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Start-up Now A guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

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What did you do in 2011? Here’s what we did, and what we learned building, pitching and growing our own tech start-ups. We hope it inspires you and others like you to follow your dreams and fulfil your goals in 2012, whatever they are.

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Page 1: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Start-up Now A guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Page 2: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Here’s what we did, and what we learned

building, pitching and growing our own tech

start-ups.

We hope it inspires you and others like you to

follow your dreams and fulfil your goals in

2012, whatever they are.

What did you do in 2011?

Page 4: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Bootstrap Your PR The biggest challenge you will face as a start-up is not

technology, not building your app or hiring.

It’s getting people to give a damn.

Here’s what we learned about generating buzz from an

event at zero cost.

1.Help the organizer promote the event

Use social media to let everyone know you’re attending.

Retweet official announcements and post status updates

to LinkedIn. Remember to include the hashtag in all your

Tweets. By doing this we’ve been offered massive

discounts on show pricing, free upgrades and the chance

to speak at future events.

2.Build relationships

Look at the speaker and attendee list. Tweet about the

speakers you’re looking forward to hearing and the

people you’re meeting up with. Make sure to use their

Twitter usernames so that the conversation can grow.

Cast yourself in the role of the jovial party host. Do not

sell!

3.Arrange a side event

If you can’t afford the entrance fee, arrange your own side

event. When we were told we couldn’t attend a show we

arranged a Tweetup to coincide with the conference that

grew to the point that the conference organizers asked us

asked how they could get involved in our event!

4.Live Tweet conference sessions

Remember to always use the conference hashtag.

Journalists often follow the hashtags during conferences

on the lookout for interesting stories. In our case, our very

first piece of media coverage came from a journalist

quoting Tweets we sent from a conference.

CubeSocial is social CRM for professionals. Since its launch in mid-

2011, CubeSocial has garnered accolades from customers and press

alike. CubeSocial was named a “Top 20 Idea” in The Guardian,

selected as a “Company to Watch” in the TV250 awards and named a

Top 20 Startup of 2011 by Startups. http://cubesocial.com

Page 5: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Follow-up Follow-up with everyone you meet.

Add people you meet to Linkedin

– You never know when you need intro

Add them to your CRM or address book

– Write down all that you remembered about them. I have met 800 people this year. If I hadn’t done this I would be in a bad situation

– Use tags. E.g VC, London (for next time I need money and I’m in London!)

Send a follow-up e-mail…

– Say a big thank you – State your biggest take-away – Say what you will work on in next month – Ask – is it ok to keep them in the loop and ask

for feedback in future

Every month, send a short update

– Progress – what you have achieved. E.g “we have launched GrabCAD Challenges and have signed 5 customers”

– What are you working on. E.g. “Improving the retention, currently 10% survive and it sucks”

– State where you could use some help. E.g “Do you know anyone in Ferrari?”

You will find that

– Some people like you and continue working with you weekly => engage them

– Some people don’t give you any feedback, but keep them on the loop anyway, you never know if you need them, but don’t spam!

Next action

– GO write those e-mails, they won’t remember you next week

GrabCAD is a community founded by mechanical engineers. It is also a place for engineers to share their talent, expand knowledge, find a dream project and work with tools and features that make life better. http://grabcad.com

Page 6: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Managing the Start-up Rollercoaster

One of the reasons people start companies is to get the

feeling of doing something meaningful with their lives.

They want to experience the excitement of building

products that people find useful to the point of paying for

them. The “I’m invincible” feeling that comes when you

land your first big customer or when your product gets

featured on a big blog.

Well, if you want to enjoy the adrenalinic pleasure of

hard-earned success, you’d better be prepared to go

through the dark deeps of depression when things don’t

work out as expected. That’s the startup rollercoaster:

You’ll have just as many highs as lows during the

adventure of building your business.

With Ondango, some days we’d be celebrating the

acquisition of a big customer and the next day we’d be

managing a PR-crisis due to server crashes or seeing a key

employee leave. I can’t remember how many sleepless

nights we’ve had, both from euphoria and depression.

We have been riding the rollercoaster for a while now and

have learned how to deal with it. The key point is to

understand and embrace the fact that startup life is just

like that. Enjoy the highs, but be aware that they won’t

last, so you keep working hard. Go through the lows

thinking that they are part of the game and try to learn

from them. And most importantly: Know that you’re not

alone. Seek support from your co-founders, get mentors

to lend you an ear. If you’re a true entrepreneur, you’ll

find yourself enjoying the ride as much as the destination.

José Matías del Pino is CEO and co-founder of Ondango, a shopping system that helps brands to sell their products directly on their Facebook Pages.

Page 7: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Better Than Good

When building an idea, prototyping it and releasing it to

the lions out there, you tend not to stop, breathe and

rethink. Adrenaline is high, you and your startup mates

are in the zone, productivity is beyond imaginable. No

time to pause. But that is exactly what Seedcamp taught

us to do. Not that you need to stop and smell the roses,

but you need to stop and rethink what you are doing.

Every idea, every startup has an evolution process and

distance between A and B is always the same. But the way

and speed of getting there is such an insane variable that

periodically one needs to stop and deeply rethink what

and how he wants to get to the B.

Seedcamp has given us exactly that: A reality check. And

what is even more, these reality checks came in various

shapes and fragrances, expending our horizon and field of

activity. We came back confused, of course, but with a

knowledge platform that allowed us to find opportunities

far beyond the expected product fit.

Seedcamp taught us that loosing focus and being

confused every now and then is not a bad thing, it is

actually a vital ingredient of a startup life.

It does hurt finding that you were wrong, though. But that

is needed if you want you or your startup to become

better than good. This is no army and failure is an option.

Andraž Logar is CEO of Toshl, www.toshl.com

Failed architect, but graduated 3d computer graphics artist; founder

of one of the first social networks in Slovenia; partner of RnD

web/mobile lab www.3fs.si, servicing multinationals like Ericsson,

Nokia, Publicis; a good guy.

Page 8: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

How to Hack Seedcamp First and most importantly have an answer for the question “Why do

you need the money”. Having no answer or not a sufficient answer

(“We may do some marketing”) may be a deal breaker. Think about

how exactly the money helps your business and why you need the

money from Seedcamp for it. Also be honest. If you don’t need the

money you won’t fool anyone there. If you need the network, but not

the money say so.

