Tag Archives: guest posts

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.

So… you want to build a social network?

Posted by Carmen on 02/04/2012 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 Fandomain team (@), formed by Carmen Bermejo.

Half of the entrepreneurs I’ve met in the last two months told me that their project consist on a social network. It reminds me of ten years ago when everybody wanted to launch a web portal.

But this is just a more dynamic way to organize and create content. If your idea is really trying to cover a necessity and not just following the trend, that’s fine.

Where is the problem? Big established social networks (and I’m not looking to anyone) has set a very bad example to follow. If you are doing this, there are a couple of things you should consider:

 

Open software: Are you sure you want to reinvent the wheel?

Ok, you have an awesome idea for a social network. Perfect. But that doesn’t mean that you have to program all from scratch. There are a lot of previous work done that you can use so you can center your efforts on the really innovative aspects of your idea.

Also if you use open software that will aloud your users to collaborate, fixing bugs or creating new features. That will also have the benefit that they’ll consider your social network something of their own and helps you to build the sense of community that it’s one of the most important things a social site needs to succeed.

Cons: If you have some very secret implementation that you don’t want anybody to copy or your end goal it’s to sell your site/software to a big company.

Examples:

  • Diaspora Software written on Ruby on Rails.
  • Elgg Software written on PHP.
  • Apache Wave (previously Google Wave). A protect Google gave away to the community after they decided to focus on Google plus. Written with GWT (Google Web Toolkit).

 

Federation/OpenID: Sharing only with yourself is not sharing.

When you say that you want to build a social network one of the main problems people thinks are: “Register on another site, no thanks.”. Well, in case you didn’t knew, Internet wasn’t suppose to work like that.

What I’m talking about? Think how email works. You have an account on a server/email provider, like for example gmail or hotmail or even your own server and you can use it to communicate with anyone that have an email account on any server on Internet, it doesn’t matter where.

But social networks can’t be like that right? That’s where popular belief it’s wrong. Not only it’s possible, there are in fact a lot of social networks and initiatives that works exactly like that.

You have an account on a social network that is in a server and is managed by someone: a company, a free software foundation, a group of friends or even you on your own server. And you can use that account to share content and communicate with anyone that is in a “compatible” social network. That usually means that it’s another social network based in the same software but in other server, but there are some protects and initiatives that aims to create protocols and standards so social networks build with different software could communicate.

So if this is possible, why doesn’t everybody does that? For big social networks, having the monopolio goes on their advantage. It doesn’t matter if what they offer it’s better than smaller social networks or not, because they have the users and if you want to communicate with them you need an account on their system. That works for them, but remember, you are not Facebook.

 

For more information about this projects:

Does size matter?

Posted by EspafilVentures on 28/03/2012 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 Espafil team, formed by Diana Morato, Javier Sánchez and Alfonso Pérez.

“Bob, you have to tell me what you did, because I’ve tried everything but without success. It is way too big and nobody wants to benefit from it. I’m so desperate, I´ve asked everyone in my company but, when people realize the size of it, they refuse  to do anything with it and  say it is simply to large to handle. I’ve been storing it for a couple of years. It is just growing bigger and bigger. I know I’m losing a big business opportunity, but I don’t know how to manage it”.

Of course, as you’ve probably guessed, we are talking about data, huge amounts of data and the situation depicted is what is commonly referred to as the problem / opportunity of BigData.

Some time ago, companies realized that during their normal activities they produced data that could contain valuable information about their customers, providers or even their own business. They also thought that at some point, later in time, they would have the time, the money and the technology to analyze it and take advantage of all the valuable information they could obtain from this data.

Nowadays, most companies are gathering or producing huge amounts of data, which can be used to improve efficiency, increase sales, find new business opportunities, etc. But instead of doing something useful with it, they usually just store the data.

It is important to take into account two key trends:

  1. Storage technology is getting better and cheaper
  2. Raw data is slowly turning into a commodity, as companies are measuring everything themselves, and many of are also offering (to sell) data about customers.

Therefore, the key questions around BigData are:

  • How to analyze it
  • How to extract relevant information from it
  • How to make a profit with it

Some large corporations are solving their BigData related problems in-house. They are keeping this technology in-house in order to maintain their competitive advantage.

