In this post, I want to touch upon some of the main mistakes I experience when talking to startups about how much to raise, and give you a simple process to establish what you actually need and what would be best to have and how to get closer to the latter.

Very often, startups approach the question of how much to raise by asking themselves questions like these:

• How much have my competitors raised?
• How much is an average xyz-round?
• How much could we imagine spending in the next 18 months?

This is all completely irrelevant to efficiently reaching the goals you’ve set to make your business successful. Even worse, I quite often experience founders saying things along the lines of:

Let’s set our goal a bit higher than what we actually need, that way, if we don’t raise the full amount, we’ll still be okay.

This is an understandable logic, but completely misguided nonetheless. If you come to an intelligent investor with bloated budgets, she will see straight through it, interpreting it as either–in the best case–incompetence, and–in the worst–as you trying to scam out money of your investors.

What you actually need to think about

Instead, here’s the steps to go through to determine how much you need to raise:

1. Make a very, very thought-through and thorough plan for your company defining which goals you need to achieve.
2. Make a realistic budget for how much resources and time you will need as a minimum to attain those goals.
3. Make a realistic budget of what you could do with extra resources in the same amount of time as in the budget above.
4. Show this to everyone who can challenge it.

Step 1: The detailed plan of goals is the most important part of your pitch-deck. You have to make the investor agree to these goals as being what your business needs to accomplish.

The goals you set here, are essentially what you will be building your next round upon. You need to make your goals realistic and attainable, but at the same time, they have to accomplish achievements that will be strong selling-points in the next rounds you raise, or even make you cash-flow positive.

Step 2: The sum of the first budget is the minimum amount you need to raise to achieve these goals. This is your funding goal, and you should be honest with investors, saying that this is the minimum amount that will make it possible to reach your goal, and that you are not going to close a round of anything less than that amount.

If it is impossible for you to raise this amount, it’s back to your day job. You have correctly defined what you need to accomplish your mission, anything less than that will waste your time, and your investors money.

This is not saying that you need to give up on your business, but either the timing or your plan is off, and you need time to find a new approach.

Step 3: The second budget addresses everything that will help your business get further, faster. This extra money is not to extend your runway, it’s to get your company further on the runway you’ve decided you need. If you decided in the first budget that you need 18 months to accomplish your goals, you should still budget to burn this extra cash in 18 months.

What you will add, is awesome stuff that will accelerate your growth, make your product better, and motivate your team to work better. The valuation must be the same, and as an early stage company, you are always selling your equity more expensive now than in the next round, so don’t overdo the “wish”-budget.

On top, it appears strange to investors if you are looking to raise between 100k and 300k. Don’t let the two budget vary by more than a factor of 2.

Step 4: Get as much feedback as you possibly can on all of the above. Do you really need that much to handle administration? Can you really build the product you need for that little? What will you eat? Repeat steps 1 through 3 as many times as needed, until you’re bulletproof to questions about what you need and for what.

Now you’re ready to fundraise.

Getting what you want, not just what you need.

Now it’s time to leverage your work to get the funding you want. You’ve done all the preparation, and you have a solid plan for fundraising. You’ll be able to answer all questions from potential investors about why they should invest the amount you are presenting. To make it even more clear, make two pie charts:

1. What the money will go to if you raise the minimum amount
2. What the money will go to if you raise the maximum amount

When presenting this to investors, there will be no doubt about the need to fund budget #1. Be honest, without this money, there’s no reason to invest at all. If they challenge any of the figures, show them the detailed budget, and explain the logic behind every single line on it. If you’ve done your work and gotten enough feedback before talking to investors, there shouldn’t really be much to challenge once you start showing the specifics.

Now to the good part. If the investor accepts budget #1 and is willing to invest, you show her budget #2. This is the budget with all the awesome stuff on it. Instead of building a scraped MVP that will do what it has to, you show what amazing growth-generating features you will add. Instead of a bare minimum of marketing and sales, you can scale up and accomplish even more in the same amount of time. Instead of 10% of her investment going towards administration, it is only 5%, while revenue generating activities will take up a larger share.

Using this strategy, you are securing what you need, but making it likely to also get what you want. There’s no guarantee that you will get what you want, but at the very least, you’ll get what you need.

The “If you can raise it, you should take it”-approach

I hear a lot of people–especially VCs–say, that if someone offers to invest in your company, you should pretty much always take it.

