I love travelling, every now and then I have the privilege to be able to travel abroad for a longer period. In my case that usually has been about a month. And things go horribly wrong. On the one hand it means I learn something on the other hand it means things like burning 700 Euros for no other reason than being utterly stupid. Therefore I compiled this compact post about how to do things right from the beginning.

Do you even prepare bro?

Preparing a trip is something I’d rather avoid doing, it’s just not any fun. I once was asked by a guy on the street if he could crash my couch. As it turned out he was travelling without anything. No money, no plan, not even a backpack. He was basically homeless, just with a drive to explore the world, which made all the difference. All he had was his T-shirt, pants, shoes and most importantly: His willingness to leave his comfort zone.

A couple weeks ago I participated in the Startup Bootcamp #DigitalHealth. Me and my team worked on creating a business plan for a smart diaper that’s based on a cheap humidity sensor built into the diaper. We won the best pitch award. In this post I will summarize my learnings from the lectures and just talking to experts in the field that were present.

Team

The founding team is of critical importance. Ideally you should know each other well. You should know how your team members react in stressfull situations. The perfect size is about two to three people.

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Source: Wassermann, Noam,The Founder‘s Dilemmas p. 7

Your miminum viable team should cover three aspects relevant to running a business and creating a functional product:

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Because in later stages you might experience some friction with team members it is important to define terms for such situation right at the beginning. For this reason you should create an internal founder contract. Law firms have contracts covering the following issues stored in the drawer ready to go:

Startup Idea

In the end you need to come up with an idea that adds value to peoples lives. You need to solve some kind of problem better or for the first time. There are two different approaches: Problem identification vs. technology push.

Problem identification consists of interviewing users and experts and trying to understand their existing problems. Then you come up with a solution for their problems. A technology push on the other hand describes the case that you want to implement an existing innovation. Basically it means finding a use case for your solution.

It is generally not recommended to use your own problems as business ideas, because your own perception of them might differ immensely from the target audience. If you do it, you need to ensure to interview enough users to validate your hypotheses and implicit assumptions.

For our startup idea we used the idea of a technology push. The RFID moisture sensor is already developed and a real innovation. Finding a market where it delivers real value seemed easier to realise in the bootcamp setting where you don’t have much time for in depth user research.

Leap of Fate Hypotheses

Your leap of fate hypotheses are the core assumptions for your business idea. You differentiate between a value and a growth hypotheses. You need both. You should test them rigorously.

The value hypotheses tests whether the new product/service will create value for the customer. They should cover:

1. Is this a valuable proposition for my target customers?
2. Will customers be willing to pay for it?
3. Will customers return?

The growth hypotheses should test how customers will adopt your product/service. Important questions are:

1. Once the project has piloted and shown value, what mechanism will we use to grow it?
2. How will we know if learnings from the pilot region apply across multiple geographies?
3. How can we encourage and reward word-of- mouth evangelism?

Interviews

Business Models

Lean Startup approaches

The lean startup model focuses on short and customer-centric product development cycles. It aims at value creation and elimination of waste from day one. It is a counter-concept to the waterfall approach to product development.

A lean startup aims at creating validated learnings and focusing on whats absolutely necessary.

Value Proposition Canvas

Offering and Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

Business Model Environment

Startup Marketing - AARRRR Metrics

I need LEDs, a lot of LEDs. About 13.000 for a lighting project. That should be about 1400$ worth of LED. Therefore here is the result of the research I did to prevent wasting a huge load of cash I do not have anyways.

The problem

You are pushing LateX documents into a repository with all of your friends. Your friends compile the PDF files locally and sometimes push garbage into the repo. Also you want to email your assignments to your tutors. But you are already annoyed by writing commit messages. Opening your email client and dragging and dropping that PDF, for you it’s pain in it’s purest form. This makes you very sad. You ask yourself: What could I do about it?

Größte Demokratie der Welt, Schwellenland, G20, Kolonialherrschaft, Ghandi. Man verbindet viele Begriffe mit Indien. Doch dass diese letztlich nur ein schwaches Schlaglicht auf das in jeder Hinsicht enorme Land werfen, ist klar. Wie der Zufall es will, hat es mich unlängst für 7 Tage nach Indien verschlagen. Nein, ich habe nicht in einem Radiogewinnspiel gewonnen, aber es spielte sich in etwa ähnlich ab. Hauptgrund der Reise war der Flugpreis von 200 Euro, da es sich um eine sogenannte Errorfare handelte. Also keine hochtrabenden Weltendeckerambitionen, Selbstfindungsfantasien oder ungestüme Abenteuerlust – schlicht schnöde weltlicher Ökonomismus. Daher folgt eine kleine Abhandlung über Indien in 7 Tagen.