The second class is now over. Again found myself learning things that matter. I feel that this course makes me think different about startups than before.
This lecture was about the execution of becoming an entrepreneur, the right reasons and the wrong reasons, things to keep in mind when getting a team together such as cofounders, investors or employees.
Bala said that choosing a co-founder should be really carefully done, because in most cases it can be like getting married, even worse because it may be harder to split up. Choose someone who you think you are willing to spend enourmous time with, even at times when things are hard. Another thing that might put your startup into the ground soon is if you and your cofounder are not gonna find an understanding about possession, ownership and control which are the main reasons why startups die.
Important things started piling up as Bala continued speaking and his next subject was about staff recruiting. Try to avoid hiring peoble until you have found yourself an investor and your businesss model is ready. Payroll slows things down and may put you in difficult position. Instead you should convince peoble to become a co-founder with you so that peoble have all their heart in the project as well as being likely to keep pace when hard times come for example if the company is out of money tempory. If you however fail to follow these guidelines you should be confident about firing all of them if you need in order to achive your goals.
Finding an investor is sometimes necessary and can be hard work. It's just like hiring an employee. You should not get an investor that you don't think fits your company or does not understand your startup. It has happened so may times that investors have ruined startups. You want someone who cares and is willing to put some effort in helping the startup meet it's goals. Another thing also very important mentioned by Bala is that you should also keep in mind to always have a minimum of two investors bidding for entry. And if you do the mistake of getting a investor who does not fit your startup fire him.
When the time comes when you have found yourself an investor you should consider hiring people. You should be looking for the best people and be aware that there is demand for them in other exciting places such as Google. However some people may want to work for you instead of Google if they find it more embassious. You need to be able sell them why they would wanna work for you.
Now over to roles and duties. If you manage to hire great people, maybe suddently about 10-20 employees, you should be focused of making some kind of positive culture and taking care of things which make them feel comfortable because you might loose them elsewise. You therefor need to be sure that you have someone in the role of an operator, who makes sure everything runs smoothly, bills are getting paid and necessery things are in good hands. You will definately need a technical person and the most important role is the communicator. The communicator is the one who can tell the investors why they should invest, he will be able to get ask the right questions and get the right output you need from your people.
When things pile up and you need to be focused in order for things to work . We need to be aware of what we need to exceed and what we need to be without to exceed. Like Henry Ford once said: ,,The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time". I've seen it so often in my life how little things can ruin much. For example inpolite waiter at a place which serves great food does make me visit them again. When I start my own business I'm gonna focus on these ideas above. ,,Remember: Your focus determines your reality." - Qui Gon Jinn
Sunday, 30 August 2015
Saturday, 29 August 2015
I guess I owe my blog a little summary of my self before this page get's loaded of me and my wisdom.
My name is Atli Sævarsson and I started this blog as a part of an assignment in one of my master's classes in Reykjavik University.
My name is Atli Sævarsson and I started this blog as a part of an assignment in one of my master's classes in Reykjavik University.
Who am I? I finished my bachelor degree in 2010 Business Administration with emphasis on finance. I also did some courses in computer science but never finished that degree. In 2010 when I was graduating I had been planning to go into Reykjavik University master degree in investment management(MSIM) and had already been approved to their program when one I got offered a job from Arion bank in their asset management department which I could not reject. When I started there I was immediately sent to get certification as stock broker so I had my hands full starting a new job and finishing another degree.
After finishing the broker degree I felt the need for having more things to do after work so I registered in the masters degree again and was planning to take it with work. However I didn't pay the school fees and decided to skip the master's degree for a year. I played that same game for two years and when I had registered for the third time my college in Arion bank said "lets just do it together and finish this". So finally I decided to take full speed ahead in the year 2013 as 50% student and a 100% worker with two kids which made me a more than 100% father at the same time.
Later my career was gonna change when I lost my job in Arion bank for no special reason in October 2014. I then got offered a job immediately at Advania, a major IT company in Iceland, the eight biggest IT company in Scandinavia. They had shown me interest before so I was started to work for them the same month as I quit Arion bank. Unfortunately I didn't really like working there so much and had been thinking about seeking another job opportunities when KPMG in Iceland sent me an email and asked if I had interest in meeting them for a job opportunity. I took my lunch the following day with KPMG and knew that there was somehting exciting there. I soon got offered a job there as Enterprise risk management specialist which I'm currently in today and I love my job. The main reason why I love my job is that it's so busy, I have my arms full of tasks and readings all day long so I feel that I'm at a great place. Also I feel that I'm on to some important role as well.
Now when peoble ask me what kind af character I am, it's safe to say that I love being busy. And speaking of that I feel it's little terrifying graduating the spring of 2016 and just being a worker, a paycheck slave.
The following months I know I'll have alot of mind digging in this course How to start a starup. Hopefully I'll end up having some lifetime task after this course, the future will decide.
Sunday, 23 August 2015
Turning tables, singing upload for real for the first time
Last wednesday I started attending a new course in Reykjavik University. The course name is How to start a startup and is tought by Bala Murughan Kamallakharan. Bala is originally from India but has lived in Iceland for few years now. Bala used to work for Glitnir but found himself lost in the crisis 2008 when he became unemployed. He then thought that he needed to redefine his future plans because prior to that he had always been a hard worker making everybody else rich but him. Now it was time to turn the table and his path was gonna lead him to working with alot of innovative and promising young peoble in building up startups. He sure made a good name for himself as he was soon gonna become one of the founders of GreenCloud and Clara which are probably two of the most successful Icelandic startups the past years. I feel that it's safe to say that he must have a good eye for promising startups and I look forward expressing my future ideas with him and the world.
