“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.” – Henry Ford
On the 8th November six Start-Up founders came together to one Conference at the Dublin City University: #GetStarted 2016.
It was all about Entrepreneurship and giving you the Confidence to start your own business. Founders of all age told their story, gave valuable advice and told us the mistakes to avoid.
In the following, the diverse facets of Entrepreneurs and the factors for success of businesses will be analysed and illustrated by the different Start-Ups.
The host of this evening Andrew Keogh started this year’s conference, giving us many encouraging words to start our own business. Being an International Spokesperson and Coach with over 20 years’ experience himself, he introduced the first speakers.
Stand out and get Traction!
The first Presentation is from the CEO and Founder of OvercastHQ, Philippe Brodeur.
The aim of OvercastHQ is to help managing videos better, thus reducing the time spent on rudimentary tasks by up to 90%. More precisely it is a cloud based content management system designed for professionals to securely store, share and collaborate on their video content.
The Entrepreneur delivered one of the most appealing and helpful speeches, as he not only talked about his 2016 founded Start-Up, but also about the generally important steps of founding a company and the main factors of its success.
Today YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-34 and 18-49-year-olds than any cable network in the U.S. But what made the video-sharing platform such a huge success and why are there no real, similar competitors anymore?
According to Philippe Brodeur these are some of the vital aspects to consider when building your Start-Up:
First every business has to Differentiate itself from the competition and find its own niche, new market to be successful. Just as YouTube did in 2005. The essential concept of differentiation confronts us in every part of our career. It is already important for me as a student. There are thousands of business students in Ireland right now. So how do I stand out, differentiate? Why should an employer “invest in me”?
The second point is the importance of gaining Traction. While the thought of establishing your own business is great, it is important to keep in mind the hard work and dedication behind it. In the beginning, it is crucial to create the minimum viable product to present it to and raise money from investors and attract new customers. Speaking of Traction, Overcast has signed partnerships with Amazon, Signiant and the Digital Production Partnership.
Third and most surprisingly no matter how good your idea, plan or team is, the key factor of success for a start-up is the right Timing, says Philippe Brodeur. In a recent TED Talk Bill Gross, founder of more than 100 companies, examined the same thing.
A frustrating thought in my opinion, that the aspect deciding over failure or success is one you cannot even influence yourself. Moreover I think, while Timing is important it is more an equal combination of various facets and every one of them has to be right to make a start-up successful. Because no matter how good your timing is, if for instance the customers or the laws in your country are not ready for your product someone else will simply copy the business idea at the right location with the fitting environment and target audience. The same thing could happen if your team is not functioning or your funding is too small and you thus grow too slow.
If you want to know more than 3 aspects, Jason Demers wrote an interesting article on Entrepeneur.com about 10 critical factors that dictate Start-Up success.
One Man’s Loss is another Man’s Gain
With the recent bus strikes in Dublin the next two speakers, nailed the point Timing perfectly. Now CEO and former Dublin City University student Brian O’Rourke and his partner COO Alan Farrelly founded the Social Transportation Network CitySwifter, seeing an opportunity during a time of chaos.
“From Graduates to Entrepreneurs” was the title of their motivating, impressive presentation. Not only because the founders are relatively young, but they have had already started two other companies. (Plus, the CEO graduated from my University 2014 #takethatUCD)
Who is an Entrepreneur? What defines them? Several characteristics have been established over the years. They were summarized in an article published in the influential business journal “Academy of Management Review”. An Entrepreneur…
1. … has to be good in human relations and have distinct communications ability!
The business studies graduate outlined the importance of networking and the opportunity for us to build up a team while we are still in college. Furthermore, he explained that you have to get “domain knowledge”, but also how relevant it is to additionally exchange with people from other fields for example mix with software engineers, thus getting a “complementary skillset” for your business.
“We always plan too much and always think too little” – Joseph Schumpeter
2. …needs to have an innovative an initiative mind! (Schumpeter 1934)
To get an idea for your start-up the bigger the problem the better. In their case, how to offer a reliable and cheap alternative shared transport. Moreover, be initiative and do things that do not scale first, then build things that do. They got their first customers offline to find out what works and what does not to then change it. They talked to users and partners often and early.
3. … has to be risk taking, have a need for achievement, responsibility!
I mentioned in the beginning, CitySwifter is not even their first company. The two predecessors failed at this point. But like Brian said “You have to do it wrong, to know how to do it afterwards”. Seeing failures and downs as a chance to learn and even motivate you more, is a highly value spirit we greatly lack in Germany.
The dangers of loneliness and Elva Carri’s solution
“We are built for social contact. There are serious—life-threatening—consequences when we don’t get enough. We can’t stay on track mentally and are more stressed when feeling lonely”, states an article in Psychology Today.
For many first-year students like us finding new friends and like-minded may be the hardest challenge of university life so far. For girls Elva Carri has found the solution for that often tremendous problem.
Her female only social community Girlcrew makes it easy for them to create events, discuss and in the end, meet up.
