Tag Archives: startupspain

Heaven, Hell and Spanish Entrepreneurship

Posted by Incentivalia on 24/04/2012 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 Incentivalia team, formed by Jorge Bestard and Magd Kudama.

Everytime I help or advise one of my fellow startups, I sometimes get a question which to this day shocks me… “What do you want in return?” People have a hard time understanding my answer “Nothing”.

The best way to understand what we have learnt in Tetuan Valley I feel is best expressed through the “Allegory of the long spoons” which can be found in the Bible. It goes something like this:

 

A man spoke with the Lord about heaven and hell. The Lord said to the man, “Come, I will show you hell.”

They entered a room where a group of people sat around a huge pot of stew. Everyone was famished, desperate and starving. Each held a spoon that reached the pot, but each spoon had a handle so much longer than their own arm that it could not be used to get the stew into their own mouths. The suffering was terrible.

“Come, now I will show you heaven,” the Lord said after a while. They entered another room, identical to the first — the pot of stew, the group of people, the same long-handled spoons. But there everyone was happy and well-nourished. “I don’t understand,” said the man. “Why are they happy here when they were miserable in the other room and everything was the same?”

The Lord smiled,“Ah, it is simple,” he said. “Here they have learned to feed each other.”

 

 

 

...the soldier next to you, makes you stronger

 

 

 

Spain is going through hell right now. Greed, deceptive business practices, speculation etc. have haunted Spain for the last decade, and the results are obvious: Spain is on the verge of disaster. We’re in hell right now and we can stay here, or we can fight our way back.

The allegory of the long spoons,shows us that either we die as individuals or we succeed as a group. That is a message that more entrepreneurs in Spain each day are living by. Entrepreneurs are helping eachother out in a society that does not understand them, with government that bashes them with absurd laws, and with the huge uncertainty and mental anguish that characterizes our practice. Little by little, with these collaborative efforts, we are Starting up Spain, and creating an atmosphere of creativity, productivity and talent much needed today.

 

Demo Day is Tomorrow!!

Posted by Julie on 24/04/2012 None comments

Tetuan Valley Startup School

Happy Demo Day Eve, everyone!

It has arrived! After all of our sleepless anticipation and countless Twitter and Facebook reminders, Demo Day is tomorrow!

For those of you who do not yet know, Demo Day is the final session of the 6th Edition of the Tetuan Valley Startup School. We will get together to celebrate the graduation of nine wonderful teams of entrepreneurs, all of whom will be given one last shot to pitch their presentations and, for the first time, wow us all with an actual working demo of their proposed product. These teams have all come incredibly far in the past 6 weeks of Startup School, and we expect big things from them tomorrow night.

In addition to the teams´ pitches, we will also welcome keynote speaker Iñaki Arrola, an industry heavy-hitter, who will undoubtedly have some very valuable words of wisdom to share with everyone.

Finally, as always, there will be pizza and drinks for everyone!

So if you still haven´t done so, head to our ticketea page now and get your (free) tickets, and we will see you tomorrow night!!

 

If you want to keep posted on the Spanish startup ecosystem, you can also Follow us on Twitter @StartSpain, Like us on Facebook and/or Subscribe to our NewsLetter.

Ownership vs sharing

Posted by stuff4share on 13/04/2012 None comments
Collaborative Consumption

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2012 Spring Edition. This post is from the www.mituyuu.com team, formed by Carolina V. Rojas, Chandini Jeswani and Ángela M. Rojas

In a society obsessed with money and possessions, it is not rare to hear this common question:

“What value does the sharing industry have?”

In order to study this present value we need to ask ourselves the following questions: “What drivers are affecting consumer trends and behaviour and what is society’s tendency towards sharing stuff?”

There are 4 key drivers which are determining and changing consumer behaviour and trust:

-         A new belief in the importance of community

-         The torrent of social networks changing the way we behave

-         Unresolved environmental concerns

-         Global recession

Would you have thought of sharing your articles or services with a stranger you had never seen before 20 years ago and even paid for it through the internet?

We have been brought up in a world of hyperconsumption and have been taught that we own stuff and that things are our property. As the 4 key drivers are introduced, the idea of property becomes less about title and more about usage and control. Do we want to own stuff or do we want the needs or experiences it fulfills? How long do we need stuff? More and more items are being invented and manufactured and the time we have to enjoy them remains fixed. We spend less time per item so do we really need to own all these items?

Collaborative ConsumptionThe sense of property isn’t going to disappear, but the attitudes of people towards ownership are changing and we are moving from a world of hyper consumption to a world of collaborative consumption in response to these 4 drivers.  We have progressed from being passive consumers in our hyper consumption world to being creators to being highly enabled collaborators in our present collaborative consumption world.  We are creating an economy of what’s mine is yours and encouraging sharing articles, resources, services and knowledge.

Consumer behaviour is changing and is accepting the idea of sharing stuff which was impossible 20 years ago. Users have realized that sharing stuff has “ better that owning” benefits; no maintenance, need for storage, care, cleaning and instant access. As well as these benefits technology is also collaborating with this idea by enabling trust between strangers and as making sharing frictionless and fun.

A quote from the NYT says:

“Sharing is to ownership, what the iPod is to the 8 track, what solar power is to the coal mine.

If you would like to learn more about the sharing industry, here are a couple of good links:

Better Than Owning

Collaborative Consumption

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:

Level up with Gamification

Posted by holoholo on 30/03/2012 1 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 Joaquin Grech.

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.

Gamification and Rewards

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.