startup – my passion for startup and my experience in Poland vs USA

It was great time recently. Our photo recognition technology found some attention in peoples minds. I must say as being pride that we were chosen to top 10 startups during startupweek2011 in Vienna. We were showing up our photo recognition technology in San Francisco and some really cool Polish newspapers and web pages mentioned us.

Sometimes you feel that things are really cool. Technology got traction, VCs pay attention, people write about your staff. This is such a great feeling which takes you up to the sky. Gives energy.

Startup life is great, it opens a box o surprises (probably the same forest gump had) and it shows that so many things are possible when you in enterprenuership mode.

So sometimes it is hard to wait for the surprise but it will come !

I am watching crisis around us, watchin’ Polish politicans fighting for their next 4 years life. I am looking at Polish flag waving. I can see so many great startups around me, so many smart people, smarter than I am, than I can even imagine. I can see investors watching pitches but admitting that not having time for insight. All of these surround me. In spite of all that stuff around me I must say I am so lucky to be inside entrepreneurship world.

I need to admit that startups showed me what I love. Being in this chaos world I realized what is best for me as a human-being. Entrepreneurship shows what are my strengths and where my weaknesses are rooted. This is so obvious that I can’t cheat myself. So much self development insight from my life.

I feel in love in sales and marketing. This year I realized what is it. How it works. After all these years, startups gave me the best advice how to love sales and marketing. Startup should sell. This is healthy money.

There are no boring days when you entrepreneur, no back scratching and beer drinking with remote control in your hands.

I must say, I don’t know why I wrote all of this but I feel I have to….

Once a week I spend 30 minutes with SaveUp user. We launch Skype or Googles Hangouts, have coffee and talk. BTW if you are SaveUp user let me know, let’s talk.

These conversation gave me a picture of SaveUp usage. Where, in what situations, SaveUp users buy books:

- in friends’ house – they see a interesting product, take picture and buy this item straight from smartphone

- reading magazines they see products recommendations and they realize they like it and they want the book, they grab smartphone, and buy what they want

- in restroom – they use simple text search option and put several books into basket. They buy many items but pay only one delivery fee

- finally they buy things sitting in the car, in the traffic jam  - how? they listen to the radio and get to know that someting new is on the market. They use SaveUp to search for it…….

The day we were preparing for during the whole year has finally come – money collection for the next periods of operation. iTraff Technology Ltd, the producer and the owner of the image recognition technology and at the same time the owner of application SaveUp, has started its journey to acquire capital. Sounds pompous, but it is a very big challenge for us. We combine our brains in the company and focus them towards this direction.

We started this concentration on establishing relations with investors and acquiring capital with departure for TechCrunch. I am (sitting on a plane at the moment) heading to Amsterdam for CapitalOnStage.com . We will also attend startupweek2011.com and InvestorsDay . We were picked to participate in all these events by chapters which found our product interesting and of great business potential.
Then we set out on a journey into the unknown, onto the path of questions and answers, discussions and conversations, negotiations and poker faces. We depart to convince the potential investors we are worth to invest in. Like Christopher Columbus (first startup man in the world) we set sail …

iTraff Technology team, outstanding and amazing:
- image processing engineers,
- account managers, people taking care of the relationships with our 50 partners
- PR, Marketing and SEO people
…. has developed technology of image recognition for over a year.

SaveUp is mobile application for spontaneous shopping. Buy your favorite products whenever you are! We believe that people want to buy products right here, right now. Spontaneous decisions rocks the world. We want people to buy what they see right here, right now. Because of image recognition technology you may purchase products displayed on printed ads, billboards etc.. Every printed or displayed product information can lead directly to a purchase. You can make shopping everywhere now!

At the same time, for months we have been receiving inquiries from advertising agencies, manufacturing companies pharmaceutical companies, companies which produce and distribute alcohols and also internet stores – these companies want to use our technology in their applications. There are also talks with those companies which would like to replace QR codes with image recognition. This is our strength – demand has found us.

Analyzing queries from abovementioned companies, as the SaveUp owner after analyzing opinions of hundreds of users we want to give the investors possibility to acquire shares in the company, which:
- is the owner of the image recognition technology;
- owns the application SaveUp, which we will introduce into German and UK markets (localized applications);
- will be installing build-up image recognition technology in applications of other companies/developers/mobile applications producers. We want to give the others possibility to use our technology.

Today, like never before, we need you to keep your fingers crossed. We dream about becoming a global company, we want to show to the world the project conceived and developed in Poland. We want to attract the eyes of the biggest companies in the world to Poland. We want to visit these companies wearing white and red t-shirt with SaveUp logo on it.
Please keep your fingers crossed and have a drink or beer for good luck. Your feedback and support is priceless.