A lot of the time, that is true. Access to capital is sparse, especially in Europe, and if someone wants to invest, a large amount in your company, it will mean that you can achieve bigger goals, faster.

While that is true, it’s also true that if you are in the fortunate situation that someone wants to invest in your company at your current state, that will also be the case later, assuming that you manage your company well. And under the same assumption, you will be able to sell your equity at a higher price in the future than today, meaning less dilution of your stake, and to misquote Warren Buffet:

A full [funding]-wallet is like a full bladder; you may have the urge to pee it away.

I’m very happy to discuss the opinions in this piece, which are my own and do not express the opinions of my employer. Leave a comment, or tweet at @madsemiil.

Originally posted on madsemil.com

Background: I’ve been through several successful as well as failed fundraising campaigns in my own companies, and on the sideline of many more. I handle marketing at Funderbeam, a platform for making and trading startup investments.

How much does my company need to raise? was originally published in Funderbeam Wire on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I was asked to write a piece about how I, as a marketing professional, believe we can help blockchain technology to “cross the chasm” and become more widely adopted in society.

It’s All About Showing Value

I always ask people who say they don’t “get” what a blockchain is, whether or not they really “get” the internet. I first heard this question being asked to an audience at a WIRED MONEY talk in Berlin by the CEO and Founder of Funderbeam, Kaidi Ruusalepp.

Typically, the majority of people who understand the internet, also understand the concept of a blockchain, and vice versa — which means, if you don’t understand one, you probably don’t understand the other.

The task at hand for us, as marketers, is not to make people understand how a blockchain works, but instead, it is to show the customer the value of the product and how it can be used in their day-to-day life.

In all developed countries, the vast majority of the population have been internet users for over a decade, but many have no idea how the internet actually works. They all, however, understand the benefit very clearly — because of the internet people are able to keep in constant communication with loved ones, are able to spread ideas and information, and also simply are able to log onto the web and watch a turtle hump a shoe.

The internet has crossed a chasm, not because we, as people, understand how it works, but because we all love what it does. This is also what we need to do with the products we’re building on top of the blockchain.

I believe that, as marketers, we need to internalize and understand this concept ourselves. New technology is fascinating and it is very easy to fall in love with how it works instead of focusing on what really matters to our audience: What it does for them.

In order for the market and the people to adopt and adapt to our concept, blockchain technology, needs to become less visible. We need to use the blockchain to make products that are faster, better, more secure, and cheaper. The majority of people will not care whether their product uses blockchain or not, as long as it works and does something they need or want.

When the technology becomes less visible and more usable, marketers will be able to focus their attention on transmitting these values to people. This is how the blockchain will be able to continue to move further across the chasm.

In our organization, we’ve used blockchain to make a stock exchange for startup investments. Although the investors who use Funderbeam to trade investments don’t care about the underlying technology, they care about access to liquidity in their portfolio. This is how we are able to market ourselves. Blockchain is simply the technology that allows us to make these trades transparent, fast, and most importantly secure.

If you liked this post, please recommend it to you network, and make sure to share this or the full E-book which includes loads of great pieces!

Huge thanks Jeremy for stopping by the office and inviting me to contribute to the book!

Opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Funderbeam.

Crossing the Chasm: A Marketer’s Perspective on Blockchain was originally published in Funderbeam Wire on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I recently gave a talk at a conference on blockchain in Helsinki, giving insights about the hype around blockchain, and the amount of investments being made into blockchain startups.

As part of this, I presented a slide showing the amount of searches on Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Blockchain, according to Google Trends:

This slide was photographed, shared, and interpreted as me claiming that there was more searches for Blockchain than for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency.

However, this graph is indexed, so each individual search term has maximum at 100, and the point I made was simply, that the peak of hype came much later for blockchain than for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

The slide was a continuation of the slides before, where I showed blockchain, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on Gartner’s hype-cycle:

I used Google Trends to elaborate on the previous slides, but this is of course lost when the single photo is shared out of context.

I believe that anyone who was at the conference would understand this, but my lesson learned is, that each slide you present in the year 2016 should be understandable out of context.

Next time I use the slide of Google Trends, I will be sure to add a note, stating that searches are all indexed to 100!

As a final note, I have absolutely no interest in “claiming” that there are more searches for blockchain than for Bitcoin. At Funderbeam, we use bitcoin technology for trading startups.

