What are your Habits?

[Original post written @http://startupiceland.wordpress.com]
"We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, Excellence is not an act, its a habit" - Aristotle

 I have been fortunate to experience many things in life and I am thankful for it everyday. My Grandmother made me experience waking up early in the morning and build the discipline of reading in the morning. Over the years I have persisted in making that experience into a habit of waking up early in the morning and reading an hour in the morning. My Grand mother, she used to wake me up early in the morning, when I say early it was really early 4:30 to 5:00 am since I was 6 or 7 years old. I cannot shake the habit, but why would I want to? it is the best time of the day to get stuff done. I had an interesting conversation with a couple of people, when they asked me why did I believe I can do something better than them or their company and we were talking about launching a Venture Fund. I did not say anything at that time because I did not want to look bashful or tweeting my own horn... What I do very well is make habits of things that I want to excel in. It does not guarantee that you will get success but it has always increased my odds of success. Lets take running, ok, I am not a great runner or nothing like that but I could not run for 3 minutes at a stretch just 6 years back. I made a habit of running and training. I have completed 7 marathons improving my time from 4hr 12min in my first marathon to 3hr 33min in my 7th. That is a 39 minute improvement in less than 3 years. That is what I DO! I build habits or rituals as Tony Robbins calls them, set achievable standards, constantly measure myself against world class standards and improve iteratively. The post was not suppose to be about me. I want you to look at your habits, really spend time to understand what is that you repeatedly do. If you want to get better at something, then repeatedly do that. Yes, it is going to suck the first couple of times, but don't give up build a habit of it. Why write about this? I think there are so many misconception and myths about Starting a Business or Startups. Many people that I speak to think that it is luck, try saying that to Michael Jordon or Tiger Woods or Michael Phelps. Think about the first time each of them walked into their world and started working on their skill, what would have people said when they saw Michael Jordon for the first time? Would they have bet that he will be one of the greatest baskeball players of our time? His "luck" was built around habits he formed over many years of repeatedly doing something. So how does one go from wanting something to getting that something? Break the goal into tiny tasks and build a habit of doing those tasks repeatedly... lo and behold you are suddenly lucky! Do you have the discipline to build a habit? if you have words in your vocabulary that says "I don't", "I can't" etc deeply look into why you believe that. I believe everyone can do anything they set their mind to and build the discipline to work on it. Why can't I play the piano? well, because I have not spent the time, built the discipline or habit of practicing playing the piano. Never created the opportunity to do it. The second point I wanted to make was look deeply at your Standards. Are you competing with World Class? Are you raising your performance bar to compete with World Class? Check out the video by Tony, he talks about Standards. If you don't have high enough standard you will never strive to improve.

Related articles

• Habit Building (myyeartothrive.wordpress.com)
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Crowd funding Startups in Iceland

[Original post written @http://startupiceland.wordpress.com]
Just in time for SXSW, the House passed the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act. This is a big step in the right direction, of course the US Senate has to pass this bill for President Obama to sign this into law. Venturebeat has the news about the bill here, and has a FAQ Page for Crowd Funding Bill go read it. The biggest advantage of this bill is the right to allow Startups and small companies to raise capital through Crowd Funding platforms like Kickstarter or Twitter. In addition, it reduces some of the restriction on the size of the shareholders needed to raise capital before going public etc I believe that is what is needed in Iceland. If a company really has the numbers and business case to really put themselves to the scrutiny of the crowd, I say that is true transparency and power. Check out the Infographics about Crowd Funding explosion around the world and here is a nice introduction to Crowd Funding.

I want to start a Crowd Funding Platform for Startups in Iceland, I think it will open up many options for Entrepreneurs and release them of the shackles of running behind investors or wanna be investors. I am positive that there are some legal restrictions on this in Iceland, I need to understand it. The biggest challenge I see many entrepreneurs face is the endless time spent on running to raise capital to build their business. The smart ones understand that Investors are not going to invest in them at an early stage so they straight go to their customers, but I think there is a middle ground. What if you need some capital to scale your business to acquire more customers or expand internationally? That capital raise path is full of mines... at least the way I see it. There are too many intermediaries and investors spend too much time trying to uncover what could go wrong. I think there is an opportunity to build a business to raise capital from the public as I am sure they are not making a lot of return on their investment sitting on bank deposits. What do you think? Do you think a Crowd Funding Model for raising capital for Startups and Entrepreneurial companies will work in Iceland?