Read through the list of mentors and get an overview who everyone

is. Think about the questions you have for all the mentor groups

(Marketing, Sales, Investors, Tech, …) so you got something to ask

anybody.

Go through the list of Startups and try to see which ones you would

like to talk to the most.

Think about and get Feedback on all the weak points in your Idea. e.g.

Why use your service, what if “big company xyc” does this. The

Investors will ask you those questions and if you don’t have a

sufficient answer they will ask the question again and again and

again.

When answering a question take your time. Think about the question

and the underlying meaning of the question. For example we were

asked if a huge company could do the same thing we do with their

current infrastructure. I answered as a techie and said no and listed

some techie reasons. Let’s say they were not impressed. The real

question was what if they step into this market and the answer

should have been then the market is already pretty big since they are

multi million dollar companies. Thus I only care about the other

startups in that space and how I can be the one big enough to either

partner with the big company or get bought. So stop thinking as a

techie. At least a bit.

See which other Startups from your area go there and book your

accommodation together. Drive there together and drive home

together.

Don’t forget to put some numbers about your market into the pitch.

No one is interested how your technology works. Everyone wants to

know how you make money.

Don’t hesitate to tell someone “Then you will maybe never be my

customer”. We talked to one guy who would probably never use our

service out of very legitimate reasons. Don’t get dragged into an

open discussion with someone who will not use your service. There is

nothing to gain out of having that discussion publicly in front of

everyone.

Have Fun and go to the parties. Talk to everyone at the parties and

dance, dance, dance.

Railsonfire provides Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment for Ruby code hosted on GitHub. Follow a modern day development method with regular testing & deployment in the cloud. http://railsonfire.com

Page 9: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Stress Test Your Product Name for $5

So you have your idea? You even know how to call it?

Great! Now let’s find out if people will remember the

name and spell it correctly. We combined a web

survey (eg. surveymonkey.com) with a cheap way to

get English speaking participants (Amazon’s

Mechanical Turk).

Step 1 – Setup the survey. Start with a description of

your product and mention the name. Continue with a

couple of decoy questions (can be product related,

but don’t mention the name again). Ask a free text

question “What is the name of our product? If you

don’t remember what would you google?”. Make

sure you deactivate the option to return to previous

pages, so people can’t cheat.

Step 2 – Setup Mechnical Turk and pay 100 people

$0.05 to take the survey. (More than a hundred

answers is premium on surveymonkey).

Step 3 – Profit. Analyze how many people

remembered the name and spelled it correctly.

To improve the results you can repeat the process

with different names. Don’t expect miracles these

people are rushed and non-native speakers. But the

same applies to your “prospective” users when

somebody tells them about your product.

For us this helped a lot to drop a name that was hard

to remember and spell.

Jan Mechtel @janmechtel, office productivity junky, excel wizard, founded http://veodin.com to build KeyRocket, a smart trainer for keyboard shortcuts.

Page 10: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Jump Faster. Jump Higher. “If you aren’t standing on the edge you’re definitely

taking up too much space”. This was our main belief

when we decided to start a life-long project of

building an awesome startup and we live by it every

single day.

InfluAds started with a simple but powerful vision:

There are a lot of crappy ads on the web today and

we’ll clean it up. We are an ad network where only

gorgeous, carefully designed ads are served through

carefully selected, quality sites. Ads suck and we

wanted to be the ad network for the Quality Web so

we’re focusing on promoting that quality with only

one quality, premium ad per page.

We were nuts enough to start a lot of stuff and the

need to be lean introduced another idea. What if we

ask our publishers (site owners) to help us inviting

others to join? They know about quality more than

we do, anyway. The first crowd-sourced ad network

was born and now thousands of publishers work with

us on turning our vision into reality. A lot of people

came to us saying something like “Your model is

awesome; too bad you don’t focus on Tattoos”.

Tattoos? Why not. We’re now building one with our

publishers and many other trendy topics as well. Lots

of them!

Is there something we wished we had known when

we started? It wouldn’t have been half of the fun if

we knew more stuff.

Jumping faster into your own passion and jumping

high is all that really matters, really! It’s not about

the team of ninjas... or the funds... or…

InfluAds is the Ad network for the Quality Web. We match gorgeous ads promoting quality products with quality ads and highly influential, trendy audiences.

Page 11: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Even My Mom Can Do It! Creating a video was not an easy job and not fun at all….until now.

I and our CTO Matjaz consider ourselves enthusiastic travellers and

amateur photographers. Naturally, we take lots of pictures on almost

any occasion. And for the last 10 years we’ve been creating videos

from them. Why? To me, it is simply so addictive and rewarding to

see people smiling when watching my video. And it’s so much more

powerful than just pictures.

But there is a trick. To create a video for people to smile and feel

good, it takes some effort and a LOT of time. Too many times I’ve

found myself spending whole weekends polishing one single video.

Yes, it sure looked great afterwards but I’ve discovered I simply didn’t

have the time for this anymore. After couple of months, I’ve found

out that I’m having a great amount of great memories stuck on my

hard drive. What a waste!

So, last year around this time we asked us:

Does it need to be so depressingly difficult and time consuming to

create and share a great video?

After couple of beers and some napkin sketches… we had an idea.

Why not create an on-demand video creation as a web service? But

not just any service. It has to be incredibly easy to use. We’ve set

ourselves a criteria. It has to be so easy, so our moms can use it. No

skills or any prior experience required.

So, after couple of months of research, we’ve started. We are now in

public beta just before going commercial. And I’m happy to tell you

this. Just the other day, my mom who turned 62 recently, has created

her own video using Slidemotion. 100% on her own, no looking over

shoulders!

Challenges? Many of them. Besides engaging the best enthusiastic

guys possible, challenges are appearing every day. The biggest one is

…speed. We are a small team and it’s a real challenge to o prioritize

what you do first. It’s a constant struggle between what we want to

develop and how much time do we have.

