We had the pleasure of meeting Paula Gould. It was clear that Bala shows big respect for her and he is very grateful for having had her to assist him in starting "Startup Iceland".
She's been in involved in PR-related subjects for almost 20 years. When I think back I remember her looking like she was around 30 year old so she must have started quite early :).
In her mind one of the most crucial thing's to "know your story". She told us that the first thing people think of when they see you or your company is "you are like X".... and because of that reason you really need to emphasise on the importance of knowing your story. What was the passion for starting the company? You need to know how you differentiate from your competitors, what your competitors are doing, know your market fit ... because when you meet someone and tell him about your company, you don't want to leave that person with the impression that your company is a copy of something else. You want leave that person with how you wanted your product to fit better the customers needs and how that product is going to impact certain people. I completely agree.
Now that we agreed on what I explained above she menioned next the question if we afforded a PR? Well if you want people to know your story then yes... if you want people to know that your product is not just a copycat of something else then yes... if you want people to know why they should need your product then yes.
But that left us with the question... but hey, PR-advice is not cheap, I probably don't afford it... But her answer to that was... well you don't afford not afford PR. Then if I can't not afford a PR then how? ........ You need to find a way, what ever it takes. You don't necessary need to a hire a PR specialist. You might just book your self for a PR practice with yourself, or trying to hire people who may be PR-savy. There's endless ways to do PR but it's so important to get through all that noise out there so people notist you. You might even know about a certain person that might help you get others to know your product... and there's nothing wrong about sending that person a message once and then... as long as you are only stalking that person professionally she said :).
And if you keep your mind to doing at least the best you can in PR you will hopefully (eventually) afford a PR person to help you... And then I thought, can everybody do PR? The answer is clearly yes but a profession PR will help you sending more valuable longterm signals about you out there.
Bala then took over with some nice things to think of regarding "how to get started".
He talked about the challenge of getting noticed which Paula had been talking about as well.. He's simple advice was find a way to make people care! Build a landpage so that people know you exist. Get 5 to 15 people to like your side. Try getting more to like your page. Ask them for their email so that you can contact them when you are closer to making your product ready. And of course... don't do things that will cause you trouble like hiring people when you don't afford it. And just do these things that need to be done even though they are not scalable such as having a talk with people about your product. Every founder had to do then also.
But what about raising money? Why not just raise money immediately? The answer is No, no no... do not raise money until you really need to and you hopefully know there's alot of investors who's gonna be waiting in lines to give you their money... because if you go soon you'll end up getting nothing, wasting all your energy on nothing or even worse giving that investor too much equity in your company because you were talking to that person to early.
Monday, 26 October 2015
Wednesday, 14 October 2015
How we must sacrifice for the world to develop
We had the pleasure of having Haukur Guðjónsson as a speaker, founder of Bungalo.com last wednesday.
I really enjoyed listening to this inspiring guy, more than any other lecture actually to this point, because he gave a really good impression of himself and brought to my attention that I have actually had partly wrong view on how to deal with challenging ideas that don't meet my todays reality or the enviroment. I think 99.9% people who get an idea which would need the world to change burry their ideas and do nothing. We need to change that, that's just plain wrong! All ideas have some negative sides, which may involve your current ability to make your idea come true such as your current financials, they may also have negative effects on some professions, species and more.... Did polluting the earth regarding making affordable cars stop us? Did complaints from hotel owners over changed demand and supply make people not use AirBNB? The answer is NO. New innovation usually changes the world, it may affect some negatively but I'm sure that it always has positive side effects as well. Current laws or macro factors need to change for new future to come true.
A good example of how a negative thing can later become a positive thing is how elephants did not become extinct mostly because of the game Billiard and other things as we'll. The game needed extremely massive balls which would not brake or explode. The only massive ingredient that did the magic was ivory from the tusks of elephants, which needed a lot of killing of elephants. The demand was huge for various of things but mostly Billiard. As the demand increased a man called Leo Bakeland invented a plastic called Bakelite which did the trick for all these things that needed ivory before, which he then used to make Billiard balls more affordable so not only the rich could enjoy the game. He did therefor save the game and the elephants. But it's safe to say that the game actually saved elephants because Billiard and many other things that needed ivory, were invented with extremely negative impact on the elephants and later came that guy who wanted to make the production of billiard balls differently which made it possible to stop using ivory in production of many things.