Well, I told myself... there is only one way to find out. I am launching a signup page for Crowd Funding Platform. The design idea for the platform will be very similar to Kickstarter. Are you relentlessly resourceful? Can you pitch your business, show traction and attract an investor to get interested in your business in a 2 minute video? That is going to be the format, we will mashup the site sourcing from different applications that are already available like Crunchbase (a database of startup companies), Vimeo (video database platform) and WordPress (hosted domains) and a couple of resourceful teams that I have come to love as they execute so well. Lets Startup Iceland!

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• Crowd-Funding - Start-Up Businesses Need To Take Note (bizsugar.com)
• Is Crowd-Funding For You? (outside-the-boxblog.com)

IMMI - The best business case for Data Centers in Iceland

[Original Post written@http://startupiceland.wordpress.com]

Many of you know that I don't understand the business case for Data Centers in Iceland. I have written about why Data Centers will not work in Iceland here and here. I was wrong! IMMI or the International Modern Media Initiative is by far the best business case for Data Centers in Iceland. I knew about the initiative but I was not aware of the status of the resolutions that was passed in the Icelandic Parliament. I believe this is one of those rare moments in history where a nation is at a cross road and it chooses to lead the world... Iceland has that opportunity! I am strongly in support of this initiative. I am not political but I believe this initiative is as important as the laws on Human Rights. Freedom of the Internet and information on the Internet has been threatened many times through SOPA, PIPA and ACTA... I am positive there will be future attempts. I believe that Internet Service Providers are similar to those who pave the road, the road should not be shut down just because someone decided to drive at 300 miles/hr and killed someone. That has been the approach so far of every Government in the world. I believe Governments need to provide the proper legal framework to operate in, the Internet is a new paradigm where physical borders don't apply and trying to legislate it just like in the physical world just does not work. We need laws that understands and accommodates how the Internet works. Everyone of us have a role to play in this. The coordinated effort that was demonstrated to protest against SOPA and PIPA is needed to ensure the right kind of laws are passed that protect the freedom of information for the Global Citizen on the Internet.

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How to make your startup survive

[Original Post written @http://startupiceland.wordpress.com] 

The post is motivated by the answer I saw in Quora to a question that went like this "Where is this startup hype going to end?" The author went on to describe why he wants answers to the above question. His premise was that everyone and their mother is starting a startup and that is a clear indication of a boom and even people who know nothing about Internet are working on something. He was more interested to learn about How is this trend going to evolve, how is it affecting our society and where will it end up? All valid and relevant questions but these should be the least of the worries of any startup. The biggest worry should be how well you are iterating the Build-Measure-Learn cycle to improve your Product-Market fit and how quickly are you scaling up your customer base, market share and revenue, in addition, how efficient are you with the cash in the bank so that you can continue to extend you runway. 

Remember the biggest challenge a startup faces is Running Out of Money! the usual stuff. I really like the top answer on the topic as well. If you have time go read it, it is insightful but I don't really agree fully with the assessment that Interest Rates drives the engine of the startup world, sure it helps a lot when the cost of capital is low to be able to raise money but the biggest value while building a company is how cheaply you are able to run the business. 

The author to the answer refers to Paul Graham's Cockroach Essay. It is one of the classic essays from Paul Graham. I could not agree more to that essay, the reason a startup succeeds or fails is 99.99% dependent on the quality of the founders. This means "what matters is who you are, not when you do it. If you are the right sort of person, you'll win even in a bad economy. And if you're not, a good economy won't save you." The second point that Paul makes is how to make your startup recession-proof, it is "exactly what you have to do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible". The most important lesson in building a startup is getting into the discipline of bootstrapping and Paul puts it "be the cockroaches of the corporate world. The immediate cause of death in a startup is always RUNNING OUT OF MONEY. So the cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill. And fortunately it has gotten very cheap to run a startup. A recession will if anything make it cheaper still". Paul wrote this in October 2008, It is even cheaper today to run a company. 

