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- How 15' with Phil Libin At Seedcamp Saved Our Startup's Life
At Dashmin (a lightweight, easy-to-implement business intelligence SAAS tool), we were very fortunate to be accepted in the Mini Seedcamp Paris 2011 batch (20 startups in total), despite our project being only one month old (we may have said it was 2 months old in the application. Fake it until you make it, as they say).
The pitch sessions were super interesting and we got a lot out of the whole day. But the high point was definitely the series of intensive, 6-in-a-row mentoring sessions.
Mentors at Seedcamp are VCs, angels, entrepreneurs. We talked to a lot of VCs in these sessions. Pretty quickly our spirits were down in the dump. Especially for a young product, VCs can be pretty demoralizing. Market sizing, barriers to entry, initial niche targeted… For them, our (not-yet-incorporated) startup wasn’t worthy of VC money.
For the final mentoring session though, we had the amazing chance to have Phil Libin walk over (slightly nudged by Colette Ballou of Ballou PR). The talk with him quickly turned to the “why” rather than the “what” or the “how” (and the “how much”).
And he calmly told us to follow our passion. “The odds are against you succeeding as a startup,” he reminded us. “Might as well do something you really really like and you’re passionate about.”
We had almost let the mentors’ opinions make us focus on a market we didn’t feel comfortable with—all because of the allure (allure, not certainty) of higher potential returns. After the 15’ we spent with Phil though, we were back on the track of our passion and ready to rock the startup world (soon!). And now, we’re pretty sure that had we followed the previous feedback we got, we would’ve failed pretty quickly for lack of entrepreneur-market fit. Phil: you saved the life of our startup—thanks!
Key takeaways:
- Listen to all the feedback you get, but don’t forget to think about it again a few days later to see what sticks and what doesn’t
- Don’t do it for the money—do it for the passion: VCs told us that this or that market was bigger and we would be better off targeting it. But we’ll tackle their markets, in time. We’re just going to start with one we’re more passionate about!
- Starting a company? The odds are against you—might as well do something you LOVE.
- Apply to Seedcamp. Great mentors, great peers, great organization. Thanks to the team for a startup-changing experience. It was worth it—if only for the intense feedback.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”.
Isaac Asimov- Picuous Post-Mortem & the Entrepreneur-Market Fit
On Friday, November 17th, after dumping our SQL, Arnaud (our CTO) deleted all of our users and their pictures from our database, the equivalent of being brain-dead for a startup. There was no coming back.
Arnaud did his job. Now it was up to me to do mine, and think about what we did wrong with Picuous, to have us close down the company 18 months after having started to work on it. And coming in first place…
1. We wanted to start a company
You’ve certainly read about this online. But if there is a theme that is going to repeat itself throughout these three mistakes, is that they are very common. It seems like we made all three top mistakes one can make when starting a company. Which will lead us to our conclusion—hint: telling people fire is hot sometimes isn’t enough, they still have to get burned.
So yes—we wanted to start a company. This in itself is not necessarily bad. But when I started pitching my idea and managed to attract two other brilliant people to it, the team dynamic was too fragile. People were there because of the idea, not because we went along well (although we did afterwards). So we squashed any forewarnings and misgivings we had about my idea and rushed to produce something that would make our dream a little more tangible. Down the road, the idea would prove, well, not that good.
Conclusion: start something to change the world—don’t start a company.
2. We were a feature, not a product
Why was the idea not that good? We were a feature, not a product.
Bear with me through a quick digression. Feature vs product, nice to have vs got to have are dangerous distinctions. So let’s define a feature vs a product : when you build something on platforms, you’re a feature if your business is core to every platform you use. For example, Dropbox is a feature. Developing a cloud-based storage is core for both Apple, Microsoft and Google (who own mobile and desktop Operating Systems) and they will quickly execute it in the coming years. So acquisition is the most likely outcome for Dropbox.
What about image embedding? Getting into media starts with content. It was going to be tough for us to recreate a pool of quality content (it took 500px 5 years), so we thought we would latch on to existing photosharing services. But image embedding is actually core to their business (which is why a certain number of photosharing sites are now developing their own embedding technology). For them, we were but a feature, that they would rather develop internally. Not a good outcome for us.
