Investing in startups.

My story about running LIFT-OFF Startup Accelerator (LOA.io)

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adjust.com

adjust is a business intelligence platform for mobile app marketers, combining attribution for advertising sources with advanced analytics and store statistics. We make data work for you.

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11 Simple Concepts to Become a Better Leader. Being likeable will help you in your job, business, relationships, and life. I interviewed dozens of successful business leaders in my last book, Likeable Business, to determine what made them so likeable and their companies so successful. All of the concepts are simple, and yet, perhaps in the name of revenues or the bottom line, we often lose sight of the simple things - things that not only make us human, but can actually help us become more successful. Below are the eleven most important principles to integrate to become a better leader:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20130128162711-15077789-11-simple-concepts-to-become-a-better-leader

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Raising Seed Capital

Primer on raising seed capital for first time and experienced startup founders and employees. In this slideshare, I provide insight into the following question…

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Online investing, equity crowdfunding, business finance : Crowdcube

Online investing via crowdfunding platform, raise business finance through Crowdcube, the world's first equity crowdfunding platform, online investing just got easier

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How to build startup accelerator outside silicon valley? #1 THE PLACE.

If You want to know who I’m and what I’m doing please read my article right here. I’m running the startup accelerator in Poland in the city of Wroclaw. My city is one of the biggest IT outsourcing centres in Poland. We are better communicated with Berlin (2:30 hours by car) and Prague (4h) than with Warsaw (5h). We have big Universities. The king among them is Wroclaw University of Technology with is producing great number of IT specialists and programmers every single year.  We are at the beginning of building startup / VC communities. Wroclaw is a perfect place to start building it. 

I’m running the LIFT-OFF Startup Accelerator (later LOA). We have 140 square meters office for our startups. If they have more than 6-7 people on board they have to move away to the new office. We have started the accelerator on April 2014. I decided to give away the knowledge of building such a project to the community. I’m willing to get a great positive and negative feedback which would be greatly beneficial for me. 

I’m observing companies like YCombinator, TechStars and the people like Paul Graham and Steve Blank. I want to build startup community in the city of Wroclaw like it is described in Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Right now I’m 6 months after starting the LOA Accelerator. I have learned few things that I want to share with You. 

#1 The Place

I have decided that the office would be located in the Technology Park. The main reason for that is in this location we have very easy access to another companies that are doing the IT technology and hardware. The place is not so close to the Wroclaw University of Technology (15km) and that is the biggest problem cause students / interns have to take 50 minutes trip by public transport to get to our office. The office is open 24 hours / day. That is perfect for those who like to work at night or at the morning (Yes we have them). I don’t have my room, I work on the open space like the startup teams. The main problem with open space is phone calls. The phones have to be muted and if You have to talk You need to move outside to not interrupt the rest of the team. Usually there is some music in the background not so loud that is killing the talk noises. We have to rooms for team work and one separated space to talk, eat breakfast and drink coffee. On every wall of the office we have whiteboards. Every startup has its own whiteboard. There is one  additional at the entrance of the office so if You want to say something to all of the startups You should put that information on that whiteboard. At the entrance there is also a pin board for announcements and CV’s that might be interested for another startups. On every wall of the office You will find quotes from the http://startupquote.com/ web site. There is a mirror that will give You the impression that You are on the first page of the WIRED magazine ;). 

To be continued …

Pic #1: Whitebard and the zeccer startup printer … 

Pic #2: The open space (left subcom.me desks, centre: zeccer HQ) 

Pic #3: Whiteboard … subcom.me - subscription e-commerce platform

Pic #4: … done is better than perfect … ;) 

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LIFT-OFF Private Startup Accelerator from Poland.

This is the very first post on my blog. On April 2014 together with my business partners we have started LIFT-OFF Startup Accelerator.  We all are around the 30 years old and we all made IT companies in the previous years. My co-partner made the trans.eu that is one of the three biggest European companies that are providing the freight exchange platform. The whole trans group is hiring more than 300 specialist across Europe. I have created a couple of companies that has been sold after 2-3 years. I have been doing the mobile game for the Java ME platform (2007). That company was sold to the e-muzyka SA that is listed on the New Connect Stock Exchange. I was the co-founder of the Sky Store (2009) company that is providing a Dropbox like service based on the Amazon AWS. I was the co-founder of the Taxi5 (2011) service its like UBER but it connects the end user with the taxi companies not with the taxi driver cause taxi companies are very popular in Central European market. That was the biggest investment transaction in Poland one the seed level made by the VC fund. Satus has invested 2 160 000 PLN (4 PLN +- 1 EURO). I’m still the co-founder and share owner of the KMP group (2010) software house sold to the RST IT company. RST-IT.com is providing the lean sourcing service to the startups in Poland and Europe (no1 market is German).   

During my time as a founder or co-founder I have been struggling with building the company and money rising process. Some of my companies where backed by the VC and some where bootstrapped. Most of the VC money that are invested in Poland comes from the European Union Funds. It’s great that we have such a funds for the early stage investments but the regulations that are build upon those funds are so great that they are killing the investment. The average time from the initial meeting with the founders to the real investment and money transfer last  about 8-9 months! I know one startup that got the money after 18 months! The single investment can be up to 800 000 PLN (200 000 EURO’s). The fund is taking 49,99% of the company. Sometimes less but that is very unusual. Those VC funds get the money from the public institution called  PL: PARP (EN: PAED - Polish Agency for Enterprise Development).  To be precise from the 3.1 investment programme. 3.1 investment program works like this VC needs to have 0-10% private money the rest 90% will give the PEAD. The minimum VC fund is around 10 000 000 PLN (2 500 000 EURO’s). There is another programme for bigger funds that can invest up to 6 000 000 PLN (1 500 000 EURO) in a single project. They are working more or less the same as 3.1. Anyway if we are speaking about VC investment in Poland most of the money that are invested in startups comes from the VC funds backed by the European Union. 