I distinctly remember those days in October when the whole financial system in Iceland had just collapsed and I got fired, one of the most liberating and conflicting experiences of my life. I need to thank the one who decided that I am not worth being part of the "team". I did not do the conventional wisdom thing of either going back to school or trying to get another job. I did what Paul recommends that is be an Investor when the times of tough. I had no money, but found ways to raise the money convinced my partners that we should be building equity when the times are bad. The jury is still out on whether the decision was right or not. But we run a very tight ship with our operations, our partnership in my opinion has the lowest cost to run, it is about 0.6% of the capital we have invested. I know that we are cheaper in running our investment company than even Vanguard. This last couple of years has been a humbling lesson in building my discipline to endure the pain and sacrifice. I don't have any sympathy for anyone who wants to do a startup but does not want to sacrifice. Like they say it is like running a Marathon, there is no short cut.

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Incubators vs Accelerators

[Original Post Written here in WordPress] 
There is a fundamental difference between an Incubator and an Accelerator. Here is a video interview where Brad talks about the difference between Incubators and Accelerators. 

An Incubator gives you real estate i.e table, chair, meeting room and power socket, internet connection, a coffee machine and/or a foosball table in exchange for rent. This has been the traditional model, and I believe the economics of this model does not work. You are trying to get rent from an Entrepreneur who is struggling to get his economic engine going. Some incubators actually take Equity + Rent for providing the above, that is just wrong!

To make a point, Iceland has a bunch of Incubators but no Accelerators! Most Seed/Angel investors when they invest in a Startup fund for all the above. I think that increases the risk to the Entrepreneur and the Investor. Think about it, every Entrepreneur needs to build a network, tinker with the Product-Market fit and build a business when operating in an environment of extreme uncertainty. This is what I believe increases the chance of failure. When I bring this topic up in Iceland, everyone comes to the defense of all the support that exists for Entrepreneurs, I don't doubt that or challenge that but the help is in the wrong direction. I want to bring attention to the successful Accelerators of TechStars and Y-Combinator. Lets look at the numbers:

TechStar (here is the link to live numbers from Crunchbase):

Companies selected through the program: 104

Failed: 8

Acquired: 8

Total Capital Raised by Companies: $126,392,305

Number of jobs created: 645

Timeframe: 5 years

Y-Combinator is by far the most successful Seed Funded Accelerator out of Silicon Valley. Paul Graham the founder has blogged about the results. He looks at the result differently. The total value of the companies that have gone through Y-Combinator according to Paul is $4.7 Billion.

I think Iceland needs an Accelerator and we are working on establishing one!

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#BMD - Value Proposition II

This is the second of the posts related to defining the Value Proposition. The original post is here and the first post is here. I am using Startup Iceland as an example. Value proposition needs to address multiple stakeholders. The first post was the value we bring to the Entrepreneur, this post is going to focus on the Value to the Investors and Limited Partners (LPs) of Startup Iceland. We invest money on behalf of our investors and LP: What value do we deliver our Investors and Limited Partners? Traditional methods of measuring Return on Investment or Return on Capital Invested are good metrics, however the biggest value we bring is transparency. We plan to run the operations of the Venture Capital Fund in a transparent, inclusive and open manner. We clearly state our investment thesis, the timeline of investment, decision criteria for investing capital, our performance, time invested and effort in a team. Which one of our customers problems are we helping to solve? Mentoring, advising and creating an environment where the entrepreneurial teams get motivated to execute, win and be a world class company on a tough compressed timeline is a lot of work. We solve that problem for our limited partners and investors. Typical investors are passive and look at Venture Capital Asset class as risky, we asked the question ourselves why is that? the answer is it takes a lot of effort and handholding to make startups succeed. Eric Rise, the author of the Lean Startup defines Startups as an "Organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme Uncertainty". We strive to reduce the uncertainty through our disciplines approach, working harder and smarter, bringing the power of the network to increase the odds of success and following the time tested methods of building companies. We are entrepreneurs at heart, we have had experience building companies and we want to ensure that our experience gets translated into our portfolio companies. What bundle of products or services are we offering to each Customer Segment? Investors and LPs are always looking for avenues to invest their capital. We believe we provide a platform that is underserved. Venture based investments have outperformed typical asset classes over a 15 year period. A Venture Fund dedicated to creating valuable internet based companies out of Iceland is a unique value proposition. Our intention is to use Iceland as a good testing ground to validate the product quickly and help launch it in the global market place. We understand the world of Technology, being technologists, architects and geeks. We understand the direction the social networked world is moving to. A platform to invest in this new trend is the product and service we provide to the customer segment of Investors and LPs. Which customer needs are we satisfying? Diversification in capital allocation. High Return on Invested Capital and Being responsible stewards of capital. We want to earn the trust of our partners. We understand we do not exist without their trust. Our values of Integrated, open, transparent, fair and trusting relationships in building wealth and return to our Investors is our gospel. We don't just say it we live it every day. We will NEVER put our interest before that of our investors. We will measure ruthlessly our performance and we will be transparent about communicating our failures and wins. Transparent Governance is the core belief of our operation.

