App idea: find your double

Take this idea and run: the find-your-double app. You take a selfie, the app analyses it and tells you where your identical twin, I mean, your identical twin from-another-mother is to be found.

I’d love to have something like this out there, but won’t be able to start a new thing just now. (Insert sad smiley here.)

Another brilliant idea that I had before has just been made by PornHub: the BangFit is a fitness tracker service that tracks a special kind of fitness. Though this one is done by PornHub, so I guess it will eventually measure the mhm, exercise of men’s underarm?

There, a pivot idea for takers: WankFit.

j j j

This is how I pitch (and why)

There is the promise of the Internet that if you sell online, you never, ever have to see the person you are selling to.

Now that might be true, but then I just have no idea how it works.

If you read this blog for some time already, you know that I’m building a number of products on the side. This is a fun hobby and an extremely convenient position to be in: it’s not like we need to bring on any customers for these projects.

Although many of them require quite some amounts of work and resources, and they tend to reach a point where I’m not that comfortable throwing everything out the window either.

Then, some of those projects I create together with others. There, responsibility is the bitch: when you’re playing with someone else’s time, suddenly a whole lot of girlfriends (including your own) will start hating you.

And there always comes a point where I have to do something highly uncomfortable. Get feedback. Talk to lawyers. Reach out to magazines. Talk in public.

As luck would have it, I got a demo spot on the last Berlin Tech Meetup to introduce Appwoodoo (the service you haven’t heard much about for the last two years, but we suddenly received some real attention).

Talking in front of so many people is scary.

This is how it looks like, a slice of the 235 people in front of you. (Photo by the organiser Gabriel Matuschka. My hands were rather busy pointing towards each and every direction. And shaking like hell.)

Appwoodoo on the Berlin Tech Meetup

To assemble the slides is not more than a day really, but that’s the easy part: you will see how simple they are once I find a way to upload them to SlideShare. (I’m not saying I did it all alone though: all my friends and even the Pitch Doctor helped me out.)

The hard part is, to talk. Once or twice I’ve been on radio shows, and I’m always astonished by how many things the presenters do there in real time. Taking care of each guest’s sound levels, fading out the music, queuing the new song in, reading comments on Facebook, Twitter and what not, and, by the way, following the programme, talk and actively engage the listeners.

It’s much less work to just, sort of, walk about on the stage, talk to the microphone and point towards the presentation, I know. But then it does feel a lot. Look how busy I am there.

Appwoodoo on the Berlin Tech Meetup

Ok, looking at it now, I don’t look that extremely busy. But my brain is running on full power, believe me.

A great shock, and I will want do it again. As many times as possible.

First, everyone says these things get easier with practise.

Second, people loved what I was talking about. I mean, really, some folks did actually sign up to the service while I was introducing it.

And lastly, it sort of feels like runner’s high. Once you get to the point where you can’t breathe any more and are just about to spit your lungs out, it kicks in and you feel like you could just run, run forever and more.

Can’t wait to be shit-scared again.

j j j

IBM is not Nerdwana

So when I get offered a $2000 visitor pass for a tech conference plus a flight ticket and accommodation in Las Vegas, then I say yes and start packing my bags. Even if IBM Interconnect does not particularly sound fun, and even if I could point out almost infinite number of better things to spend that money on.

Buy me $3500 worth of Red Bull, and I’ll rewrite for you Facebook in Brainfuck tonight.

In university times, IBM used to be the place where you send your resume only if you don’t consider technology being especially important. Their products are as uncool as Windows XP was for OS – but where Microsoft developers are crazy awesome hackers, IBM seems to exclusively hire sales people. Hackers don’t like that sort of thing very much.

And now, the Big Blue gives the world Watson. The one-stop shop for artificial intelligence. That is a solid, fun, innovative thing to do, and mind you: it’s not a startup building AI-as-a-service first, but people from the Dilbert strips.

I’m here with one of the first startups that can get their hands on Watson, so I’m very excited to visit all workshops and see what is there to learn.

There are many versions of the system for example, but I can break it down to two main ones.

