Meetups

Yesterday I went to a pitch event.

I had a few take-aways but the only one I can remember (because I wrote it down) was that there are about 1000 apps  produced per minute in the world.

Actually there were some others such as:

• need to have a very solid business model
• (once again) if your business can be global say so
• (once again) it's the solution not the technology
• have a robust capitalisation plan - don't take more than is needed as that will dilute your ownership more than needed ...
• ... and don't be too blase about dilution because if you no longer have ownership of the business your investor may panic one day and tell you to take a course of action which you don't believe in. 
• It can take 5 or 7 years for investors to get a decent return (via IPO or whatever) and some of the mainstream hi tech companies that are around (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google etc.) were started 10 or more years ago.
• Once established companies, which are successful, don't really pivot.

This morning I went to a startup event covering the legals around data protection. The main takeaway was:

• learn more German.

This evening I want to a lean startup event about Concierge MVP and "don't think about scaling when starting".

No real takeaways - it was thought provoking not that I necessarily agreed with everything, oh wait, there was one:

• develop lean and incrementally (I won't say Agile because that is hipster bull shit) but don't spend 10 months getting a system implemented and then immediately realise that it is hopelessly wrong.

Listen to this now

This being a TechCrunch podcast with Fred Destin.

Bit of a pattern

It seems that as I develop the app, as one feature is added another stops working.

Good link

Spent the whole day, and quite a bit of yesterday, recreating the app from what I have learnt from the Appery.io tutorials.

Also found this link to 50+ And Counting Websites To Post Your Product Or Your Startup  hat tip to the Startups Traction & Funding group on Facebook.

Don't actually have time to go through all of these fifty sites and am a bit surprised that this site isn't on the list.

Coding, coding, coding

Well, using Appery's visual builder.

Earlier today I went to an extremely helpful and friendly bureaucrat to talk about a founder's course run by the Bavarian government.

She helped me select the appropriate modules and didn't say - I think - that my German is so poor that I wouldn't understand what was being said.

I need to go on this course so I can convince the authorities that they should pay me benefit while I develop this business.

For some reason, although I was very tired, not mentally but physically.

After lunch I looked at the app I'm developing with Appery.

I restarted the app, copying what I had written before. My thinking about the app and building it is improving but there are some things I can't just hack and tomorrow will go through Appery's database tutorials.

Not good

Yesterday I read an interesting article from TechCrunch about the possible bubble we are in.

It was titled "Too private to fail" and "A bubble by any other name". I would link to it but it has disappeared from their site.

They had made reference to Good which was finally purchased by Blackberry after turning down higher offers and this action has left the employees high and dry (owing lots of tax). In contrast the execs have been left high and well paid off.

The answers are there

Christmas was spent in England.

A bit boring but there was some eating out and drinking Sussex ales - a nice Holiday from Helles (which is the local name for lager).

There was also quite a bit of development work and I made good progress.

Back in Germany for the New Year and continuation with the development. The Crazy Chicken is working on the business plan while I get my geek on ... the only thing is I'm more used to telling people to tell people to do technical stuff. This time, however, there is no one else. Just me.

The last couple of days were spent trying to get authorisation working for the app.

I decided upon Auth0 as it will work across platforms quite nicely (I think).

But I couldn't get it to work following the Appery tutorial. After a break where I watched The Machete I revisited the problem.

The answer was just about hidden in plane sight ... the clues were in the error messages referring to frames. Also there was a short but effective answer in Apery's own database of problems.

I need to go into more authentication work tomorrow.