Salutara, StartupYard

Salutara: Your Health Matters

Salutara is a full-service online platform for medical travel.

Every year, 11 Million people seek medical procedures that are not accessible or affordable in their home countries. With Salutara as a trusted advisor and intermediary, patients can search and compare clinics, arrange procedures, plan, book, and pay for a whole trip in one place.

I sat down recently with the founders, Martin Cvetler and Petr Vankat, to talk about Salutara’s current status, and future plans. Here’s what they had to say:

Q: Hi Petr and Martin! Tell us a bit about Salutara. Where did the idea for a medical travel platform come from?

Petr: I was spending my 2014 New Years in Switzerland with my girlfriend at that time who is a dental hygienist. As we were walking through the center of Thun, I saw a walk-in store saying “Zahn reisen – Dental travel” on the sign above the door. It caught my attention so I came closer and found out they were sending citizens of Thun to Hungary for dental procedures.

They organised trips specifically designed for patients with any kind of dental problem. This whole concept was taking place offline and was aiming at a very limited clientele. I thought why not do this online and globally? There is clearly a demand, with 20 million people traveling every year for treatment. That is when the idea was born.

But I put it in a drawer after my return to Prague and we started seriously discussing it in the summer of 2015 and in August we signed up for the Startupyard FastLane. And you know the story from there. We went through all the steps in the selection process and eventually made it to the accelerator.

Martin: Our first idea was to concentrate on dentistry and our first work name was “Bite´n´Chew” [laugh] Then we started to research, expanded the idea to other treatments and we just could not find a website that would be easy to use for booking a medical treatment abroad. Salutara is for people seeking quality medical care who cannot find affordable and accessible treatment at home. It’s a complicated and time consuming decision-making process, and we want people to have a way to do it all within one platform. We want to become the world’s most innovative medical travel booking platform.

 

Salutara

The Salutara Team: Martin Cvetler and Petr Vankat

 


Q: What are some of the main advantages of traveling abroad for medical treatments? What kinds of treatments are most popular for medical travel?

Petr: One of the most obvious advantages is the price difference between countries and continents.

Just to give you an idea, it is very common that patients for example from the USA are saving up to 80% of their medical costs when traveling for a hip replacement, dental restoration or cancer treatment abroad. Those can add up to huge sums- into the tens of thousands of dollars per treatment. A hip replacement in the US can cost upwards of $80,000, while the same treatment by an equally skilled surgeon in India might cost $10,000. That easily justifies the cost of going abroad.

You know, the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States, believe it or not, is medical bills. That really makes no sense to me in the modern world. But where there is such a clear need, there must to be clear, easy to access alternatives.

But the US isn’t the only place with problems. Waiting times in various countries such as the UK or Poland are also a big issue, as they can go as high as months and in some specific cases including orthopedy or eye surgeries up to years.

On top of that, some countries are facing certain legislative barriers that can be seen in relation to procedures such as In Vitro Fertilisation. At Salutara, we strongly believe that every human being should have a right to access that type of treatment, and we are working hard to provide options and accessibility for all the cases mentioned above.

Martin: We want to inform and educate customers about all possibilities that the medical travel industry offers. One example is the EU Directive 2011/24 that enables all EU citizens have their insurance cover procedures anywhere within EU. Not many people know this, and not many people use it. On the other hand we want to give our clients the opportunity to choose and decide if they want to go abroad or not. They can compare both options, decide and book abroad or at home. We just want to give them the freedom to choose and a tool to make it safe and easy.

Q: What are some of your key challenges in approaching consumers? How will you convince people that medical travel is for them?

Petr: We understand from our own experience that it can be tough to even decide where to go on holiday! Is the food going to be good there? Will it be safe to walk on the streets after dark? Will I be able to charge my iPhone there and get wi-fi? Generally speaking people are not always very open to changes and exploration. Especially when it comes to something so important and precious as human health.

Certain things are easy to sell. Medical travel can be vastly cheaper, and certain treatments will only be available abroad, depending on where a patient is coming from. But it’s about more than that. A person thinking about medical travel is concerned about trust and safety, and building trust is one of our biggest challenges going ahead. People deserve their dignity in medical care, and sadly that’s not something they can always have. So we want to change the way medical care works for those who can’t now get what they deserve.

