Every successful business is built on their successful products. At their roots, they enter emerging markets and become the leaders in that particular market (assuming they know their stuff). However, as we have already seen in the past, having a first mover advantage can give companies leadership but also; it makes them vulnerable in many ways. For example, look at Apple. Apple was the leader in the smartphone industry and tried to bring innovative features to its iPhone twice a year. And as the leader, Apple charges premium price; however, for that matter they made themselves more vulnerable because other companies were able to disrupt the smartphone space by bringing cheaper smartphones available for more people. So in a nutshell, business leaders focus on innovation; however in order to disrupt a market, companies have to start from the bottom of the market and make products available for more people.
Another fact that companies need to embrace is that products have their life cycles and at some point they die. Companies cannot simply focus on one product because if the product dies, the company will die as well. They have to evolve as the market evolves and that is the only way to survive. Since we showed an example from the phone industry, we can see how regular phones are being pushed off the cliff and smartphones are emerging. It will not take too long before they go fully extinct.
As it was mentioned earlier, products have life cycles and they do jobs for a certain period of time. Consequently, customers hire products to do jobs for them. For example, if you are hungry and your job is to satisfy your hunger, you can hire a sandwich to do the job for you. But in order to understand what your product does you have to understand what job is it hired for. This is particularly difficult in the software industry because companies often assume what their product should be hired for; and therefore, it might be full of useless features. Companies need to understand that jobs have been here for a long time; only products come and go and as mentioned before, they die. A great example of a job that has been around for a long time is mail delivery service. Even in ancient times, people hired messengers who had to walk long distances to deliver their mail. Now, we have Fedex.
One great way of understanding what job your product does is to understand your customers. Every business has its VIP customers who come often and spend a lot, loyal customers who come regularly but do not spend as much and churn customers who come and do more damage than good.
But how are you going to find out who these people are? Futurelytics is here to help. By integrating your CRMs and Email software solution, our platform can easily segment your customers so you can understand them better. And understanding your customers not only means generating more revenue from your existing customers but it also means understanding your product better so you can reach more potential customers. So what are you waiting for? Ask us how we can help with your business at info@futurelytics.com.
source: www.businessofsoftware.org
As you probably know, Seedcamp is without a doubt the most prestigious business competition in Europe and only 1% of all companies have the right mix of skills and fortune to get funding. As we announced in our previous blog, we are very proud to be a part of the 1%. Now, one would think that investments start coming easy. Well that is not the case. Even though being a part of Seedcamp is invaluable to us, we were still thrown in the same pot with the other top 1% to attract investors at Seedcamp London 2013.
Competition is the best driving factor
At the end of January 2013, Seedcamp was hosting another competition for start-ups and our team was invited as well. Many great projects were presented by companies such as Subscrib, Gate.me, Hole19, Minubo and others who did a great job on showing off their new and innovative projects. Companies which proceeded to the next round were then presenting the next day. Along with other Seedcamp winners we tried our best to find the right investor who would make all the difference in our journey to success. The competition was fierce but the sense of cohesion at these events is priceless. The level of competition is always extremely high but I am pretty sure many of you would agree that this is another component which drives people to become even better at what they do.
Getting ready for the big day
After three hours of mentoring sessions, teams lined up to give their presentations for feedback. Carlos Eduardo Espinal with his colleagues helped us to perfect our material, and we certainly thank them for their valuable feedback. With this being said, I must admit that our slides did not look all that great at first. The feedback we received was:” focus on the business, less on operations”. And it is true, if you are presenting to investors, all they want to see is money for obvious reasons and it does not really matter what tool is going to make them. You will have plenty of room to discuss that once you have their attention. At this point, there was only one thing on our minds: go back to our hotel and make our presentation better. However, Seedcamp was organizing an after-party for everyone where many investors were supposed to come. So now, we had to face a dilemma whether to go back to the hotel and prepare ourselves for the big day or go to the party and network with the big guys. And guess what, we did both. After spending 12 hours at Seedcamp, we went to the after-party and we had a hell of good time while talking to investors and other start-up teams. The music was loud at the venue so after a couple hours of yelling we went back to the hotel to work on our presentation. We were exhausted but we knew it had to be done. Our CTO Mirek, who was presenting the concept of our business, did a great job on keeping a healthy balance between improving and redoing it all. And that is why he kicked so much ass on the big day. It is great to receive feedback; however, people have different opinions and views. With this being said, the presenter has to be comfortable with his presentation otherwise, the whole dazzling factor is diminished.