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Innovation Clusters - Why they don't work

Here is an interesting article about "How to make a region innovative"  by Strategy+Business portal of Booz & Company. Why am I writing about this? well, because there is all this talk about Innovation Clusters in Iceland around Geothermal Energy, Seafood etc In My Humble Opinion (IMHO), it is a waste of time! this is old school thinking that never works. Don't take my word for it go and read the article. I am not the only one who thinks this way, there is a need for new thinking on innovation and entrepreneurship all around the world so how does not go about creating this new value i.e new equity. We are here because over indulgence in Debt has basically eaten away all the equity in the world. I am sure we all can agree that is the case in Iceland, but more and more countries are starting to feel the pain of this... hello! have you seen the news about Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal... and the USA? So, here is a thought start hyper growth companies that can innovate at the speed of the internet and it can be done only by small teams because of chemistry, mechanics, change management etc. There is enough evidence to support Bigger a company gets the smaller is their rate of innovation, I am sure there are exceptions to this, but the majority of large companies fall into What Clay Christensen calls the Innovators Dilemma. If you have not read the book I highly recommend it. The only way to innovate out of crisis is to start small, start at the grass root and change the entire paradigm of thinking and radically make traditional businesses obsolete. There is only one sector that is good at this at the the Startup Nation! Actually I would go one step further and say... you better be thinking about a Startup Of You, no wait Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn just wrote a book with that title. People these days, always stealing ideas :) just kidding. Go and read that book it is fascinating to think about the fundamental changes that are happening right in front of our eyes, but you need to be aware to see or suddenly you become obsolete. Are you getting obsolete?

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#BMD - Value Proposition

[original post written @startupiceland.wordpress.com]
This is the first of the posts on Business Model Design. The topic this post will cover is Value Proposition, it is one of the boxes in the Business Model Canvas. In my opinion defining the Value Proposition is one of the fundamental blocks in building any business. The definition of value has to be clear. Lets consider the example of Auro Investment Partners aka Startup Iceland. When I embarked on this journey almost 3 years back the value I wanted to create was to enable entrepreneurs to achieve their highest potential and goals. Although the fundamental definition has not changed, what is valuable has changed depending on the lifecycle and stage an entrepreneur or the company that we work with is in. Alexander Osterwalder in the Canvas asks fundamental questions that we need to take the time to answer: What value do we deliver to our customers?

We deliver speed in capital decision, know-how, networking and physical presence into the US and Indian markets, mentoring and experience in starting, building and scaling companies in the technology and the hospitality business. Characteristic addressed: Speed, Performance, Risk Reduction, Customization, "Getting the job done",

Which one of our customers problems are we helping to solve?

At the initial phase it is providing the seed and angel funding, followed up with mentoring, advising and help in building  the team, a network and large markets of US, Europe and India. Characteristic addressed: Performance, Risk Reduction, Customization, "Getting the job done", Cost Reduction

What bundle of products or services are we offering to each Customer Segment?

