community. There are three characteristics of gamification that can help businesses increase customer engagement and participation: performance, achievement, and social interaction.

Performance includes:

Real-time feedback – players can receive instant feedback on any action they take
Transparency – players can always see exactly where they stand and where everyone else stands
Goal-setting – whole purpose is to have a goal, strive for it, and hopefully achieve it; sub-goals can provide small wins

Achievement:

Badges – serve to demonstrate skills, achievements and reputation, which is a big part of players’ identity
Leveling up – levels indicate long-term achievement and status
On-boarding – teaching players how to play from within the game itself

Social Interaction:

Competition – games foster excellence and achievement through competition
Teams – teams provide an opportunity to connect and bond with others; peer pressure of not wanting to let down your peers can amplify behavior

The language, metaphors, and concepts from games have much to offer businesses that want to engage customers and change their behavior. However, gamification is not without its critics. Real-life is very messy, complex, and non-linear. Some argue that gamification creates an expectation that real-life interactions follow simple mechanics and that disappointment occurs when they do not. Others dismiss gamification as a fad and that adding game dynamics will distract from actually creating high quality products and or services. We think gamification is here to stay and that it’s now a matter of finding the right balance between art and science of ramification. It’s not an easy task, but we are looking to add a game layer to product at holoholo. Stay tuned for future developments.

Entrepreneurs Feedback Day – 7th December 2011

Posted by Nast Marrero on 05/12/2011 None comments

Good eve, buddies!!!
If you have an startup project or idea, and you want to discuss it with our team. We are holding an Entrepreneur Feedback Day this Wednesday (5th December 2011). Make sure you book your slot for our office hours. We’ll sit with you for 30min, listen to your project and give you some insights on what is our take on the best posible ways to tackle the main problems or what pivots could make more sense.

Book your slot in this doodle.
Meetings will be held in our Headquarters @ 244th, Bravo Murillo St. (Entrance @ Alonso Castrillo – Metro Tetuan)

Tetuan Valley Startup School V – Session 4

Posted by Nast Marrero on 05/12/2011 None comments

Good morning, Tetuan!

Catching up with Tetuan Valley Startup School Vth Edition’s videos and materials. Here we are with the 4th edition. In this session we had Nathan Ryan as starring-guest-mentor, our own American superhero Katelyn Melan gave the Tetuan Lecture and facilitated the event together with me.

Kately’s lecture

K’s lecture versed on online marketing, how to use the digital platforms and tools, how to create value and build some traction around the founders’ personal brand and the startup’s. The second topic were some 101 pills on lean development process.

Nathan’s hacks

In the second part of the session, Nathan Ryan talked on development and how important it is for an entrepreneurial process to build code to be as pragmatic as posible. Playing with thousand variables that could go wrong in the different possible scenarios and building a god-mode app is imposible and it consumes the most valuable of your resources: time. If you’re facing some importan coding decisions, invest your time in the best possible way and watch this talk by Nathan.

We had with us one of our sponsor, David Bastida, founder of YoRespondo.com. David introduced in Spanish their useful service of virtual secretaries to our teams.

Pitches

Al last but not least we had 9 pitches from the tetuan teams. The missing one was Mashpan. They were working hard on IE Venture Day Competition.

And her you can access to the slideshare of our presentation:

Tetuan Valley Startup School V (Session 4)

View more presentations from TetuanValley

PS: Uploading week 5 (30% complete)

Congratulations, your start up is running…What´s next?

Posted by P2P Solutions on 05/12/2011 None comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2011 Fall edition. This post is written by the P2PLending team, formed by by María del Carmen Mochón, Enrique Cárcamo and Raúl Sánchez.

After thousands of sleepless work hours and a lot of passion in your innovative idea for offering a disruptive service to society, you finally got the financial support to make it real and become an entrepreneur. But, how do you plan to promote your business? How will you flag your project in the world?

The answer is marketing, but as you are in an early step of building up your company , how will you promote your business better than others when you don´t have half of the resources you wished for? Good news: here are some smart advises that will help you to make the most with a bunch of bucks, thanks to Social Media:

1/ Start from scratch

Create a profile on every social community and be sure it’s attractive for your market:

- Use proper Keywords for your industry

- Fill out every section of the community with your information

- Spread your content around all of them

- Don´t forget to check out comments and post and answer as soon as possible!

2/ It´s the beginning, do not forget your friends and family

These are the people you already know and the ones who will make your company viral to all their contacts. Do not underestimate them, they can provide you the first wave of customers splashing over to your business.

3/ Content is the key

It can look obvious but do not forget that you have to provide relevant content through your different profiles and you have to take care of it. It is not only about posting, you need to take time every day to know what is going on and to talk to people online.

4/ Target your market

Something that social networks can offer to you are advance search functions to locate and reach your niche of customers. Use proper keywords to find your target. If for example you want to offer a new marketing tool for cars and you need to reach all marketing managers in the automotive sector in Spain, type ”marketing managers automóviles” at Linkedin advance search option and check out the results!

5/ Last but not least: CALL TO ACTION

This is not only for Social Media, it can be used for other channels (display marketing, emailing, offline ads,…) If you communicate something to your users, be sure you can get them to do what you want them to do: view a video, get their email address, subscribe to your newsletter.. You need to create a link between you and your users, but always explain what you will do with their data and include your privacy data policy.