That is why we are focusing on providing top notch care for our first customers – the early adopters or ambassadors. Sharing and promoting their experience on the website as well as on our social media profiles is going to be crucial- getting the word out through people like that will open up new possibilities for people who haven’t even considered medical travel. Good word of mouth plays an important role in the process of convincing others that it is safe and supremely beneficial to make the decision to pack up a small bag and take off for a treatment abroad.

Q: Let’s talk a bit about Salutara. What features and capabilities will you launch with? Where do you see the product in a year or two?

Martin: Customers will be able to connect directly with clinics and their doctors for unlimited online consultations and price quotes. They will be able to book a treatment and pay the deposit.

Later on we want to provide the whole travel package, including flight and hotel booking. Everything in one place. A lot of patients use medical travel for sightseeing before the treatment or they stay longer after the surgery to recover and come back home all fit.

Most competitors in this market right now are focusing on connecting clinics and patients. That’s great, but we want to provide a whole experience- start to finish. That is what we’re working towards: a platform that you can use exclusively to get reputable, safe, and fairly priced treatment anywhere in the world.

There are plenty of resources now available for medical travel and for patients seeking treatments. There are great services like RealSelf, which provides a community for people to discuss issues around cosmetic surgeries. We want to provide the same value to people- a place where they can find trusted opinions and advice, and also connect with the right doctors and clinics to provide the right treatments.

Q: What will be your focus within the next year? How will you approach the market, and which segments will you focus on in order to grow?

Martin: We will launch small and lean. Just with a couple of procedures, clinics in the Czech Republic and UK market on the patient side. After we optimize our workflow and processes, we will scale up with more treatments and clinics in the same markets and then expand within the EU in the second half of 2016 and globally in 2017. We’re starting with less invasive procedures like cosmetic dentistry, hair transplantation, sleep disorder, cosmetic surgeries, LASIK (laser eye surgeries). Then IVF and life threatening diseases and their treatment like oncology.

Our dream, as Petr said, is to be a trusted platform for patients and clinics the world over- so that people will always know what treatments and doctors may be available to them anywhere in the world. Right now, medical travel is very opaque- it’s run through backchannels, and patients rarely have any sense of who they are dealing with. That’s just not good enough. Fair, open, and trustworthy markets need transparency, and that’s what we will provide.

Q: Obviously partnerships are going to be a key factor in Salutara’s growth and success. Which partners do you view as strategically important, and how do you plan to build these partnerships?

Petr:There are lots of ways to think about partnerships in our case. We believe that the first partners should be charities of all sorts. It is important to give back. And those who are in need or unfortunately suffer from a specific condition deserve our primary attention.

We would like to donate a part of each transaction to a charity of choice for each patient who uses our services. Next in line of common sense, are travel agents both in countries where our patients travel from and in the countries of our clinics. Sport clubs and associations have a natural connection to what we are doing too, especially those where injuries happen often such as rugby or ice hockey.

We encourage anyone reading this to reach out to us with partnership suggestions from their network. We want to hear from you!

Q:  You started at StartupYard with essentially nothing but an idea and a vision, and now you’re almost ready to launch. Have you been surprised by your own speed and execution?

Petr: I am personally naturally very impatient and yesterday was already too late. So until we fulfill our goal of becoming the world’s biggest platform connecting patients with clinics all over the world, and handling medical travel on every continent, I will not be satisfied with the pace of our progress. Nevertheless just being around such amazing influencers as Cedric Maloux or yourself, Lloyd, and having the priceless opportunity to consult with our great mentors helped us speed up the process a great deal. We can never thank them enough.

Martin: I will be very open here. I was a little naive a few months ago. The deeper we are in this industry the more I realize how much more is ahead of us and also what we could have done differently, faster and better. We have decided to make some compromises on the product and market entry in order to launch fast and we have a long list of updates already. The truth is we chose a very complicated product and market. And you just cannot do everything at one moment. You have to prioritize every day, stay focused but be able to pivot at the same time. All of this is very challenging but I enjoy it quite a bit.