Our customer segment is broken down into Entrepreneurs in the technology space and Entrepreneurs in the hospitality space. For the customers in the technology space, we provide validation of the business model hypothesis, marketing and sales strategy, operational know how, team building know how and developing the market and customer know how. In the hospitality sector we bring vast experience in developing, managing and running hotels. In addition, we bring experience in advising investors in investing in hospitality business. Characteristic addressed: Customization, Risk Reduction, Performance, "Getting the job done", Cost Reduction

Which customer needs are we satisfying?

We satisfy the need for early stage capital, mentoring and network development to validate product market fit. We try very hard to build relationships and partnerships that are driven by the principle of win-win. We want to understand and provide value for Entrepreneurs in the entire gamut of business development. We understand it is our previlage to have the opportunity to work with Entrepreneurs and not the other way around.  We want the entrepreneurs who work with us to see the value we bring to the table, if we are unable to justify the value we simply don't waste the entrepreneurs time. We believe we need to be evaluated the same way as we evaluate the teams and entrepreneurs we work with.

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Business Model Design

[original post written in WordPress] 

Alexander Osterwalder's book Business Model Design is an excellent workbook for all businesses, especially those that are already established and want to look for ways to transform, amend or update their existing business model. Of course for those of us who have been in the Consulting industry it all feels like deja vu but I have been impressed with the approach of the book. I have written about this before, what works for me in this book is the concise way in which to view, capture and focus on the elements that a business can strategize, prioritize and execute on. When I work with companies and try to help them through their trasformation the biggest challenge is identifying the most impact for the resources that is at our disposal. And when I talk about resource, I mean Time, Money and Teams. Time is by far the most important because that is the only thing that we cannot create. We can strategize about raising money or organizing teams. I want to run a series of blogs on breaking the Business Model Canvas into each component and explain. I believe that this work by Alexander is more important if not the most important work compared to the Lean Startup by Eric Rise. The Lean Startup sets the overall goals of embarking on either building a business or transforming an existing business or fixing a broken business, Business Model Design gives you the roadmap of how to do it. We are trying to put together a workshop during the Startup Iceland Conference, were we are working on bringing both Eric Rise and Alexander Osterwalder to run workshops in Iceland. If you have not signed up, please do me a favor and sign up. I guarantee it is going to be an awesome event.

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Migrating this blog to WordPress

Image via Wikipedia

I started blogging in 2004, it was just something I wanted to do because I never had a habit of maintaining a diary. Blogging was very easy with Blogger, stuck with it until now and I think the time has come for an upgrade. I am moving this blog to WordPress, I already did the migration over the weekend here is the new link http://startupiceland.wordpress.com, but I will continue to post in both platforms until I am fully satisfied that WordPress meets all my requirements. I found an excellent resource that helped me in the migration, that was Google Groups. The link here pointed me exactly to what I needed to do, of course there is a limit to the size of the file that you can export from Blogger and Convert, in addition the WordPress import tool does not work as well directly from Blogger. Here is what I did:

1. Exported my blog from Blogger to XML - Settings - Other - Blog Tools - Export blog
2. Ran the conversion program hosted in Google App Engine
3. Imported the converted file through the WordPress import tool - Tools - Import - WordPress

Some of the challenges that I think I will have once I complete the migration:

• Links - I think the links to my previous posts might break or go to the original blogger link
• Google Search Results - Search Engines may not get my new URL until another month
• Analytics - I like the Blogger analytics dashboard, will need to see how I like WordPress
• I may have to move to a host - don't like that because the interface is different for every host and I need to learn that interface, how it links to WordPress etc I am hoping that I can fund someone to do all the behind the scene dirty work and I can just write! well, as they say there is no free lunch. 

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And the Winner of Startup Weekend Akureyri is...