There is the Watson that is on TV and in press releases and does all the cool stuff. And there is the one that you are being given access to, which is basically Elastic Search with a fancy, overpriced API. (That is, for now, of course, because the product is meant to evolve in the future.)

I’m not supposed to disclose any details, but the startup I’m supporting has seen marketing potential in partnering with IBM, therefore the Big Blue’s technology has to be interesting for us. It is actually, as far as it can get, but is it something to wow on in 2015, that they’ve discovered Cloud Foundry and a bunch of open source code, than went on to copy Heroku?

It isn’t of course, but it isn’t even relevant. Technology alone is not worth a thing. Even further, innovation alone is not worth a thing. Otherwise the Big Blue would have gone out of business a long time ago. And business is something they are very much in.

“I don’t get why we have to give away stuff for free, but if the world wants that, I’m fine with offering Bluemix for a month at no cost.” — says an IBM-mer in suits.

And as low of a respect I have for developers who are wearing ties and aren’t interested in working with the latest tech, I have to admit, there is something to learn from IBM here.

Business. Whatever you create, invent, play with and work on: don’t forget to find someone who sells it for you.

j j j

Kickstart any app idea: our recipe

It’s easy to be in the centre of attention if you have something cool to offer. Developers are a hot asset now: every now and then, someone wants our agency to do a mobile app for revenue share, a website for future buyout, or me, in person, to be the CTO of a new gig.

I love all these projects.

No, really, I do.

Not because they bring much cash or fame, as I don’t tend to earn much with most of them. But it’s always great to learn new teams and methods, and these projects provide a good field for experimentation.

Quite some guidance may be needed on the project setup and management though, especially if my co-founders lack experience with tech products. Here is the three points I like to send out to them, right at square one.

Our plan to kickstart any tech project (mobile apps, websites etc).

  1. Almost immediately start working on an initial prototype.
    Creating the prototype helps exploring the idea internally, and will also help explaining it once you can start attracting potential investors and new team members.

    By creating a demo product you will need to set up most of the tools and methods needed to – well, to create a product. So it can be nothing but super easy to demonstrate the team’s ability to bring an idea to the market – which can significantly help the negotiating positions with a VC.

  2. Set up the development workflows.
    Any rapid iteration process would do. The key is to answer this question: if anyone comes up with a new feature or idea today, how will that be incorporated in the product and reach the market tomorrow?

    There are a lot of free tools (like Trello or Asana) that will help teams keep track of these features. The bottomline with choosing one is: every new pair of eyes should be able to tell where the company is standing, just by taking a look at the dashboard.

  3. Start PR & marketing efforts from day one.
    Have you ever wished you had a handful of people to ping when you are ready to launch? Set up a ‘coming soon’ landing page and collect subscribers as soon as you start thinking about the product and that is taken care of.

    The rule of the thumb is to always start with the things that can be potential bottle necks, and a good marketing is one of these. First step here is usually to choose a good name, create a corporate identity with a nice logo and an initial mission statement. This will help strengthen the product as well as the team, especially with remote ones.

We tend to do the above in no particular order, and in strong collaboration with the business development. The idea is to get the product only far enough so that we can find out whether there is a market fit for it. If the answer is yes, the foundation to create the next version of the product is as good as it can get.

j j j

Startups, why don’t you learn from corporates?

Right on, you got the title right. While I’m helping large companies implementing startup techniques in their work culture, it always leaves me surprised how young upstarts have an attitude towards learning from anyone else.

If you are a startup though, you shouldn’t forget that corporates are entrepreneurs too – they are just a bit different. And those differences are not necessarily all that bad; there are at least a few lessons you can take away from them.

So what secrets can startups learn from a big mammoth? Here are my favourites.

The company structure

Regardless of what type of structure the age dictates, be it a bureaucratic hierarchy or an upside-down pyramid: having one is a must. Responsibilities and rights management make life easier, especially when it comes to avoiding conflicts.

(If you are now thinking that as a one-man-show you are safe, here is another lesson for you to start with: learn how to delegate. Hiring an online assistant for a few hours a week will give you the opportunity to focus on what you are the best at – and eventually, to make more money.)

