Medialitics

Trust in people

Last couple of days I learned a lot, I was busy searching a coach and asked a couple of people if they knew anybody that could help me. People they trusted, successful entrepreneurs, who would like to coach a young entrepreneur. So the journey started …

At first people started saying I couldn’t trust organizations like KVK and Syntens. Then people started saying either that I couldn’t trust anyone or that I should trust everyone. And both groups of people where people I respect and trust but they have a different approach to life, the one group is pragmatic while the other one is more pationate about what they do.

My first converstation of the subject was with Ritzo ten Cate and Richard de Vries from de ondernemers. They thought my best course of action was to present a plan to a big partner, they have the resources to help me out. Although I thought it was a good strategy I am a little hessitent to shape my product that early to a partners wishes. Its reasonable to think a partner wouldn’t give me a lot of atonomy.

My second conversation was with Nils Roemen from b-come. He did know someone but he expected a very good executive summary (which made me a little uncertain). Although I am currently working on a good summary, people have advised not to trust anyone with my executive summary. After hesitating I think I will send it. Knowing how difficult it is to understand, let alone realize the plan, I don’t think there is a big chance someone will take off with the plan. Had similar conversations with Lykle de Vries and Gerrit Vissir who advised me to contact other people.

My final conversations was with Filips Jager from 2spark, Jasper Jobse (coach), and Johan Schaap from Probaton. I talked with Filips and Jasper at lifehacking academy, we talked about why I would even consider coaching, if it was uncertainty or something else? Jasper Jobse offered to coach me, although I know he is a good coach from my network I was searching for coaching on business-side (and not personal). My converstation continued with Johan Schaap about trusting people. He gave me a very good advice on trusting people with the global picture but not with the details. And trusting me gut (as did Sanne Roemen and Erwin Blom on twitter).

What am I going to do?

• Trust people with the executive summary
• Ask advice from people who are willing to give it
• Be open about what I am dealing with on this blog and twitter
• Consider other options than the incubator on the University of Amsterdam
• Try to generate revenue with medialitics in a early stage
• Ask advice from Syntens (and LifeWire)

In search for a coach

As I have heart is very common for people to have some guidance from experienced people when they are starting a venture. Dealing with a lot of issues myself I have also thought of asking people if they would like to have a coffee with me once every couple of weeks.

But what is the ideal coach? Someone involved with the same problems as me or someone who has already faced them? Do I need to find equal peers or people with much more experience?

Looking at my direct network (people I know for more then 5 years) I don’t see many experienced entrepreneurs. However more and more of them are appearing in my more casual network, people I know from twitter or people who are know to people I do know.  Some have offered my to scan my exec sum and to send it to other more experienced entrepreneurs.

Currently I have constructed a list of people I would like to mail my exec sum (most of them are contacts I know from twitter or contact of contacts) and ask them if they would have some time to talk to me. See if we have some similar interests and if we can create some kind of win-win situation.

Still some concerns come to mind:

• Should I just mail my exec sum to even people I don’t know that well?
• Will they tolerate the fase I am in (very early in the realization of the concept)?
• Will they understand the technical difficulties I am facing? or will they assume I have an answer for everything?
• Will they expect a fully developed businessplan (mine is already outdated because of recent developments)?

Valuation of a project in incubation

Currently I am trying to get into the pre-incubation of University of Amsterdam. Its going to be their first incubation project where they will fund a start-up for a year. But when dealing with such a situation where there is only a proof of concept (and the value of the product because of that is very low), how do you valuate?

I asked this same question to Adeo Ressi who responded by proposing a valuation after pre-incubation stage. One potential construction would be to valuate based on the valuation of VC after pre-incubation. Of course you would give the pre-seed incubator some discount on the shares (reasonable would be like 10%). They would get a cut of the company based the money and resources they invested in the company.

Currently the University of Amsterdam is constructing a agreement where all shareholders are recognized. I will have to see what they put on paper and what the shareholders are willing to put forward in terms of resources. One good advise Adeo Ressi gave me is that I need to consider that I need enough equity to be able to do 2 (or 3?) rounds of funding after pre-incubation. And that is not to early to start negotiating about equity!

Meeting interesting people in the Netherlands

I hate networking where people just start blabering a quick pitch finishing with exchange of businesscard, and while you tell your story they already started to hunt for an other sole. So I dicided to stop networking in the traditional sense and go to places where I can be myself.

Several groups I like:

• Open Coffee
• Naamlooz
• Creative Booster

Because starting your own group is in :P I am starting a initiative around coworking, bi-weekly or monthly “meetups” at a company or individual. The host provides a room and wifi (and if possible coffee, thee and water). Everybody brings his own lunch or we collect lunch money and buy lunch together. More information in a couple of days!

Building upon other services

Starting a company is already difficult enough, so why not build upon existing services (this was also the sales pitch of the CTO of amazon at the next web).

• Google apps for domain (emails, documents, wiki, calendar)
• Tumblr (blog)
• GetSatisfaction (user feedback) - expirimenting with usersuggest
• GitHub (sourcecode hosting) - expirimenting to put it on my own server
• Things (todo management) -expirimenting with basecamp
• Slicehost (hosting) - expirimenting with the amazon stack
  • Nginx (very fast http server)
  • Mongrel (ruby server) - expirimenting with Ebb
  • Ruby on Rails (MVC stack for building app) - expirimenting with Merb+Datamapper
  • MySQL (database) - expirimenting with Postgresql and hopefully bigtable soon
  • Sphinx search (very fast search database)
  • Capistrano (deploy framework)
  • Monit (manage services)

Configuring server for setup

The adventures starts ...