The One-Liner challenge

Firstly, I always feel that if you can’t explain what you are doing in one single line, then there might be a number of things wrong: You could not have thought it through enough, so your business model might still be undefined. Your product might still be undefined. Secondly, your idea could be too complex (if you can’t explain it in one phrase). During a business model work shop at IESE with Matieu Carenzo we discussed a number of businesses and the role of the elevator pitch. As we were doing a round explaining what we were planning to do, I was confronted with the fact that I needed a lot of words to explain my idea. Everyone I show my slide deck or even the prototype that I am working on, understands it immediately. However standing in an elevator, it will be less obvious. So I need to work on my one-liner, especially a tagline. Below are some of the things that are currently in my mind, without knowing the exact idea, which one is more appealing to you?

1. “Crowdsource your project”
2. “Data visualization”
3. “Social Global Project Delegation”
4. “Simplifying complexities”

As you can see I haven’t figured it out yet. But by sharing my idea with people it gets a little better each time I explain it to someone. The challenge is that the product I am developing, would fit of all of the before mentioned tag lines. But the fact that it does all of these right now probably means I need to focus it towards a specific niche before I launch. I am just thinking out loud here and if you have any suggestions… they’re always welcome! Also Mathieu promised some “Elevator Pitch Push-ups” during our one-day session before we go to The Valley. Those should be very helpful.

Coding adventures

Now for the technical stuff and the factual progress of last week. I was only able to put in 3 hrs of coding this week due to exams. But nonetheless I made some progress. Again for the professional developer reading this, these are baby steps. But they are steps and as long as I don’t have a developer helping me, I will keep moving forward.

• Scripted a script in PHP to add and remove information from the app. I know that to some this is very, very basic stuff but it was nice that I got it working in just 45 minutes. Then added unique ID for records and got everything to work. Created my first AJAX script to avoid re-loading the entire app for just adding one record.
• Added and styled the top-bar of the application. This will hold the logo and basic user info. Also added the subbar which will hold context specific information.
• Scripted my first AJAX popup.
• Made a Google-maps-like interface using JavaScript to allow the dragging of the diagram in the application once it goes beyond the screen size.
• Started working on the visualization of a graphic using CSS. It needs some dynamic scaling of lines with dynamic margins based on other items in the graph. This is the biggest challenge at the moment as I need to develop the math for that.

That’s it for this week, hopefully next week I will have more time to give to my project but little progress is also progress.

Trick #1 – Focus

The most important thing in my opinion is focus. The IESE MBA can take any person off his track. It exposes you to so many different career paths that you can easily lose focus. The case method is so contagious that it will make you want to do any profession that you are discussing. During marketing I felt like going in to marketing, during other cases I felt like going into whatever business we were discussing. On top of that, there are the banking interviews, the consulting interviews and the industry career forums. These are all amazing events that a really great, however they can get you sucked in to the general pursuit of opportunities in these areas. This is great if you want to do consulting, banking or industry. However, from the beginning I have made the choice not to pursue banking or consulting which has  saved me from a lot of stress. I’ve only pursued specific industry events. Then I made the choice to pursue only my startup which has made me focus even more. Also I’ve not been a part of many competitions or events. For example, IESE has an amazing conference called Doing Good Doing Well (DGDW) which I sacrificed to be focused on the IESE Meets The Valley project. It’s all about setting a goal and then executing without mercy, without getting side-tracked. This will free up time to spend towards your goal. In my case  my focus is (besides family): IESE Meets The Valley and my start-up. This actually contradicts the above, there are 2 things. This is because I’ve decided to speed up my start-up because I want to have something to show when I go to Silicon Valley in June.

Trick #2 Trade-offs

During the global economics course we’ve been taught that there is always a tradeoff. Personally, I consider this to be 100% true. I focus on my family and study. So I have no time to go out and visit every edition of the famous BOW (Bar Of the Week), or many of the other club initiatives. Also I haven’t done a lot of  sports since the MBA started. Then there are the amazing opportunities of events, competitions and IESE club activities that I am not attending. These trade-offs aren’t bad, as long as you are conscious about them and don’t regret them.

Trick #3 – lists

A third trick I can advise anyone is to make lists… of everything you need to remember. My main list is my to do system. I’ve seen and tried many of them so I won’t elaborate on the ones I’ve seen or tell you which one you should use. The most important thing is that you write down (paper or pda) what you need to do and then do it. Also I make lists of things I need to discuss with people. I love crossing off things I’ve done. Find a system that work for you and then stick to it for at least 6 months before you discard it. My to do system is one I’ve adapted (with permission) from a Cap Gemini Principal. It lists tasks in categories on an A4 page. On the back I have added 4 slots for things I need to remember to discuss with people during upcoming meetings. I always carry it with me everywhere. I love the sensation of crossing off things from my list.