Blockchain in general and bitcoin in particular are in no way competing, and I seriously don’t understand how anyone could get their panties in a bunch over this.

Thanks to Nikolaus Kangas of Local bitcoins for amending his blog post to reflect this misunderstanding!

FIRST, A LITTLE BACKSTORY
The higher you fly, the deeper you fall. Our hubris had been roughly three months earlier, when we went on the Danish version of Shark Tank/Dragons Den, pitching our company and asking for DKK 300k (≈$46k). We had done our homework, and delivered a pitch that was, in my humble opinion, fucking awesome. We sold our vision, and we had the answers. Several of the high profile investors were interested, and we ended up walking out of there with a interest of a million Kroner (≈$150k. — More than three times of what we asked for.

This was the most amazing day. As anyone who’s walked away from a really, really great investor meeting will know, you feel like you’re flying. On top of this, we were going to get some serious PR from this, as the show was extremely popular.

Of course, when you get a commitment while recording a TV-show, that’s only a commitment to start a due diligence, and we were in for a rough one. As first time founders, dealing with some of the world’s best investors isn’t easy. They were fair, honest, and to the point, but there were clear problems in our startup that made them weary of putting down the full investment. On a call with the investors, one of them said it very, beautifully:

Your team is awesome, your product sucks

It was true. And we had to fix it. We had already tried to bring in more manpower, but being non-technical, we struggled to find the right guys for the job.

In the end, we set a goal with our investors: By the time the show aired, we needed to have our product improved on range of areas, otherwise they would pull their investment.

We didn’t

SHOW TIME
On the day of the show, we were still working like crazy, and pushing our developers well beyond what was probably fair, but everyone knew the cold hard truth: The show will air at 21.00, and if we aren’t done by that time, we are probably done all together.

We ran out of time before the show, and this let to what will by far be the single most depressing moment of my professional life. Sitting in an empty office with my cofounders, all of us watching 100s of messages popping in saying “congratulations”, “I knew you could do it”, “You are killing it!” and “I knew you could do it”.

In short: The exact opposite feelings of what we had at the moment.

Full attention, full failure. Hard things.

SOUTHBOUND AND DOWN
Around midnight there’s basically nothing more to do, and I walk out in the night to take the U-bahn down to my flat in Kreuzberg. Mood darker than the tunnel around the U8, time couldn’t pass fast enough until I could be alone on my Graefestraße balcony; drinking Netto’s €2 bio-wine and speed-rolling cigarettes like I was getting paid for it. — A job I could actually have considered at this point.

Naturally, this is when the conductor announces that the train won’t go any further, and that everyone has to get off. Because fuck me.

In the five or ten minutes up to this, an annoyingly cheerful stranger had continuously been trying to strike up conversation with me. I’d tried my best at ignoring him, but his continuous smiling and questions made it increasingly hard. As he spoke no German and very poor English, I decide to help him get from one train to the next. He had already asked for directions several times, despite him being on the right train and just needing to stay seated. Anyway, we start talking, and his ridiculously optimistic attitude started to rub off. Pretty soon, we were both laughing, and I start asking him about his background. Turns out, he’d walked to Berlin, all the way from fucking Syria, and was working every single night from 01 am to noon in order to make a living.

I was feeling super depressed because the most likely outcome of a dream I’d chosen to follow was starting to kick in. This guy’s name is Prince, and he’s reminding me that I shouldn’t focus on the shit that was behind me, but on the upside of where I am right now. This isn’t a, “I should feel so grateful for what I have, there are poor kids in Africa”-kinda post. It’s a enjoy the fucking ride, sometimes it’s low, but make sure the lows are in good places with good people. Soft things.

Prince was crazy excited about just being in Berlin, and so was I. I just needed a reminder.

THE SHOW MUSTN’T GO ON
I think in any failed startup, there’s two breaking points: 1) The one where your company actually fails, and 2) the one where you come to the realisation that it has failed. Our company probably failed a lot sooner than we realised. It’s the classic story of not having a tech guy on the team from the beginning, and even though we worked day and night to make things work, we just didn’t have what it took. I’ve learned an incredible amount of things, and when (not if), I take on my next venture, there are a lot fewer things I’ll do wrong, but still there are more mistakes yet to be made than I’ve made in the past. The most important thing however, is not which mistakes you make or don’t make, it who you make them with. I had the incredible luck to start my companies people I’d only just met:

I think the most amazing thing about this whole journey is, that I didn’t know these guys when we started, but now I have friends for life. In all the shit we went through, we never had an actual fight. Sure we had lots of heated discussions, but they were never about personality, only the company. To this day, this is what makes me look back at this with a smile on my face.

