Archive

Archive for March, 2011

Chaos in my work – another challenge before me and how I plan to tackle it

March 24th, 2011 No comments

I want to share a bit personal information regarding my everyday’s problems while completing tasks as a CEO of SaveUp. To be able to explain certain phenomenon I must tell you shortly about a change that has taken place. Starting with SaveUp we had only people working on technology (one team). Back then the main goals and challenges we had before us were: get organized, obtain equipment, define priorities and start building software (not to mention problems of leaking toilet or faucet). Feeling pressure from the investor and having established goals with them we wanted to get organized the best we could.Today the situation looks a bit different. Apart from technology squad, in SaveUp’s team we have people working on relations with our partners, people working on SEM, SEO and buzz marketing. We increased number of people working with great commitment on SaveUp’s success. Other things that have changed recently:- We have first imperfect version of SaveUp in AppStore (presently books, we’ll have broader assortment of products),

- We have over 30 partners working with us (mainly e-stores), providing hundreds of thousands of products and price offers,

- We had an enormous pleasure to appear on the following portals: www.gazeta.pl, www.antyweb.pl and  www.tech.wp.pl,

- We launched SaveUp Ninja program, which purpose is to cooperate closely with several people we are getting involved in product development,

- We receive inquiries about possibility of using our technology in scanning number plates, billboards, library books and other strange cool things,

- And the most beautiful thing. We have the database of users with whom I want to make a direct contact (if you are the user reveal yourself by writing to me or signing up to our   newsletter).

Of course a way to success we dream about is still loooong and full of uncertainties and questions. All these abovementioned issues make my inbox grow bigger, I am losing individual contact with the team (sometime ago we all used to play poker together, we spoke together – today it is difficult in a form I would like it to be), I must brutally define what I want to do and what I don’t want to do, I have to care about my private time in a more brutal way. I love to read posts, blogs, tweets – I find comfort and inspiration in them and they stimulate my creativity. I thought that a lot of you have the same challenges and tasks. You probably have the same dilemmas, same mountains to climb, therefore this is how I plan to tackle it (I want to share it with you):

- everyday ritual of getting up at  6:00 a.m. allows me to read posts quietly (before most of the people get up and start their computers),

- avoid answering emails all the time

- discipline of answering 3 times a day (in the morning, at noon, and in the evening),

- better and more effective use of skype and telephone in order not to carry on fast, interrupted conversations which give you only a lot of misunderstanding (plan time slots for conversations in order to discuss important subjects calmly),

- use priority inbox in Gmail even better  (select emails),

- use Google calendar in even more consistent way,- if during meeting there are millions of ideas that come to your head, write them down in Evernote, so you can browse them through later.- jog and use the gym on a regular basis (it’s amazing how these clear the head from stress),

- talk to people more, dedicate time to direct communication with members of the SaveUp’s and Saveup, SaveUpNinjas team and the users.I wanted this post to be valuable by showing ideas how to overcome chaos during the day. I think some of them are well-chosen  And they will act giving us better future.

Categories: Start up - CEE, Poland vs USA Tags: , , , ,

Talent vs location – no matter where you work

March 21st, 2011 No comments

I wonder sometimes if I don’t write my posts in too straightforward and firm way. I don’t want them to sound like 23 rules of marketing, or 45 rules of negotiations. Please bear in mind that what I write here are conclusions, thoughts, and experiences from comparisons and observations which come to my head after having spent time in USA and lead startups in Europe.

I sense such a great value in organizing startup’s biology around talent. What is talent in startup? Talent is a set of knowledge and attitudes. Knowledge is an ability to develop code, write texts, record films, SEO and SEM. Attitude is a willingness, energy, ability and desire for action and taking up issues. Attitude is a certain aura of human brain which perceives challenges and possibilities instead of blockades and holes. Such attitude allows individual to see holes but to focus not on their depth, rather on ways of building a footbridge over a hole. Attitude x [product] knowledge equals the power of action. In my opinion it is exactly the talent around which startup should concentrate.In our beautiful country full of opportunities, venture capitals, investment funds and European    funds I notice certain possibility of accomplishing extraordinary results. In our cultural specificity we don’t assume high mobility in my view. It is rather difficult than easy for us to leave places we are attached to. It is of course only my subjective assumption.  According to that notion however startups from Szczecin (polish city) have offices in Szczecin and startups from Poznań (polish city) have offices in Poznań. It is not my purpose of course to criticize such situation. However I would like to emphasize the fact that startup should focus around talents. That means it is necessary to search for talents out of the comfort zone, i.e. local area. Talent must be the purpose, not the location. Then we invest our recruitment effort in potential value of high return on investment. Loose structure of startup is a natural consequence of this action.

