Tag Archives: lessons learned

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.

Veterans advice

Posted by Carmen on 23/03/2012 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 Fandomain team, formed by Carmen Bermejo.

Last March 8, womens day, I attended an event that aimed to put in contact new female entrepreneurs with experienced ones. The format was kind of a speed-dating, where the veterans sat on a row in one side of a large table while the newbies switched chairs on the other side each time the bell rang, every 3 minutes.

Trying to make the most of the few time that I had, I asked all the veterans more or less the same question: “If you could go back in time and give an advice to yourself what would it be?” I received some interesting answers:

- Business are done with people.
Even when you have to deal with companies, make sure you get along with the person that’s your contact there. If you don’t, find another one (in the same company or another). You’ll be grateful for that when you have a problem and need someone willing to help you with it.

- Don’t be humble when you talk about yourself.
At the beginning some entrepreneurs feel like they are trying to fill some shoes that are too big for them, not sure they are good enough and that’s reflected when they talk about themselves. Don’t do that. You are valuable, you have qualities that big companies doesn’t have. That’s the message you want to show.

- Remember that your partner is also your friend.
If you start your project with someone that was your friend before, don’t forget that relationship. Nurture that friendship outside of work. In bad times you’ll probably will want to tear each others heads, but when problems pass and you have pass them together that will make the link stronger and it’ll be great to have someone that celebrates it with you.

- Be loyal to your idea.
When your business starts to be successful a lot of people will come to you with new ideas about how to improve or expand it. Some of them you’ll like, and that’s OK. But don’t forget what was the spirit of your idea or you could end doing something you don’t really feel anymore.

- Be honest with your employees.
If you have complaints, tell them. Is much better to say what you don’t like or don’t want on the moment than bottle up and explode later. Your employees are not mind readers and they could have no idea that they are doing something wrong.

- Cost 0.
I heard this advice tons of times. But that’s because is true. At the beginning, the lower are your costs, the most control you’ll have over your company and more power to negotiate with potential investors because you won’t be in a hurry to get money.

And to finish, I’ll contribute with one of my own:

- Listen to everyones advice, but remember that the decisions are yours.
Don’t feel bad if you don’t follow someones advice. Some people would feel offended, but you are the one that will have to live with those decisions.

“How to love and handle your customers?” @DavidBastida – Okuri Talks

Posted by Nast Marrero on 20/02/2012 2 comments

Hey, hey, hey, friends!

Did you ever feel like killing one of your customers? Or you’re overwhelmed with emails and calls and have a terrible need to set a better system to manage your users? How do you set priorities in your to enhance your users’ experience?

For entrepreneurs is a MUST to learn how to run the most efficient communications and projects a secure and solid image. David Bastida is serial (or a parallel) entrepreneur, with huuuuugeee experience in customer care and management. He’s gonna give an Okuri Talk this Wednesday and teach assistants all his best hacks for corporate communication.

Don’t miss it! It’s gonna be uber-enriching… and, David is a super-nice guy, so I’m sure we’re gonna have lots of fun too.

Hope to see you around that day!

Best,

@StartupJedi

Its not only about you

Posted by Hukuju on 29/11/2011 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 Hukuju team, formed by Álvaro García, Joaquín Sánchez, Fernando Caballero and  Fernando Amenedo.

Some times we think that we can build something that will change the world. But, have we ever thought about building something that will save the world? It seems that every young and enthusiastic entrepreneur, like us, wants to make something that makes him, hopefully, lots of money. And of course, the sooner the better.

How great is to find someone that with the same talent, enthusiasm and dedication tries to build something for the benefit of others. Let’s do some autocritic today.

“By the middle of the century, one in three people on the planet will be living in inadequate, often illegal housing,” says Cameron Sinclair. Cameron is the co-founder of Architecture for Humanity and Open Architecture Network, one of the greatest ideas that we have seen lately. Open Architecture Network was Launched in 2007 and has become one of the worldsʼ largest resource for humanitarian and community led design solutions. It has around 5000 designers that give a damn and over 25,000 projects. The Open Architecture Network is a collaborative database which Architecture for Humanity hopes will make it easy for architects, designers and engineers from around the world to freely share their work, evaluate and modify existing solutions, and collaborate around new approaches. Think of it as the Wikipedia of humanitarian design.

It is very interesting to to face such a  great “competitor” (as this one is for us), someone, somewhere is doing something similar to help others. This doesn’t discourage us, and if you find something so molar in your case it shouldn’t. If you thought you had to learn from your competitors, well, you have to learn more from the ones that do the same, but don´t compete directly with you. Look up for three things:

1. Those guys are doing something for free, to help others. they probably have none or few resources. So, check that out, they still might be doing something great.

2. Are we accomplishing something substancial? In the case of Open Architecture Network they were are creating the database that will come from Architecture for Humanity itself.  What are we creating? How useful is it.

3. There needs to be an impulse that moves you, something that you might call more “philosophical”. Something that can make you work for hours, days, years, just loosing money and sometimes patience.

There are really great stuff and great people working out there on ideas that can challenge you to aim bigger than you ever thought. Those are the ideas you should be looking for.

Aftermath of II Tetuan Valley BattleDecks with Madrid Emprende

Posted by jmcobian on 15/03/2011 None comments

And here it is!

The video of the battledecks event we organized with our friends from Madrid Emprende. Get ready to watch our panelists having an interesting discussion about the differences of starting up a company in Spain vs. the US and laughing while improvising a story over our insane presentation decks!

* By clicking on the image you will be redirected to FroozeTV’s platform to watch the video

Thanks to:

You guys rock!