We are now live for couple of weeks and we are welcoming users to

try us out. But next big step will be mobile! Create a cool video way

on the fly in just minutes, from a sailboat in Croatia, from a mountain

cottage, the beach and basically wherever you are, payable instantly

via mobile and Facebook credits. That's where we are going. And

we’ll stick to what we said in the first place. It has to be easy so

everyone’s mom will be able to use Slidemotion.

Slidemotion makes it incredibly easy to create awesome videos from images, video clips and music in just few clicks.

Page 12: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Make Your Customers Feel at Home

Khojan is a community of boutiques across London,

when we had the idea we were very stubborn with

our approach. We felt that by providing a platform

for customers to find and shop from these stores we

wouldn’t have to focus too much on the design as it’s

not the main attraction.

Big Mistake.

Fashion is a totally different environment to usual

tech start-ups and looks are as we know now are a

crucial player when it comes to success. We made

the mistakes of not researching our customers

enough and not making sure what makes them feel

‘at home’.

By this we mean making sure they feel comfortable

with the site and design, that it’s something they’re

used to, or impressed with.

Because Khojan didn’t say ‘Fashion’, it totally gave

the wrong message to those who landed on the site.

Instead of being very professional and high end it

was very web 2.0, very rounded corners which is

something these boutiques and their customers are

certainly not.

My best advice would be to research your ideal

customer and profile them in depth. Look at what

websites they use, where they spend time online,

what are their interests, and then begin to build a

picture of how to design around that.

We are currently re-branding and the re-design is

due within the next 6 months.

Anish Hallan is cofounder of Khojan.com, passionate about technology, nature and health. Powerofchange.tumblr.com - @anishkho – [email protected]

Page 13: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Lean Seedcamping Here's some advice for a successful Seedcamp session.

1. Read 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries.

2. Figure out what change-the-world

(http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2011/10/what-i-

learned-from-steve-jobs.html) business assumptions

and hypothesis you truly have. It's just a few distinct

sentences, but take your time here; it's an iterative

brain-sharpening process, and it's supposed to take a

while.

3. Build a short presentation

(http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/re

ally_bad_powe.html) around your hypothesis. What

are your assumptions? And how do you propose to

build a business around them? The Seedcamp

experience is about learning (big ears) not about

convincing (big mouth). It's easy to become confused,

but this is not a VC pitch; your Reality Distortion Field

super powers should be checked at the door.

4. Use the Seedcamp mentoring sessions to get feedback

on your assumptions. Do the mentors think they are

valid? How can you refine them? And, most

importantly: ask the mentors to help you figure out

how you can test your assumptions quickly and with

minimal effort.

5. Listen.

6. Take notes.

7. But remember: everything you hear in a session is not

the truth. Success is out there, but only you can figure

out the path to get there.

I wish we had done the above before our sessions. :)

Best of luck!

Martin Walfisz Serial entrepreneur, game developer and gamer. Founder & CEO of Planeto http://planeto.com

Page 14: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Everything takes time… And that's okay.

You live in the same universe as everybody else. And that

universe has laws. Some of them are harder to break than

others. A lot harder. Murphy’s Law is one of them.

You're young. Excellent health, fine endurance, you don't mind

working from a sofa, living on dubious junk food diets and

putting in (very) long hours. No friction.

You're a small team. Lean, mean and fricking awesome at what

you do. You know your limits and how long it takes to get

things done. No cumbersome hierarchy to deal with, no red

tape, no complex process. No friction.

You're a startup. You're building in the cloud, advertising on

virtual platforms, selling online… Again, no friction.

So this should take exactly the minimum time required to do it,

right?

Wrong.

Even the best engines use lubricant. Even the best-built bridges

have expansion joints. Even zero-stock is close-to-zero-stock.

And for a startup, that lubricant, that joint, that "extra shot" is

time. Mostly because there's really nothing else to bank on.

Things take time, and slightly more of it than you'd expect. This

isn't because you're not doing it right. Don't be too hard on

yourself: you are young, and your team is awesome. But in

every plan, in every schedule, for every deadline, you should

have a line for the unknown s*** that will hit the fan, and you

should put a number in front of it. Not necessarily a big

number. But never, ever zero, because you do live in the same

universe as everybody else, and you don't mess with Dr

Murphy.

Gabriel and Stan, engineers and Stanford grads, cofounded teleportd in June 2011 to allow people to... teleport. More at http://teleportd.com

Page 15: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

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Page 16: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Scratch your own itch? Apparently it’s the secret to building a great web app.

Scratching an itch feels great but if you stop scratching

there’s only a brief moment of respite before it itches

some more.

How do you follow that second great mantra ‘Release

Early and Release Often’ when the itching just doesn’t

seem to stop?

We are a booking/ticketing agency for adrenalin activities.

We process bookings for over 150,000 adrenalin

enthusiasts every year and place them at partner venues.

Our business has been evolving for the last 13 years from

an event management company, venue operator, national

paintball network and finally ticketing and gift vouchers.

We built groupM8.com, to solve our own problems and

help our business become more efficient and profitable.

In so doing we built a great web app. We intimately

understood the problems and by using the app on a daily

basis to process our bookings we can evolve, develop and

improve the app continually.

The intention was always to open up groupM8 to

subscribers (activity venues and other booking agencies)

as potential subscription revenues are significant. We

have marketing campaigns and recruitment websites

ready to go and despite no real recruitment push we still

attract a trickle of trial subscribers.

So have we built a great App? Damn straight we have!

Do we Release Early and Release Often? Not so much, still

trying hard to ignore that itch

Does groupM8.com mean our core business makes more

money? Every single day.

groupM8.com is a complete solution for activity venues to publish and manage availability, enquiries and bookings whilst helping customers organize their groups of friends.

Page 17: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Your Life Should Be a Game Oust.me idea was born exactly year ago when couple of friends

meet on a beer and realized that check-in for owning places is

not enough fun. Connecting existing check-in services in one

spot and making fun of check-ins (creating territories) was our

first goal. We build a team of seven, that started to produce

game.

History

• 04.11.2010 - the idea was born

• December 2010 - planning, researching, studying

• 30.3.2011 - Oust.me private beta start

• July 2011 - registering company Teritorij d.o.o.