How Bala expressed his situation of loosing the job and being lost in the world reminded me alot of my self about one year ago when I lost my job at one of the major Asset mangement departments in Iceland. I had then for the first time of my life an experience of the same thing, coming home and not knowing what I was gonna do the next following weeks. I actually did take alot of thinking about me and the world and actually had decided to start my own company but ended up doing nothing about that idea and accepting the first job offering I got. I wonder where I would be today if I would have just tried coming up with 4 or 5 ideas and tried executing them all in order for at least one of them to prosper.
It's safe to say that this first class did immediately have affect on how my view on expressing my self about my ideas to the world. The first concrete lesson was loose the jacket and speak upload about your ideads. Prior I had regulary had some creative ideas but somehow I almost only trusted my girlfriend for them and never did anything more with these ideas. I'm sure that most peoble actually feel the same. Bala told us that when we get ideas we should blog about the idea, share it with the world, instead of keeping the idea just for our self. When we get ideas and they are good it's very likely that someone else has also had that idea anyway but the most useful thing for a person in converting a creative idea into a innovation is getting other's peoble view on it and support.
Bala remind's me of a philosophist, at least about how he expresses he's view on the world. He teaches us how to gain advantage on the problems we meet in life and thinking of them as an opportunity which is essentially how many ideas are found and later become products. An entrepreneur opportunity is likely to be found when you find yourself in a situation which many other peoble may find them self in as well.
Bala was not the only person that was gonna share his wisdom this day because we also were so lucky that Bala had arranged an Skype meeting with Professor Sean Wise, co-author of the book Startup Opportunities which I am currently reading. Sean talked about how the current methods of business are outdated and pointed that we should not make things to complicated at the beginning like we have been told in school. We should not start by making a complicated business plan instead we should just make a demo of our product and go straight to the market, eventhough the product doesn't work or not and see if peoble like the idea and get a feeling about how much they would wanna pay for it if you would go further with your idea. This man actually works as a mentor or specialist in evaluating other's peoble ideas. What he does is telling other peoble, his clients if their ideas suck or are brilliant.
Having listened to these two bright men about how to express my self in the future when I get a feeling about somehting innovative I had a talk with a good friend and coworker of mime. We decided to buy our first domain for an idea we talked about which we might start working on soon with some other peoble.
All to all it's safe to say that the lesson of this day was if you get a promising idea you should share it with the world, make a facebook page and see if peoble like your idea because having that as an reference when seeking investors is probably one hell of an indicator.
The next 15 weeks I will be blogging weekly about this class. I'll do my best in sharing with the world my ideas and experience having Bala as an mentor and maybe there might end up being some carreer changes, eventhough I'm really happy today in my current job. But it's fair to say that it's actually a possibility that I'm gonna be working for my own company in few weeks and maybe one day not be a slave of my paycheck, making other peoble rich.
How Bala expressed his situation of loosing the job and being lost in the world reminded me alot of my self about one year ago when I lost my job at one of the major Asset mangement departments in Iceland. I had then for the first time of my life an experience of the same thing, coming home and not knowing what I was gonna do the next following weeks. I actually did take alot of thinking about me and the world and actually had decided to start my own company but ended up doing nothing about that idea and accepting the first job offering I got. I wonder where I would be today if I would have just tried coming up with 4 or 5 ideas and tried executing them all in order for at least one of them to prosper.
It's safe to say that this first class did immediately have affect on how my view on expressing my self about my ideas to the world. The first concrete lesson was loose the jacket and speak upload about your ideads. Prior I had regulary had some creative ideas but somehow I almost only trusted my girlfriend for them and never did anything more with these ideas. I'm sure that most peoble actually feel the same. Bala told us that when we get ideas we should blog about the idea, share it with the world, instead of keeping the idea just for our self. When we get ideas and they are good it's very likely that someone else has also had that idea anyway but the most useful thing for a person in converting a creative idea into a innovation is getting other's peoble view on it and support.
Bala remind's me of a philosophist, at least about how he expresses he's view on the world. He teaches us how to gain advantage on the problems we meet in life and thinking of them as an opportunity which is essentially how many ideas are found and later become products. An entrepreneur opportunity is likely to be found when you find yourself in a situation which many other peoble may find them self in as well.
Bala was not the only person that was gonna share his wisdom this day because we also were so lucky that Bala had arranged an Skype meeting with Professor Sean Wise, co-author of the book Startup Opportunities which I am currently reading. Sean talked about how the current methods of business are outdated and pointed that we should not make things to complicated at the beginning like we have been told in school. We should not start by making a complicated business plan instead we should just make a demo of our product and go straight to the market, eventhough the product doesn't work or not and see if peoble like the idea and get a feeling about how much they would wanna pay for it if you would go further with your idea. This man actually works as a mentor or specialist in evaluating other's peoble ideas. What he does is telling other peoble, his clients if their ideas suck or are brilliant.
Having listened to these two bright men about how to express my self in the future when I get a feeling about somehting innovative I had a talk with a good friend and coworker of mime. We decided to buy our first domain for an idea we talked about which we might start working on soon with some other peoble.
All to all it's safe to say that the lesson of this day was if you get a promising idea you should share it with the world, make a facebook page and see if peoble like your idea because having that as an reference when seeking investors is probably one hell of an indicator.
The next 15 weeks I will be blogging weekly about this class. I'll do my best in sharing with the world my ideas and experience having Bala as an mentor and maybe there might end up being some carreer changes, eventhough I'm really happy today in my current job. But it's fair to say that it's actually a possibility that I'm gonna be working for my own company in few weeks and maybe one day not be a slave of my paycheck, making other peoble rich.
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