Now over to the guest speaker. Haukur has started many companies in his life and has made a bunch of mistakes which he was willing to share with us. His real success was bungalo.com, a company started at his worst financial moments in his life. He didn't have any money and no programming skills, he technically had no resources to make that idea come true. He was unable to convince people to come work for him for free so he needed to learn programming by himself which he did. He did what was necessary for his idea to come to life, he took years with no salary, sleeping on friends sofas, keeping all cost as low as possible in order to make sure he's dream would come alive.
He talked to us about the part when Bungalo needed users. His only way of getting user's was by calling all cabin owners he could think of or go meet them, so it took alot of effort. He later went to Canada to start Bungalo there and had to do the same thing, travel around the country and meet cabin owners and sell the the idea about renting their cabin on Bungalo. All to all... this guy did what was needed and I really hope bungalo.com will continue to grow. He therefor had a company which had important factor that was not very scalable unless doing peer to peer sales.
Now to the part which changed my world. When I was listening to Haukur speak about Bungalo I remembered that there had been some news about that people renting rooms or apartments on AirBNB needed to have license for offering guest services, they technically need to start a company with licenses to do what they are doing, and the same thing should apply to Bungalo renters I guess. And I related to many people I know who have rented their houses via AirBNB and Bungalo that don't give a crap about the rules. And the police is not doing anything about it and probably have no intention to do so. This issue will hopefully never kill sites like AirBNB or Bungalo.com but this kind of mindset of worries may however kill many good ideas at their birth.
I have had several ideas in my life time where I have decided to do nothing about, because of rules make the idea hard becoming alife. Just 2 months ago I bought a domain called localTGS.com and had plans on starting a similar concept as AirBNB but only tour guide services (Local Tour Guide Services.com /LOCALTGS.com). But when me and my colleges started talking about it we soon realised that in order to work as a tour guide you need license as a tour guide and of course there our idea was dead.
However if I relate to AirBNB, Bungalo and UBER they all probably thought, "No, this idea does not work. In order to drive people you need to have a taxi license...", but the thing is and that if you get that insane idea there's definitely gonna be some problems like that. And why on earth does a Taxi driver need to have a special license? It's not like it's a complicated job! And why on earth would I need get some license from the government in order to rent out my spare room downstairs? And having said that, one of the key similarities among successful ideas is that they changed the world, maybe at your cost or some else...
So now for the future. When you think that things should be done differently eventhough the rules are not on your side, just go for it. The world needs to change, most rules also. I wonder if Henry Ford ever thought that he should stop making cars because they probably would drive too fast and be danger to people?
Now what about "good design"? What is good design? Like my posts have already described things don't need to perfect at the beginning, they just need to show your vision so that you get users which will inspire you to make your product better. But what is "good design"? According to Steve Jobs : "This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasent for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it". Haukur talked about how customers always want to give you ideas on how to improve your product which is good but you need to be able to take the noise away. You need to be able to pick the valuable points because you don't want your product to become to complicated. You want it to be simple and beautiful.
Then what is good design? Bala had alot of points for us there:
So all to all... Bala had a great quote which I will make my last sentance for this blog: Building products that people love is about building something unique ... "If you go on a date with a person you want to show something unique with your personality".
I really enjoyed listening to this inspiring guy, more than any other lecture actually to this point, because he gave a really good impression of himself and brought to my attention that I have actually had partly wrong view on how to deal with challenging ideas that don't meet my todays reality or the enviroment. I think 99.9% people who get an idea which would need the world to change burry their ideas and do nothing. We need to change that, that's just plain wrong! All ideas have some negative sides, which may involve your current ability to make your idea come true such as your current financials, they may also have negative effects on some professions, species and more.... Did polluting the earth regarding making affordable cars stop us? Did complaints from hotel owners over changed demand and supply make people not use AirBNB? The answer is NO. New innovation usually changes the world, it may affect some negatively but I'm sure that it always has positive side effects as well. Current laws or macro factors need to change for new future to come true.