Q: How has working with StartupYard affected the development of Salutara? Have any particular mentors had a big impact on your development?

Petr: As I mentioned above StartupYard is like a nitro boost in the Fast and Furious franchise. Being friends with one of the 2015 SY startups (TeskaLabs), we knew what we were going into and busted our bottoms to make it to the 2016 cohort, because we were aware of the impact SY had on TeskaLabs. To be specific at StartupYard you learn a great deal of skills from pitching, creating awesome landing pages to creating meaty content and to confidently ask investors for money. I am sure we will start to fully appreciate the help of StartupYard only after a couple of years from now looking back at the days spent here.

As far as mentors, the initial avalanche of heterogenous opinions and suggestions naturally creates a bit of perplexity when you want to take the advice and put it into practise right when the consultation is over. The mentoring month helped Salutara shape it’s business strategy and recognize some of the threats and weaknesses as well as strengths and opportunities.

Now as the dust is slowly settling, we are revising our notes and realizing the value of suggestions and tips we in some cases did not see immediately. To mention a few names in particular – Liva Judic helped us in the process of renaming our company, to Salutara. I cannot leave out Ladana Edwards whose persistence in support has been endless. Marketa Kabatova and her great input on Google advertising, Jeanne Trojan and her factual to the point tips on self presenting, Veronika Prikrylova, Klara Gajduskova, Karin Pomaizlova…Those are just a few, and all the mentors had something to contribute to our launch and growth, and we are super grateful for the chance to get to know them and learn from them. Thank you all, guys, you have been phenomenal! Hope we will show our appreciation by becoming the global leader in healthcare provision without having doctors on payroll.

Martin: Honestly I cannot imagine how we could move forward so fast without the support of the whole SY team, shareholders and mentors. It would be very long and painful without this.

Q: You’re currently expanding your team. Who are the kinds of people you are looking for?

Martin: Yes, we are now hiring a native English journalist/blog writer, social networks specialist, SEO specialist. Then two more coders, designer, key account for clinics and customer service specialists. We want a team of people that have drive and are results oriented. I want to also thank here Jiří, Jakub and Michal for their work, we are happy to work together.

Q: Where can potential partners, clinics, or job seekers get in touch with Salutara?

Petr: Salutara can be reached on our Twitter plus Facebook profiles and of course e-mails (petr@salutara.com or martin@salutara.com).

 

NeuronAd

NeuronAd: Ads for Everyone

Do you use AdBlock, or another ad-blocking solution? More and more, the answer to that question is yes. With the advent of adblocking for mobile, over 20% of online users now employ some form of ad blocker, and that proportion is growing rapidly.

Ads can be annoying, they often use too much data, and they can be loaded with unwanted code and invasive tracking. NeuronAd is working to reconcile the needs of online publishers, with the wishes of ordinary web users who are sick of invasive advertising on desktop and mobile. NeuronAd is a member of StartupYard 2016, and will present at our Demo Day, on April 6th.

I caught up with Karel Javurek, founder and CEO of NeuronAd, to talk to him about the state of online advertising, and his role in improving it. Here’s what he had to say:

Hi Karel, Tell us a little about yourself and NeurodAD. How did you come up with the idea?

My experience has lot to do with NeuronAD, because I’m a journalist and writer, owner of a small content website, and an entrepreneur. But i’m also a reader and i saw Adblock becoming stronger and stronger every year.

Some publishers do get a bit extreme with the number of ads on their sites, but Adblock is the opposite extreme – completely no ads. So I started thinking about that, and I realized that basically the current model of online advertising is broken.

People want content, and advertisers want impressions. But publishers have to balance these two needs, and they have a very hard time doing so. The economics of advertising are constantly pushing them to new extremes.

At some point, online ads stopped helping online publishers, and started to hurt them, and that starts to happen when the pain the ads are creating is real enough that people do something about it- like using AdBlock. And that happens essentially because the reader does not feel that their interests are aligned with the publisher. Instead, they see publishers as working for advertisers, even though they are relying on the publisher for content that they want to view.

There has to be some middle ground– a solution that can balance both sides.