The way we see it, the lack of widespread use of prediction/recommendation technologies, often leads to a bad customer experience (Who hasn´t got spamed with random offers from retailers?).

At Espafil we believe that people deserve to be treated better. After all, the technology already exists, so it is just a matter of making it accessible to all companies. This is precisely the goal we have set ourselves.

Bootstrapping, and the need to focus where it matters.

Posted by Evadity on 27/03/2012 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 Evadity team, formed by Fernando Moreno and Gonzalo Plaza.

In computer science, bootstrapping refers to a process where a simple system activates another more complex system which serves the same purpose.

Let´s imagine a young Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, when he was starting programming facebook, do you think his main preocupation was the new Time LIne or the delay in the OPV of the company? In fact, as “The Facebook Effect” tells, the main worry in his mind during the first year was optimizing the response time and stability of the servers.

If you are asking yourself why we are talking now about that optimization when that has nothing to do with your project, let us ask you one thing: why did Facebook reach his success, and not others like Hi5 or MySpace? It´s very simple: they knew how to focus in the most important tasks in each moment. Back then, it was fundamental creating a solid technologic base in order to grow exponentially.

The focus of a project is one of the key points that should be addressed by entrepreneurs, not only in the beginning, but during the lifetime of the company. It may seem too logical, but we have commonly detected this lack of focus amongst the companies that are being created in the internet with low resources.

Before creating your startup, everything seems it´s going to go amazingly well: you have a bazillion great ideas that will let cash come to your pocket instantly, you plan to incorporate many features to your product, attract clients, generate traffic, you have different guerrilla marketing plans… But when you get down to business, you realize that the tasklist you have created in your mind is literally impossible to carry on with the team and the resources that you have. It´s in this moment when focus should lead you, so you should ask yourself: what´s the most important task IN THIS STAGE OF THE PROJECT?

Focus is a subjective matter, since every project would have to work on different things at different times depending on their competitive advantage. Are we creating a new complex system to implement it on companies? Then your focus now is the technology. Are we creating a social shopping web? Then your focus is growing your potential clients database. Are we creating a new concept of internet sales? Then your focus should be on the product, etc. And focus will vary in each stage of the project, as we have already said, so you should be asking yourself this kind of questions frequently, and you should not be afraid of re-focusing your efforts.

“You are either building, selling or leaving.”

Posted by Incentivalia on 24/03/2012 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 Incentivalia team, formed by Jorge Bestard and Magd Kudama.

I recently came upon this phrase in a blog, it is actually the mantra of Graphicly, (and a damn good one at that!) which we at Incentivalia are going to make our own.

 

 

Always Be Closing

 

 

I really wish I had a penny for every time I’ve heard the phrase “ our product is so good, it’s going to sell itself!”… and if I were to add a penny for every time that “amazingly well built product” did not sell itself, I would be in a paradise island sipping on a piña colada.

 

For a company to be successful there are really only two things that have to be on the to do list. Building and Selling. That’s it. We have a tendency in startups to focus only on the product, to underestimate the sales part of it based mainly on the technical side of the product.

 

Lets face it, we all want that amazingly well built app, website etc. with the fifty thousand features that can compete with the top notch companies out there in design, usability… It’s not going to happen. If I have learned something, it’s that if you are not embarrassed of your product when you launch it… you have gone too slow.

Your main goal as an untested product that NO ONE CARES about is to sell the hell out of it… to make people care about it, to make people feel that with your product they are better than they were before. As Micah (Graphicly) points out, that’s not a feature, it’s a feeling. Better is a feeling, and you have to sell that feeling. How well you sell it is as important as how good your product is.

 

Every business, no matter how innovative it is, sooner or later will have to sell, and it has to have a real revenue model. That model has to be tested. You have to make sure the revenue model is clear, that it is a real path, and that sales can be simplified as much as possible. A real sales director will:

 

  • research the market
  • test the market
  • collect data
  • analyze results
  • try new approaches or perfect current ones
  • Start over again 

He will have to know when to pivot, and understand the patterns of the sale process. This has to be done over, and over, and over again until you reach that sweet spot. The faster you get to that point, the faster you will have a sustainable business. So quit delaying the sales process (yes, that goes for you techies as well) and go sell the hell out of your product. You company depends on it.

Remember:Build, Sell, or Leave. It IS that easy.