Pollenizer blogs

Australian Web & Startup Cup

mickliubinskas — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:33:58 +0000

Today is Melbourne Cup day in Australia, well, in Melbourne, but most of Australia gets behind it. The Pollenizer team are pretty flat out, but even we will stop around 3pm this afternoon for a champagne and watch the race.

I thought I'd do a quick video spoof of a race if some of the biggest Australian web businesses were in a horse race - who would win?

OK, OK, the quality is average, but it's social media - it's supposed to take 5 minutes! Isn't it?

Investors Can Cause Companies to Fail

phil.morle — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:03:50 +0000

Here's an idea for you. I call it 'The Inverse Law of Ambition'.

Founders who focus, obsessively, on small things seem more likely to grow massive companies.

Founders that focus on growing huge without paying attention to the small things, fail.

Facebook is the best example of this rule in action. Even today, it is clear that Mark Zuckerburg's focus is on how to make something useful. This is how he still talks about Facebook:

Q: How were the first users using Facebook?
A: Looking people up, but it was so simple. There were no messages. You could look at profiles, poke people. Everything else built over time. People say launch early and iterate, Facebook is clearly a good example of that. YC has a shirt that says “do something people want” and I think that’s a great way of looking at it. Techcrunch

Facebook has consistently released the minimum features for the next level of usefulness and not gone further until the machine is humming and the existing user-base is settled and using the product to the limit. They did not try to add more features on top of profile lookup and poking until the tiny community at Harvard used the site under their own momentum and found it useful. They did not allow college students to sign up outside of Harvard until the Harvard community had its own momentum. They did not open up the site to non-education organisations until education had its own momentum... and so on. Facebook does this time and time again.

They focus on the small things and are growing enormous because of that.

Investors can cause the companies to fail by triggering the a dangerous focus on growing large, especially when they come in too early. Founders usually get to a point were they need to reach beyond family and friends to fund the growth of the company. At this stage they get the talk from investors about how they expect a 4-6x return on investment (minimum) in order for them to explore investing in the company. Frequently they sweeten the discussion with the desire and promise of a 100x return and because its a beautiful future for everyone and the money is needed, founders can be seduced like moths to the flame.

Founders can be distracted for months and months in their capital raising. During this time they might have 10 meetings a day, all over the world, and they will hear the same thing most times. 6x. 10x. 100x. It rewires their brain. The financial projections start to change. Instead of showing a bottom up growth period for the year that is achievable through attention to detail and discipline, they start to show the business expanding globally, or simply "to the US", in the next quarter with no anchor to the operation of the business and the roadmap of the product.

This is the moment that the the company is infected with something which can kill it. Now the founders have made promises and they need the product team to deliver magic. Many business development opportunities start to come in to drive growth but the product isn't ready to absorb the people that come. So the people go again.

They are aiming for the big opportunity and because they are doing so they are failing to build a product that people find useful.

Watch out for the Inverse Law of Ambition.

For Startups: Vision and Focus, Capulet and Montague

mickliubinskas — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:52:43 +0000

'Sr. Bee meets Sr. Sunflower' by robstephaustralia via Flickr
Image is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution licence

Some quick thoughts on one of the hardest things to do as an entrepreneur (or intrapreneur) - holding both a big vision and a brutal focus in your mind at the same time. They sound like contradictions and in many ways they are the endlessly feuding families of a new venture. You need to make them happy neighbours though.

You need a big vision.

To quit your job, convince your partner, convince your friends to give up some cash, to recruit great partners and team members, to nail the first pre-sales, to get the cheque from the investor and to continue to get out of bed four hours after you got in there with a big smile and energy in your veins - You. Need. A. Big. Exciting. Clear. Daily reinforced. Vision

But....

You can't get to your vision in one step.

What if Microsoft said that we're going to try and put computers on every desk straight away? You wouldn't build an operating system and supporting applications.

What if Facebook wanted to be the worlds most active social network in one move? They wouldn't have limited their first version to Harvard Students.

What if the USA said they wanted to get a man on the moon in a year? They'd just put someone in a plane and shoot them up there to see what happened.