Conclusion: distinguishing features from products is hard. But think hard about what other actors in your market should do and will do. If you’re building an increment to Facebook, be aware that Facebook will do it—eventually.
3. We avoided doing the hard work
Coding, designing, wire framing, setting up advertising and Launchrock pages—that isn’t hard work. Hard work is going to see your clients, calling new clients, negotiating contracts, getting people to care. It’s hard work because you care about your startup deeply and you don’t know how many “no” you can stomach. Because you maybe have second thoughts and doubts and are afraid you won’t be able to conceal them. Because you just don’t want to hear the truth.
Whatever the reason, you should get out of the building and look for a “no”. People see what they want to believe. We went and interviewed photographers. Only we took their why nots for yes, and their maybes for why nots. Look for reasons for your idea not to work. Startupping is hard enough for you to do it against the wrong enemies.
Conclusion: Yes, it’s hard work and it’s painful. But it’s still less painful than to have to stop your startup after 18 months.
We also suffered from not having enough data do take informed decisions (as dictated by the Lean Startup framework). Arnaud spent hours hacking together dashboards to get some good intelligence out of our data, and always ended up with something I wanted to tweak and change. Taking this idea further, we’re now working on Dashmin, a Google Analytics for your internal data. If you feel our pain, sign up here!
In the end, those mistakes are common because everyone makes them—even successful entrepreneurs. A lot of entrepreneurs get started with the will to start a company and latch on to an idea, instead of starting with a passion. But when things get rocky, you might realize, as we did, that there wasn’t the entrepreneur - market fit that is necessary to keep rolling when times are hard. And then… you’ll quit. And hopefully, start again.
Originally published on the Picuous blog.
When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought.
Steve Jobs- Maisel Vs. Baio: Make a Dignified Living or Hoard Your Rights?
In the Maisel vs Baio case, a potent flame war erupted between Maisel and Baio supporters. If you already know the story, skip the next paragraph.
Three days ago, Andy Baio published a post on his blog detailing the outcome of his short legal altercation with photographer Jay Maisel. In a nutshell, he recreated an 8-bit pixel-art version of the famous Miles Davis photography by Maisel to serve as the cover art for Kind of Bloop, itself an 8-bit homage version of Kind of Blue. Maisel then sued him for copyright infringement, and Baio, despite being sure that his use of the photography fell under Fair Use, preferred to settle out of court for $32,000, describing it as the “least expensive option”.
The typical
trollingdiscussion you can read in thetrollingcomment section of various blogs goes something like this:
PRO-MAISEL: Baio is a thief!
PRO-BAIO: It’s Fair Use!
PRO-MAISEL: So why did he license the music?
PRO-BAIO: It’s for charity!
PRO-MAISEL: For what?
PRO-BAIO: Maisel is a dick!
PRO-MAISEL: Now you’re talking. You’re the dick!This is really the big copyright law debate rearing its ugly head in the form of Maisel vs. Baio. When does Copyright Law protect creativity and creation, versus stop it, is actually the crux of the discussion.
In a way, Maisel’s reaction seems as unproductive as those of the dreaded patent trolls, which, similarly enough, target independant developers which are forced to license the patents, the least expensive way to settle. Doesn’t that remind you of anything? This may be an important factor in the upheaval of the internet savvy against Maisel.
According to Wikipedia (really, the World Intellectual Property Organization), the purpose of copyright is twofold: “To encourage a dynamic culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public.” In other words, copyright is here to protect the economic interest of artists and creators, so that they are incentivized to create and spread their creations.
Copyright law protects your economic interest—even Baio supporters can understand that. What the pro-Baios can’t stomach, however, is Maisel’s rights-hoarding reaction. The usage of this photography does not economically harm him. Had an artist begun selling posters of a painted reproduction of the picture, then Maisel’s business (selling framed prints on jaymaisel.com) would have been directly threatened. With an 8-bit pixellated version on a CD cover for a geeky charity project? Not so much. Maisel comes off as selfish, and in our remix-based culture, that selfishness is viewed as potentially very dangerous.
Let’s hope that more and more artists will see copyright law as it really is, a way for them to make a dignified living off of their work. Not to indiscriminately use the full force of the law to hoard their rights and keep their work from others. Because that would make for a world terribly void of creativity.
