Live from Start-up day

I will be live blogging from the start up day organized by the Stockholm school of entrepreneurship (SSES) tomorrow. Waiting for this exciting event to unfold.
Go here for pictures, video's and interesting reads in this context.
(Pardon me if any mis-spellings or erroneous links. I will fix them once the day is over. Post them as comments if any. Thanks!)

Find the program agenda here

Here I go:

9.40: Introduction by Magnus Lindkvist kick started the day with an inspiring opening about daring, doing & dreaming. Focus was more on changing trends, breaking the shackles in your mind & set your thinking horizon free. I loved the video clipping that was shown. I will try to source for them at youtube. Try looking at them here in some time.

10.00 - Lesley Penington - Be a revolutionary:

Lesley is the CEO of bemz.com - an ecommerce website that sells sofa covers to IKEA.

Jist of the presentation:
Dare to do what you feel is right; do not listen to everyone except your customers; be prepared to fail; attach your emotions to your work and believe in yourself & your idea. Did I forget think different?

Q&A
Question: More about her stint with Steve Jobs?
Oh, she has worked with Steve Jobs (the most charismatic person she has ever met).

Is Jobs & Apple more of a dictator?
More of "Darwanism" than dictatorship. Darwanism sounds interesting - Survival of the fittest is through dictatorship? I personally think Steve Jobs's character is what makes Apple & the products stand out from the rest - who cares if its dictatorship. I love his style.

11.05 - Track 1: What makes a good business idea

James Barlow - Chief Executive of Scottish institute of enterprise. Work with the Universities in Scotland, providing business coaching.

Interesting analogy on your inner personality. Choose one between the square, traingle, Z and circle.

Analogies:
Square: People who choose square are natural team players (2 in the room)
Triangle: Natural leaders (Yeah, I choose this & an average of about 20 in a room of 50)
Z: Creative geniuses. Out of the box thinkers (15 in the room)
Circle: Pre-occupied & living in their own world.

Formula:
E + R = Outcome

E - experience + event.
R - response

When a human come to hear a new thing or a new idea, he makes several assumptions. So the key is to challenge assumptions - how to contradict your own thinking & challenging yourself.
We did an activity - each group is given 1M steel bearings, how do you make maximum money of it? So we all wrote down all our ideas that we got in the 5 mins that we had, picked the 2 good & 2 worst ones of it & identified the criteria for the same.

Why did we do this: Analyze your idea as much as you can. It is tough to tell the mother of a new born baby that her baby is ugly - Just the same way, make sure you are aware of what is the real picture out there. I know this is the usual mundane stuff but the way this was put into us was excellent. I loved the activities, the quickness, the time constraint and the elimination all in one go. (Read this book called Micro-trends by Mark.J.Penn - habits & trends in the market place)

Get the balance between an attractive & feasible business idea.
Innovation can be in:
Product - ipod, computer, solar cells, hydrogen cars
Business Model - Budget airlines, pre-paid model.
Process - IKEA (assembling thigns), DELL (Shipping)
Position - Where do you place your idea?

(Read "Innovators Dilemma")

This guy is damn brilliant.. Very engrossing and interesting..Thanks James!

I am having trouble shifting between rooms opening & closing my laptop. So I guess I will have to skip some some of the points inbetween.

12.10:
Session 3: Ideas to business plan:

Right now, we (myself & Juliana) are sitting in a very quiet presentation (contrary to the one by James) about taking ideas into a business plan. Linda & Asa Ericsson (founders of fabrikat - textile industry) are the speakers in this session. The talk is all about finding innovations in your ideas (examples are more in the textile industry, so not able to totally relate to it)

Shucks, not able to follow much..Everyone looks sleepy & it is getting to me.. So I am closing my laptop for now (battery running low anyways & need to save it for the evening). Will stat posting from the post-lunch session. Rebtel & "Becoming successful in sales" coming up.

2.20PM: Become successful in sales - James Barlow (Yes, he is at it again). This is at track 6. The other 2 tracks right now are "The first year of the start-up" by Charlie Hannson & the investors panel which has Kristofer Steneberg from Diego.

The idea of this session is to bring out the fact that sales or convincing your target audience is not difficult at all.

What is sales? Motivating somebody to do business with us either now or in the future. Sales is one of the cornerstone of business. A nice analogy quoted by James is with regard to heart transplant. The difficulty is not finding the right replacement but stitching it rightly in the human body.

Activity right now - what is the special functionality / features in an ipod?
Easy to use, intuitive, convenience, entertainment on the go, sexy looks, cheap?

Buying is an emotional process more than a logical process. People buy the benefits than the features. The 3 key words for convincing customers is answering "Which means that" for a customer question. An example is "I download music which means that I feel better". Matching needs with benefits is the key. The value in the entire product is creating the link between your idea, your customer, the situation & hence the needs in this context. Once this link is formed, you identify not just the need but also would have addressed the benefit. Sales is about understanding people & looking at the world from their eyes. Some of my questions are - identifying your sales channel especially when the internet is getting ubiquitous? Lets see if this gets answered. Sent the question using the telenor service. Read more about the service here

Actually the mobilstart thingy is pretty cool. When I first set it up for SSES, I felt it was very rigid, but then to come to think of it, it is a very powerful application that can fetch you some money if you play around with it. Is it right to make a direct comparison with services like Jaiku? It is slighty more simple due to the fact that users do not need to sign up for Jaiku (or similar services) to use them. A simple SMS does the job but I am not sure if it will be as pervasive as Jaiku. I am hooked on to Jaiku & it is indeed hot!

It was a good session nevertheless. This guy is very impressive. Hope, he can find some time to come down for hej! probably? Anyways, lets see how the penultimate session is..

Folks, am running out of battery. I think that ends my first stint as a live blogger for an event. Looking forward for more such sessions in the coming weeks (SIME, hubbub & Disruptive Media). I will also upload pictures here.

Thanks SSES. I enjoyed the start-up day!