You get my point. Big visions, like long journeys, take many small steps, a lot of time and plenty of meandering.

So you need to be focused. You need somewhere to start. Somewhere so small that you can deliver it with one person, part time and with $485 in your 'spare cash' fund.

And you've never done it before. Probably no one has ever done it before, so you're going to get it wrong. And get it wrong. And again. And again and again and again. Then, but only then, are you going to nail it and explode. In order to do this quickly it needs to be really small. Tiny. Microscopic. Focused.

As Steve says in this post business success is a lot about momentum which equals mass times speed. You can't win with mass (you don't have any) so you have to do it with speed. The smaller, the more focused the less weight, the less distractions, the faster you move.

So you need vision AND you need focus.

How do you do it? Welcome to the challenge. :-)

OK, some thoughts from me.

Cultivate your vision. Spend time up front to paint it big and exciting. Something you'll remember in the deepest depths of the startup rollercoaster and something which will guide your every little decision around focus without having to run it through 'the mainframe' to check.
Trust your vision. Once you have it. Trust it. Don't pull out the plant to check the roots. Not even if people challenge it everyday (which they will). Have faith.
Have guts. Being focused takes courage. Picking one thing to focus on means saying no to at least 100 other ideas and options you have. It's hard. It's always hard. It gets harder the more successful you are because you know what you're capable of and have more money to play/pray with. Make a choice and don't look back.... for at least a year!
Externalise. You're going to be in the pressure cooker day in day out. Your vision and your focus will both be beaten, pushed, shoved, blocked, mocked and distracted. Find ways to put both of them in an external mechanism where the discipline doesn't rely on your emotions. Find someone you love and trust not in your core team and pre-book quarterly breakfast/lunches with them with just two questions.
1. Are we going towards the vision?
2. Are we really being focused enough?

Good luck with your arm wrestle of vision and focus. Please share your stories of challenge and success with me.

Startup Momentum & Rock Stars with Steve Sammartino

mickliubinskas — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:41:41 +0000

Guest blog post by Steve Sammartino from Rentoid. Steve is also hosting a Startup School in Melbourne (Nov 7-8) and Sydney (Nov 21-22). It's highly recommended by me (Mick) as Steve has great, real experience buildings startups - with success and failures - and combines it with tornado strength passion. Don't miss it. I'll try and drop by.

Short video with Mick and Steve on startup momentum. Love the equation;

Momentum = mass x speed.

When you're a startup you have negligible mass, so it's all about speed.

Startup Lessons from Rock Bands

By Steve Sammartino

Driven by passion. Many years ago I wanted to learn to play the guitar. Not because I wanted be famous or even in a band. I just wanted to play. I wanted the thrill of being able to do it. To play the guitar to myself. The desire was strong an internal. It wasn't to impress anyone or achieve external recognition. This happens to be a pretty good reason to want to get into business as well.

Rock stars start simply. A banged up old guitar or drum kit will do. It's rare indeed to hear of any musician starting out with a Jimmy Hendrix style Fender Stratocaster. More likely the cheapest instrument your mum can find, or a rented one will do. If the musician is serious about their passion, they wont mind. They are happy to learn with equipment that will do the job. So why some entrepreneurs think they need the latest technology or deluxe office set up is a mystery.

Start in the bedroom or garage. Learning in a low risk environment is the key. It encourages experimentation and the artist to truly develop their own style. Just like cottage industries, the garage is a great place to build anything - wether it be 3 minute rock songs or a world changing widget. In fact, this is the time successful rock bands look back on with the fondest memories.

Learn on the job. Once the band is formed and they can play a few tunes, they don't hesitate to try and get a gig. They get out there and learn on the job. Bands will take any gig they can get. If a pub will hire them, they'll play. Because bands are smart enough to know they need as much practice they can get in front of an audience. Our startup products are no different. We are selling them to an audience, and the more interaction we have with them, the more refined our product or service will become.