Trick #4 – Time management

The final trick I want to share is time management. You can probably find tons of posts on this but let me just share the way I manage my time. I compartmentalize time, in blocks. I plan blocks of time for productivity, for family time, reflection and to waste. I then execute tasks on my list in these blocks in order of highest priority to lowest. You said you plan time to waste?, yes to waste!  For me it is important to spend time browsing the web, taking long showers, walking, watching a TV series etc. It helps me “unload” some of the stress and disconnect. Again my wife is amazing as she helps me work this way and respects my “working time”. Whenever I find myself with an unexpected slot of free time, I use my list to work on things. An unexpected hour can be used very well for those small things on your list.

The above works for me, it might not for you. But the main point is that you think and develop habits that work for you. Hope these tricks help you a little as you move through your personal and professional life.

Several months ago I decided to share my idea with a seasoned entrepreneur and get his feedback on how to move forward. His first tip was to start sharing the idea with people. Initially I was afraid but he assured me of a couple of things:

1. Noone will steal your idea, especially if it’s known that it is yours. They would get a very bad reputation.
2. Anyone attempting to steal your idea will have to go through all the iterations you’ve already made.
3. If you don’t share, you will miss out on valuable feedback and won’t be able to move forward.

Finally, added by me: If someone implements your idea and implements it better and faster then it’s better to find out now than later. For the moment I have started to share the idea in person, sometime in the future I will share it online as well. For now I can tell you that it will be a web app.

First steps

I started my journey by developing a mock-up in PowerPoint. This mock-up showed a series of user interactions with the application and helped me explain it to anyone. A mock-up is basically a series of screen shots. Creating it forces you to think through the application and how users would interact. I then joined a “Find your Co-founder” meetup where I showed the mock-up. I got tons of feedback and ideas from this meetup and most important I found a contact that introduced me to a front-end developer.

Prototyping mayhem

I have known all along that I need a prototype to show to potential investors. That was also one of the reasons to attend the meetup mentioned above. From the meetup I met a front-end developer who was fascinated by the idea and the challenge of building it. After two weeks of him coding and me going through MBA exams on the side we met again. This is the first setback I encountered. The developer had to leave the project. Developing what I am looking for turned out to be more complicated than he had thought. He shared that he couldn’t give the time he thought I need. Him quitting was bad news of course. However the fact that the product I am developing  is more complicated than anticipated, means it will be harder to imitate and add more value to customers. Or at least I believe so. Additionally I need a minimum viable product (MVP) at this stage. Once I find funding I can hire a developer full time to develop a more fancy version. But in this case the developer had a hard time accepting the potential re-development of the application  in 5 months time.

Next steps

This leaves me with the following situation: I would like to develop an MVP a.s.a.p. before I go to Silicon Valley in June where I undoubtedly will meet many amazing people. Second I have no developer and as weeks go by, so does the available time. So I decided not to sit back but to start coding myself, also a good skill to develop for a founder. I started brushing up on coding skills long lost using codeacademy. Then last weekend I pulled an “all nighter” and developed an initial view of the application which was very exciting! Now I just need time to code besides my MBA work to finish an MVP before my valley trip.

My Wife

I am fortunate to have Maaike who is absolutely amazing. I am spoiled to the bone. When I come home I have nothing to do but spend time with my daughter and then study. No cooking, housekeeping, or none of that. She does our administration and fights bureaucracy for us. Without her I would have had to spend a lot of time on paperwork and admin. On top of that, she sometimes pre-reads documents, papers and projects as she is a very detail-oriented person (and I am not).

My daughter

Family time is sacred for me. Every day I come home around 19:00 and then have 2 hours of family time. This is non-negotiable. There haven’t been many evenings these last 6 months where we haven’t had dinner together. My little one helps me relax and take my mind off things. It also brings stability to my life as our little one needs a certain daily routine. Also since we don’t have family / babysitters close we stay home more evenings than other students I know.

My MBA

The IESE MBA has you working in teams of 8, very intensively. From the beginning my team was very understanding and  they all worked with me, allowing me to spend time with my family. Sometimes members will have dinner with my family for example. Or we continue after 21:00 on Skype if we need to work on projects (we usually do). So a big thank you also goes out to my IESE Team 3B for understanding and supporting me. I’ve been able to lean on them when I needed and hopefully they will say the same about me when you ask them . Thanks: Alvaro, Amit, Candice, Eric, Josep, Nico and Sho.

Perhaps you are currently not as fortunate as I am. I am not telling you to marry and have a child . But you could still try and build a kind of support system. You have peers, friends and family. Things that you might find hard to do they might find easy and the other way around. Also it is about making choices and accepting consequences. If you are considering the IESE MBA then you have the opportunity to build an amazing team from day 1 which will make your MBA life much more manageable.

