Writings

This entry isn't about how we really should write more. And that this should include mentioning some rather unpleasant events around our business.

That will happen but not yet.

No. This entry is about how I received an email from an organisation in the Munich startup scene looking for writers.

I applied.

The strength of the team

The team - diverse and dynamic - sat down with a potential investor recently.

It went better than any of us expected it to go.

We didn't walk out of the meeting with a fat check and series A investment, but we did walk out with a feeling of success, confirmation that our idea is good, that our team works well, and that there is a market for what we are doing.

TPWNN and O insisted on a full day of practice ahead of time, the day before, which was a bit much for this Crazy Chicken. But it was a productive and energetic day.

And it helped on the day of the pitch when the potential investment angel said, no, he didn't want to do this in English. We had gotten to know the pitch and each other so well, that a last-minute change of language didn't throw us.

Apparently, our ideas are things they (the angel and his company) have been thinking of already, we already have developers on our idea, we have started the research. We have a date for a proof of concept at a high profile business.

The angel praised the team and gave us several points to think about, critic and suggestions. Things we all had been thinking of and want to address.

All in all, wow. A promising meeting that gave us a boost to our confidence that we needed. A new shot of energy.

Now we need to decide if, as he said, we want to get into bed with him. And what it would cost us initially for a "sweat" investment before any pre-seeding investment.

Diversification

After recoiling from techies questioning my skills and ability to contribute to a start-up, I did a bit of research.

Start-ups founded by women generally get less investment.

Start-ups founded by women generally perform better once they are up and running.

Diversification in a team, not just women and men, but age, nationality and general backgrounds, makes for better teams, and statistically, better performance overall.

But it also requires more effort to work together. And that can be an added factor that can easily be overlooked.

Don't let your team underestimate anyone.

TPWNN didn't like that I initially found my stats on a BCG site, so I didn't cite them. But a quick google will give you a few other sites with similar information. 

Still breathing, still blogging (occasionally)

Not sure why my last post went into this blog. I think I meant to put it in the other one.

But around that time from January I was suffering from a very bad bout of 'flu. Aussie 'flu no doubt.

It started on the day when I was having friends around for drinks and food. I had bought loads of food (and wine, and more crockery and glasses etc.) a few days before with the intention of making raclette.

I was really looking forward to it.

But I felt ropey during the day and by the time everyone had arrived and were about to tuck in I had to give my apologies and go to bed with a fever. I think everyone else enjoyed the party, my party.

This was probably the second worse flu ever in my life.

Even when I thought I had recovered a month later and went on a ski weekend, I hadn't, it turns out, recovered and my ski-ing suffered (not that I am very good).

Anyway, just as I had fully recovered I had to go to my family home in the UK as one of my elderly relatives had badly broken their arm.

But now and then, with the other collaborators there has been progress on the business.

We now have onboard two new people who know what they're doing - they're major shareholders. We will also have two students working with us as part of their industrial placement from university. We may even get some more.

And I am writing this post as Google started hassling me about whether I wanted to continue this blog.

Advice

Yeah, I know it's been a while, anyhoo ...

A friend on Facebook has been ill for a while and has had serious problems getting a job. He posted this question:

"I wonder if any of my friends have felt as I do and how they got better ?
Due to ill health and age it is my belief I will never work again and that makes me feel worthless.
Also due to ill health and poverty I am virtually housebound, surviving for the moment off the proceeds of the sale of my car.
I owe thousands to both friends and others and worry everyday how I will ever pay them back.
Being housebound and broke means i never socialise anymore and don't speak to another human being for weeks on end apart from rare trips to watch football which will cease soon.
The sense of isolation and worthlessness is worse than cancer or anything else i've dealt with.
I'm not looking for sympathy or pity, mine or anyone elses, i',m genuinely reaching out to see if anyone has any constructive suggestions or has felt similarly.
Thanks for reading ..."

