Tag Archives: voiceu

So no more adventures?

Posted by VoiceU on 19/05/2011 None comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2011 Spring edition. This post is from the VoiceU team, formed by Iuri Aranda, Joan Casas, Miquel Las Heras and Miquel Puig.

One week we have to prepare presentations, write blog posts, build prototypes, share our feedback, etc. and the next week… wait, something’s missing. Well, now you have to push even harder and further.

It has been a very stressful 6 weeks, but I would say: totally worth it!

We’ve learned many valuable things these past weeks. We discovered how to harness the power of Social Media, to make a business plan, to improve our presentations… But the most important thing we’ve learned is how to “lose the fear of failing”, this is what has motivated us to move forward and keep working. Now we value the experience of creating something new and the things we learn along the way. We are very excited about VoiceU, but we know that if it does not work out we can use the experience to face new challenges and new ideas.

Attending  Tetuan Valley gave us the chance to meet people who are in our situation, sharing our dreams and, more importantly, people who have the same problems as us. We really recommend Tetuan Valley to every “wanna-be-entrepreneur”, it´s a great way to be introduced to the startup world and become a Jedi Master in the entrepreneurial forces!

And speaking about VoiceU, in the next couple of weeks or so, we are launching the long awaited beta, if you have not already signed up, you can do so at http://voice-u.com/
We hope you enjoy it!

And finally, as we like the good ending stories, we leave you with a quote that I personally like so much, from a film you probably know:

So no more adventures, Peter?
Oh no, to live, to live would be an awfully great adventure!
– Hook (1991). Originally from J.M. Barrie

Yahoo’s HackU. The VoiceU origin

Posted by VoiceU on 03/05/2011 1 comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2011 Spring edition. This post is from the VoiceU team, formed by Iuri Aranda, Joan Casas, Miquel Las Heras and Miquel Puig.

Yahoo organizes every year a competition called Hacku.

In this competition that lasts 24 hours there are several groups ( between one and 4 people) whose aim is to develope a hack during 24 hours. HackU has 7 years of history where important American universities have been involved, such as University of Washington, Georgia Tech, etc.. And this year Yahoo! boys decided to cross the ocean, and the UPC was chosen to host this competition. This has been the first time in Europe.

 

 

When we found out that this competition was going to be in our university, we knew that we could not lose this opportunity and we decided to participate without knowing the idea we were going to develop.
After the kickoff and the first dinner with the boys from Yahoo!,  we began thinking in our idea that eventually would become VoiceU, and just the next day we started the non-stop 24 hours of developing, hours full of code and caffeine.

During these 24 hours there were moments of euphoria, depression, discussions, etc. .. but we never lost the illusion of working together and  developing  an interesting hack.

After these 24 hours were nobody slept a single minute, it was the moment where each group had to do a 120 seconds presentation about their projects. VoiceU received great and positive reviews from both competition´s members, other participants and the competition judge. This year a lot of interesting projects were presented, like a robot that moves itself by twitter, a timeline of news or different games for facebook. After all the presentations, the jury chose 3 finalists and VoiceU was one of them. This motivated us to develop this platform, so we can say that Hacku is our origin.

 

Think different

Posted by VoiceU on 19/04/2011 None comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2011 Spring edition. This post is from the VoiceU team, formed by Iuri Aranda, Joan Casas, Miquel Las Heras and Miquel Puig.

Here is the text that appears in the icon of the MacOSX application TextEdit. This comes from an advertising campaign that Apple Inc. made in 1997

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Apple Inc.

This speech is very suitable for our situation, mainly because it is very encouraging and inspiring. When I read these lines I found myself full of hope and willingness to build something great! This may sound “happy” or too optimistic, but some of the greatest startup ideas were considered  just silly ideas at the beginning.

Everyone can have a great idea, it may be a 15 year old boy or an 80 year old gentleman. The great ideas do not depend on the age of the person who creates them. Ideas do not appear while you are lying on the coach. They appear when you are doing an activity and you think about a way to improve it. Although many people tell you that your idea is crazy or useless, you must not worry because it´s enough to trust in your idea to be able to make it come true.

Maybe today, nobody is interested in your idea, but do not worry because your idea can be succesfull in the future.

Most of the entrepeneurs who have succeeded have had more failures than triumphs, so if you fail you have to learn and move on. Think about ways to improve and try again.

We believe the following advice is useful for entrepreneurs: firstly, your ideas must be easy and simple. These usually are the ones which revolutionize the world. There are many examples that are in this group of ideas which are very simple. You can buy Chupa-chups everywhere, and everybody cleans their house with a broom. The simplicity is the key.

If you want to have a successful idea, think about a daily activity. These ones have more chances to triumph on the Internet. FaceBook is similar to having a beer with your friends in a pub, speaking about your lives and sharing some photographs. Nowadays, you don´t even have to speak (here is VoiceU‘s opportunity!).

The most important advice would be not to restrict your mind. Restrictions for your ideas will be obstacles in the future to achieve your objective. When we were little boys, we were taught to have limitations and when you are an adult it is very difficult to open your mind and to THINK DIFFERENT.