In the next post I will share some more practical things I do to keep things under control

Spearheading this project has been quite a journey, both as an aspiring entrepreneur and a project manager. Let me tell you more about this exciting project, the things we’ve done, how we got here and where we’re going.

The Journey of Entrepreneurship

A trip to Silicon Valley has a certain “coolness factor” of course, but the main reason for going is to learn first-hand about entrepreneurship and the tech industry. Silicon Valley is the place to be when it comes to entrepreneurship and the tech industry. This is where the interaction between capital and ideas is still the most intensive in the world.

This will be a learning experience… During the trip we will meet  startup founders, larger companies, incubators and investors. From them we will learn about– getting funded, developing products, do’s and dont’s, how to scale, how to find your team and how to do business overseas. Additionally, from investors we will learn — how they view business ideas, how they would like to be involved, how they treat entrepreneurs, what they look to for in founders and founding teams. We will get exposure on what it’s like to work in the Valley. The goal of this trip is for all of us to move forward on our journey to becoming entrepreneurs!

The journey of project management

I started this project alone but soon discovered how vast the scope was. I knew I needed help and sought-out people to help me organize. An announcement through the entrepreneurs club resulted the formation of our highly-committed main organizing committee. The project resulted in a complex web of contacts with people in the valley which needed to be organized. Every week we have been meeting for 1 hour. We go through our different work streams and organize the next weeks work load. This turned out to be a perfect rhythm as many things are happening each week. Coordinating a team has been immensely rewarding and getting to know each teammate has been a pleasure. The trip would not have been possible without the amazing team, so a big thanks goes out to: Arpit, Cortney, David and Stephen. We have all devoted a lot of time and energy to this project and it is very satisfying to see what it is becoming.

Currently, more than 15 companies have agreed so see us and we are in talks with many more. I am very thankful for all the companies and individuals that are giving us their valuable time. We have been targeting startups, companies with entrepreneurial / tech roots, or an amazing story to tell. Also, we’ve been trying to find stories on both sides of the investment table. Our list includes some pretty impressive names and many people ask me how we got them. I will devote a different blog post on this but basically we got them all through networking. Speaking of which, this trip is also a great opportunity to expand any MBA student’s network for future opportunities. An additional benefit is that companies will also meet IESE students first hand and learn more about the students and school.

Besides the companies, we have setup other parts of the trip to ease the admin and operations side of things. First, we have a very attractive travel package, having negotiated a great discount which includes flight, hotel and local transportation. Second, we’ve launched a website (www.iesemeetsthevalley.com) which has proven to be an effective communication tool for both companies and students.  Third, we’ve setup all the administrative processes to allow students to easily sign up and pay for the trip.

From this experience, I’ve learned so much and have found myself moving forward on my journey of becoming an entrepreneur, a better project manager and a better net-worker.

Thanks to Candice and Graham in helping me write this post. You are both great teachers for a non-native speaker when it comes to writing!

After 4 months

When I write this I have gone through the first 4 months of the MBA program. It is intense, I study until after midnight every day of the week. But I have learned so much. The case study method used at IESE makes me feel like I’ve experienced several years worth of business situations in just 4 months. On top of that I’ve been meeting amazing people every single day. I came to the program with expectations, but after 4 months they have already been exceeded.

An MBA for an aspiring entrepreneur?

I decided to do an MBA while having the desire to start my own business. Some may say that this is contradictory. However after 4 months I can say that the contrary can also be true. The things I am learning will help my future business and prevent me from making many mistakes. But, the amazing people that I have the privilege of meeting will help even more!

Time will tell…

The IESE MBA lasts 18months, something I chose on purpose.  The first year focuses on building a foundation for general management. Currently I am concentrating on laying this foundation. However the second year students can choose from many courses and I plan to specialize in entrepreneurship. During this second year I will also work on my own business, validating the model and finding investors. Time will tell in which way the IESE MBA will help me. To the amazing life of an entrepreneur, or to a amazing next step in my career. One thing I am sure of after 4 months: The experience will help me in whichever path I choose pursue!

During my first day at work (I spoke no French), I had my first meeting with my new boss. During this meeting she started talking to her boss across the hall (in French) and after a while they started to seriously yell at each other. Comments were flying across the hallway in what seemed an increasingly heated discussion.

Now where I’m from people don’t generally yell at each other in professional situations. The Dutch I know are generally laid back and calm. They can be direct and angry, but in a professional setting, they rarely shout. When someone yells it signals impotence and lack of character on their part. It signals that they are not in control. In the Netherlands (as far as I know) yelling by a boss only occurs in the event of crucial failures. That is why I thought my boss in Paris was getting fired.