This is how I replied:

" ...Been thinking about an answer ... : Around 15 years ago I was unemployed for two years, during which time I had a major [accident] which nearly killed me and from which I still have issues. Here's some things I did (though as I have no control results I don't know if they made a difference): 

1. Routine - I job hunted Sunday to Friday, taking Saturday off but making sure recruiters had my application when they started on Monday morning. 

2. Recording - I kept a record of my applications and tracked numbers applied versus hits (any sort of positive response) and any interviews - using a spreadsheet it was slightly interesting when I plotted it to look for trends and calculated averages, std dev etc. 

3. Writing - I kept a contemporaneous blog about my job hunting activities, recording any humours adverts etc. This blog was even read in Brazil. I tried adding Google ads but never received any hits. Done properly this may have yielded some revenue. 

4. Studying - even passed some exams and it helped answer interviewers' questions about what I was doing during my "time off". 

5. More writing - I also have another blog with short stories which practically no-one has read but, helped me. Nowadays there are vlogs and podcasts as well. 

6. Exercise - for a while it was difficult but as I regained my strength it became part of my regime. 

7. Contact - not much (I was also a bit disfigured and was running out of money, plus exhaustion) but there's Skype etc. 

It still sucked the sweat off a dead man's balls and I too thought I would never work again. 

TL, wtf, DR: - routine, creativity, exercise, embrace the suck."

He seems to have found it positive.

Finally

On Friday, at the last minute, I decided to go to an Internations dinners at a Thai/Vietnam restaurant.

I was talking to the bloke opposite me and he was asking about my startup. What does it do? Oh, what's the app called? I told him.

"I downloaded it"

Wow. Someone used it. Apparently at one time it was ranking high in the Google Play store but then dropped.

He conceded that the UX needs improving. But, hey I found someone who used our app.

Pity that we have just shut it down as we intend to rewrite it from scratch: with better UX and also faster.

Yeah, I could also write that since my last posting I have found two new co-founders and we are trying to onboard them. But at least this is a restart to this blog.

Renewal

It turns out that Apple likes to renew their certificates every year.

Which gives me time to forget how they all fit together.

So for a while the push notification service for the iPhone version wasn't working. But it is now.

Venture Wiesn takeaway

The main takeaway from this year's Venture Wiesn is don't go to the next one.

• Very poor presentations - from the VCs (!)
• Not very good Bavarian food
• Not such a good environment for networking.

Burda bootcamp

Yesterday went to the Burda Bootcamp for digital startups.

A few takeaways:

• Av size of startup is 7.5 people in Munich
• Investors should be thrilled with the business
• Best of investors were entrepreneurs

It's all about the mobile

Yesterday I went to a Mobile Marketing Association "Retail in a Mobile World" seminar which was very good. It reinforced that mobile is key these days.

Then went to a meeting about big data - we anticipate that our app will start producing a lot of data.

Oh yeah, it's been a while since I've updated this blog.

I kinda stopped doing app dev work as we really need customers to use our app and give feedback (and money). Which is hard for me as my German isn't good enough.

But we do now have a co-conspirator who is German, likes app dev and likes sales.

And we have engaged a lawyer to write the standard terms and conditions for our commercial offering.

So we are crawling along in the right direction.

Topping from the bottom

Someone actually used this term at a panel discussion yesterday on the topic of corporate entrepreneurship. Apparently I was the only one who noticed.

His usage on the term was on how to innovate in a large company. I spoke with him afterwards, stressing that actually I'm not into that scene but am aware.

The lesson learnt in this post is that if you want to remember something write it down.

Several of the panel talked about the need of a good mentor. I agreed and made a note of it. A mental note which I immediately forgot.

That's also my take-away: we (and all startups) need a mentor.

Investment

We're getting the feeling that the investment advisor/facilitator we've met doesn't think we're ready to approach investors.

The steam problem

I had to get out of the flat. Even though I should be meeting the Crazy Chicken this evening I had to escape now.