They change their initial line up until the chemistry is right. They aren't afraid to sack band members who aren't serious about their craft. Or those who don't have the talent needed. They know their team is the game winning element. Not the technology (the guitars and drums)

Boot strap their products. Rock bands don't wait for a record deal to get their product distributed. They cut their own records on 4 track recorders or their PC. They design their own logos, record covers and print their own labels. They then sell their CD's at weekend markets, their gigs, and on line. They just get it out there and done. They know they can improve their product as they progress.

Self promote. We’ve all seen guys and gals from bands handing out flyers about their up coming gigs. They put up wall posters on city buildings and sign posts late at night. They get their friends to come along to their gigs. A little bit like live beta testing.

Develop the market. They do this by touring around the country. Thy take their music to the market. To the pubs where the live music early adopters are. They don't wait for fans to find them. They go out searching for them.

Leverage trends. There is a theory that a good song is a good song, regardless of which genre it is played in. This is why many remakes of songs in different genres still become hits a second time around. Smart rock bands know this and follow the trends. When grunge was big in the early 1990's, a lot of new bands sounded that way. Simply because the market wanted it.

Ignore scaling until needed. Rock bands don't buy PA systems big enough to rock out the MCG. They upgrade when the gig requires it, not before. A good lesson for startups, who tend to worry a little bit too much about how scale, before the demand is present. Ability to scale is the problem we should be hoping for.

Adore their fans. Usually called customers in business, but we should really treat them the same way successful rock bands do. They know that every fan matters and adore and respect them accordingly. I often hear famous rock bands talking about the fact that every gig matters. If we took this approach with every customer interaction (which are what their gigs are) we'd do well.

They stay the course. Rock bands rarely give up a few months in. They sleep on floors and eat canned food until their craft can pay it's way. And usually take a large number of years before they make it. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were together for 8 years before their break through album Blood Sex Sugar Magik.

It's pretty clear what entrepreneurs can learn from rock bands. But probably shouldn't be that surprising. A rock band is a start up in it's purest from where the Venture Capilists are the Record Companies. But there's no doubt we should all apply lessons, patience and hard work that goes into any rock success story.

Thanks Steve, love it.

Startup Stickiness

mickliubinskas — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:25:49 +0000

With my new MacBook Pro I'm not putting stickers on the back. Yet.

But I get lots of cool stickers from startups and other companies, so we needed somewhere to put them.

So we created a sticker board;

We're going to add stickers from all the companies we need and add them in till we fill it up. So far we have Play Spy Master, Mashery, Apple and DotSpots. We want more!

So please mail us your stickers. Every sticker we get, get's a tweet!

Chief Sticker Officer
Pollenizer
Lev 1
65-67 Foveaux St
Surry Hills NSW 2010
Australia

Teaching Kids to be Entrepeneurs

phil.morle — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:35:53 +0000

Entrepreneurs think differently. Entrepreneurs build stuff in their obsessive daily quest to find value. They invent things, create companies, generate jobs. I love it, not only because it is good for our world to have lots of people thinking this way, but because it is an excellent attitude to life where anything is possible. It is a world full of potential, if you are prepared to work for it.

I wondered how I could teach this way of thinking to my kids and came up with a plan.

I gave my 7 year old son Henry $10 and explained to him that he could not keep it for himself but had to spend it on materials that he could use to sell something. For example, he could by a bucket and some car soap to wash 5 neighbors' cars for $4 and make $20 out of the original investment.

He thought a lot about it and was very excited. He decided to buy wooden beads, thread and plastic sandwich bags to start a jewelry business. He made an excellent prototype and then we talked about our plan, which he wrote on the whiteboard. Here's what he did.

He made a bunch of different designs, designed a logo in Illustrator and sold them to neighbors and friends. Out of the original $10 investment, he made $35. Now he thinks like an entrepreneur.

Seedcampers: Join Pollenizer in London for Icebreaker Drinks

amir.suissa — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:29:51 +0000

Seedcamp week is starting next Monday, and it's time to present you the 21 finalists that will be joining from 11 countries.