That implies a few necessary aspects:

  • working by using skype, twitter, facebook
  • having the ability to motivate talented employees scattered geographically (Poznań, Warszawa, Rzeszów etc.),
  • searching for office space or other premises in different location (financial costs, time costs, business travels),
  • working through skype amongst the people from various locations and various time zones.

Flexibility is amazing if it’s supported by regularity and consistence. Building infrastructure which can run talents is challenging. Having offices in different cities, which bring together these appropriate persons who are members of our startup, shows our flexibility. On the other hand, motivating these people, communicating with them, helping them at work, assisting them by other people from different locations, requires regularity and consistence (common calendars, managing appointments and deadlines). I think that recruiting people to startups based on criteria of talent, not location is a first, substantial step to building company’s value at its bottom. It excludes of course hiring cousins and sisters, good friends and close acquaintances unless these are our talents.

Categories: Start up - CEE, Poland vs USA Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Startup – hard to kill – last part

March 17th, 2011 No comments
Referring to my yesterday’s post:
I’d like to share with you a few ways of cutting costs in startup companies which I learned from my experience:
- Search for office space offered by WAM (Wojskowa Agencja Mieszkaniowa – Military Housing Agency, famous in post soviet countries), universities, institutes. Search for premises for your startup away from glass high-rise buildings in the first place. Most of these places are of poor quality but perseverance pays off and it is possible to find something comfortable for 30% of regular price. Make sure though that your people accept the place. Invest your money in a glass skyscraper office only as a last resort. Offices in such buildings have two essential flaws – they are not associated with startup but rather with corporate suits, they do not have parking spaces (or when they do, it is expensive)
- Don’t spend great sums of money on your company’s website (as well as business cards and letterhead). Remember that the costs incurred on amazing website will not pay off. Make it light in the first place, so you could easily modify it and experiment with its usability. Most of all take care of the metrics and test you website performance.
- Use WizzAir and Ryanair airlines in your global strategy. It is amazing what low-cost airlines have done in Europe. Last week I bought a ticket to London for June for 10 EUR. I don’t have an appointment scheduled for that date just yet. However with present possibilities of Facebook and LinkedIn it is no problem at all to turn a weekend excursion into 2 or 3 meetings with people worth getting to know.
- Don’t spend too much money on office supplies. Mousepads, copybooks, stencils, pens are nowadays distributed for free as well as pendrives. And I don’t mean the savings these actions will bring. I’m thinking about the culture it is building in the company and how it affects the environment. One (out of many) of drawbacks of capitalism is that we purchase unnecessary goods. We pollute environment with it. Building up thrifty culture does not mean company’s low quality. Therefore it is not the point to buy no name server instead of HP. It is about realizing what exactly we expect from the server while buying HP, prepare our requirements and purchase such parameters we actually want. Such thinking starts at the level of purchasing office supplies.
- As a CEO use trains and city’s public transportation. You can invest time, saved during travelling, in work, building users’ database and relations with the media. In my opinion such thinking gives you the advantage over time and costs for it reduces idle time spent behind the wheel to minimum.
Categories: Start up - CEE, Poland vs USA Tags: , , , ,

