[Original Post Written @
http://startupiceland.wordpress.com]
Hallfríður Ólafsdóttir came to our
Rotary Club and spoke about her journey in creating
Maximus Musicus, a little mouse and a very popular character with
children in
Iceland and 6 other countries. She is an accidental entrepreneur because she is the lead flutist with the
Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and she recalled just waking up one morning with the idea to use a Little Mouse character to get Children engaged in
Classical Music. She shared with us her adventures and development of her business. Two books with music examples have been published and the third is on the way. She is on her way with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra to perform her
Maximus Musikus at
Kennedy Center in 2013 at the Nordic Cool festival! It is fascinating to think about the teachings and learnings that goes on in an Orchestra and most children don't really know what happens behind the scene until they are taken to a show. Hallfridur, has through her books, symphony composition, songs, apps and other media has connected with Children and during the first
symphony orchestra that was conducted in Iceland, there were more than 600 children in the audience and they already knew about the Maximus and they followed through the entire narrative, the music and the experience of being in an Orchestra concert.
It was great to hear Hallfridur talk about how the energy of the children invigorated the musicians and the performers. There were a number of questions, and the most popular one is how did you find the time to keep your day job and also produce the music score, the books, the stories, the art works, the website etc etc etc and Hallfridur's answer was very simple, She just knew she had the energy to do this because she was so passionate about the project... sounds familiar! The common trait of every entrepreneur, there is something that we cannot explain that drives us, it is not riches, it is not money it is something far more important... a sense of Purpose.
It was inspiring to hear Hallfridur's journey, but what was even more interesting to me was her success has be curtailed by Content Brokers i.e Book Publishers, for example the English version of the books are not available in Iceland but only available in Australia although it would probably sell the most in Iceland because of all the tourists who come to Iceland would like to take something as a local gift to their children, grandchildren or nieces and nephews. All the tourists visit
Harpa where there is a Maximus Musicus Corner, but the tourists probably will not buy an icelandic version because they don't speak Icelandic.
She was passionate about the creation but did not have a very good advisor against the group that relies on "Scarcity as a
Business Model", Fred Wilson
has written about it. I just don't get it! why the heck can't the
book publishers understand that their customers should dictate how they want to consume the books rather than them dictating how they will allow the content to be consumed? Such a waste, I bet Hallfridur is probably loosing a large amount of sales that she could possibly do in Iceland during the peak
tourist season. I can think of so many ways to market and sell this great product. They have games and apps in the app store etc. So go check it out!
There is a fundamental difference between a business model and business plan. A Business Model defines how you will make your product or service economically viable. A business plan describe how you are going to make your business model work. One does not always know how the plan is going to evolve, so building detailed plans although a great thought or intellectual exercise adds no real value because you are wasting time making assumption about the world out there and hope that your strategies or "plans" will address those assumptions and hypothesis. The truth could not be far from it. Most people confuse this with the product development road map and the classic example I get is people saying "hey, Steve Jobs did not go and interview his customers before he created the iPod, iPad, the Mac Air or any of the products that has come out of Apple..." to that I have only one answer, unfortunately there was only one Steve Jobs and how do we know that Steve did not do that? he had a keen eye for design and detail, he spend considerable amount of time in Silicon Valley being part of the information revolution and he had many fails to learn from. I try to remind those I am talking to that they need to spend 30 years in Silicon Valley, formed 2 or 3 multi-billion dollar companies, have the same network and experience of Steve Jobs before being able to compare themselves to what Steve Jobs did.
There is a simpler way, Steve Blank, has written books, taught classesand has done many things to showcase the Customer Development Methodology, which is nothing but a Business Model. If you approach problems with the Customer Development method, you can build a pretty good hypothesis and once you have an hypothesis, it can be validated and based on the results you can build a business. The trick is to get through that cycle as fast as you can and then execute based on the learning. It is never simple and straight forward you have change your hypothesis several times and build and re-build your business model that is why it is a startup.