MOVING ON
I live in Tallinn Estonia now, where I’ve landed a job in an amazing company, in a role I probably never would’ve landed if it weren’t for all the stuff we went through with Trunkbird.

I recently met with one of my cofounders in Berlin, and had an amazing talk, making me sure we’ll do much more together in the future, and the other is actually joining me in Tallinn!

Thanks to you two, and to all the other amazing people who helped me get through all this.

Remember the soft things, it’s what get you through the hard.

For the first time since 2012, funding in Q4 2015 dropped year-on-year. The funding well isn’t dry. But investors are feeling antsy about valuations and the overall prospects of the market.

A positive thought to keep in mind, is that while total funding dropped by a third (32.64%) from Q3 to Q4 2015, this was largely resulting from a spike in Q3. Then again, this spike may have been the last hurrah before a longer downslide which a lot of investors are predicting. They should know — they’re holding the purse strings.

We’re keeping our eyes peeled, and will keep you updated as we make sense of emerging patterns in our funding data for 2016.

Despite the darkening mood in investment circles, 2016 started out with a relative high note. Whether this will continue in the months to come is another question.

Startup funding in January 2016 beat January 2015 by 12.7%

It’s worth noting that $1.2bn of the funding in January 2016 comes from a single investment in Chinese startup, Lufax which we previously highlighted in our weekly Funderpicks.

If you haven’t read our other funding posts in our series on 2015 funding, see them all here. Also, let us know if there are any funding-related themes or trends you’d like us to investigate.

Mixed news for startups looking to raise funds in 2016 was originally published in Funderbeam Wire on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Without, I hope, sounding too much like a douchebag: I’ve quite often been asked if I could share some of the tools I use. Here are the most important tools I use in Google Chrome. Bold is name/link, Italics are the developers own description of the extension.

If you have comments for the tools, or know better ones, I really hope you’ll share with me!

General productivity:

xTab
Limit maximum number of open tabs
I’ve had a (terrible) tendency to have waaaaaay too many tabs open. This one forces me to limit myself, and make notes of things I need to get back to instead of keeping tabs open in order to remember.

Edit; ADD: Tab organizer
Organizes and Rearranges tabs by URL.
Super simple and does what it says. I’m still a tab-horder, and this makes it more manageable.

Quick Search for Google Drive
Lets you quickly search files in Google Drive™ and get results using the address bar

This saves sooooo much time! I just write “drive” in the omnibar, and then whatever file I need — and for god’s sake, CMD+L (COMMAND LINE) is the best shortcut ever.

Awesome Screenshot: Screen capture, Annotate
Screen capture for all or part of any web page. Add annotations, comments, blur sensitive info, and share with one-click uploads.
I use this very rarely as CMD+SHIFT+4 (A picture has 4 corners) does an excellent job, but for screenshotting entire pages it works like a charm.

Better History
A better look at your browsing history. The best searching, the sharpest interface, and the most useful filters — for your history.
They sell it well. It’s just actually just bit nicer-lookin’ than the good old history. And, remember to use CMD+Y to get to either. (historY)

Pretty-ness:

Minimal White
Simple minimalistic white theme for Google Chrome
The description really says it all. I just like the clean simple layout.

Momentum
Replace new tab page with a personal dashboard featuring todo, weather, and inspiration.
This could go in productivity, but honestly it does more for my eastethic pleasure than my productivity.

Wikiwand
Good old Wikipedia gets a great new look
Wikipedia might be my favourite websites ever made, but let’s be honest, it looks like dog-crap. Wikiwand fixes that.

Tech Tools

BuiltWith Technology Profiler
Find out what the website you are visiting is built with using this extension.
Offen it’s really helpful to quickly see the tools and frameworks behind a website. Whenever I see something that’s really good, I use this to find out what and how.

MozBar
MozBar from Moz
Saves shitloads of time on SEO.