“I read it somewhere once (I’m not so smart to make it up), but I can’t remember where. After these few years of startup life this is the truth. How does a brain of an entrepreneur work dealing with something so dispersed and chaotic as startup? The brain works like this:

1. Defines goal – with a burst of energy, faith in oneself, hallucinations and delusion it makes up a purpose. Damn right. I’ll do it, no matter what! Brain thinks out a goal because there is no adrenaline without it.

2. He gets up in the morning and pursues this goal. Startup man with a wording “Made of steel” engraved on his shoulder follows the dream drinking his own adrenaline. He is motivated!

3. He picks up the phone, let’s say from the president of a big advertising agency and he hears – you have some company with some program or application, don’t you? I would like to use your application to conduct action X”

SURPRISE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Startup man has a purpose situated at Y and then there is this damn CEO wanting to do X! F$%#…… it is not the way he wanted it. There is a question growing like a mushroom:

Do it or screw it !

After all these years I can see big DO IT if only this action brings a few cents of startup’s value. Press it, model it, but don’t give up. Startup man travels from island to island, does not follow a goal on a straight path because he can’t afford it. Corporate people can afford acquisitions worth billions of dollars to straighten up the line to the goal. Startup man strives in a twisted way. He jumps from an island to an island not to drown. So gather your scattered deals, but straighten them into your visions. Cling to a subject and push it towards your vision. Unless you feel that an island is distant from the other island by gallons of energy drinks. Between leaps from island to island the fuel is burned (the wealthy’s money, VCs, BAs). This consciousness sharpens sense of choice of what is valuable. So take it easy, don’t worry, under stress of burning money your brain will choose right islands for you. Automatically, ha! Therefore negotiate, talk, ask and try to use your chance if it’s a boletus !!!????

Get hold of a boletus, pass by a toadstool

There are less boletuses than toadstools in the forest. Startup man with a vision searches for people sharing vision with him. Coca Cola does not search for them for it sucks in tons of golden bars. Startup man searches for people sharing vision with him. Islands, which he can cling to offering them value. He develops this island and then he jumps to another one. From one man sharing vision with him he follows to another one. He searches for allies. Boletuses don’t occur as often as toadstools. Toadstools should not be picked up. They should be passed by and moved away. 

Google products started to make me crazy and broke my thinking process which is correct. It flip up my status quo.

1. iPhone, iPad, iPod

My iPhone experience is great. I had all iPhone phones, 3G, 3GS, 4 and I will get 5 for sure. The same time I got Android tablet and I was hit by something amazing. All these sharing features, contacts update, pause in making movies, all share options with Samsung TVs. Damn this is cool. All of these make me think warmly about Android. Limits and narrow options implemented by Steve Jobs are annoying and make me feel a little “prisoner”. Moreover Kindle example or NYT fee rules, these 2 examples give motivation to move into freedom zone which is Android.

2. Google +

This is a first day when I thought about moving out of Facebook. There is only one THING (capitals purposely) keeps me there – friends. A lot of them I met f2f, a lot are net friends. All I know is that Facebook doesn’t have any specific feature which is cool. I know I am hard on them and shouldn’t be, but I think Google plus gave us fresh air. Somehow Facebook is old school stuff. Somehow. The most important thing is that Google plus is deeply drowned into Google ecosystem: google contacts, gmail, you tube, picassa….like that !

3. Summing up

I am watching my brain floating into google fields….. will it be google fields forever?

This is guest post made by Rokas Tamošiūnas, Managing Director of accelerator based in Vilnius.

The StartupHighway program is a great opportunity for startups to get up to quick start . The program will take place in Vilnius (Lithuania), a city which has all the necessary infrastructure for tech-businesses and is a fairly cheap place to live in (with 500EUR/month you can sustain a good living). Teams selected to participate in StartupHighway will also receive a lot of help with relocating to Lithuania and with all visa issues.

StartupHighway is 13 week business acceleration program for businesses that want to expand globally. All participants will receive up to 14.000 EUR in funding, business advice from an international network of over 70 international mentors and access to essential resources for starting up (such as office space, hosting, legal advice, etc.). Applicants can vary from a very early stage start-up to a profitable business. StartupHighway will end with two investor days (one in Lithuania, another one in one of Europe’s VC capitals), where teams would present their start-ups to some of the most prominent early-stage start-up investors in Europe.

No business plan is needed to apply to the program, startups just need to fill in a 20 question online questionnaire (http://startuphighway.com/en/apply). The deadline for applications is August 15. If you have any questions, the founders of StartupHighway are ready to answer them via email (team@stratuphighway.com).

Mentors are listed at http://startuphighway.com/en/mentors. Among the program’s mentors there are people such as investor Allan Martinson (founder and former CEO of Baltic News Service, DELFI, MicroLink, SAF Technika among others), serial entrepreneur Jochen Dopelhaimer (former CEO of Simyo Spain and now CEO & Founder of Yuilop mobile service) or Goncalo Saudade (Founder of several internet startups, including the largest Portuguese e-commerce platform ClubeFashion.com and the first global online 3D arts gallery ArtChezMoi.com).

