#askimagine

I'm Malwine Steinbock, entrepreneur and co-founder of Cookbooth. I am a dreamer at the Imagine Creativity Center in Silicon Valley 2014. My mission is to learn from the best startups and mentors in the world and bring all the learnings back. http://bit.ly/askimagine

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Today we met Pepe Agell. Happy entrepreneur and Head of International at Chartboost.

The company that is today the largest only game platform with 60k games (new numbers to be released soon), was founded in 2011 by Maria Alegre and Sean Fannan, at Pier 38, a former accelerator in San Francisco. After an incredible growth, the team got funded with 21m lead by Seqouia in 2013, and they just moved in their new office in downtown San Francisco. Say hi to the large T-Rex that greets you after walking through the door.

Pepe shared some very inspiring insight with us.

GLOBAL AND LOCAL

Everything is global today. The AppStores are global and you should be global, too.

If you want to become a global company, start speaking English from moment one, even though there are mainly Spaniards in the team.

And always make sure you still shake hands. 

AT CHARTBOOST CLIENTS ARE PARNTERS

Surprise, Chartboost, just are Waze, doesn’t have a head of marketing. Their best marketing is actually when their clientes = partners recommend them. “You are not selling, you are creating fans”. By solving real problems for the developers and helping them to monetize, their users are massive ambassadors for the brand.

To help the indie community, they have even integrated tools so developers can connect, chat and exchange data and experience.

It’s all about the "developers first” approach: did you know the SDK Burger Challenge? You can actually install the Chartboost SDK faster than eating a burger and they invite developers to proof that. 

TEAM CULTURE & VALUES

As the company was growing they were becoming aware of the importance of values and the culture of the company. Because there should be always just one team. By defining their values, they were defining what it meant to be a Chartbooster. 

Values like “getting shit done” and that “numbers don’t lie” are important lemas that everybody in the company knows.

What is Chartboost’s vision?

They are a revenue platform for developers. They develop ad-technology and are developers helping with in-app purchases. They want to be the company that pays the first check to the developer. 

One last thing?

Above all, whatever you do, enjoy what you are doing. Be surrounded by people you admire and have fun.

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Passionate storytelling by angelikab

What makes Isabell Allende's story so compelling? Why can't you stop listening?

Tell a story when you pitch, create an experience painting a detailed picture of the situation. Be passionate and give a lot of detail.

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more important than the idea is the ability to execute

#askimagine 

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Clients are your most important asset. If you have clientes and are generating a cashflow, you can decide when the time is right to rise money.

Daniel Tapias

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6 PITCH AND NETWORKING INSIGHTS

by Gorka Sadowski, passionate hobby cook and cyber security evangelist.

Insight Nº1

“Good ideas are like energy, you give them, share them. Never be afraid that someone will copy it. If you have a great idea, it is very likely that 20 really smart people in Stanford and Berkley are already working on the same thing”

Insight Nº2

“People are very accesible and you can get 2 minutes with almost anyone. Don’t miss your opportunity even with a 15 second pitch to get a follow-up meeting"

15 sec. pitch: this is what I want to say 2 min pitch: this is what I am saying 15 min pitch: this is what I just said

Don’t be afraid to be redundant, in any pitch format, make sure you get across the main message right at the beginning.

Insight Nº3

Americans are very pragmatical, relationships are always about work.

“Give before you get. Always bring a gift: a feedback, an idea, a compliment."

Insight Nº4

Adapt you pitch to the person you talk to. Have an investor’s pitch, a potential partner pitch, an engineer's pitch. “It is like an exercise of reverse engineering, what can you offer to them?"

Insight Nº5

Ask questions and get yes for an answer. Up to 7 times and the 8th “yes” will be for free.

  Insight Nº6

Storytelling. Take your audience by the hand and make them dream and fall in love with the idea. it’s really about psychology. Then give some data to make it tangible.

The more incipient the idea, the more you have to sell the vision of your company.

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“Don’t go to bed and dream your dreams, dreams are there to get up in the morning and live them”

Colorado on the Road

Javier started making his dream come true on October 1st 2013 when he left Madrid on his bike for a trip around the world. Since then he has crossed 19 countries, biked 20.501 kilometers at -20 and +40 degrees. And 34.499 more to go.