Miroslav Cerny, CTO
The big day
At first, I would like to express my gratitude to Seedcamp organizers, who did an amazing job on running this event and frankly, it was one of the best events I have been to. Better than any venture summit, and the reason why it was so great was that they made it cozy. It did not have that cold venture summit feeling where people tell you to buzz off once they notice that you are not an investor. There was a plenty of time, not only to listen to every presentation but also to network with every person in the room.
In result, we made many great partnership connections for future cooperation and collected many investment contacts. Only time will show how we can build on this solid foundation but the bottom line is that we spent one day with the best start-ups Europe has to offer and we thank Seedcamp for this great opportunity. Now, we are getting ready for Silicon Valley Stay tuned for more.
Cheers!
Few weeks ago we made a trip to Seedcamp Budapest 2012 and it was a pretty amazing experience for us and definitely for other teams as well.
We were really excited when Seedcamp invited us to join the event. In such a moment you realize you perhaps did something right. We didn’t know exactly how many startups actually applied but the number must had been big.
We just released our second version of a native Salesforce app (Account Analyzer) and started building our own analytical platform. We decided to use external funding, so it was just about the right time to attend such event, extend our contact base, connect with the right angel investors, VCs, enterpreneurs, etc. We knew that we’ll need something what makes us more visible among others in the crowd. So we had to prepare…
Luckilly Phil Moehring from Seedcamp gave us lots of useful information on how to get ready for the event. Most importantly how to get ready for the pitch – a strict, three-minutes speech, its recommended structure, readings and best practice. They provided also a list of mentors and advised us to learn more about each person in advance, namely about the people to meet.
We did our homework, looked at their linkedin, twitter and other profiles, saw their experience, so then it was obviously much easier to decide who are the important people for us. Most funny time we had practicing the pitch, refining it and then again and again. Time’s running sooo quickly when you need to fit into three minutes…
After few weeks our team finally took off to Budapest eager to meet all the participants, mentors and Seedcamp members face to face…
Preparation day
During the preparation day we had the initial session with Seedcamp. At first we discussed how to prepare ourselves to the big day. We confirmed Daniel to be the speaker. We had to tune the presentation slightly, as well as the speech. Phillip’s advices were really helpful because he can really feel the potential of every idea, product, team, application and other stuff. He really has serious experience in this domain. In a really friendly and constructive atmosphere nobody minded to help each other’s “competitors”.
Pitch!
Getting up early, armed by the sharpened slide-deck, shielded by good mood and still with some condition left from previous night we headed to the “Dragon’s Den”. When we arrived at the impressive lobby of Corvinus university we have got our name-tags, took some coffee and tried not to freak-out from so many mentors and investors around. This was actually our first international experience of that kind – and compared to what we were used to from home – it was very well organized and efficient.
At 10:00 the Pitching started! All 20 companies presented their ideas. In strictly three minutes we had to impress the audience. Luckilly everything went well and Daniel finished in time. After the pitching it was time for lunch. We used this opportunity to discuss with other teams, mentors and investors more closely about who we are, what we do, etc.
Mentoring sessions
There was no siesta after lunch, we had another important job ahead us. We had six mentoring sessions, four exactly planned by Seedcamp and two open sessions, where mentors were free to join any startup they wanted. There were mentors from different fields, some of them entrepreneurs, some investors, or telco and other industry experts. It was sometimes hard and a bit exhausting, but honestly one of the most effective ways to get constructive feedback on all different aspects of our business. As surprisingly many investors came to our table for the last session, we had a not-so-bad feeling…
After-party
When the sessions were over, we were with all other startups invited to join the party at KoWerk office to continue to align. We joined gladly and met the rest of the people. Around 10 p.m. teams started receiving e-mails with information whether they made it to the next round or not. There were good news for us! We couldn’t resist to celebrate that with other lucky or interested guys, challenging great Hungarian wine that night.
Futurelytics Team
Final Day
We got up early (oh dear..) to adjust our pitch with business and financial plan and get ready for final day. We had to prove the group of Seedcamp members and several mentors that we mean our business seriously. We wanted the investment and it wasn’t that easy to get it. During about 20 minutes we presented our product again, with plans for the future and answered corresponding questions.
Then we went to the train back home and waited for the Seedcamp’s decision. The answer came a week later with the information that we WON!!!
We are really happy, because for us it has been a considerable validation of our work. Now we must go on, there is a new load of responsibility in place. We must grow. Grow by being more effective, by getting connected with other relevant people, by getting smarter about doing business internationally, by delivering our customers a good service.
In a few words – attending Seedcamp was a transforming experience and things started to move very quickly.
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