Accidentally while creating a lamp I ended up learning FreeCAD. FreeCAD is an amazing open source CAD program. It still amazes me that people created this for free in their spare time. The software is still in it’s alpha version and is far from perfect as you can tell by the current release version number 0.19 and the heated discussions around how soon a 1.0 release could be reached. Still it’s very usable and once you get the gist of it you can create powerful and complex designs. FreeCADs approach to CAD is a parametric design. That means that you specify shapes with parameters. E.g. you base the 3D shape on a 2D drawing. The geometric figures of the 2D drawing - circles, recatangles, lines - are all constrained with parameters. Then you create a 3D shape out of your 2D sketch, for example by extruding it. And every step is based on certain parameters that can reference previous parameters. It’s basically visual programming. Is FreeCAD NP-complete? Probably, but that’s a topic for another time. Anyways. The parametric approach allows you to easily modify your design at any time just by tuning these parameters. For example with my lamp design the number of aluminium bars is a parameter I can simply tweak at any point in time. All the relevant details depending on this number will be automatically recomputed by FreeCAD. This gives great flexibility and allows for fast customization.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a program run by Google that gives stipends to students who over a period of three months implement an open source project with a mentor organization. Among the organizations are well known ones like Arduino, Ruby or Wikimedia. But there are also more niche organizations that are not so widely known. The great part about GSoC is that students apply for specific projects, so you yourself determine how exciting the thing you work on is if you get accepted. This and the work from home aspects are definitely something a lot of internships can’t offer. For me it started with seeing the potential of first designing a parametric lamp and then creating a custom web page where you could change the parameters to your liking and see a live 3D rendering of the changed lamp. Then you just download the 3D files and 3D-print the lamp. I was heavily inspired by the card1o cover generator created with OpenSCAD. After some research I realized that something comparable to rendering OpenSCAD in the web browser does not exist for FreeCAD yet. I already knew about GSoC and to my suprise FreeCAD was one of the open source organizations taking part in GSoC 2020.

The result from printing the cover generator customized card1o badge cover. It's such a cool experience to customize something so effortlessly and to then have it in your hands. Unlike designing everything you don't have to think a about it too much, but you still feel more connected to the end product since it has a personal touch. That's the experience I wanted to create for my lamp design.

This year and last year I was lucky to be part of the HPI Startup Bootcamp. To my suprise my team won the first time I took part (link or it didn’t happen) and last year at least got a spontaneous made up prize because the jury liked the idea so much (can I has link plz). But enough humble or not so humble brags. I wanted to condense what I have learned there into a text hopefully giving you guidance on whether to attend and what to expect at such an event aside from late Roman, decadent catering. The learnings are a combination of the practical bootcamp experiences as well as the accompanying lecture called IT-Entrepreneurship. ...read more

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.

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. ...read more

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