Readers are ultimately the most important part of online advertising. That’s what advertisers are there for, and it’s why publishers exist. At the same time, advertising is ultimately meant to be beneficial to people. In a fundamental sense, advertising does help us to make choices about how we spend our money – and it can have a positive role in our lives.

You want to know if a product is right for you, or if something new is available, and advertising helps us learn things like that. But neither advertising nor publishing is going to work if the publisher can’t survive because half of the readers are blocking ads, and the other half are being attacked with them.

What we see today is the whole system sort of breaking down, and that’s bad for everyone. NeuronAd is set up for what I think the future of online ads is going to be– something much more sensitive to the needs and wishes of consumers.

Click to Tweet about NeuronAd!

 

Tell us a bit about your team as well. Who is working with you now? Are you looking for more people?

Right now we are about 8 people. As CEO I still do everything except programming, that is managed by the David Dutkovsky, our CTO. We are still mostly programmers and DevOps, but also one experienced sales pro from the US, who has worked more than 10 years in online advertising business, and led big teams of salespeople.

The NeuronAd Team

The NeuronAd Team, Karel in the middle.

 

Our business is strictly B2B, so we will need lot of sales help in order to expand. We are always looking for talented programmers as well. We are solving hard and unsolved problems, so it’s very interesting even from the architectural point of view.

NeuronAD defeats ad blockers. What’s the problem with ad blockers, considering that they are so popular?

The main problem with ad blockers is that they are too extreme – they block every ad on every page a user visit and usually, once a user installs them, they never uninstall them. Possibly over 20% of internet users now use some form of ad blocker, whether or not such technology is really needed to enjoy online content. In most cases, they simply aren’t necessary.

Making quality content isn’t free, and i think everyone who use adblock, knows this. Ads are  a great solution for a free internet, and they work not only for publishing, but also for Google, Facebook and a lot of other online companies and startups.

Some publishers are greedy, honestly, and they deploy too many ads, pop-ups and so on. But that in itself is an extreme situation, for which all publishers are being punished. We are trying to help conscientious publishers who display useful, relevant ads that are not obtrusive- as it should be.

Ads that are tasteful and well placed can add value to a reader’s experience. That is the kind of thing we want to support with our technology.

Can you talk a bit about how NeuronAD’s technology works? How does it get around Ad blockers?

Our solution gets around any type of blocking software in a browser- desktop or mobile – and can also get past adblocking on the network level, where it’s normally hard to do. So we can offer publishers a future-proof solution for the next generations of adblocker, not just the ones on the market today.

We do that by detecting when an adblocker is being used, and rebuilding that page with code the adblocker doesn’t recognize, delivering an “ad-lite” experience that an ad-sensitive user should find acceptable.

It’s a better alternative than, for example, barring ad-blocked users from visiting the site at all, as more and more publishers, such as Forbes, now do.

We’re building NeuronAd from the ground up, to tackle ad blocking technology where it will be two, three, or even five years from now.

We can also easily update our solution, so if there is any problem with any type of new adblocker, we will be able to patch our technology quickly, and publishers don’t need to take any action.

Will NeuronAd have any effect on website visitors who are not using ad blockers?

No. NeuronAd only affects users who are employing ad blocking technology. For typical visitors, NeuronAd has no effect on their experience, and nothing is changed at all.

Part of our mission is to change the business of online advertising by rewarding fair actors. Part of this is our firm commitment not to spy on or collect private data about site visitors. Much of what has driven people to adopt ad blockers has been privacy concerns, and with good reason. We want to encourage publishers to respect the privacy of their readers as well.

What is NeuronAd’s relationship with advertisers or ad networks?

Our backend can be connected to different ad networks and clients, so we can provide extra inventory for an advertiser, even on big websites and reaching people who don’t usually view ads.

The number of people with ad blockers grows at about 40 % every year. There are more than 200 million people with some kind of adblock installed, and that will double in the next few years. On some websites, the number of users with ad blocking software is now higher than 50%, and this puts a powerful strain on publishing as a viable business online.

How do you plan to grow in the coming 6 months to a year?