Within startups, it’s quite common to see programmers and graphic designers fighting over marketing questions. The reason is simple: there is no marketing guy in the team, and no one else has the right to make a decision alone. Working in such a structure is not only inefficient, but has a bad influence on the work morale too.

Clearly, the more people work together, the more support they will need on the management side, increasing overhead, making the hierarchy more complicated. All this is very unnatural for upstarts, but as the company grows, these questions will arise. The sooner you have the answer for them, the easier the transformation will be.

Planning ahead

Do you know exactly, how long you have been working on this product? Do you know how much more time you would need to finish it? Do you have a marketing budget?

Most startups have difficulties answering these simple questions. Some can’t even tell how much money they will need to finish their only project. And even when they have the numbers, those are far from being usable: costs usually include everything around the development but not the product launch costs, maintenance, support, marketing (and sooo on).

Planning ahead is not easy, and any system that aims such has to be extremely flexible. Large corporates tend to suffer from strict policies, forcing managers to do those little cheats: buying chairs of the marketing budgets and what not.

Ignore the math early though, and it will put you in serious trouble later: imagine running out of cash the moment you finished the product – and with a zero marketing budget, you will eventually reach no one. Maybe except from those you are friends with on Facebook.

Good planning won’t save you from being unlucky. But at least, you will know when you are in the need of making a decision. When the project exceeds the budget only halfway through, you can decide to freeze the features, cut some of the marketing costs or handle the situation in any other way. Without budget expectations, you might learn about running out of cash too late – and end up with no money, no product – and no plan.

Information management

How many people do know about the company’s assets? Who has access to the bank statements? Who do your clients trust?

What happens if those people leave?

You may not be surprised how much it can cost you if a trusted employee leaves the company – but you surely would be surprised to know how much of that cost could be reduced by utilising the right concepts.

Corporates have to handle a huge fluctuation of employees and board members – and each time someone leaves, it turns out that none of those guys were irreplaceable. Everything works fine without them too, and – unless the ones just left are fishing in the dark -, the company’s assets and products are safe too.

The way they do that is having the responsibilities and rights set ahead. From this article’s point of view, it really doesn’t matter if you want your startup to be a place where everyone knows about everything, or, a company with strict data security policies.

The only thing important is being prepared to replace every single person – even a board member or a co-founder -, with having clear responsibilities and being ready to give and revoke access to any asset.

Using the right tools

Yes, large companies have a lot of cash. You can argue that for them better computers and a few more test devices cost almost nothing, or that they can share everything between many projects and employees.

There is nothing against being creative though. There is no need to buy a 3D printer to use one, and one of the big advantages of using co-working offices is to work close to similar startups. You can ask them to test your products, or lend each other all sorts of resources: graphic designers seem to be working on all sorts of projects in their empty hours.

The same goes to online tools.

Software, infrastructure, marketing is for free, one can say. Except that is usually not true. Surely, there are great opportunities out there, and the best form of advertising – word of mouth – is also free. But in most cases, you will end up investing something more important: your time.

Creating a circle around you where everyone shares their discoveries, newly utilised tools or just explains the ones you don’t have time trying out, is a good way to make the learning curves a little steeper. It doesn’t only feel great but is extremely helpful for everyone involved.

Think BIG

Large companies have huge numbers on the cost side – so they need to have big numbers in the income column too. One of the upsides of running a startup is to be able to keep the costs low – but it doesn’t mean you need to keep your income low as well.

As a startup, you are probably trying to find a nice niche in the market. But one of the reasons you have the opportunity to fill up your gap is that it is – a gap. A small, tiny piece of the whole cake. Now, it might be a really profitable segment and a very tasty slice, but there is a high chance that the whole cake would feed many more mouth.

There are plenty of reasons for being unable to immediately go for bigger ventures of course. It’s very unlikely for example, that an upstart animation studio would get the next feature-film deal from Disney. These trust issues and other obstacles can usually be hacked though, and the opportunities are always there. They are there for the ones who are looking.

So, keep looking.
Keep learning.

j j j