• 14th of July - Participation on Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana

where we were one of two winners

• 5th to 9th September 2011 - Participation in London

Seedcamp Week 2011

• 1st of October - Oust.me going live (very silent)

• 6th of October - Oust.me scoring

Future goals

• 31. November 2011 - first game OusteRisk

• December 2011 - first campaigning using Oust.me as

platform

• 2012 - continue adding games, challenges and improving

Oust.me for you to have even more fun

Advice

• Start-up life is the way of living.

• Begin your start-up if you truly believe in it and you are

prepared to sacrifice a lot of your free time. Keep in mind

that having a full day job and running a start-up is very

exhausting.

• Running start-up costs money. Getting a seed capital is

far from easy, so be prepared to open your wallet big

time.

• Stay in contact with your potential investors and inform

them often about your progress. You never know, who

will you need sometime.

• Listen to your users. Theirs feedback is worth of gold.

• Stop waiting and go for it. You only live once. Share your

idea and try to succeed with it.

Page 18: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Legendary Insights I don't have a magic formula for success or solving

problems. I do have a tip: learn from others that have

been there, done that. To be honest that's the only way.

So when you listen to people that have various opinions,

ask yourself: what experience do they have? Have they

started companies? Remember, age is just a number in

business, just like everywhere else.

When you're a lean start-up not many things are certain

and that's also an important part of the journey you have

to take. Avoid creating a corporate environment to soon,

with fixed policies and no room to move. You need to be

able to adjust quickly (changes in development, testing

new audiences). Flexibility is one of the biggest strength

as start-ups.

Working with a small budget, the difference is like night

and day compared to having a big investor behind you. As

a company with limited resources, your time is your

currency and simultaneously the most important asset for

success. Don't waste it.

An entrepreneur’s journey is a wonderful journey, but

there will be hard times. But when the tough times are

coming the tough get creative. Remember one thing:

there are no bad ideas - and with a great team you can

sculpt your venture until it’s perfect. With this advice in

mind, don't be afraid of rebranding your solution or for

that matter changing your customer group.

See you in the trenches!

SurveyLegend is the world’s first engaging picture-, video-, text- and audio-based survey app that can be integrated with a company/individual’s website, blog or social media presence.

Page 19: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

How to Pitch in the Wardrobe With all the work around selling our hosting business and

finishing our last web development projects it seemed to

us that all the info regarding Seedcamp came in the last

minute. We really didn’t have that much time to prepare

for the perfect pitch. But that’s the whole point, you

never have enough time for anything. In Seedcamp

Prague we had 3 minutes. Seriously, 3 minutes? But

technically that’s all the time you have to grab the VC’s

attention, and trust me, that’s all the time you need if you

are any good.

The point of the 3 minute pitch is to be direct, stay on

point, learn how to prioritize and say whats downright

important!

Everybody is a potential investor, client, partner, you

name it. Seriously, be alert all the time! When you go to

the “cloak room”, when you eat, when you go to the

toilet, all the time! I am dead serious! When we arrived at

the Cervo institut where main event was held, one of the

hostess told us where the cloak room was.

Shortly after me, another person entered the wardrobe,

and I started a conversation how I couldn’t remember

what a cloak room was, until I remembered playing Diablo

10 years ago, where you wore cloaks. And the guy

laughed, and commented how games can be educational.

I responded that was true, and the first time I realized

that was in high school when I was the only student to

know what “congested” meant. (English isn’t my mother

tongue). And when the teacher asked me to explain the

word and how I knew about what it meant, I explained

and said I knew this from playing Sim City 3000. So

naturally the guy laughed again. Than he asked about my

startup, and he (Thomas Preuss from VC fond Neuhaus

partners) ended up giving me his business card, and asked

to send him the info and to update him. So you see, stay

sharp!

Goran Duškić is an online marketing strategist and online business consultant. He co-founded a game development team Generation Stars 10 years ago, a web development - hosting company GEM Studio 5 years ago. He is currently co-founder of IT startup WhoAPI.

Page 20: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Talk to customers! “Seedcamp is just a factory on start-ups!” or “You

can´t get anything from just one day startup event!”

Well… we did not listen much to these and many

others opinions on Seedcamp, the early-stage seed

investment fund, and applied to Mini Seedcamp

Prague 2011, one of the start-up competition taking

place at various cities in Europe. And it was worthy –

we got support from high-profile people,

international exposure and things you might not

expect…

Some advice to the start-ups applying to Seedcamp:

People, the co-founders, are taken even more

seriously than what your start-up do. So spend a

time to make really impressive personal profiles (skill

set, mind set, career history, experience, etc…) and

easy to understand explanation why your team is the

right one for your project to become successful.

We realized that the pitch is mainly about the

SHOW. There are 20 startups one after the other…

You have to make difference to awake the crowd. So

show some story, make them laugh, make them grab

a pen and make some note for later. You need it,

because otherwise they will not want to talk to you

during the mentors sessions afterwards.

Seedcamp helped us to get international feedback,

support from marketing-oriented high profile

managers and investors and little exposure thanks to

the TechCrunch Europe blog post. Not bad for one-

day no-fee start-up event, right?

Brand Embassy helps companies to talk to customers on internet. It provides a full solution of online customer engagement to large companies. www.brandembassy.com

Page 21: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Discover New Books Our journey started at Seedcamp NY 2011 when

we’ve launched BookLikes for the very first time. It

gave us tremendous heads up.

Thanks to events like Seedcamp we’ve got a lot of

useful feedback from mentors, VCs and

entrepreneurs that practically helped us save a lot of

time and money. Here are few tips:

• focus on the user not only the product - listen

to your users because they now what they really

need;

• fight for your product every day instead of

planning releases for next 6 months - don’t get

lost in visions and focus on what should be

done today;

• monitor traction every single day - you’ll see if

you are doing it right;

• don’t stop learning - read books and not only

blogs;

• product should solve your own problem - be the

user and not just the creator;

And so after few months of hard work we did it!

TechCrunch, The Europas, Startup Week … BookLikes

was chosen as one of Europe's 50 most innovative

startups and one of The Best Social Platform or

Networking Startup.

And we’re still on the road - BookLikes is constantly

growing and successfully monetizing.

In next 12 months we are expanding to other

countries and languages.

