Friday

Posting this a day late ...

had a great meeting with the head of a local American German Business Club. We are getting so close to getting beta testers.

This morning I rearranged my schedule for next week so I can go to a business club meeting. The meeting's topic isn't really associated with us but it was suggested and it will be a good networking opportunity.

A blur

This evening I briefed someone who is basically an associate - he is not employed by us but wants to develop his mobile app dev skills, for which we will get some developed mobile apps.

Explaining the current set up was very tiring.

Also very tiring was everything else, before and after as we are getting prepared for a major (ish) presentation tomorrow.

Investors' seminar

Yesterday I went to an "Investment 101 Part 1 - Post Accelerator - A Three Part Series", a two hour meetup event whose guest was Kevin Czok (who totally deserves this name check, as did the organiser Jewell Sparks. As you know, when you are named checked in the ultimate startup blog you are living large).

Unlike some other startup meetings this was a tight two hours, around a conference centre in a law firm, with a slightly older, less hipster-ish, but still relaxed (the organising partner was also dressed down) attendance.

Here are my take-aways:

• a lot of VCs don't advertise, you have to seek them out and if you do, get an introduction rather than cold call.
• VCs tend to look for seven to 10 years of involvement in the business, well at least German ones do
• read Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld - I've already downloaded it to my Kindle.
• also check out Brad Feld's blog 
• if you have to incorporate in the US, it will probably be best in Delaware or California

When you approach VCs you have to:

• have a real business which has a solid, scalable model
• be respectful to everyone, some VCs are quite small and you may be lucky just to talk to a junior
• show traction and how you would use the money
• disclose anything (e.g. dormant co-founders) before you are found out
• take projections seriously - don't be glib
• don't forget to include legal costs
• have scenarios on what would you do if you raised more/less/none/exactly what you wanted
• some VCs will do convertible loans before series A round
• VCs might take 5 to 25% of equity depending on investment
• ultimately the deciding factor for VCs to invest is the team (including are they fun to work with - answer: yes we are)
• beware of liquidation preferences - better for a co-founds to have less equity 
• documents can be in English (yay!)
• business plans are less required by VCs (than by, for example, banks).
• a pitch desk can be 10 - 15 slides (with even ca 60 backup slides) and take 45 minutes of a 1.5 hour meeting with VCs - though the initial meeting may just 15 minutes. 

Foreign

With the apps all nicely working and being regularly updates I, and the Crazy Chicken, totally didn't notice that one of the apps was back to English.

I had reverted back to it a couple of weeks ago when trying to get the last bit of the code working. I'm not fluent in German (it's my third language - I don't have a second one) but I can read quite a bit of it without noticing that I am seeing actually foreign words.

We both need to keep aware of this risk.

Process

While I wait for the Crazy Chicken to find us some beta testers (she has better German than me so it makes sense for her to focus on this) I have been updating the apps on Google Play (we are still in private beta mode).

I'm now getting more into a process: I use Trello to store changes needed and track their progress (Kanban styleeee).

I am also developing a test sheet (which includes functionalities of the apps) and a release process.

Hmm, just like old days when I worked for corporates.

Progressed

So after three wasted weeks (almost four actually) because of flu both apps and the backend work.

At least sufficient for beta testing. The apps are even on Google Play albeit in beta only mode.

Now to find some more potential businesses who can test the apps - this is actually for the Crazy Chicken to do.

Less mush

Today I felt much better, though not fully recovered.

Appery.io had sent some advice to the last problem I was having and strangely everything seemed to work now.

It's like for the last three weeks I haven't been able to think with sufficient rigour and have missed obvious things.

Bit lesson learnt - sometimes when ill just accept and don't try