What we are doing in LIFT-OFF Startup Accelerator is rather different than EU backed VC funds. We are investing only private money. Thats why we are super fast in making the investment, cause we don’t have to fill the papers and wait for the agreement from the PEAD. We can focus 100% in the investment. We are investing on the very first stage of the startup. We can provide fast 25 000 PLN (6 250 EURO’s) initial money that can be spend on what ever the founders want to spend it except their salaries. We are investing in teams 2-3 people (programmer, usability and graphic designer, business user acquisition guy). After 2-3 months and team work and spending 25k PLN we should have some kind of the MVP product with witch we can touch the market. Than the market verifies the idea. It the verification is promising we are investing in four rounds 50 000 PLN (12 500 EURO’s). That is total of 225 000 PLN (56 250 EURO’s). After that investment we should have the cash flow positive company if not we should know how much do we have to invest in the next rounds. For the initial investment (225k PLN) we are taking up to 30% shares. 

We like to work with the 3.1 VC funds cause we can invest on the very first stage with our private money and those funds will invest later on after 6+ months when they will prepare all the documents and the business plans that have to be approved by the PAED. In the LIFT-OFF (later LOA) we don’t need the business plans we already know that they wont last the confrontation with the market. All we need is well prepared Business Model Canvas and the presentation that will tell us what the startup wants to do. We like the presentation cause by making it the startup has to identify the most crucial components of the business and they have to build the presentation in some kind of order. 

In what we are investing? We like to invest in SaaS, B2B on the US or Western Europe market. The average salary in Poland in IT industry is 2-3 times less than the salary in Germany and/or United States. The exchange rate is 1 EURO = 4 PLN and 1 USD = 3 PLN. So 1 EURO invested in Poland in technology startup is working 8 - 12 times stronger than in Western Europe (2-3 times salary and 4 times exchange rate). 

We have already invested in subscription commerce platform, printing machines that are working in the universities and the platform that can help to sell the lunches in the business centres. If  You want to contact us please call me [phone], skype tomek.popow or send me email t @ loa. io - Tomek Popow.

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[500DISTRO] The Scientific Method: How to Design & Track Viral Growth Experiments

Brian Balfour, VP Growth, HubSpot Check out Brian's slide deck here: http://www.slideshare.net/500startups/02-brian-balfour-hub-spot-final

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I was looking for the whole list of the YC investments this is the most current one that I have found. 

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The Money Making Techniques every startup should know

Just right from the beginning the important question: "What revenue model should I use? = the wrong question to ask. You should rather ask the question "Why will people pay me"? First understand why people put their money on the table. Only then explore how you can capture that value with a strong business model. 

Why people pull out their wallet? 

Like a Boss

Be part of a Mob

Mystery & Thrills

"I own this Sh*t"

... 

This is just few first slides of the presentation. I strongly recommend this one. 

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Wealth derives increasingly from ideas, cities will prosper only if they attract those who have them.

http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

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Startup Metrics for Pirates (SF, Jan 2010)

My talk on Startup Metrics for Pirates at the Lean Startup Circle (San Francisco, Jan 2010).

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The video from my Seattle Ignite talk last month on Startup Metrics for Pirates is now available for your viewing pleasure below: If you don't want to watch video, 80% of the value of the talk is in these 2 pix: Please feel free to steal this talk & distribute to others; my slides are here: and of course i am *always* open to feedback on this info. ps - SlideShare.net rocks... use it.

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You must attack your assumptions at all times. My basic tenet: question yourself, because the world is ever-changing.

Bruce Moeller, DriveCam CEO 

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Pivot - In the Customer Development context, pivot means to change an element(s) of your customer-problem-solution hypotheses or business model, based on learning. As Eric Ries writes “by testing, each failed hypoth- esis leads to a new pivot, where we change just one element of the business plan (cus- tomer segment, feature set, positioning) – but don’t abandon everything we’ve learned.” Pivoting is at the heart of the “fail fast” concept. The sooner you realize a hypothesis is wrong, the faster you can update it and retest it.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Entrepreneurs-Guide-Customer-Development/dp/0982743602

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The Customer Development team works on testing the assumptions about who the customers is, the problem they hope to solve, and what the solution should be. | Product Development team actually builds the solution.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Entrepreneurs-Guide-Customer-Development/dp/0982743602

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Positioning, in a nutshell: Positioning is the act of placing your product within a market landscape, in your audience’s mind. For your customer, the goal of positioning is to have them understand what benefit they will receive from you and why you are better than everyone else.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Entrepreneurs-Guide-Customer-Development/dp/0982743602

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Segmentation, in a nutshell - The practice of breaking down a larger market into smaller IDENTIFIABLE group of users who SHARE specific needs and who REFERENCE each other.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Entrepreneurs-Guide-Customer-Development/dp/0982743602