Booklikes is a social platform for real readers who want to discover new books, organize them on their personal bookshelves, share their reading passion with their friends and find great books in best prices. http://booklikes.com

Page 22: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Tell me a story As a startup, you tell your story a lot, with every

conversation offering the opportunity to refine and

improve. And as tiring as it sometimes feels, the

repetition and picking apart of the story makes us

continually think about customers, competitors,

coding and complement. And our message is getting

better. All businesses need cash to operate. Bilbus

gives businesses visibility to work out when they will

need cash and simplifies how they will meet funding

gaps.

We realized quickly how our particular audience’s

reference point (and occupation) defined whether

eyes glazed over or lit up. To get the proverbial ‘light

bulbs’ to ping silently, we needed to find a way to

make working capital and business finance sexy.

Amidst a sea of mobile, geo-location, social media-

derived apps and tools, this was easier said than

done. Through Seedcamp, we were able to pick the

minds of some amazing people. Validation lifts the

spirit above the mountain of challenges yet to come

and makes it easier to fix the bugs.

Pitching to a large audience in 5 minutes was a

different story. Experience in the boardroom or a

mastery of product and market does not necessarily

translate to an audience-grabbing delivery. Both of us

had years of industry and business experience -

banking, treasury and financial technology.

After a few botched attempts to get it right, we got

some very good advice: simplify what you say, as if

you were explaining it to a kid. Surprisingly (to us), it

worked. No matter how good the idea or

proposition, how clear and important the problem,

getting a large number of people to understand and

realise that is hard.

Sanjeev Chhugani

www.bilbus.com

Page 23: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Machine, learn! For the last few decades we told our computers

exactly what to do and they mindlessly followed our

orders. But this relationship is about to change.

Finally our devices start to behave in ways interaction

designers have always dreamt of.

The concept of a device that just “knows” when to

do what and accomplishes tasks independently has

always been floating around the interaction design

community -- along with the realisation it wouldn’t

quite work in reality yet. But recently our devices

started to have access to interesting data (location,

calendar, your communication with others, etc) and

have become powerful enough to make sense of this

data mess.

Imagine for example a smart-phone’s music player:

Without knowing it the user actually inputs data:

Skipping songs, turning the volume up, being at a

specific location. All this tells the application a lot

about our preferences. Which songs are skipped at

which time of day in which order? For which songs

does the user adjust the volume? Is there a pattern

in geo-location, time, day and played songs?

Think of these questions as a starting point: Take a

minute and imagine where in your own product the

machine could make sense from the human’s

behaviour and how this insight could enhance the

user’s experience.

Ben Freundorfer is passionate about user experiences and co-founded http://replydone.com - a software that learns and makes smart suggestions for email replies.

Page 24: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Pivot or Die One of the most painful experiences for the

entrepreneur is the pivot: a fundamental change of

direction in the development of a product or service

based on the discovery of a new, enhanced truth. It

can be the discovery that his product is unwanted on

a market or that the opportunity window he has

been pitching for the last six months just ceased to

exist. The point is that this new truth partly or

completely distorts the current world view of the

entrepreneur which can cause intense pain and a

deep sense of regret.

In that moment, it is important for the entrepreneur

to stay true to the pivot. The accumulated knowledge

of the customer and the market up to that point is

what matters, and if the marketplace is telling him

that something is wrong then so be it. For most

entrepreneurs it is natural to value one's own

opinion above any other and to admit that one was

wrong can be highly challenging. Pivots are however

a natural part of building products and services, and

the survival and growth of them depends on the

ability of the entrepreneur to pull those pivots off.

The successful entrepreneur learns to embrace

change and program pivots as a part of his DNA. He

is humble to the voice of the marketplace and

understands that its words must stand above his own

ego at all times.

Forget servers, system administration and expensive IT bills - deploy

your websites and apps to Omnicloud and relax while our platform

makes them scalable, swift and secure.

http://omnicloudapp.com

Page 25: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Lessons for Hackers As a team of two talented hackers with intimate

knowledge of our target market Jack and I were

perfectly aware that we had all the skills one could

possibly require to launch a successful start-up. We

knew what we were going to build, why we were

going to build it, and most importantly how to build

it (in a beautifully elegant manner). So we did.

Once we were (eventually) at beta we thought it

prudent to whip up a social media frenzy; one tweet

and two facebook status updates later we sat back to

catch our breath and watch the users (and $$$) roll

in. Inexplicably this didn’t happen. Something must

have gone wrong, but what could it have been? All of

our bases were covered.

Although I’m being somewhat facetious we did learn

an awful lot in our first few months, so here follows

Globe’s Lessons for Hackers:

If you are worthy of the term hacker you do not have

the requisite skills to build a successful start-up.

Find someone that likes talking to strangers, and

another that knows how to run a business.

We know you like perfection (to the points of OCD at

times). This is your enemy.

The ‘M’ in MVP stands for “The least or smallest

amount or quantity possible, attainable, or required”.

Try not to forget.

You + social media != a marketeer.

Working 30 days in a row is not cool, and doesn’t

help. (Turns out Kent Beck was right).

Tim Sherratt is one of the co-founders of Globe, which is dragging travel blogging (kicking and screaming) into the 21st century: http://www.globev1.com

Page 26: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

The Place to Be?!? A success story is Heineken, the Dutch brewer that started in 1864 in

Amsterdam and is ranked as the third largest brewery in the world,

with an annual beer production of 139.2 million hectolitres. The

success of Heineken beer can be granted to Alfred “Freddy”

Heineken, a brewer and salesman. Just after the World War II he

went to live in New York for two years. There he was taught the

ropes of American advertising and marketing. In its green bottle, with

“export” on the label, and priced to match its suggestion of

exclusivity, it caught on in the United States and elsewhere as a beer

for special occasions.

If you want to be the best fashion designer, you go to Paris or Milano!

If you want to be the best banker, you go to London or New York! If

you want to become an actress or actor, you go to Hollywood! If you

want to start a successful and thriving start-up company, you go

where there are people just like you. Why? Because you will find the

following:

A culture of collaboration: You have to build networks! People that

understand how difficult it is to start a start-up will listen and share

their experience, they will also help where they can as they enjoy

seeing others succeed, it is magic that rubs off, which gives new

energy and momentum.