- Nice to Have Vs. Got to Have Is Dead—Here's Why
Before, a new product or service would be put in one of two categories: the Nice To Have—it’s a feature, duh—and the Got To Have.
Yet isn’t it time to throw that distinction down in the dumps?
Economy—or more precisely, price—depends on scarcity. And the scarcest thing in the world today is your time. And increasingly, services that allow you to accomplish the same task while saving you time, see dramatical success. It doesn’t matter if they’re Nice To Have or Got To Have. If they save your time, it’s enough.
And let’s not forget that this classification is very often subjective, meaning that people, based on your 2’ pitch, wonder whether they would consider it a Nice To Have vs Got To Have for themselves, for their workflow, etc. This is because there is no clear definition of what is Nice To Have and what is Got To Have.
Case in point: Instagram. Instagram is fascinating because I don’t think that many people would’ve classified it as “got to have”, rather as a “nice to have”. Yet what it allowed people to do—show stylish pictures they took—in the time it required—mere instants—made it hugely popular, reaching 5 million users in 9 months on the sole iOS platform. The photo-sharing market was crowded, and yet they stand as the most serious contender for the place of the mobile picture sharing platform of the future.
So if you’re an investor or mentor or advisor or anyone dabbling in new ideas, avoid this distinction. If you do think that the product should be a feature, explore with the entrepreneur the possibilities of partnerships with products which would benefit from the feature, or the idea of being a technology provider rather than a standalone product. I think everyone stands to benefit from the death of Nice To Have vs. Got To Have.
- Being a Founder Institute Graduate, One Month Later
On February 8th, 12 companies graduated from the Founder Institute, Paris Fall 2010 semester (otherwise known as #PAFI2010): Jolishare, AppartInfo, Paymium, Super Marmite, Learniz, Wiiiwaaa, AutoReduc, LeazyDesign, Dress-Me, Le FoodClub, HereWeDate and—last but not least—Picuous. That’s not much, considering there were around 40 startuppers at the beginning of the program.
First of all, you have to know a few things about the cost of the FI. The application is going to set you back 40€, although there are quite a few ways to get it waived. The program will set you back 900€ (in Paris—prices vary based on location). Once you’ve graduated, you’ll dish out 4,500€ if you raise more than 50,000€ (replace the euros with the appropriate currency). And you put 3,5% of your company in a bonus pool which will be distributed to your peer Grads (30%), the Mentors (30%), local facilitators (25%) and the Founder Institute (15%). When you add everything up, it might seem a bit much. After all, YCombinator takes 6% but gives around $50k in seed funding, right? That would be mistaking the point of the bonus pool: create an ecosystem of interdependant startups that root for each other’s success, incentivizes you to give good advice to your peers, incentivizes the mentors whose share in the bonus pool depends on their rates by the Founders, etc.
What you get in return is a weekly kick in the butt to actually get things done at a very rapid pace, and working groups of 4 or 5 peers which you see twice a week to talk about the challenges you face and choices you make to build your dream company. You meet great CEOs, journalists, business angels, even some VCs. Your mileage may vary depending on the quality of said peers and mentors, but the structure is there to allow you to get regular feedback on your idea on the way.
Would I recommend the FI to an entrepreneur?
My experience with the Founder Institute was intense, to say the least. When I entered the program end of September, I had my project—one I had been thinking about for quite some time—but no idea what practical first steps to take to launch it, and no technical whizz. Fast forward three months and a half: we’re an awesome team of three, Arnaud, Thomas and I. The beta is almost ready, and we can’t wait to see what people are going to do with the product. We’re now well networked in the community of French startups and we can see the FI mailing lists as a powerful tool to gain traction with influencers and early adopters.
I know that all my peers don’t share my level of satisfaction. Some PAFI grads arrived with a very mature idea, and it didn’t budge much. At the end of the program, they feel that they didn’t derive much value from it. On the other hand, two Founders arrived with a beta which was almost ready, but they had been developing it for months and adding features without customer feedback (in “waterfall development” mode) and critical feedback from peers on the early beta convinced them to pare down the features and regain app focus. They’re definitely on a better track now than they were before.
All in all, I would definitely recommend the program to anyone who has a project and who is looking for peer support, insightful feedback and networking opportunities. I know I wouldn’t have made it alone.