Drum roll... Entrepreneurship! Yes, the winner over the weekend is the concept of Entrepreneurship. It was exciting to see over 100 people working on a problem, listening to feedback and presenting their ideas and getting recognized for their effort. As much as I like the idea of people getting recognition for their ideas, Ideas do not equate to launching a business. I have written about "Startup Ideas - Why ideas are not the problem". There were 19 teams that presented their ideas. The companies that I thought really created a business over the weekend were:

Video taken from previous Startup Weekend Events in Iceland

• Campalo.com and Campalo.is - a booking and reservation application over the web for Camp sites around iceland
• Disulistar.is - a hyper local curated list of things for everything from Top 5 restaurants for business meetings in Reykjavik to Task list to do press release. You pay a small fee for not having to spend the time to research the list yourself

Of course both of these companies did not win the award because their idea was not revolutionary or "cool" but both of these probably will be able to build a sustainable business. I think the other ideas and teams need to be recognized as well. Here is the link to a slideshow of pictures from my Twitter stream.

1. Whale Buddy - A Multilingual App for Smart Phones that enables a better experience for tourists on a Whale watching tour
2. Life Line - Making the rescue suits and life jackets fitted with GPS device, Nano technology and Diode lights to enable finding the missing persons at sea.
3. Viral Trade - An online market place for digital goods used in online games
4. Tannstra - A toothpick made from Icelandic straw
5. Active Site - A photo market for pictures taken underwater off the coast of Akureyri, I guess it could be applied for any all underwater pictures.

There were 12 more companies, I have to admit did not find them very interesting that is probably because of my lack of understanding of Icelandic. 

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Iceland should be proud!

Since I have started blogging, my goal has been to bring the attention of the Global Startup Community and the Global Venture Investing industry to Iceland. Yesterday was the best day of my 2+ years long effort. Here is the quote from Fred Wilson:

If you have not been following the discussions in Fred's blog avc.com, I would urge you to look the post tilted "The Free Internet Act". I think the grass root efforts that started in Iceland right after the collapse is starting to get noticed around the world. I think that is a good thing and we need to push the agenda further. Context for the above image is the post that Fred wrote yesterday, Reddit Community has drafted a Transparent Bill to Free the Internet, Fred blogged that he needs to analyze the document before having an opinion. I commented about the Thjodfundur 2009 effort and how it transpired into the Icelandic Constitution being drafted in a Transparent manner and how that model can be a good starting point to make any and/all bills in all Governments. It was very exciting to see Fred acknowledge that effort in Iceland and endorse that the World needs to take notice of that effort. If you are an Icelander, you should pat yourself in the back and for those that were responsible for the Grass root movement, your recognition is here! 

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Bill Gross @Idealabs

Bill Gross (Photo credit: jdlasica)

To get a thumbs up for innovation from Bill Gates is nothing to sneeze about. Bill Gross has done just that. Bill Gates just wrote a note about Bill Gross in his Gates Notes. I have been following Bill Gross for as long time now. He is the quintessential ideas guy, he has been doing this since he was a teenager. I wish we had role models like him in India. We were taught that working for the Government was the best job one could get. I still remember my mother urging me to take up a job with the Indian Railways and how that would secure my future with at easy 9 to 4 job! what a concept! anyways, I digress. This post is about Innovation and how to make it sustainable and solve big problems because that is what Bill Gross has created in Idea Labs. There are 5 key things that he outlines in the video and so does Bill Gates. How can we create an environment that fosters these things?

1. Embrace failure as learning: Employees don't fear loosing their job if an idea does not work - it allows them to take risk
2. Bold Ideas are important, but they can fail: Try bold things that have a high chance of not working, its still learning
3. The market place is not always ready for a new idea: Old ideas that are shelved can come back if a market has changed
4. Go places where others are too afraid to venture: Get excited about things that are in the white space of what others won't do - the best ideas come at this intersection
5. Analyze, Assess and Move on: It takes a dissection of the strengths and weaknesses of all systems, coupled with statistical analysis, to quickly cancel out the ideas that won't work, in order to land on a completely new idea.

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Entrepreneurial Density - Startup Weekend Akureyri

I jumped in a car with bunch of Entrepreneurs yesterday and drove to Akureyri. I am participating in the Startup Weekend in Akureyri. This is the 8th Startup Weekend run by Innovit, Kristján Freyr Kristjánsson, the CEO of Innovit and I have been talking and working through a number of things including the Conference in May Startup Iceland - Building Sustainable Startup Ecosystem. I wanted to volunteer and observe this event and also to test my own hypothesis.