Startup – hard to kill

March 16th, 2011 No comments
Latest readings of many various posts, tweets and also my own everyday’s experiences brought up some thoughts in my head about building startup. To be more specific it evoked thoughts in response to a question: “What should be done to efficiently perform the turn in case of a failure/problems? Changing product? Changing operational strategy? Or maybe only product’s functionality?” Thinking loosely I came to the conclusion that if I needed something like this, the hypothetical turn would be much easier if the costs of a change were relatively low. And I don’t mean only financial costs but also emotional, organizational, costs of marketing and development.
Looking at my own startup experiences in Poland I notice essential differences between these and what I could observe and learn in USA. I will not compare them now, I’ll focus only on a few elements which, in my opinion, are fundamental while building “hard to kill” startup. By “hard to kill” I mean such an organizational form (kind of organized group, non-criminal) which can relatively easily perform turns (so-called pivots) and at the same time it is able to deliver substantial value and fast growth.
First element crucial in forming and developing startup is an outstanding motivation of a team. Excitement of creating something new and advanced from technological and marketing perspective allows to achieve high value in relatively short period of time. In my SaveUp team I observe something I could only read about in books before, hoping I will be able to experience it one day. And I don’t mean subjective assessment of SaveUp’s attractiveness as a firm. I mean passion, excitement and this spark in the eye which appears in the eyes of the team members who face another challenge regarding image recognition technology. Fueling this excitement by startup’s board is an absolutely key element if building a „hard to kill” organization is the purpose. I understand the „kill” in this case as fading energy in the company and moving on to the state of boredom, discouragement and indifference.
Another element is focusing on young people during recruitment process. They should be admitted to work in startups on regular basis. Young people are in most cases still students and the students are not cheap contrary to the common opinion. Time, which should be dedicated to them to teach them how to function in startup processes, use e.g. scrum methodology and work as a team, is relatively long. It requires quite some energy and engagement from all the people. What can you get in return? You get certain element, which I was completely not aware of before. Excitement of these young people with new technologies they happen to work out (in our case these are very advanced indices of image search, image comparison) often reaches fever pitch. Such high level of positive energy is passed on other team members with a great fluency, it has an influence on everybody and entails startup culture which is difficult to suppress. Of course not only students guarantee this “hard to suppress” energy, however I’d like to draw your attention especially to them.
Building company in the world of uncertainty (certainly one of the things startups face on everyday basis is uncertainty) it is worth remembering to cut costs. I’ll write more about it in my next post.
Categories: Start up - CEE, Poland vs USA Tags: , , , ,

Helsinki, Startup meeting, mobile camp

March 2nd, 2011 1 comment

I have just come back from the weekend’s excursion to the capital of beautiful and freezing Finland. I decided to take this trip in order to search for ways of SaveUp’s development. I have to admit that this was well-invested time thanks to Mobile Dev Camp event. Agenda was filled with issues regarding solely mobile technologies and divided into strictly technological parts as well as parts dedicated to business matters in this field.

I was definitely interested in the business part during which there was a discussion on matters concerning market development but first of all there were presentations by Angry Birds and Wooden Labirinth. Elias Pietila had a very interesting presentation about his failure with monetization of game Wooden Labirinth. In my opinion presentations given by speakers who talk about what did not go well and what did not bring sufficient return on investment are the most interesting (I’d like to encourage Polish camps to include such confessions. It is good when every such presentation has particular structure showing the face of a failure. If you want I can pass on the knowledge).

I had an opportunity to speak to Ville Heijari, who is the co-author of Angry Birds. And here is an interesting fact: Angry Birds sold 2 million plush mascots of these angry birds – don’t forget that every mascot is worth around 15 USD. Ville spoke about conquering Finnish and Swedish App Store and also about so-called App Store tax and plans of making the animated movie Angry Birds. We debated for more than 30 minutes about the problem of crossing the borders of such small country as Finland, as far as population is concerned. I have a lot of respect for actions and determination of Angry Birds’ team.

The event created opportunity to talk to persons who run Arctic Startup and interesting was the presence of the reporter from Bloomberg TV who, as she said “was sent here because of high startup activity in Finland”. I tried to convince the lady from Bloomberg that there is a lot more going on in the country on the Vistula river regarding startup business, and the market is ten times bigger than the one in Finland. I hope Bloomberg will take up the subject.

One of the discussions during the meeting touched upon the future of alliance between Nokia and Microsoft. Nokia representatives were convincing the audience that at the end of the year entirely new smartphones, which enter the market, will show a new quality. Nokia hopes to rebound and is getting ready boldly to attack Apple and Android. I also would like to mention BADA system (made by Samsung) which was presented by its developer during the camp. In my opinion it is still not a solution which is gaining a lot of fans. I’m not able to say more because the presenter, Manfred BortenShlager, spoke mainly to developers, therefore I didn’t understand much of this technological message.

Categories: Start up - CEE, Poland vs USA Tags: , , ,