We are a global startup, and our reach is not limited by geography or language. We hope to be in the US within the next year – that’s an obvious market to tackle, and it is where much online advertising is focused.

We’re piloting the solution with a few Czech websites right now, and we hope to be serving ads very soon.

Long term, what do you hope NeuronAD’s role will be in the online advertising market?

Our goal is to make the internet a better place for all involved – for publishers, readers, and advertisers.  Publishers and advertisers can forget that readers are the real customer, so we focus on them quite a bit, providing an ad-light experience (less advertisement), more privacy (less tracking), more security (ads link check), and better performance (faster loading times, less data to download).

 

How has your experience at StartupYard shaped the company going forward? Are there any particular mentors who had an outsized impact on your development?

The experience with StartupYard has been fantastic. It’s accelerating every part of our project and we’ve had great feedback and contacts from a huge number of mentors. Every mentor is useful in some way, even if they’re from different market or segment. Sometimes even a small idea or feedback from a different point of view can shape your service or product to be much better.

 If I’m forced to name names, then Jan Urban, Andrej Kiška, Aleš Teska, and Viktor Fisher are examples of really important mentors for us. But in truth, there are many more who have played vital roles in shaping our development, and we are grateful to all of them. 

Are you currently looking for launch partners and early customers? How can people find out more?

We are looking for good partners from publishers and ad networks, that want be relevant in the future. More information is on our website Neuronad.com and you can also send email to info@neuronad.com. On our twitter page we are trying to cover new thing in the world of adblocking.

Speedifly

Speedifly: When in Doubt, Travel!

SpeediFly is for spontaneous travelers who want to get away last minute, but don’t know where they can go on a budget.
Unlike clunky old-fashioned search engines, SpeediFly combines social dimensions like group travel planning, with the ability to discover destinations based on activities and interests. It will allow friends and relatives to book flights together at one price, while splitting the bill, and to book truly last minute trips, even on the way to airport. 

I caught up with Co-Founders Alexander Karadjian and Stoyan Dobrev, the Bulgarian team behind Speedifly, to talk more about the young company that wants to take the next generation to the skies. Here’s what they had to say: 


Q: Hi Alex and Stoyan, tell us a bit about yourselves and the SpeediFly Team.

Alex: Hi Lloyd. Thanks for asking. Well, I spent the last eight years of my life studying architecture at Harvard, and a month after graduation decided to found a spontaneous travel startup!

I think that speaks to my spontaneous nature.  The truth is I have always been passionate for travel, which is why I took a semester off three times during these eight years and lived in Spain, the Netherlands, the Seychelles and Australia.

The other co-founders, Stoyan and Zahari, have been good friends of mine for many years. Actually, Stoyan dated my sister back in the day, and she always claims that she deserves a share in the company [smile].

Stoyan is also crazy about travel. He spent the last 4 years studying management in the UK and Hong Kong. Zahari is a friend from high school, whom I’ve known for more than 13 years. He is our tech genius living in his own world. In addition to his programming skills, he has quite a lot of experience with computer graphics and visual effects, which turned out to be invaluable for the team. 

 

Speedifly Team

Alex and Stoyan, CoFounders of Speedifly

 

Q: How did you come up with the concept for SpeediFly?

Alex: The idea for SpeediFly came up during a lunch conversation I had with a good friend at Harvard.

At that time I was working on my graduate thesis project, a proposal for London`s seventh airport, and all that occupied my mind was optimization of air travel, airport capacities and cost of airfare. We were discussing how every fifth seat on a plane that left Heathrow airport was empty.

I though that the business case for last-minute travel had not been pushed to its limits – as long as people can be convinced to act spontaneously and hop on the next plane, the opportunity is huge.

Now, it’s no shock that this isn’t a new idea by any means, but I thought previous attempts had been missing something. There was a lot of talk about “Uber for air-travel,” because Uber is also about managing the extra capacity of someone’s car.

But airlines and air-travel just don’t work that way. It takes a different kind of approach: something in between traditional travel agencies, and these on-demand service platforms.

So we built the platform to essentially tap into the benefits of on-demand functionality, in what is otherwise a more traditional, less on-demand business.