SimilarWeb
See real in-depth website engagement, traffic sources, and site ranking information with

FB Pixel Helper
The FB Pixel Helper is a troubleshooting tool that helps you validate your FB Conversion and Custom Audience Pixels.
Simple extension to see if FB pixels are working their magic (unless people have ghostery :O

Tag Assistant (by Google)
Tag Assistant helps to troubleshoot installation of various Google tags including Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and more.
Same as pixel helper, but for google stuff.

What’s the font?
Quickly find the font name of any highlighted text.
Just faster than checking the CSS yourself.

Social

News Feed Eradicator for Facebook
Find yourself spending too much time on Facebook? Eradicate distractions by replacing your entire news feed with an inspiring quote

Twitcher — Twitter Account Switcher
Twitter Account Switcher
Really intuitive and quick way of switching between Twitter accounts. Yes, I use tweetdeck for managing multiple accounts, but that don’t give me no analytics.

Buffer
Buffer is the best way to share great content to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn from anywhere on the web, with just one click.
Yep, That’s what it does. 👆– And, it works amazingly well in combination with:

Bitly
Save, share, and brand your links
Allows me to make awesome shortlinks like this one: ma.dsemil.com/ChromeME

Facebook Invite All
Automatically invite all your facebook friends to Events or Pages with just one click.
A bit noisy (and maybe violating facebook’s policy), so don’t overuse it but this is super usefull to get you going on facebook.

Reddit Enhancement Suite
Reddit Enhancement Suite — a group of enhancements for browsing Reddit
Especially neverending scroll and auto-expand of photos is great (Unless you are at work)

Privacy/security

LastPass
LastPass, an award-winning password manager, saves your passwords and gives you secure access from every computer and mobile device. I used to use Dashlane, and actually think it worked better, but the price was just too damn high.

Extensions Manager (aka Switcher)
Handy extensions, applications & themes manager.
Somewhat useful. Quickly manage all the fuckers on this list.

Ghostery
Enjoy a faster, safer and cleaner browsing experience.
Perhaps my main recommendation in this category. It’s a big loss for online marketers like myself, as I can’t target the shit out of you based on your online behavior, but it’s a win for your digital privacy, which is more important.

THE END!

– So, what are your favourite extensions that are missing from this list? Or which ones of the ones I use are not the best at what they do?

Kan man være studerende og iværksætter på samme tid? Jeg håber, svaret er ja! I hvert fald forsøger jeg netop nu, at starte en virksomhed samtidig med, at jeg er i gang med at tage min kandidat på ITU.

Det mener min rektor, Mads Tofte, også, hvis man skal tro hans udtalelse til Politiken d. 28. oktober:

Jeg ved ikke, hvor meget universitetet kan tage æren for det her, for det er jo de studerende, der skaber resultaterne. Men vi gør meget ud af at fortælle de studerende fra første dag, at hensigten med universitetet er at give folk mod på at skabe noget. Og så er vi nok ret rummelige over for det lidt skæve. Iværksættere er ikke altid konforme — de går deres egne veje. Det tror jeg, vi giver dem plads til.

Jeg har dog haft en lidt anden oplevelse med Rektor, som jeg føler, jeg vil dele her, eftersom han ikke har svaret på min kritik af hans håndtering af situationen, og da den står i skærende kontrast til ovenstående udtalelse.

Jeg har startet en virksomhed, der hedder Bringrs, og læser samtidig Digital Innovation and Management på ITU. Det er hårdt, sjovt, stressende, tilfredsstillende og alt i alt pisse spændende. Både at være studerende på ITU, og at starte en virksomhed.

Det går unægteligt ud over studieaktiviteten, når man pludselig bruger mere end, hvad der svarer til et fuldtidsarbejde på et sideløbende projekt. Ingen tvivl om det. Men jeg håber og tror på, at om end det nedsætter studieaktiviteten så bidrager det omvendt til, at man som studerende kan omsætte sin teori til praksis, skabe interessante projekter og ikke mindst skabe værdi for samfundet. Jeg tror på, at der er et samspil mellem at starte en ny, innovativ digital forretningsmodel, og studere digital innovation og ledelse på et IT universitet.

Inspireret af studiemiljøet

Grunden til, at jeg valgte at starte mit eget firma, var faktisk ITU. Efter at have gået på ITU i ganske kort tid blev jeg en del af ITU Innovators, en studenterorganisation der beskæftiger sig med iværksætteri og innovation. Herigennem voksede min interesse for at blive selvstændig, og det endte med, at jeg pludselig var involveret i at starte mit eget.