Brad Feld, has the theory that there needs to be Entrepreneurial Density in a community to enable a sustainable startup ecosystem to form and function:
Entrepreneurial density = ((# entrepreneurs + # people working for startups or high growth companies)) / adult population

I wanted to test the Entrepreneurial Density in Akureyri, which is a smaller town than Reykjavik. There were more than 100 people last night split up into 31 teams working on a new idea to launch a business over the weekend. I will play the role of mentor and observer today and tomorrow. It is fascinating to see the energy, enthusiasm and twinkle in the eyes of the people working on their ideas. Entrepreneurism is alive and well in Iceland. I think the number might be small, but I am seeing a healthy trend that is pushing the density number up in Iceland.

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• Startup Weekend Part I - The Idea (zapier.com)

Strategies to Test Business Hypothesis - 6th Meetup

We had our 6th Meetup @Cafe Solon last evening. We once again had a very good turn up, around 30 people. The topic of the discussion was Strategies to Test Business Hypothesis, which was a follow up from last week's meet topic "Business as a Hypothesis", here are the Notes to that meetup and follow up write up. Björn Brynjar Jónsson, give a 5 minute brief talk about a topic of interest that he wanted to share with the group. The topic that he talked about was from the book "Start with Why" by Simon Sinek. It was very interesting and inspiring. Björn talked about the Golden Circle from the book. The premise is that we tend to focus our effort our vision etc on the "What", whereas great leaders who inspire us usually start with the "Why", which refers to the Purpose of why we do the things we do. When we understand the purpose and communicate the purpose we can inspire people to action. He gave the example of Apple. Here is the Video of Simon talking in Tedx.

• We talked about Strategies that were used in Clara to test their business model through the product Vaktarinn. Originally, Clara had not created the software that automatically sources all the digital content and provides the visualization that they do on Textual information. Gunnar explained how they got 10 of their friends to manually enter all the text from different sources into Excel Spreadsheets and then manually created the visualization look and feel on the data to validate if anyone would be interested to buy the product. Their first revenue was in selling that manual work, once they validated that idea they went on to build all the software that powers Clara Insight and Vaktarinn now. This was a quick and dirty way to see if there is a market for what you want to build. 
• The second example was from the company Buuteeq, how the team there validated their hypothesis that Independent Hotel Owners are willing to share their contact details and everything about their hotels to a third party and host their solution on a third party platform. They validated that by creating a Hotel Directory Service for Independent Hotel Owners called Wandari.com. Not only were they able to validate that business hypothesis they also created their customer funnel which they could target and convert into actual paying customers. 
• There was a discussion on a new business hypothesis that Safe Drivers would be willing to save money on their car insurance by allowing a tracking device to be installed in the car. We talked about how this hypothesis can be validated by just creating a web page with a simple button that says "Are you a Safe Driver? If you answered Yes, You can save 30% on your Car Insurance!" Sign up to be the First of the Safe Drivers to take advantage of the offer." Ok, I made the actual sentences up but that is where the discussion was going!
• The 4th business hypothesis was about non-availability of Icelandic Candy on Souvenir shops. One of the participants wanted to create a business on creating an attractive wrapper around the traditional Icelandic Candy and sell it to the Souvenir shops. The group guided her to actually pre-sell the candy to the stores with just using Digital images and depending on the demand she could build up her business. I was so happy to see how excited she was about being able to launch her business by this weekend! Entrepreneurs find the way! 
• Kristján Freyr Kristjánsson shared the story of how they created a business to sell the Eyafjalljokul's volcanic ash. They sold this idea while they were stranded in the airport in London, they just used digital images to create a visualization of a fancy bottle with the Ash in it and they sold it even before the product was ready. Overall a fantastic meetup and the next meetup is going to be on Pivot Stories. 

Related articles

• The Golden Circle Theory - Simon Sinek Discusses How Great Leaders Inspire Action (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Buuteeq, a hotel marketing software startup founded by ex-Microsoft execs, raises $2m (thenextweb.com)