(You want to know how we’re doing? I created a list with all the PAFI grads corporate accounts. No personal bullshit!)
- Startup Weekends Focus on the Wrong Things
Last week (it already seems like a month ago), I took part in the Startup Weekend Paris. The event brought together more than 200 French entrepreneurs who pitched more than 50 projects, only 18 of which were selected for the WE.
I was fortunate enough to have not chosen any of the 18 projects, wanting instead to walk around during the WE and get a glimpse of all of the projects. What happened then was that Olivier Desmoulin, the cofounder and CEO of Super Marmite, told me that he’d had a great idea and that I should come and work on his project. Our team eventually won the Startup Weekend with appibabi.es, the first app where you can have, and take care of, virtual babies.
This was my third Startup Weekend, but also the first where I stuck with a project during the weekend. Here are a few random thoughts about Startup Weekends in general:
1) No Idea Screening
This seems to be a recurring SW problem. Since there is no idea screening, neither before nor after the pitches, there are a lot of me-toos pitched. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but since in most cases the SW won’t give rise to new startups, its added value seems to be in the educational process, and the latter would be amplified by working on completely new ideas.
2) Main Projects Need Not Apply
While some people pitch their main project in the hope of getting free labor, others just want to pitch that one, because it’s the one they’re the most passionate about. I’d advise against doing that, though. There are two risks: your “main project” doesn’t sell well, and you’re frustrated because others’ side projects are chosen (I’ve experienced this first hand) ; and if it does get chosen, there have already been legal problems with the work produced during the SW. John Lewis Jr., professor at HEC and former SW mentor, told me he’d stopped mentoring the SWPA after having been asked to be a witness in a legal dispute between members of a SWPA team.
3) Focus on Ideas, not HR
Despite this absence of screening, the focus of the Startup Weekend is on ideas, not HR. Once the project of one participant is chosen, she tries to recruit as many participants as possible—quantity over quality. What happened to “the team is paramount”? I think one of the reason we won is that at least one key member of our team knew all of the others and knew that we’d work well together. This seems to be an exception rather than the norm, however.
That being said, the sheer quality of participants helps some SW projects continue onward. It’s the case with the appibabi.es team, which continues to operate, albeit without me—I’m going to stay focused on my main startup, Picuous. I don’t understand why SW emphasize statistics about the ongoing projects via all of their official channels (their about page for example says that “over 36% of Startup Weekend startups are still going strong after 3 months”—since when is three months an appropriate metric to measure the dynamism of a project?). I think it’s great that they provide such an intense 54-hour experience, and I find it too bad that they don’t feel it’s enough.
- What You Can Learn From the Competition Between YouTube and Spotify
“My idea is brand new and we have no competition” is apparently a recurring delusion of new (and not-so-new) entrepreneurs.
I was recently at a party where I was supposed to handle the music. I’d assembled a nice Spotify playlist, and when I arrived, I set up Spotify in just a few clicks on the host’s computer and launched my playlist. Quite happy with myself, I left to grab myself a drink. 5’ later, I noticed that the music playing definitely didn’t belong to the playlist. I returned to the computer and noticed that people had taken charge and where assembling a YouTube playlist for the party. Wait, what?
A few days later I was at a friend’s house. She really likes music, and I highly recommended she try out Spotify. “It’s an awesome service for music streaming,” I said. She agreed to give it a spin. A few days later, she’d uninstalled it and went back to listening to music on YouTube. Wait, what??
YouTube is for streaming video, I told her, not music. It’s not bandwith efficient, it’s not structured by album or artist or label (or anything), it’s ugly. If your browser crashes, so does your music.
But for everyone in the early or late majority in the “music streaming” category, YouTube’s advantages far outweigh Spotify’s:
• ~100% brand penetration
• everyone knows how to use it
• almost every song in the world available, including obscure remixes
• no ads or listening limitations
• no download necessary
• awesome search capabilitiesSeen this way, Facebook status updates are competing with Foursquare checkins, phpBB is competing against Quora, and MMS are a potential Path-killer (or is it the otherway around?).
So next time you think about your startups’ competition, think YouTube vs. Spotify. That’s what we tried to do at Picuous and I think we’re better off with this view of our competition, than by saying that we have none.