Jeg skruede ned til halv tid på mit studie, da jeg startede min virksomhed, og på den foranledning fik jeg en mail fra Rektor på ITU, der ville høre, hvad dette skyldtes:

If the delay is due to causes which we have not been corresponding about previously, please inform me of those causes. I’m both interested in causes which are under your control (or are of a personal nature) and causes, which are under ITU’s control. Please send your reply to me at […]. I’ll treat your reply as confidential.

If you wish to speak with somebody about your situation, you are welcome to contact the ITU Study and Career Advisory Office.

Jeg beklager, at jeg ikke ligeledes behandler dette som “confidential”, men forklaring følger. Jeg syntes på daværende tidspunkt, at det var ret god stil, at de sådan spurgte til “Progress in my studies”, som emnefeltet lød. Det smager jo næsten af fremdriftsreform, men syntes det var godt, at de holdt øje med, hvordan det gik med mine studier. Jeg svarede d. 30. April, og forklarede hvorfor jeg havde reduceret min “courseload”, og spurgte til, hvem jeg kunne snakke med. I første omgang fik jeg ikke noget svar, så jeg skrev igen d. 14. maj, for at høre om min mail var modtaget. D. 19. fik jeg følgende svar:

Kære Mads [Emil]

Jeg tror du står foran et vanskeligt valg, nemlig om du vil være kandidatstuderende her eller starte firma. At gøre begge dele er urealistisk, som du også har erfaret.

Jeg vil være fuld af respekt for dit valg hvis du vælger firmaet, men jeg synes du skylder dig selv at træffe valget aktivt.

Venlig hilsen

Mads Tofte

Her blev jeg, for at sige det mildt, godt gammeldags gal. Jeg syntes simpelthen ikke, det kunne være rigtigt, at det ikke skulle være muligt at gøre plads til, at man som studerende kan forlænge sit studie for at starte en virksomhed. Særligt når der er så klar sammenhæng mellem mit studie og min virksomhed. Ja, faktisk har alle mine projekter på ITU, siden jeg grundlagde min virksomhed, omhandlet ting jeg bruger i min virksomhed. Jeg lærer ting på mit studie, som jeg kan bruge i forbindelse med min virksomhed, og jeg lærer ting i min virksomhed, som jeg kan bruge på mit studie. Jeg efterspurgte nogen at snakke med, og fik i stedet at vide, at jeg bare kunne droppe ud, hvis jeg ikke ville droppe min virksomhed. Og hvordan hænger denne besked lige sammen med det budskab, som Mads Tofte D.D. har udtrykt til Politiken? Netop om hvor meget ITU nurser og støtter op om iværksætteri?

I første omgang undlod jeg at svare, da jeg vidste, at jeg var i min gode ret (dette finder sted før fremdriftsreformen) til at forlænge mit studie, så længe jeg levede op til ITUs krav om studieaktivitet, og vel at mærke ikke modtog SU hvis jeg havde så få fag, at jeg ikke var berettiget til det. Først små tre måneder senere fik jeg svaret Mads:

Kære Mads [Tofte]

Jeg mener ikke at det behøver at være et valg, men hvis det gør, er jeg på nuværende tidspunkt for fysisk og mentalt investeret i mit projekt til at det ville være et reelt valg. Når det er sagt, så har jeg en ufravigelig ambition om at opnå en kandidatgrad, så det er for mig ikke et spørgsmål om, at droppe ud eller ej. Det er et spørgsmål om, at jeg ikke vil levere en halvhjertet indsats i undervisningen og dermed ikke opnå optimale resultater.

Jeg er overbevist om, at der er en synergi-effekt mellem at starte en innovativ virksomhed (Bringrs) og læse Digital Innovation på ITU. Rigtig mange af de ting jeg har beskæftiget mig med i undervisningen er direkte relevant for mit firma, og omvendt. I de sidste to eksamener jeg har taget har jeg brugt min Bringrs som eksamenscase der eksemplificerer hhv. Open Innovation og Digital technology and new business models. Det tror jeg både gavner mig og mine medstuderende.

