Wrapping Up The Year of 2011
It’s a new year again, and while preparing for the new entrepreneurial challenges it’s also worthwhile to take a look of the recent past. Did we actually accomplish anything last year? Some projects take longer to materialize than the others, but even each small step is a step forward. As they say… “How do you eat an elephant? Piece by piece”. So true.
One of the great milestone of last year was opening up Venture Bonsai crowdinvesting service. You can read the press release here. The first investment round was completed within two months of the release. Venture Bonsai is still the only pan-European service which follows the European Union financial regulation as well as the national laws. The experiences from an investment round can be found from a post “The First $100K Is Always The Most Difficult.”
Learning always new things is essential for entrepreneurs, especially… Continue reading
Hitlantis GUI is Awesome
The first impression with this Finnish start-up Hitlantis is simply “Wau!”. The unique way of representing each artist as a “bubble” is unique and visually impressing. What is really cool about this is how the color, size and distance from the center indicate specific attributes such as genre and popularity. Naturally, you can zoom in and out to see more details.
Discovery of new music is not that easy nowadays. Visual discovery of new music is one of the key features in Hitlantis. When closely checking out the visual map, one can quickly notice graphical indicators for example when somebody is listening to an artist. So in addition to listening songs you found, you can see details of the song (of course) but also see what else is being listened … right now.
This kind of user interface works perfectly also in iPad. Luckily there is a cool iPad App… Continue reading
Californication of a European Startup
Have you ever wondered what would be the right time to transfer your startup to Silicon Valley? For our mobile startup (originally based in Finland) we quite early realized that it would be right away in the beginning. As the biggest interesting market, most potential (and knowledgeable) investors as well as the eventual exit would be in the US, it was an easy decision to make. The journey is still in the beginning, but I thought I’ll share some of the lessons learned already now.
If you already have a company which has undergone its first seed investment round, you may be too late already. Even though within Europe transfering a company from one country to another can be relatively easy (and tax-free) with share swap, it is not possible between EU and USA. This means the transaction would technically be a “sale”, leading among other things to capital gain… Continue reading
What About the Exit?
So you got your friends, family and even some angels believing in you to invest in your startup. But what if it takes a bit longer than anticipated to make it a success? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a mechanism for the early-stage private investors to make a partial exit?
Many people believe that having a possibility to exit a private investment withing 3 years would greatly accelerate the willingness to invest. The effect would probably be much greater than any of those planned tax breaks. Tax breaks are useful, after all, only after making an exit.
Why should you, as an entrepreneur, worry about the exit strategy of your private investors?
Aren’t there already enough challenges of your own?
There are quite a few things that make this important aspect to think about.
Well, at least to think about whether it concerns you or not.
According to the… Continue reading
Entrepreneurship vs. Sailing
It’s that time of the year, the sailing season is starting. Well, at least here in Finland where it’s between May and September…
Some time ago, I thought about comparing entrepreneurship to sailing. Let me explain why.
First of all, as an entrepreneur you are in control of your boat. You’re the captain. You have the power and the responsibility.
There are many different sizes of boats, as there are many different sizes of companies. The boat size affects the crew requirements, you can sail 35 feet boat with your wife but for that 65 feet boat you need quite a bit of crew.
When your company grows, the crew requirements change. With a bigger boat you may sail faster, and reach destinations further away. You may want to practice with a smaller boat first.
Unless you already have a boat, you need to buy one. Like as an entrepreneur,… Continue reading
Demystifying (Vendor) Due Diligence
If you’re a company preparing for a financing round in the near future, you should already know what is a Due Diligence (commonly known also as DD). If not, read on. If you do know what Due Diligence is, you might be interested how to do is cost-efficiently.
Wikipedia defines Due Diligence as follows:
Due Diligence is a term used for a number of concepts involving either the performance of an investigation of a business or person prior to signing of a contract, or the performance of an act with a certain standard of care.
Nowadays there are many kinds of Due Diligences, for example Legal, Financial, Technical, Commercial and Environmental. The scope of the Due Diligence will depend on the size and scale of the transaction and the surrounding risks.
We will focus here on investment-round related Legal Due Diligence, and more specifically on Vendor Due Diligence which is… Continue reading
Elevator Pitch on the Video: Fambit
In the series of “Elevator Pitch on the Video” we are proud to present Fambit!
For more information please visit the website www.fambit.com.
This “Elevator Pitch on the Video” was produced by Venture Bonsai and is made with a specific script for companies looking for funding. With this well-defined script and process the production cost was 80% lower than it would normally be. For each company, there is also another video produced. This second video is “Investor Pitch”, it’s purpose being to answer in more details questions regarding the business and the investment round. It’s about 5 minutes long and access to that video is granted by the presenting company.
Thank you also for our sponsors!
The Art of Productization – Part 2
Launching with ‘good enough’ productization
Last week’s blog series ‘art of productization’ continues with more insights from Kati Riikonen, our guest writer in this week’s blog.
Yes, it’s true, ’good enough’ is not measured in the amount of features or the length of specification. For productization, the key customer promise is a top priority it seldom requires all possible features to be showcased.
Often there is no need, nor it’s feasible, to do full productization journey before going out to market making mode.
The level of necessary productization is depending on many variables. Most importantly one should crystallize concrete goals for the post-launch actions. There are also big differences on targeted audience is B2B, B2C or C2C. In reality, the limiting factors for productization often tend to be time and money.
The following provides examples of productization check points for various types of launches.
Idea launch
- Examples of next… Continue reading
The Art of Productization – Part 1
Crowdfunding Made Easy: Venture Bonsai Is Coming
Last Friday we released some information on our crowdfunding project, now officially named as Venture Bonsai.
Venture Bonsai is a tool for companies (start-ups and others alike) enabling them run a crowdfunding-style financing round successfully.
I’ve covered some of the challenges of the crowdfunding model in my recent blog articles (Part 1 and Part 2). Venture Bonsai is about to solve some of those, if not all, challenges.
The key benefits of using Venture Bonsai are
- Demystification of the crowdfunding process, and a funding process in general
- Offers tools and processes to follow the financial regulations
- Offers tools for acquiring or creating the key documents such as Business Plan, Shareholders’ Agreement and Term Sheet
- Offers a platform for Vendor Due Diligence (DD), including DD done by certified partners
- Includes tools for company valuation
- Includes a “Show Room” for your marketing material
- Includes “Elevator Pitch on the Video”
- Includes communication… Continue reading