5 from eastern Europe - Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Estonia
5 from central Europe - Austria, Germany, Belgium, France and the UK
2 from the Middle East - Jordan and Israel

Seedcamp in it's 3 year effort to date 2007, 2008, 2009 has managed to cross borders, bridge cultures and languages, and most importantly unite investors, mentors and entrepreneurs across the European startup hubs to create a European startup scene. It's also the place to point out the contribution of Mike Butcher from TechCrunch Europe to report not only what's going on in the UK, but inviting local guest bloggers to contribute from across Europe.

Without further a due - here are the Seedcamp finalists:

• Advertag – London, UK
• Boxed Ice – Bromsgrove, UK
• Brainient – Bucharest, Romania
• Codility – Warsaw, Poland
• Comufy – London, UK
• Erply – Estonia
• Joobili – Budapest, Hungary
• Kukunu – London, UK
• Loc8 Solutions – Edinburgh, UK
• Patients Know Best – Cambridge, UK
• Petsicon – Berlin, Germany
• Plug in SEO – London, UK
• ShoutEm – Zagreb, Croatia
• T27 Systems (Pearl Systems) – Bristol, UK
• Talasim.com – Amman, Jordan
• Teachable – London, UK
• Vooices – Wigan, UK
• VouChaCha – London, UK
• Wondergraphs – Leuven, Belgium
• World on a Hanger – London, UK
• YubiTech – Ramat Gan, Israel

Pollenizer Icebreaker Drinks - join us this Sunday!

We invite all Seedcamp participants, finalists, mentors and investors to icebreaker drinks this Sunday to meetup in an informal surrounding and swap notes before the big week commences.

The drinks will be hosted from 4pm to 6pm at The Carpenters Arms, 68-70 Whitfield St (map), a short walk from the UCL buildings.

James Peck, Mick Liubinskas (Mr. Focus) and myself are looking forward to meeting you and the other participants this Sunday or latest next week!

Seedcamp and Pollenizer partner in Europe

amir.suissa — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:07:38 +0000

If you are in the startup scene in Europe you have for sure heard of Seedcamp or at least read an article about them on TechCrunch Europe. If not, here's the short run down.

Seedcamp was initiated in 2007 by Saul Klein, of Index Ventures, and is run by CEO Reshma Sohoni and her team to promote the creation of startups in Europe and to seed finance the best of them (suprise, surprise). Many of the best known investors, entrepreneurs and mentors in Europe are investors or supporters of Seedcamp. Seedcamp orchestrated this year 7 one day events or "mini Seedcamps" in Tel Aviv, Berlin, Helsingborg, Ljubljana, Paris, London and Warswaw by choosing 20 startup teams to participate at each event. The teams get to pitch their ideas in front of a group of approximately 80 mentors and investors within a carefully orchestrated schedule which enables each team to have 8 mentoring sessions per day, with 3-5 mentors per session. This structure allows the teams to receive invaluable feedback from mentors with diverse backgrounds to their pitch, business model, marketing, product, strategy, technology - in short, all the aspects you need to build a great web business.

Next week, September 21-25th is Seedcamp week, which is *the* event of the fall for Europe's upcoming startups. 21 finalists have been announced from accross 10 countries in Europe including 1 from Israel and 1 from Jordan to come and meet over 300 mentors and investors in a full on program consisting of 4 themed days: founders day, going to market, how to scale and investors.

We are proud to announce that we are partnering with Seedcamp to select 3 of the finanlists in conjunction with our venture capital partners to provide each of them a one day Focus Workshop covering target customers and product core utility.

Why do we think this is of need?

We've found that the biggest difference between success and failure of a new venture is the teams' ability to focus and execute. Using the Pollenizer methodology, we'll identify the first target segment the company should focus on, scrutinize the core utility to serve that segment and develop a product and marketing action plan. We believe this focus exercise will be invaluable for these companies and are happy to provide our experience to these teams.

We look forward to seeing you at Seedcamp London!