Vores projekt: http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Penge/2014/06/09/182453.htm

Venligst,

Mads Emil

På dette tidspunkt gik det så godt med Bringrs, vi havde flere nationale omtaler og en del brugere, at jeg slet, slet ikke kunne forestille mig at droppe mit projekt. Jeg håbede, at Mads ville svare noget, der er i tråd med den tone som ITU generelt lægger over for iværksætteri, når der laves udtalelser til offentligheden, men her små tre måneder efter, at jeg skrev ovenstående mail, har jeg stadig ikke fået svar fra ITU.

Dette indlæg skal ikke læses som brok over hverken ITU generelt, eller Mads Tofte i særdeleshed. Jeg elsker at være studerende på ITU. Jeg synes det er et fantastisk sted, der virkelig inspirerer til iværksætteri. Jeg synes, at Mads Tofte er en dygtig rektor, og ud over denne ene mailkorrospondance har jeg stor respekt for ham og hans resultater med ITU. Jeg synes ganske enkelt, at denne modstridende holdning og handling viser et grundlæggende problem; Man vil gerne have iværksætteri fra studerende, men vi vil ikke give dem tid til det. Man vil gerne have innovation, men man vil ikke give plads til den. Man vil gerne have, men man vil ikke give.

Studerende er de bedste iværksættere!

Uddannelses og Forskningsministeriet har netop udgivet en pressemeddelelse, der omtaler stigende iværksætteraktivitet på universiteterne. Ikke nok med, at der er sket en stigning på 43% fra 2001 til 2011 i antallet af virksomheder der startes af studerende og nyuddannede, vises det også, at studerende og nyuddannede er de bedste til at få deres virksomheder til at vokse, overleve og skabe arbejdspladser.

Tilsyneladende er iværksættere fra universiteterne både bedre til at skabe arbejdspladser og produktivitet end andre iværksættere. I de tre første leveår voksede de studerende og nyuddannede universitetsiværksætteres virksomheder i gennemsnit hurtigere end øvrige iværksættere. Samtidig voksede produktiviteten med syv procent hvert år, mens de øvrige iværksættere i gennemsnit ikke formår at skabe fremgang i produktiviteten.

Hvis de studerende er så gode til at skabe virksomheder, og dermed vækst, hvorfor så ikke give mere plads til det, i stedet for, at lave reformer der skal presse dem så hurtigt så muligt igennem systemet?

Jeg vil gerne lade dette være anledning til debat omkring, hvorfor vi ikke giver mere plads til iværksætteri i uddannelsessystemerne. Det er fantastisk, at der er opstået en kultur, hvor flere og flere vælger at starte virksomheder, men hvorfor understøtter vi det ikke i stedet for, at lave reformer? Hvad er meningen med ikke at give de studerende plads til andet end at være studerende?

Skaber jeg mest værdi i samfundet hvis jeg drejer nøglen om på min virksomhed? Bliver jeg en bedre studerende hvis jeg ikke samler erfaring fra den virkelige verden og bruger den i mit studie? Er så mange studerende som muligt, så hurtigt som muligt virkelig det, vi har brug for i Danmark?

Når fremdriftsreformen træder i kræft, og jeg skal til at være fuldtidsstuderende igen, ved jeg, at det vil have en konsekvens for min evne til, at drive min virksomhed. Hvis jeg først var begyndt på min uddannelse efter reformen var trådt i kraft, ved jeg slet ikke, om jeg havde haft tid og mod til at starte den.

Originally published at www.madsemil.com on October 29, 2014.

Drop Evernote, Onenote, Vesper eller hvad du nu bruger. Det eneste man har brug for er lister
– Overskuelige, enkle, uendelige, lister.

Mit liv indeholder lige nu 4 ting: Arbejde (Bringrs), Privatliv, Frivilligt arbejde (mest Roskilde) og studie (ITU). Under disse fire kategorier har jeg arrangeret hele mit liv i værktøjet “Workflowy”:

Det geniale ved Workflowy er, at man kan folde punkter på listen ind og ud for at give overskuelighed, og og åbne underpunkter op så man kommer ind på en ny liste, hvor det underpunkt man har valgt står som overemne. Her ses fx. en liste med de KPI’er (Key performance indicators, som jeg er igang med at udvælge til Bringrs:

Jeg ved præcis hvor jeg er, nemlig på en del af en meget større liste, men lige nu og her kigger jeg kun på denne.