You can follow this dreamer on @ColoradOnTheRoad.

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TRACTION?

Today we met Jean Claude Rodriguez @je4nc1aude, founder of puddle, a new social credit line from your peers that is making bancs obsolete.

He started his business in 2004 after a trip to Africa where he learned that small communities were self-financing their own initiatives with micro-loans.

Quickly he got many of his friends on board and puddle was growing at 10% yearly. Not enough to proof that this could be the next big thing and that the market was actually huge.

Fast forward to 2014, invested by Google and the founders of KIVA, they have shown traction.

“If you want to grow your business really fast, you are not going to achieve that with Facebook or any other PPC ads. Or have you ever seen a whatsapp ad anywhere? 

You will only achieve real traction if you get your users to invite other users. And this only works if that’s in benefit for your current users. Their experience with your product must be better with their friends. Whatsapp wouldn’t make sense without your friends"

"Investors here don't care about your business model, they only care about disruptive ideas, a huge market and that you are able to proof your growth"

I have the feeling that I will get this kind of input more than once here. 

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Have you ever met a real-life super heroine?

I was so much looking forward to finally meeting Di-Ann Eisnor, I had seen her speak at several conferences and I had been waiting for this moment. Today I could finally ask her my question.

Di-Ann is the Vice President of Waze, a crowdsourced navigation system that outperforms Google maps and any TomTom by far. Plus it has new cool features like live traffic updates that saves you time and money.

She joined Waze in 2009 after the CEO had tricked her to come on a trip to Israel to speak at a conference. They were offering her quite some money to speak in Tel-Aviv but really he wanted to convince her to join Waze. A week later, she came back from the trip having resigned as the CEO of her own company because she was fascinated by the team’s ability to execute and build a great product. Since then, she and her team grew Waze from 100k to 50m active users in 2013 when Waze was acquired by Google for 1.3bn USD.

Di-Ann always says that their best marketing is their product. So I was curious to find out how their teams are organized and how they managed to get such amazing traction without any (traditional) marketing.

Make your product your marketing. Waze didn’t hire a marketing person until 2013. Their product was good enough to get massive attention from the media and the users. 60 TV stations are using their app today for their morning traffic report.

Get your product recommended. Ask blogs and media for reviews. Get recommended on the AppStore, tell the story at conferences and to the press.

Know your data. Engagement is key and you need to dig into the numbers to find out what your users are doing and what they are not doing.

Lucky events. When your product is solving real problems in real time like a mayor traffic Jam in Los Angeles or fuel shortage during the superstorm Sandy, then those events give you inevitably a boost.

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Day 1 Imagine Creativity Center at the old Twitter offices.

Our new home for the next 27 days. 

The first day was a mix of presentations, exercises, challenges and learnings already. You can follow the full sessions on imagine live.

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The mission

Good morning San Francisco, 

well Dublin (I'm staying here with Roberto & Fred, 2 dear friends who just moved to the Valley).

During the flight I had plenty of time to put my thoughts in order and formulate my mission for the next 6 weeks.

I am here to learn.

To learn from the best startups in the world. Those that haven proven growth and high engagement.

To learn from the best mentors that will share with us their experience and knowledge.

To learn from the staff of Imagine with diverse profiles that will guide us through this months of transformation. 

To learn from the dreamers who are just as motivated as me to learn and bring out the best.

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@DiAnnEisnor

"You always say that the best marketing is your product"

"How is your product and marketing team structured?"

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@joaquimtrias 

"We are a SOLOMO app looking for our first round of investment"

"What kind of investors should we be talking to?"

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@angelikab

"You have met the most brilliant entrepreneurs and most promising startups"

"What mistakes should we avoid when pitching?"

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@quimgil

"we are creating a global cookbook based in individual knowledge"

"How can we integrate with existing platforms to build a free software solution?"

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@monicadeza

"Cookbooth is a new media for brands, chefs and restaurants"

"How are brands and their clients going to relate in the future"?

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cargomor

"Recipe search at Google is still not social"

"Do you think Google could be the exit strategy for a social cooking network?