- The 299 Qualities All Entrepreneurs Need to Succeed Even A Little
Trying to understand what makes an entrepreneur successful, or even entrepreneurial, has yielded a lot of material over the years. Sadly, that material seems to fall under two categories.
On the one hand, we have articles citing all the obvious traits. Among those, motivation, energy, focus, flexibility, and many others. They are useless—they just state the obvious—but not dangerous. See for example 7 Key Qualities of a Successful Entrepreneur, 5 Qualities of a Good Entrepreneur, 10 Qualities of a Successful Entrepreneur, or Five Qualities of Great Entrepreneurs. Yes, I guess that if you’re not motivated, nor resourceful, nor energetic, you won’t make a very good entrepreneur. However, I strongly believe that people are naturally attracted to what they are (or at least could be) good at. Following this logic, if a person has neither one of these traits, she won’t be attracted to entrepreneurship in the first place.
On the other hand, we have opinionated articles, such as How can I tell if I am failing at my entrepreneurial venture or start-up by Marc Cenedella. Following this quote from Paul Bucheit: “Advice = Limited life experiences + Overgeneralization”, they generally reflect more on the personality of the person who wrote them than on general rules, but are presented as the latter. I find these articles both interesting and dangerous.
“Dangerous” is a pretty strong word. But the reason why I chose to quit my job and founded Picuous is because I was fed up with people telling me how to behave, what to do, what not to do, how I needed to do it. And I was disappointed to see that I just traded one diktat for another. Where big companies can afford to (or even need to) smooth out individualities, I think an entrepreneurial ecosystem thrives on diversity and sheer numbers. And saying like Marc Cenedella that a certain category of people (the polite and purposeful) will fail, is dangerous on both counts.
As an entrepreneur, I want nothing more than for other people who want to be entrepreneurs, to succeed. If I don’t think they have what it takes—who am I to judge? The way toddlers learn that fire is hot is by trying to touch it. Let’s be encouraging, not judgmental. If the spark wasn’t strong, it’ll go out soon enough. Don’t be the one who extinguishes it.
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Tweets
- Submitted @socialfolders to Hacker News :) http://t.co/p1tShJi2
- Glorious view of the Financial District http://t.co/LKROiaR1
- I love how the roads suddenly disappear into nothingness here http://t.co/8FeDLaSs
- Scary. RT @newsycombinator: Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy http://t.co/Ulx0HN9a
- RT'ing. So meta. RT @venturehacks: Word of Mouth: When you can tweet simply by RT'ing what other people are saying about you.
- Coolest coworking space of 2011! (with Philippe at Storek Coworking Space) [pic] — http://t.co/ZE8iQfMw
- @roxannevarza @SelmaBek Who raised $12m? Just curious
- I just liked "Hello" on Vimeo: http://t.co/BSZa3YGy
- Early sun @ Storek Coworking Space http://t.co/EhbLD1yP
- cc @Tranchier re: nos discussions RT @TechCrunch: Want To Build A Startup? Entrepreneurs & App Developers Are Going B2B http://t.co/Vtf3lJAN
- Agreed RT @john_frankel: This is one of the most thoughtful pieces on Android that I have read in a long time: http://t.co/YbUqZpPd
- @PandoDaily text width is OK, but you should A/B test line height. 1.6 would improve the reading xp, especially for long form articles
- Does anyone at Apple use the Keyboard Viewer? Answer: no. http://t.co/ZQa7baAo
- @CamilleRoux "based on a small sample size of 1500 people in the US. Does not mention anything about their age, race, gender or location."
- @CamilleRoux I call BS
- Oh no, @gruber is going to have competition now! RT @arrington: the golden age of blogs actually linking to each other is back. gasp.
- Ready for take off! (with Philippe at @cdg) — http://t.co/5tg60LIX
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Today, search engines results are based on their algorithms and not on what you enjoy, you and your family. Birds of a feather flock together. On Doodoo.com we have decided to show you results you’ll really like. Yes we can!
— Emmanuel Françoise, Doodoo.com
- New photoshoot date in Paris
After a first “test” in November, we’re going to be hosting a new photoshoot for 8 lucky entrepreneurs in Fontenay les Roses. Space is extremely limited, so sign up quickly!