Ekstra genialt bliver det, når man så har muligheden for at dele specifikke lister med udvalgt personer. Dette markeres med Lilla, som fx. har jeg delt vores KPI’er med min medstifter Daniel, så vi sammen kan udvikle dem.

Jeg har igennem tiden på studier og arbejde etc. brugt et hav af forskellige noteprogrammer, men synes dette simple listeformat er ganske enkelt genialt, og når der samtidig er en god søgefunktion bliver det utroligt nemt at finde frem til det man søger. Samtidig kan man Bruge # som indikator for emner, hvilket gør det nemt at kode ting sammen, selvom de ligger på forskellige lister.

Her er link hvis du vil prøve det af!

Det var en rigtig fed oplevelse, og jeg var glad for, at journalistens vinkel var, hvordan deleøkonomien kan gå ind, og direkte udfordre de etablerede markeder — I vores tilfælde fragt-markedet. Vi er stadig en lille spiller, men fedt at vi bliver taget alvorligt!

Journalisten havde haft en lidt dybere vinkel i interviewet, men det er klart at til et så kort indslag er det svært at komme i dybden med problematikkerne omkring deleøkonomien. Louise Jakobsen fra innovation lab kom også ind på, at man kan argumentere for, at der kan forsvinde jobs, i takt med at vi ser en omstilling til en deleøkonomi:

“Det kan i hvert fald betyde færre brugere, det kan betyde mindre indtjening, det kan i sidste ende måske endda betyde at man lukker afdelinger ned.”

Louise er, så vidt jeg ved, ikke “deleøkonomi-skeptiker” men påpeger med rette, at deleøkonomien også vil have en effekt på de brancher, der på nuværende tidspunkt har eneret på deres respektive områder. Journalisten spurgte mig om netop dette, og jeg synes man kan stille det ganske enkelt op.

Vi beholder 10% af de transaktioner der foregår på Bringrs.dk. For dem køber vi forsikring og betaler et transaktionsgebyr til Nets. Ud over dette, har vi et overskud, som er det vi skal bruge til at drive vores side, og når vi bliver store nok, også til at leve af. Med andre ord kan man sige at 90% af beløbet går til den, der rent faktisk udfører arbejdet. Jeg skal ikke gøre mig klog på, hvordan pengene fordeles i traditionelle fragtselskaber, men jeg tvivler på, at de kan klare alt deres administrationsarbejde, forsikring, markedsføring og overskud til virksomheden på 10% af deres samlede omsætning.

Så ja, der vil måske forsvinde arbejdspladser fra de store virksomheder der i dag sidder på markedet, men i princippet gør vi alle der har lyst til det til mikrovirksomheder, hvor de kan tjene en meget større andel, for det stykke arbejde de udfører.

Det lyder måske lidt frelst, om ikke andet idealistisk, men vi er ikke i tvivl om, vores samfund har brug for, at blive omstillet til mere sociale, fair og bæredygtige måder at gøre tingene på. Hop ind på Bringrs.dk og vær med!

Læs mit blog-post på vegne af Bringrs her.

Vi havde tidligere brugt en chrome extension der tillader at man kan invitere alle sine kontakter til at like i en side, deltage i et event etc. Vi havde set en ret god effekt ved at bruge det på vores egne konti, og et par af vores venner. Ud af denne idé voksede ideen til at holde en Likefest, hvor alle gæsterne skulle tillade os at lave samme trick på deres facebook, mod betaling i gratis øl.

Vi inviterede en god portion af vores nærmeste venner og købte en masse øl, sprut, snacks, og kul til grillen. Efterhånden som folk ankom brugte vi deres konti til at invitere alle deres venner, og i alt fik vi nok lavet tricket på en 20-30 venner.

Det var muligt at aflæse en øjeblikkelig effekt på vores Facebook-side, og i løbet af et par dage fik vi mere end 300 nye likes.

Det kan stadig diskuteres hvorvidt det kan betale sig at købe likes. Fra vores udgangspunkt ved vi, at jo flere mennesker der har liket vores side, jo flere mennesker bliver der eksponeret for vores tjeneste. Vi er helt nye og små, og vores samlede antal likes steg med 27%, så på den måde tillader vi os at kalde ideen for en succes.

Det her fortæller os ikke noget om værdien af købte likes, men vi har købt dem på en sjovere måde end ved at betale for Facebook annoncer. — Og i virkeligheden ville vi bare gerne holde en fest!