Tweet About Speedifly!

Q: What do you see as the last-minute travel industry’s biggest problem? How can it be solved?

Alex: Travel platforms featuring last-minute travel “sell” the price. It’s always the price of the ticket, the price of the hotel, the price of the car you rent.

But if you think about the nature of a last-minute trip, it’s all about the experience – it’s about seizing the moment and allowing people to discover fabulous destinations and share their adventures with friends. The price should be there only to show people that travel is not as expensive as they think – that they can afford it; but low price is not the key factor that motivates people to travel.

With all the information in social media, it’s so easy to analyze your customer’s interests and passions, and to customize the last-minute deals to their taste. Still, nobody does it yet.

This is one way to go about it. Also, just think about how difficult it is to make a group last-minute booking – by the time you call your friends, the deal is gone. We want to provide our customers with a platform where they can share flight information with friends in-app, invite these friends to join them on a flight and make the decisions live.

That’s much easier for people, and it’s about the experience.

Q: What makes SpeediFly different from typical metasearch platforms like Kayak, or booking platforms like SkyPicker?

Stoyan: Metasearch platforms like Kayak or Skyscanner simply aggregate large amounts of flight data and refer customers to the websites of airlines or online travel agencies where tickets can be booked.

It`s not uncommon for the price and the seat availability to change during this referral process, which, of course, disrupts the quick and easy nature of the booking and negatively effects the whole user experience. That`s why we don`t want to follow the metasearch model.

By contrast, Skypicker processes bookings and does not redirect customers to third-party websites. In this context, we will be a booking platform just like Skypicker. In fact, Skypicker is our flight data provider.

What`s unique about Speedifly is that it allows for interest-based searches like flights to skiing, surfing, concert or festival destinations. Birdwatching is also an option, although I don`t have high hopes for that one [laughs]. So, in a way SpeediFly is a travel discovery platform – the customer doesn’t have to know where he or she wants go, just what he wants to do.

What`s more, SpeediFly is a social booking platform where users can invite their Facebook friends, build their own travel communities within our app, share flights they are interested in, or flights they have booked, and invite others to join them on these flights.

Once we start understanding what the customer’s and his friends` preferences are, we will be able to recommend group getaways based on interests and budget. SpeediFly is all about making travel a social experience.

Q: Let’s talk a bit about your target market. Who do you see as your ideal customer, and what does that person value most? What will be special to them about SpeediFly?

Stoyan: Our go-to-market strategy is to target Millennials. Statistics show that on average Millennials travel way more than any other age group. Soon, millennials will account for a substantial part of the working population in Europe, enjoying more purchasing power than ever before.

We divide our target market into two segments – students (aged 18 to 24) and young professionals (aged 25 to 35). These are two groups that differ in their price-sensitivity and flexibility.

Let`s start with the students. They are very price-sensitive but have flexible schedules, which means that it is easier for them to take a long weekend or to skip the Friday class and jump on the next available flight. With SpeediFly, students will not only find it easier to discover relevant and cheap flights, but we expect them to use extensively the social dimension of the platform – it will allow them to share their travel intentions, invite friends and classmates to particular trips and organize group getaways.

Young professionals are less price-sensitive and less flexible, which has two important implications. First, the cheapest option is not necessarily the best one. Second, the timing of the trip and its duration really matter. That`s why I see the value for this group coming from the recommended deals we can make. SpeediFly can save busy young professionals a lot of time planning a quick trip – with us they can discover destinations related to personal preferences for hobbies, concerts, sport events, etc.

Q: Can you talk more about your go-to-market strategy? When and where will people be able to use SpeediFly for the first time?

Stoyan: On the 27th of March we are soft launching in London. We will make the private beta of our app available to 200 students from two different London universities. We want to see how people interact with the app, how they make use of its social functionality and where they see the added value.

A month later, we will officially launch the app in London and market it exclusively to university students. For 4 months SpeediFly will be available only in London and in September we will release it in Paris, Rome, Madrid and Amsterdam.

Q: What are your near term goals for the service? Where do you hope to be in a year?

