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.