Critical mass of talent: You need to network with engineers,

marketers, investors, venture capitalists, lawyers and stakeholders

that you can share and discuss your start-up with. It is like dating you

have to find someone with the same chemistry, which you will only

find where there are people just like you.

Respect of intellectual property: You will be more at ease to share

your knowledge since you know that people are focusing on a

different scope and do not have time to copy you, but instead think

of a win-win situation.

A capacity to celebrate failure: It takes less time to find out if your

start-up is a failure since others surpass you in success. Lesson learnt-

start a new one with all the knowledge you gained from your last

start-up.

Worldwide attention: Who reads local tech blogs from a country?

Not many. The best tech blogs will be where there is action. You have

a better chance hyping your start up in a famous tech blog since the

local ones will refer to them and it will be translated into 15 different

languages!

Alexander Börve, Founder & CEO, iDoc24- Ask a dermatologist anonymously in any device 24/7. iDoc24 started in the STING (Stockholm innovation and growth) incubator in 2009 and took home first place in the Mobile Healthcare University Challenge at last year’s mHealth Summit in London. www.iDoc24.com

Page 27: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Ziv’s rules for start-up survival MyWebees is now one year in the making; we’re beating

our own forecasts with over 10,000 sites joining our

platform since Jul 13th but with every milestone reached

the next ones are looming even higher. So when

embarking the hazardous startup road with the odds

stacked high against you I’ve tried following few simple

rules that make survival just a bit easier.

Raise money fast – some VCs will tell how much they love

bootstraps; building a product on your spare time may be

a necessity but it also means you’re wasting precious time

and time is the one resource that runs out faster than

money.

Forget about valuation – an important factor if you want

to raise money fast; pre-money valuation is a fictitious

number that represents what YOU think your company is

worth; most investments will cost you 25% - 40% so

don’t waste time optimizing; if you can, raise what you

need to reach the next meaningful milestone, if you can’t,

raise what you can.

Apply selective hearing – You will mostly hear why your

idea will not work / attract customers / make money; do

talk with domain experts but remember that an expert is

a person that optimized existing process which mostly

makes him less capable of understanding and embracing

disruptions. Listen to the few who offer actionable

advises on how to overcome your challenges and simply

ignore the rest.

With point 3 in mind don’t drink your own cool-aid if

things don’t work out as planned and you think you know

how to fix them don’t hesitate making changes if you do

not know it’s probably time to move on.

Wear sunscreen.

Ziv Koren is Prime Webee @ www.MyWebees.com Start-ups veteran turned corporate VC turned entrepreneur

Page 28: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Don’t Give Up Margn took part of the Mini Seedcamp event held in

Prague October 2011. The event was amazing and

experience was memorable. It gave a lot of ideas for

developing and marketing our product.

2011 has been breaking year for us as we finally

could introduce Margn to public and do some

marketing besides coding. The whole process has

been real challenge for the team, as it took more

than one and half a year to go live. But now it seems,

although we made our first revenue one month ago,

that it has been worth of all the effort! We already

feel that we have done something that makes the

World better place, including the part that nobody

currently likes: accounting.

If you think you have a good idea then start working

with it. Do some market research and put a lot of

effort on finding the perfect people around you for

your journey. Always try and if you fail, don’t give up.

Instead remember what T. A. Edisson said: “Genius is

one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent

perspiration.” We have perspired a lot, but the

journey has been really fun. It is worth living in the

World of start-ups!

Margn is super simple online accounting software for small

organisations.

Page 29: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Wait no more! “Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t

yet dramatically transformed, it will”

- Chris Dixon

What are you waiting for? For the idea? For the charitable

investor? For the time when you have “time to focus”? Waiting

to get some magical insight on information that would give you

a competitive advantage?

The harsh truth is that by reading this you are most likely

wasting your time. You should be out there getting this

information yourself - everything cannot be put into words. Do

or Die.

But on the positive note – by reading this you are already more

likely to succeed! The simple fact, the simple step that you took

by obtaining this e-book and reading it, gets you a step closer

to #winning

On average, I read 600 articles, blog posts, e-book pages, etc.

per day, but what got me to the writing side of the spectrum,

was the step to actually do something. It was stepping out of

my comfort zone and taking action!

I did it without any special or highly relevant technological

expertise or connections or education, but rather by disrupting

my comfort zone and going all in with the acceptance of

learning from my #fail’s and having the determination to go on

regardless.

I am 22. I dropped out of college, I have never written a CV, I

am currently at a startup garage, sleeping on the floor and

reading an article about my startup – Qminderapp.com – in

The Wall Street Journal, shared on Facebook by the President

of Estonia. A startup eliminating waiting.

The thing I wish I had known before I started is the knowledge

that I could have started sooner. I already had what it takes -

and by reading this e-book it is more than likely that so do you!

Don’t get me wrong - doing a startup is hard work, but not

because of the reasons most of you expect it to be!

Wait no more and find out for yourself!

Page 30: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Upwardly mobile? Ok, let’s start with the thing we wished we known at the

start. Actually, we did know it. Everybody knows it. We

just didn’t know it:

Less is more. Be specific. Build a niche. Narrow your

focus.

Call it what you want. We didn’t do it, not at the start

anyway.

Why was it important? Well, trying to develop an

application that everybody could use meant:

• we were slower than we should have been • the app we were developing was less simple than it

should have been • we were spending way too much energy on stuff we

shouldn’t

And it wasn’t working for us.

But the plus side, I guess, was that it took all that

slowness, over-complication and wasted energy for the

message to really hit home. And when it did, we could

begin to strip back everything the app didn’t need. And

then focus fully on the stuff it did need.

So we refocused our app (Sylphone) on its original goal –

to make sales calling fast, easy and efficient. And we set

the app to integrate by default to just one CRM – the

most popular and fastest growing.

This meant we were also able to position our app within

the Salesforce.com sphere, get access to appexchange

(their app marketplace), etc.

Our big challenge over the next year is going to be very

much a customer-focusing one. The shift will be away

from development and onto getting our customer

interactions right. Scary.

Sylpheo makes apps that make business – customer relations better. More calls + better data gathering + less sales admin + more up-to-date CRM = more sales. www.sylpheo.com

Page 31: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Be Passionate and Dream! Universator is a real company with 9 employees right

now but it took us more than year from the first

thought to build it up.

