Take-aways from the fireside chat

Yesterday evening I attended a local Silicon Valley Fire Chat - Entrepreneurs Night.

At it the organisers, Axel and Marita, talked about their view of the startup scene in Munich.

In particular, they repeated their view that there is no need to go to America for funding.

A lot of what they said they have said - and I have blogged - before but here are some takeaways:

Here are the four big things you need to get investment:

• communication skills - including being able to articulate your vision (which goes beyond having so money customers or making so much money)
• extraordinary people in your team - and you need to be able to find them. Our business has two co-founders but we definitely need more and are struggling to find
• have an MVP - reduce it to the absolute minimum, even ignore differential features unless it is core to the product and get it out there. Hint: don't wait for bugs to be fixed but add them to a known issues list on your blog
• valuation - in Silicon Valley it's about 10x forward looking revenue. Remember that valuation is basically just a guess and there is no reason why European startups shouldn't receive US levels. If investors disagree challenge them.

Some other advice:

• co-founders need an equal share and big staken in ensuring that the business survives and thrives
• find a mentor - often they want nothing in return or maybe say around 0.5% equity ... something small
• add to the Munich startup ecosystem, offer to help without expectation of reciprocation

Oh, and I just remembered, I also met an investor at the event. Will chase him up today.

Networking in the time of catastrophe

On Tuesday evening I went to an event held by Democrats Abroad to watch the US election results over some biers - quite a few beers actually.

Obviously I am not a Democrat not least as I am not an American. But I have, and have had, strong connections with the US and also beer.

(There isn't a Republican equivalent of DA probably because I suspect most republicans are afraid of "foreign". In any case even if I was an American I wouldn't be a Republican either).

There were some Hash House Harriers there (I'm a member of the two Munich kennels) and one introduced me to a woman she brought along.

And she works for a big consortium in the innovation apps area.

We exchanged business cards and LinkedIn connections. Since then I've been racking my brains to see how our app would work for their business.

I've now figured out how it would work and in fact it would fit really well with their business - I may have been a bit tired after a night of lots of beer; shock, horror and disgust; and ending after 5am on Wednesday morning.

We haven't gone away

Seems it's been a while since I lasted posted but things have been happening.

I was in the UK for a week although I did do some work on the business.

The app looks a lot of better.

We tried to get a third co-founder but they disappeared off the radar.

We've onboarded one business though they actually have to use the app now and so far they haven't. We're not surprised and expect they will need a bit of hand holding.

I was ill with a cold which, in retrospect, was probably a flu like infection and has been going around Munich.

More good advice

Some hours after the meeting with the lady involved in funding startups I met another lady who runs a PR company in Munich (with global reach).

She had some great feedback and advice about our solution and also said she would introduce me to an investor.

Progress

Despite my bloke interrupted post actually I have been making progress:

The app more looks like an app now. Although it did involve a tour around stack overload and github.

At the end of yesterday's pitch night one of the organisers mentioned that they would holding a "clinic" today to see if their startup-assisting-business could help startups with financing. They have an interesting business model for this.

I hope I didn't kill too many people in the room as I rushed to the front to put my name down.

Met the organiser this morning and will send them a pitch deck and have a conference call with them soon.

She too stressed that we need to show some traction. We will.

Take-aways from yesterday's pitch event

Last night I went to another Entrepreneurs Night - pitch event at werk1.

Here are my takeaways:

• European investors are funding European companies which have gone to the US to find funding.
• US valuations are significantly higher than Europeans ones
• Valuations cannot but be disproved - if someone says your company is not worth €8m or whatever ask them why not, how much is it worth and why.
• Better valuations are needed because by series E funding of €50m is not really enough for a company.
• No European angel has been outstandingly successful with a European startup. On average they are losing money.

And Axel's advice:

• 8x20 on forward looking revenues (I really must get the slides for his presentation)
• get revenue as soon as you can
• ideally grow by 1% per day
• have a disruptive business model

For the pitches they were judging on:

• Team
• Idea
• Growth Strategy
• the pitch itself.

At the end he reminded us that entrepreneurs are, at most, 0.1% of society.

Bloke interrupted

Been busy but:

• my Surface Pro died. It was only 11 months old. I went to the shop from where I bought it and they told me that if they sent it back to Microsoft it could take six weeks to replace. When they realised there were no armed police nearby they then calmed me down by telling me that I could also use a special Microsoft service to expedite this. As a result no one died and the shop wasn't horribly destroyed. Microsoft were awesome and a few days I had delivered by courier a brand spanking new Surface. I did, however, have to configure it for my needs.
• On the day of the Venture Wiesn in Munich (an event I had been advised to attend by a VC) I developed my third ever migraine. I took a pill my doctor had prescribed for this eventuality. Instead of feeling "foggy" I now felt "woozy" but not better. I checked the details of the medicine on line and worked out from its half-life that I would be ok to have a beer later on that evening. I ended up having four beers at the Venture Wiesn and felt much better. Made good contacts there.
• A few evenings ago my modem suddenly died. In the morning I had to go to a local DT shop, buy a new one straight away and then set it up. Turns out the modem included a firewall with an email service whitelist which is, apparently, updated by DT on a regular basis. But my email service provider is in the US and so wasn't on the whitelist. After a bit of investigation I manually added it.
• And yesterday I went into town with the alertness of a zombie. I had forgotten to renew my transit ticket and, for the first time ever, was unlucky enough to suddenly be ticket inspected. Not a cheap experience.

Better news:

• A week or just over ago I had a Skype call with an interim manager who knows some angels. Although what we are doing isn't in their space, he reckoned we had a good idea. He also added that we need some traction, at least a couple of customers, even for angels.
• We have a young IT guy volunteering to help us in his spare time. It will take a little while to bring him up to speed on how we do things but once he understands this he will probably be more productive than me - even though he had limited time due to work reasons.
• We're pursuing a third co-founder who has been a bit unlucky recently but hopefully will be able to join us.