The French however are much more outspoken in their discussions. Perhaps I would even describe them as more passionate than the Dutch I know. In France whenever people raised their voice at me I felt somewhat disrespected and in the beginning even intimidated. However being a guest in this culture, the yelling lost it’s effect on me.

I learned that in an intercultural setting, things aren’t always what they seem. It also showed me that the Dutch way isn’t necessarily the right way. After 3 years in the French context I might even have taken on some of this behavior myself.

But don’t worry, if I ever yell at you, you won’t get fired.

Ça….?

Asking someone how they are doing usually consists of 2 parst: Ça and then some word.

For example: Ça boom?

This is usually used for Children. But sometimes they it is used in a playful way amongst friends.

Below some other ways to ask how someone is doing (and my attempt at translating them):

Ça Gazze? (Does it gass?)

Ça flot? (Does it float?)

Ça mousse?  (Does it mousse?)

Ça fart? (Does it wax?)

Ça grouve (Does it groove?)

The throwing of food

How ever the strangest thing is when they start throwing food at you…

Not literally (luckily) but the conversation could be as follows:

Tu as la peche? (do you have the peach)?

You could answer: Oui, or Oui, la patat! (the potato).

Once someone even answered: La Banane!
Recently, I even found out that “la banane” also means a smile from ear to ear.

So if they ask you if you are having a peach, don’t wonder about whether you look funny or whether you were supposed to bring fruit to the ocasion. Just answer “Yes and the potato as well”.

Disclaimer:
Just remember that anything you say in the French language is highly context sensitive. I found out after using “la banane” with several people that it’s actually better to only use it with friends.

Penetrating your foot

During a lunch recently I was sitting next to a lady. When I moved my chair I almost put the leg of my chair on her foot.  So I apologized and wanted to say sorry for almost piercing her foot. I said: “J’ai presque pénétré ton pied”. This means I almost penetrated your foot. However in French the verb penetrer is only used in a sexual context (there we go again).  I should have used something like “percer ton pied”  or “perforer ton pied”.

Short lick

I wanted to say that someone had a “short fuse” which in Dutch in an expression for saying someone is short tempered. I  said il a un leche court. Which means: “He has a short lick”. This made my colleagues think about all kinds of inappropriate stuff. I should have said Il a un meche tres court. The correct expression is il demare au quart tour. Which means that he already starts (like a car) when you turn the key 25% instead of all the way.

Eating doctors

I wanted to tell someone to take some medicin for something. So I said: “il faut que tu mange des medicins”. This means “You need to eat some doctors”. I should have said “medicaments” instead of medicins.

Whenever you discuss an idea, business model, strategy or any matter whatsoever you need to somehow bring accross the subject to whomever you are it discussing with. When you have to do this with a document, the traditional way to do this is word. You could write a business plan or positioning paper with a lot of text and tables.

However this is actually where PowerPoint actually has a lot of use.

Makes you think about it:

Whenever discussing an idea with someone, it is always good to think about it before you discuss. Creating a PowerPoint presentation of the matter forces you to Think things through before you explain them. Also it forces you to make a good structure and a good story out of whatever subject you are explaining.

Synthesize & Schematize

When you are working with PowerPoint, you can still put as much text on a page as you could with Word or any other text editor. However you are challenged to summarize your content. You are challenged to say more with less. You are also challenged to prioritize content over other content. On top of that PowerPoint gives you the ability to easily integrate schematics and drawings. That will allow you to say even more then words alone.

Finally, PowerPoint makes it much easier to work with a lot of people if you have a good template. You can easily move slides around or insert and replace them. If styles do get mixed up, they are easily adapted to make it look whatever you want it to.  People tend to click through a slideshow quicker then print out a text-heavy document and read it.

The Big mistake

Finally your PowerPoint presentation is done, you are ready for your meeting or speech. Then comes the big mistake: You put it on the screen. Most presentations are made is such a way that they should never be allowed on a screen. They should be used like a word document. Printed, and then used for discussion during a meeting. Or else a phenomenon called “death by PowerPoint” will occur. If you want to make a presentation for a screen create a second version that conforms to the ”presentation zen“ norms. Some examples for how to transform a powerpoint :  Garry Renolds example slides, writer of the book Presentation Zen. Good examples of discussion document powerpoints can be found at the big consultancy firms like: McKinsey, BCG, Bain etc. Examples: BCGs love life

Conclusion:

Use PowerPoint, but choose how you will use it. As a discussion document, to print and to discuss sitting around a table . Or as a slideshow on a screen supporting your speech. Both cases require radically different presentations and perhaps you should create two versions…

So PowerPoint does have a use, in most cases it’s just not the screen .

Don’t forget to check your presentation before using it.