So, I am sitting in a San Francisco Coffee Shop (in Munich) - think Starbucks without the grotty carpets.

To avoid any incidents I didn't get a coffee - already had one - but tea.

They handed it over with a second saucer on top. So I didn't realise that they had put two - TWO - tea bags in the cup.

Oh well.

Why is this post labelled as a lessons learnt?

Well, I've been looking at colour swatches. Purple is our corporate colour which is used on our flyers, window stickers, logo and most of the app itself.

But to make the app less monochromic I am looking for a colour that is complementary to purple. There are lots of free colour matching sites out there. But I am kinda thinking that maybe we should have asked our designer to give us a series of colours.

A few days ago the latest version of the app rolled out. This gives us usage information. Appery supplied a view of this but we couldn't download it and analyse it - I guess for security reasons.

So I had to create a work-around.

From this we deduced that one phone (apart from ourselves) is using the app. Well, it's a start.

I'm hoping that by this weekend I will have submitted a more colourful and enticing version of the app with some bugs fixed and some new features.

Take-aways from Startup failure

Another good panel discussion, this time on failure.

There was a lot of talk about German attitude to failure and almost whimsical debate on whether failure is a good thing.

Anyway here are my takeaways:

• according to research entrepreneurs on average succeed on their fifth venture (!!!)
• startups tend to fail for these three reasons:
• poor marketing
• poor team
• running out of cash
• get and check references for investors (one of the panellists had a galling story of how she was conned into leaving a company and joining a new VC funded by someone who turned out to be a fraud)
• get a good lawyer on your side, early on.

Still no tequila

But another good meeting with the investment facilitator, this time with the Crazy Chicken.

One thing though, check meeting placed beforehand to ensure they are acoustically satisfactory, which is unlikely to be the case with beer halls. Fortunately it was warmish so we sat outside.

No Tequila

but still a good meeting with an investment facilitator.

I was electronically introduced to him from one of the people I met at the Dutch pitch night.

Our meeting today - over a coffee - took more than an hour and the next step is for him to meet the Crazy Chicken.

Tiring

I've been battling with app problems, or to be more accurate iPhone app problems. I had to roll out the Android update - as there were some important fixes required - before I could get the app working on iPhone.

Appery.io had done an upgrade to their development app so it now supports iOS 10. Which should be good as I had to do a lot of work arounds beforehand. But it seems that I will now have to do different workarounds instead.

Last year, for the first time ever, I was able to run 10km in under an hour consistently. That was because every time I got stuck running helped me clear my head. So as a result I became really fit.

This year I haven't been able to run. I went ski-ing for a weekend in January and that meant that everything ached.

Anyway, today it was sunny and almost not cold so I did a slow 40 minute run.

I felt much better about the iOS app problems and made progress.

Lesson learnt - gotta keep fit.

Then, this evening I went to a Startup Pitch event featuring businesses from The Netherlands.

I did wonder why I was there as was the person sitting next to me who, it turned out, now works at a VC. Contact was made. I also exchanged cards with a couple of other people.

So worth going but there was no food or alcohol which is very unusual for these events. As a result I am starving.

How to tell if you have had a good customer meeting?

When the customer breaks out the Tequila.

And we are talking real Mexican Tequila, complete with salt and lime.

In the afternoon.

Monday

After a weekend of falling downhill a lot ski-ing today the flyers and stickers arrived. Handed over half to the Crazy Chicken and we are now rapidly losing excuses not to get our first businesses to actually use the solution.

By the way, Vistaprint did a very good job. they look great.

Sticky

After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing I was finally able to order flyers and window stickers.

Well, you learn something new every day including:

• don't use the rude vulvas at local print shops in Munich
• instead use online services such as Vistaprint - they are cheaper and more helpful. OK, they take a few days but only a few and obviously you can't get a pre-run sample
• colours vary depending on code used CMYK v. RGB. Vistaprint (and I guess others) best work with CMYK.

We should get these on Monday.