About Pollenizer:

At Pollenizer we build web businesses and have helped more than 80 start-ups grow. Founders and investors engage our veteran team of technology, product, business and marketing specialists for focus and execution within their ventures. We tightly integrate the business focus with product development and technology creating value for the end user in alignment with a business model. We bring an 'agile' approach to all aspects of operations applying our experience learned at companies such as Kazaa, Yahoo, BBC, Naspers, Skype, Amazon and Xing. We like to share the risk and reward with our clients, which extends their runway and leads to a long term partnership.

Tim O'Reilly Says Startups Don't Necesarily Need To Focus

mickliubinskas — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:49:19 +0000

I was cruising the Demopit at Techcrunch50 and spotted Tim O'Reilly a serious tech veteran and celebrity. I thought I'd stop him and get his thoughts on focus. Of course I'd sure he'd give us sage advice on why they should be brutally focused.

I was wrong.

Tim O'Reilly On Why Startups Need to Explore from Pollenizer on Vimeo.

OK, he's right. For some startups, at early stages, exploring is good. Actually in all startups, regularly exploring is important. I'd suggest that at some point and at most times, the priority needs to be given to focus. But you need to look around. You need to try things. Think of different angles. See what other companies in different markets/industries are doing that you can learn from.

What's the balance? Hmm, let me throw up some completely instinctive thoughts.

Before starting - 90% exploring, 10% focus - going completely wide might drive you completely wild.
Started, pre-launch - 30% exploring, 70% focus - some exploration of people, markets, ideas for your core utility, but mostly focus on that first, tiny product.
Launched and growing - 10% exploring, 90% focus - one thing at a time, focus on getting it done. Some exploring to avoid myopia.

What do you think?
Were do you think you are right now?
Do you have the balance right?

TechCrunch50 Business Model Review

mickliubinskas — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:21:56 +0000

Post Morning Demopit Walk

First morning of Techcrunch50 and after a quick walk of the Demopit (those that didn't make it on stage) I'm not yet startled by amazing new business models. Most of the same with a bit of spice here and there. Here is a summary after a quick lap.

The Usual Prospects

Advertising - and everyone adds "It's super targeted", "It's specific, locally targeted" or "We've got tags". In this group but not particularly mind-blowing was Meaningz, 7ages,Lifemee and Pip.io. iAte was interesting in that it searches through Twitter and finds reviews of restaurants, then collates them and builds a reputation of them. No great business model yet, but looked like they were creating value.
Freemium - you give it away and hope to charge a percentage of people a subscription for more features. (I'm not a fan) - Such as Problemator - where users pose questions and answers bubble to the top.
Fee for service - you actually charge money (I like this more). A good example of this was Ask Your Target Market, which matches your survey to an audience and gives you a simple tool to analyse the results. The more focused the target, the more you pay. Love it. Trademarkia was also interesting, letting companies to IP searches for current as well as lapsed marks (e.g. Trademarks). They say that Google is actually the second Google.
Licensing - charge money to use the technology. A good example of the this is Tucoola, which has methodologies in the area of Early Childhood Development and lets companies plug it easily into games. This helps them actually be good for the kids, as well as being fun. It also includes analysing the impact such as music exposure, literacy, hand-eye coordination.
Micro-Payments - charging small amounts of money for tiny transactions. Two examples here, firstly Tapjoy, which touts itself as an alternative to the iPhone App Store, but allows smaller fees for applications, e.g. 5 or 10 cents. They say that Apple is OK with it. Hmmm. Second was Cloudmach which has a browser-based virtual world, which I believe can be embedded anywhere which will be selling virtual goods, e.g. 1 cent for a hug, 5c for a kiss.

So that's just a first look at the business models being touted here. I hope to see a few more interesting ideas. Don Dodge is on stage asking the 'What's your business model?" question to Penn and Teller's iPhone app, so it's still firmly in the investors mind - of course.

Techcrunch50 has now officially started. Jason and Mike on stage, talking proudly of Mint which one the first Techcrunch40 back in 2007 that just got acquired by Intuit for $170m. Onto the second pitch - Story Something, which is personalised books for the digital space. Looks like they are looking to the iPhone for monetization too, which might become a new usual suspect.