To make a decision of leaving all other activities aside

(school, other work) is a real challenge. But once

there is some project you are really passionate

about, you have strong intention to do something

useful and if there is a big need for a change, go for

it! You will enjoy working on something which makes

sense to you.

Our first tip is to not forget to find others who will

follow you, help you and support you in tough times

that will come.

We have just started and we have big plans: to be

the first to help people find their education

anywhere in the world, to bring the biggest added

value to our users. We want to change the whole

process of finding higher education abroad, help

people in a new social environment when studying

abroad. We would also like to help poor people to

get top education thanks to online courses and our

support in the future. We think we can do it, we

need to start and step by step make others believe in

it as we do, so they help us.

Our second tip is: find where your strengths,

passions and opportunities cross each other and you

will find something that you will love working on.

Dream big, go for it, don't let others stop you!

Universator is a global project with a mission to help international

students with their life decision of choosing the right university.

www.universator.com

Page 32: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Enjoy the ride! Nothing is permanent, except change. For us that

meant getting ride of our beloved name egoarchive

and shift to archify.

There are no “markets” anymore - there is really just

only one big market. However in our case the cultural

differences of the various “regions” do matter.

Especially since our home “market” Austria and the

next logical bigger one, Germany, are more

challenging to conquer for our product due several

reasons. Not just by the missing openness of the

culture itself but also by the surroundings and the

certain mindsets. Be aware of time wasters, people

with a blinkered view and those who just talk and not

listen. The solution is to move on, literally. The

quicker the better. We got out of Austria and got a

really great international network to begin with.

Be analytical (rely on stats, the feedback-loops ...) as

well as relentlessly self-critical, identify your

weaknesses and make sure you have great team

member(s) who can compensate those - so you enjoy

wandering through the exciting so-called Valley of

Darkness with a half smile of confidence.

The rules: you need an awesome team & you have to

deliver. Besides that rules - there are no rules.

Remember, the future’s so bright, we gotta wear

shades.

Team egoArchive - aka archify Gerald @geraldbaeck, Max @karli & Walter @vavoida http://egoarchive.com - your memory in the cloud aka http://archify.com - making search personal again

Page 33: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Planning Global? Start Local A beautiful evening on a snow-white 31st December 2008; the CHAKKR team, a group

of expat friends, got together to celebrate New Year. But the mood was not the best as

they were missing their families abroad, and their Christmas gifts had not yet reached

them. Because of the heavy season, many national and international parcel deliveries

were getting delayed.

The start – Global Big-Bang

We found a solution which we thought was unique and useful for millions like us

worldwide → an online travel-courier community where people can help each other to

send and take parcels, especially on international level. That was CHAKKR; first

launched to public during next Christmas night, in 2009.

The first kick – World is BIG and not everyone's the same

We started getting kicks on butt within a few days after the first launch. Not a lot of

traffic (only 300 users in 3 months, for a FREE community platform); no “viral effect”

among expats contrary to what we had expected; CHAKKR user-distribution was

almost like a random spread of 300 dots around the globe; and most of all more

“negative” approach and negative publicity → it was a platform quite open for mis-

use. The exercise turned out to be the first eye-opener → we were not the FIRST one

who tried this model; many had seen this before and view it is a high risk solution.

The change – Localize and Monetize

We were emotionally attached with the “international” aspect of CHAKKR, as it could

really solve the problems we (as expats) had, if it could build the volume and

international networks. But soon after the first kicks we got, we had to find and work-

out ways to make the platform more practical and profitable. The solution was clear;

focus on “safe-zones” → convert CHAKKR from an international “community” to a

regional “courier market-place”, where we connect customers with local/national

couriers. On another cold and snowy Christmas night in 2010, we launched a revised

version of CHAKKR → a commercial courier marketplace; focused on our “safe”

region→ EU.

The second kick – Local is not BIG

We had a nice ride with the online courier-marketplace → in 6 months, we could

facilitate over 1000 deals between customers and couriers in Germany. We thought

we were doing great, and as the bootstrapping cash was almost getting over, we

decided to start a fund-raising round for “smart money”. It was a privilege to get

selected for Mini Seedcamp Prague 2011; but the event really made us think a lot. The

mentors made us really sweat and gifted us with sleepless nights about the flaws in

our business-model and distribution strategy, with optimization suggestions and

potential partnerships.

The second change – Partnerships are keys to the treasures

We got a lot of VC contacts and potential “partner contacts” from Seedcamp. We knew

we were in the radar. We sensed a common tone → “You guys are doing good, but

small. If you want us, show us something BIG; we want to invest a LOT of money → but

show us a BIG vision”. A phone-call with the legendary business angel Morten Lund

really gave us concrete ways to go. We are now making our platform BIG, by opening

up our courier-capacity-matching engine for online shops and marketplaces for use, as

a shipping-solution (SaaS) to their customers. This helps and “saves” us of the

Himalayan task of end-customer oriented marketing, and simply slip-in into the

existing markets which others have created. → easy money, and potentially easy exit.

VC's are knocking on the door now, and we hope to be ready and useful for many

people during Christmas 2011.

CHAKKR is “Shipment 2.0”; it’s a smart way to transport what is bought and sold online, through couriers already on the road, with half-empty trucks.

Page 34: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Customers know it better Here at PressLabs we are a team of three software

developers, dealing with WordPress in the past four

years. Starting late 2009 we entered the hosting

business as our development customers asked for a

reliable hosting service and we couldn't recommend

any at that time.

Since then everything we did for this service was

challenging, really challenging. Going from one

customer to two, then to three and so on, meant a

huge learning curve for us. We realized quite fast

that every customer is unique and we learned a

bunch of stuff with every new customer.

Our key learning for 2011 is that customers tell you

what to do, so GET CUSTOMERS from day one and

then tune your product according to what they need.

There is a huge waste of time planning features that

maybe nobody will ever use. Besides that, you get

frustrated for not getting real results and this can

tear apart the team. Get customers' feedback,

prioritize their needs, focus on one feature at a time

and then your startup will rock.

A second thing we'd recommend is to get out there.