StartupHighway is co-founded and run by experienced business professionals and has a board of advisors composed of very experienced professionals (http://startuphighway.com/en/team). “I do witness an immense potential for new innovative business ideas in Central and Eastern Europe. I have seen many interesting startups and very competent teams applying to various accelerator programs in Western Europe I have been involved in. I am glad to see that StartupHighway has concentrated the resources required for unleashing this potential of multiple success stories,” said John Bradford, the founder of several European top accelerator programs and advisor of StartupHighway

I was participating startup conference, in London. It was maybe a year ago. I can’t remember. There were about 100 VCs participating in this event. What got my attention,was that, after Dave McClure, Morten Lund speech, time for startup pitches came. And…. most of the VCs disappeared, where? They went out of conference aula for coffee.

Startup pitch sucks if there is no coffee networking afterwards.

I think (didn’t check it with calculator), that VCs don’t care about pitches, they have enough. They participate in pitches but deeply in their hearts they don’t care. Most of the ideas that are on the pitching stage are known. Nobody discovers anything amazing or incredibly new. All ideas have been implemented already.  There is one thing which is so important: personality and team. If startup has 200 000 000 users, VCs know it and they know how to contact founders. If startup doesn’t have solid base of users, founders’ personality can be partially presented during pitch but real “flipping hamburgers” job is to be done during coffee break.

Coffee networking.

Being talkative matters but asking questions is what matters the most. During coffee break is good to open mouth and talk (enthusiasm can’t be expressed with closed mouth), but the most important is to ask questions. I don’t want to give golden formula here (like 23 rules of good naping time or something like that) but what matters the most is founder(s)’ personality. Being authentic or honest is obvious. Is good to be aware that our personality influences others the most. It influences others better if we do what we love to do. If our job sucks, we don’t care about the company we work for, it is impossible (not hard, but impossible) to express enthusiasm because our brain suffers and is squeezed by dark power. If you are unhappy ,people will feel it, if you are rough but cover your face with smile, people will find it out anyway. “What you are screams louder than you think”, Stephen Covey words.

I don’t want your money dear VC.

It’s the best when you’re selling your car when you don’t have to.  It’s best when you are raising money for your startup when you don’t have to. Being relaxed and easy during VCs conversation is crucial and very valuable for our comfort zone. My experience: during conference I mentioned the the beginning of this post, I opened conversation with one of VC (managing director). He had cool leather jacket what got my attention. Anyway, I asked him, how are you? And he replied I am fine. We talked about weather and then he asked me “do you have your startup?” I answered “yeah”. Afterwards his willingness to talk reached really low level. Fortunately he asked me a question “Are u raising money?”, I said “No”. He had his smiled back on his face and he carried conversation. VCs are tired of pitching. We are in touch now and we don’t talk about weather, if you know what I mean.

Enthusiasm can’t be expressed with closed mouth.

If you put heat detectors on your face, it will heat up during enthusiasm expression. For sure. Opening mouth, facial expressions, smiling, ears movement, all of this heat up our face. This temperature jump onto other people and heat them up too. They feel great when somebody express enthusiasm.

Coffee networking, asking questions and relaxed mind, these are very important things when you go to startup conferences. If your goals is to raise money, it is not important what happens inside conference room.

Why SaveUp

SaveUp is not price scanning product, is an application which enables users to buy things based on impulse. What does it mean?

- if you are underground, waiting for train to come and you see big poster with new Graham’s book, you grab your phone, take picture and you buy book. Simple and easy (currently in Poland, but we’re fighting for some money to build product and be available abroad)

- if you are at friends party and they have cool DVD, you take picture with your smartphone and buy it. Simple and easy. Bought and forgot.

- if you driving your car and you’ve heard on the radio about new Stones CD, you take your phone, type cd name in SaveUp. Bought.

Buy what you see, by taking picture.

Empik (Polish bookstore chain) and myself

So, I was in big mall in Warsaw (Poland). There is an Empik store. I looked at the shelf and there was a book which got my attention. I wanna have it. I don’t buy books in Empik, so I took out my phone, take picture of this book. I clicked BUY button and….. security appeared. Why do you take picture? I answered: why not? He said: because no. I said what is the punishment. He said, go to the one of the Directors and ask. I said so you want me to go and ask how strong you are going to kick me? …. that’s it.

I love Poland (sarcasm) for trying to stop free market rules. Instead of fall in love with capitalism and its advantages, Poland tries to stop it. Afterwards I realized all shops in this specific mall are under “don’t take photo” restriction. So I believe they have something to hide. If they have I am more than motivated to go and take photos.

Freedom is not free!