Like Carri described social networks fail their purpose, being social. They rather increase the feeling of loneliness because you need to have everything already figured out. To post pictures of your awesome activities and events with friends, they have to be organised already.
That’s where girlcrew jumps in and improves the life of thousands of girls to this date. It is a local network, where you can easily browse or post events, to then meet up with likeminded strangers.
“Friendship is a lot like food. We need it to survive.” – Psychology Today
Her idea was the most important factor of her success as there appears to be a huge need for the website. It today has over 50.000 members with one of the world’s biggest target audiences ahead, 79million middle-aged women living in rural areas. And there is not even an app developed yet! Furthermore, it was a freely scalable business concept and Elva fortunately did not have to put much effort in it. The company finances itself through advertising, event sponsorship and a freemium model.
The nominated Image Businesswoman of the Year, too stressed the idea of solving problems in a creative way and networking. Her enterprising way of getting to the web summit was to organise the group women on web summit “WOW Crew”. Getting so much media coverage, Carri eventually got tickets for free. With reference to the mentioned importance of timing, Elva Carri gave the concluding advice: “Do it as cheaply and quickly as you can”.
If not me, who? If not now, when?
– The serial Entrepreneur –
Having already founded several businesses Gavan Walsh is probably the most experienced speaker of this evening. The now CEO of the world’s leading cloud based Taxi Dispatch System, presented the “iCabbi Story”.
To keep up with the rapidly growing likes of Uber, Hailo & Co, traditional taxi companies had to update their technology and form alliances, thus creating large, networked fleets. iCabbi reduces costs by providing flexible dispatch systems, online booking engines and taxi booking apps.
“If not me, who? If not now, when?” was the first and very motivating question he asked us. In the end the regret of not fulfilling your business idea and possibly seeing someone else succeed with it will always be worse than the failure.
Besides he again stressed the Silicon Valley typical spirit to learn from your failures. 10 significant lessons to learn are described in this article. For instance, one must “sustain a long-term vision” and “remember to continue to build the business”. For iCabbi that long-term vision is to become the global leader in overall dispatch technology. To achieve this, they are on the one hand expanding their taxi system to the USA and Canada right now, on the other they are exploring new markets like construction and medical transportation. In the End “You can only grow as big as your vision”
The Siri for CVs
The second last speaker of the conference was Adrian Mihai, CTO and co-founder of Opening, a B2B technology company, that uses algorithms to scan CVs and match candidates to suitable jobs.
Contrary to the big visions of the previous speaker, he emphasized that people often focus on the wrong roadmap, because initially there is only one goal: to survive. I think that is important to keep in mind especially in the beginning, to not get megalomaniac and let the downs frustrate you.
For said survival of businesses the location is also a big influence. Strong clusters of start-ups and the communities around it bring a sense of togetherness perfect for networking, for example at start-up events like the Startup Weekend in Dublin. He lastly gave the advice regardless what you do always set a deadline for things to complete and then try to reach it.
Solving the world’s starvation problem one step at a time
5,106,000 Meals donated – 2,321 Tonnes of food redistributed using food from over 1000 stores in the UK and Ireland. – Does not sound like the figures of an only 2013 founded start-up, does it?
Iseult Ward is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of FoodClou
d. The social enterprise connects food businesses that have too much food with charities that have too little through a cloud-based platform and mobile application.
FoodCloud has grown from initially one Tesco store and six partner charities to now 160 donors and 350 partner charities.
It all started by calling businesses, collecting leftovers from the local food market and then sending a pick up sms to the charity, Iseult Ward remembers. Quickly enough the problem how and where to facilitate the donations raised. To be able to distribute surplus food from manufacturers and farmers nationwide, it can be delivered to FoodCloud Hubs in Galway, Cork and Dublin, where it is then stored and registered in the IT warehousing system.
“If the amount of food wasted around the world were reduced by just 25% there would be enough food to feed all the people who are malnourished” – The Guardian
What I find most impressive about the company is that it helpful and beneficial for everyone, there seemingly is no loser. Besides the good publicity, Tesco cuts its costs for disposal and so does the charity, Drogheda Homeless Aid has been able to reduce its weekly food costs by an average of 30%. And the Trinity College business & economics graduate is far from done! The target is 17.000 tonnes of food redistributed.
She ended her speech with a quote of Michel de Montaigne: “There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened. “. So, in the words of a known sportswear company: Just Do It!
What are you waiting for?
Closing, the host of the evening Andrew Keogh, cited a joint study from AT&T Stanford University. The single best question to predict high earning was “Do you enjoy giving speeches? “. So, do not let anxiety stop you. Giving sharp and persuasive speeches are important skills Entrepreneurs need to acquire. Successful founders of YouTube, Twitter or Skype mastered these rhetorical skills, underlined Andrew Keogh.
It sounds simple, but in the end, you need to have the confidence and Do It. There is no reason to be afraid. A study from the venture capital firm First Round Capital, featured in the Harvard Business Review, shows not only that younger founding teams outperformed older ones, but also did Female-founded startups compared to all-male teams.
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