A good example of how a negative thing can later become a positive thing is how elephants did not become extinct mostly because of the game Billiard and other things as we'll. The game needed extremely massive balls which would not brake or explode. The only massive ingredient that did the magic was ivory from the tusks of elephants, which needed a lot of killing of elephants. The demand was huge for various of things but mostly Billiard. As the demand increased a man called Leo Bakeland invented a plastic called Bakelite which did the trick for all these things that needed ivory before, which he then used to make Billiard balls more affordable so not only the rich could enjoy the game. He did therefor save the game and the elephants. But it's safe to say that the game actually saved elephants because Billiard and many other things that needed ivory, were invented with extremely negative impact on the elephants and later came that guy who wanted to make the production of billiard balls differently which made it possible to stop using ivory in production of many things.
Now over to the guest speaker. Haukur has started many companies in his life and has made a bunch of mistakes which he was willing to share with us. His real success was bungalo.com, a company started at his worst financial moments in his life. He didn't have any money and no programming skills, he technically had no resources to make that idea come true. He was unable to convince people to come work for him for free so he needed to learn programming by himself which he did. He did what was necessary for his idea to come to life, he took years with no salary, sleeping on friends sofas, keeping all cost as low as possible in order to make sure he's dream would come alive.
He talked to us about the part when Bungalo needed users. His only way of getting user's was by calling all cabin owners he could think of or go meet them, so it took alot of effort. He later went to Canada to start Bungalo there and had to do the same thing, travel around the country and meet cabin owners and sell the the idea about renting their cabin on Bungalo. All to all... this guy did what was needed and I really hope bungalo.com will continue to grow. He therefor had a company which had important factor that was not very scalable unless doing peer to peer sales.
Now to the part which changed my world. When I was listening to Haukur speak about Bungalo I remembered that there had been some news about that people renting rooms or apartments on AirBNB needed to have license for offering guest services, they technically need to start a company with licenses to do what they are doing, and the same thing should apply to Bungalo renters I guess. And I related to many people I know who have rented their houses via AirBNB and Bungalo that don't give a crap about the rules. And the police is not doing anything about it and probably have no intention to do so. This issue will hopefully never kill sites like AirBNB or Bungalo.com but this kind of mindset of worries may however kill many good ideas at their birth.
I have had several ideas in my life time where I have decided to do nothing about, because of rules make the idea hard becoming alife. Just 2 months ago I bought a domain called localTGS.com and had plans on starting a similar concept as AirBNB but only tour guide services (Local Tour Guide Services.com /LOCALTGS.com). But when me and my colleges started talking about it we soon realised that in order to work as a tour guide you need license as a tour guide and of course there our idea was dead.
However if I relate to AirBNB, Bungalo and UBER they all probably thought, "No, this idea does not work. In order to drive people you need to have a taxi license...", but the thing is and that if you get that insane idea there's definitely gonna be some problems like that. And why on earth does a Taxi driver need to have a special license? It's not like it's a complicated job! And why on earth would I need get some license from the government in order to rent out my spare room downstairs? And having said that, one of the key similarities among successful ideas is that they changed the world, maybe at your cost or some else...
So now for the future. When you think that things should be done differently eventhough the rules are not on your side, just go for it. The world needs to change, most rules also. I wonder if Henry Ford ever thought that he should stop making cars because they probably would drive too fast and be danger to people?
Now what about "good design"? What is good design? Like my posts have already described things don't need to perfect at the beginning, they just need to show your vision so that you get users which will inspire you to make your product better. But what is "good design"? According to Steve Jobs : "This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasent for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it". Haukur talked about how customers always want to give you ideas on how to improve your product which is good but you need to be able to take the noise away. You need to be able to pick the valuable points because you don't want your product to become to complicated. You want it to be simple and beautiful.
Then what is good design? Bala had alot of points for us there:
- is simple,
- is timeless,
- solves the right problem,
- is suggestive,
- often slightly funny,
- it's hard,
- looks easy,
- uses Symmetry,
- resembles Nature,
- is Redesign
- can Copy
- is often Strange
- happens in Chunks
- is often Daring
So all to all... Bala had a great quote which I will make my last sentance for this blog: Building products that people love is about building something unique ... "If you go on a date with a person you want to show something unique with your personality".
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