TechCrunch Brunch: Two Important Lessons
Yesterday I attended the TechCrunchBrunch which was organized as a side-event for the Slush conference. The event consisted of two panel discussions hosted by TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher and networking. All in all the event was really good - well organized and the content was excellent.
A live video of the event was streamed by Floobs to Techcrunch. They now have a 30minute video of the highlights. If you want a full description of the discussion, Arctic Startup’s Miikka did a good job in liveblogging the event.
Below are two of the most important topics that came up in the discussions.
Business location is not important, focusing to the global market is
You can create a startup anywhere nowadays. No VC will anymore demand you to move to Silicon Valley, but it is important for startups to have a foothold in a place such as London, where startups and VC:s can easily come together.
Startups in general have not been really good at aquiring new users. One should not rely on a viral effect that comes from your product being really good. Finnish startups would need help in their marketing efforts for 1) gaining more users 2) developing their business.
A solid business plan will make life in a startup much easier. Companies should try to avoid getting funding as long as possible, so that when they do need it they are in a better position to negotiate with vc’s.
The government in Finland, as in many European countries, is very helpful for early stage startups by providing funding. However they usually demand that a startup proves themselves in the Finnish market first and later try to take over the world. This logic guides Finnish startups into the wring direction. Many panelists agreed that startups must be created to the global market from the beginning in order for them to succeed there.
The team is really important in getting funded
The problem in Finnish startups have, is that their management is too junior. The VC’s put their money on the team. They must believe, that the team is capable and experienced enough to succeed in any situation. This is even more true in these depressing times we live in.
Startups can be founded by young people, but they should try to recruit experienced people before they try to get funding. This is something Finnish startups have not realized yet.
Problems with hosting provider hopefully behind
My hosting provider has been under a DDOS for the past week and it has caused quite a lot of trouble for me. The site has been really slow an finally crashed totally during the weekend. I just got it back up, but still there are quite a lot of things for me to do. Sorry for the inconvenience, you can be sure that it has been more inconvenient for me.
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I’ve had a dream for a long time that one day I will have my very own web start-up. The only - and most important - thing that’s missing in THE idea. While I’m waiting for that master plan to appear from somewhere, I’ve decided to learn as much as I can about startups: how the find that one grand idea, how to develop it further into a business model, how to build a successful web site (or program or service or whatever) and one day exit gracefully. I’ll be looking at good examples of startups, posting links to interesting articles and theory and everything else interesting I find about web and startups. As I live in Helsinki, Finland, I will also be writing about Finnish startups.
This site is called Startup Bin — this is the place for me to deposit (or dispose of) my learnings about startups.
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I work as an online concept designer and planner at an advertising agency. All opinions stated in this blog are personal. I’ll try to keep my posts short and not to share any personal stuff.
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