Go outside your city, your country or even your

continent. Go to events and meet other people face-

to-face. Discuss your project with them. Only saying

what you do can lead to new ideas for improving

your product. Get feedback, share thoughts, follow-

up and good stuff will come out of it.

So stop creating the perfect product and get

customers tell you what they want!

PressLabs is a white-glove WordPress hosting provider, targeting professional publishers and large sites that need heavy optimization. We focus on getting the best possible performance out of a WordPress site.

Page 35: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Seedcamp Saved us 6 Months Time is the most valuable commodity when running

a start up. Wasting time on the wrong product

feature, marketing strategy, target sector, can be the

difference between momentum and luck or a slow

death.

Without external mentoring or validation it can be

lonely and even dangerous. Group think? Feature

Creep? Customer Closeness? What problem are we

solving again…? Maybe your team knows but can you

communicate it in one tweet to the rest of the

world? That was the value of Seedcamp to frooly.

Like a baptism of fire, Seedcamp was 6-12 months of

learning in a day and half. Where else can you pitch,

be mentored and given direct feedback from tech

industry A listers? – People who really know how to

get things done.

Frooly is trying to save choice on the high street – a

social commerce marketplace, loyalty facebook app

and self serve, simple online shops to you and me.

Pitching at Seedcamp helped refocus our feature

set/development list, simplify the language we used

to help connect better with our audience

(independent retailers/mostly female shoppers, who

don’t use tech language) and most importantly

decide what not to do.

Since Seedcamp, our marketplace has grown rapidly,

our social loyalty app is coming soon and we’re

excited by the future.

And after much discussion, here is frooly in a tweet:

“Earn money by shopping with Britain’s best luxury

and unique sellers”

What’s yours?

Frooly is an award winning online marketplace for Britain’s best luxury and unique sellers.

Page 36: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

1000 Mile Run! If you ask a successful entrepreneur, what made his

startup a success or if you ask an investor, what is he

looking for to invest in, you will always get the same

answer: TEAM.

The more often one hears it, the more shallow and

fake it seems. Nobody would invest into a great team

with a very limited market potential! And nobody

would care about a big business opportunity, if the

team does not have the right passion, commitment

and skills to exploit that opportunity properly.

What one needs to understand is that there are

several types of passion, commitment and skills that

need to prosper in the right team. It is one thing to

have enough passion to start working together on an

idea or enough commitment to quit a job and invest

all available time into that idea. High on “first-weeks-

adrenaline” this is quite easy compared to the

challenges that lay ahead.

It is all about the passion, commitment and skills you

show after a few months or years, when not

everything has turned out as planned and you need

to admit that not every decision taken was the right

one. It is that special thing, that after all the

setbacks, still makes you believe in what you have

started together and in each other. A startup seldom

is a sprint, but very often a 1000 mile run, which you

can only finish together! Therefore TEAM is the only

correct answers to all those questions.

finderly.com is a social shopping service for helping buyers find the right product with custom advice from people they trust.

Page 37: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Ruti Said Yes! When I was two years old, I spent the summer in the

US with my family in Baltimore. Now two-year-olds

the world over are famous for saying “No” at every

opportunity. And I was certainly no different.

Naturally, when my grandmother tried to stop me

from climbing a ladder for the "big kids" at the

playground, I ignored her. My grandmother, horrified,

shouted: "No! Ruti, no!"

I kept climbing all the way up to the top. A 14-year-

old had to help me down.

My grandmother (a child psychologist, by the way)

was convinced that I did not understand English. Why

else would I have ignored her? I did grow up in Israel

after all.

When we got back home, she told my mother about

my dangerous endeavor in the playground. I

immediately exclaimed: "Savta said ‘No!’ but Ruti

said ‘Yes!’". Obviously it was not a language barrier.

This past year I had to go through many changes and

hurdles in my startup. There was a big transition to

MadDate.com. I've encountered many people

shouting “No” throughout the process. But, as when

I was a toddler, I said 'Yes'!

Because no matter what others say, a true

entrepreneur says 'Yes'!

Ruti Polachek, Named Promising Young Entrepreneur (TheMarker Magazine), Chairman & Founder of the Hebrew University entrepreneurship club; Selected in TLV's Seedcamp as Founder and CEO of Flakkes; former Lehman Brothers Banker; Equities Trader; Secretary General of National Youth Group; Brown University Entrepreneurship Program Scholar; Economics Summa Cum Laude BA. maddate.com

Page 38: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Positively Brutal It’s all about the feedback. The easiest thing you can

do as an entrepreneur is to think of an idea and

develop it. The comfort of progressing through the

development of your own idea, even with some

customer traction is deceiving. A far more difficult,

but worthwhile experience is to expose your idea to

a brutal reality check. That was mini-seedcamp 2011

for me.

The mentors, ranging from VC’s, to successful

entrepreneurs, from marketing gurus to business

leaders all contributed. “We won’t invest in a single

person, don’t you have any friends?” stated the VCs.

“We tried live chat in our business but all we got was

time-wasters - how do you know it works?” claimed

the business leaders. “Who is your target audience?”

asked the marketing experts as they fired a barrage

of questions trying to understand the product and its

intended use.

Those questions rang in my head as I left the UCL

building at the end of a long day. Working through

them lead me to rethink the product and the

business proposition, the result of which is UserPulse

aka ‘Live Chat without the Time Wasters’.

We won a Technology Strategy Board grant to

develop the product that reduces the need for an

army of sales support agents by qualifying website

visitors in real-time, enabling agents to focus on

converting the best prospects.

Now I’m working through one type of feedback even

more brutal than Seedcamp; that of our 4000

customers as they respond to our lean startup

validation experiments

With a background in Computer Science, and an M.B.A., Adi spent many years building great software and successfully engaging with customers.

Page 39: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Make something happen. We need your help. Post this, email it, tweet it. Spread it freely. But please don’t sell this content or change any of the entries.

Page 40: Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

Credits

Photography (CC license):

• Tony Armstrong http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonyarmstrong/5246637459/

• Bindaas Madhavi http://www.flickr.com/photos/mkuram/3610488258/

• Aaron Brown http://www.flickr.com/photos/dietpoison/133957015/

Start-up Now was conceived by Mark Bower and the team at CubeSocial, and authored by the talented start-up teams that took part in Seedcamp during 2011.

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