Stoyan: Up to 3 months after the official launch we plan to integrate accommodation and event ticket (concerts, exhibitions, etc.) APIs, which will complete the cycle of organizing a spontaneous trip – book a flight, find a place to stay, and discover something cool to do once you are there.

Our next priority will be to enable collective bookings. You know how when you are organizing a trip for many people, someone usually pays for all the flight tickets? This is because if you buy them separately, most probably each one will have a different price, if there are seats still available.

Then the person who has made the payment has to collect his money back – it`s an annoying process. We want to allow one person to start a booking and then split the payment among all travelers. Just like Uber does it. Why isn’t that functionality already available to air travelers? It should be.

In one year? Well, as with every B2C startup we want to be viral among our target customers and have more than 100,000 active users. We will need to work hard to get traction in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, and Madrid. We’re looking forward to the challenge and the new experiences.

Q: Long term, travel is very competitive. How will SpeediFly compete and stay relevant in such a crowded market? What will SpeediFly be in 5 years?

Alex: Relevance is actually the key factor here. The industry is indeed competitive but one of its major problems is that it lacks relevance in terms of the deals offered to customers.

It’s not a working solution to send email updates about cheap flights from Paris to Tokyo to a customer who lives in London; recommending a skiing destination to somebody who is not into skiing also doesn’t work.

Still, people are constantly bombarded with such irrelevant offers, and at SpeediFly we want to fight against exactly this problem. Constant analysis of our customers is a priority for our team – this is how we can make relevant recommendations and stay competitive in this market.

In 5 years we want to have a global product or at least to have expanded beyond European borders. After Europe, our next target geography is Southeast Asia.

speedifly launch

Q: In what ways has the concept of SpeediFly changed since you’ve joined StartupYard?

Stoyan: The first thing that pops in my mind is that we changed our name. (laughs) It was quite a contentious process at times. Now we are SpeediFly, and quite happy with that.

It is hard for me to express in a few words how much feedback and insight we were given for the last two months at StartupYard. Naturally, our concept changed substantially.

When we came to StartupYard, we did not even have a website. We had our core functionality – the 15 cheapest flights from the nearest airport within the following 10 days – and we thought we would be making money from selling cheap flights. In a sense, SpeediFly had a lot in common with any other online travel agency that sells cheap flights.

Now, after two months of mentoring and workshops, our ambition is to go way beyond the cost-saving concept. In fact, we realized that the full potential of the idea has little to do with cost-saving. It has a lot to do with social travel or collective travel.

If we go back to the basics of travel for a second, it is about experience, about the unknown and about the adventure. Unfortunately, if you go to the websites of our competitors, travel is all about price. We want to change that perception and at StartupYard many mentors helped us focus exactly on this. We want to escape from the cost-saving notion, create the largest community of spontaneous travelers and change the way people think about leisure travel.

Q: Are there any particular mentors from StartupYard who have had an especially big impact on the company’s development? How so?

Alex: You Lloyd, along with Cedric, have had an invaluable impact on our team. Sometimes, we take it for granted as we are together every day, all day long, but whether it’s for the landing page, for A/B testing or for fundraising campaigns, you have always been available to work with us.

Michal Jelinek and Wallace Green have been instrumental in fine-tuning our concept – they pushed us a lot to make the most of all the social interaction that is part and parcel of every travel experience. Wallace is a great believer in what we do and he has spent hours and hours with us working on the functionality and the definition of the added value of our mobile app. His enthusiasm about SpeediFly is contagious and we are really grateful for his input.

ClaimAir

Claimair: Fighting For Air Passengers’ Rights

ClaimAir helps travelers fight the airlines for compensation, because fliers don’t have the time and resources to do it themselves.
It’s is an automated platform that handles the end-to-end process of claiming owed compensation for delays, baggage mishandling, etc. Did you know that the average compensation owed was over 300 Euros?

I sat down this week with Jakub Ladra, Founder and CEO of ClaimAir, one of our 2016 Startups. Here’s what he had to say about fighting for the rights of passengers all over the world:


Hi Jakub, tell us a bit about ClaimAir, and why you decided to fight for the rights of airline passengers.

Hi Lloyd, thanks for asking. Let me ask you a question: the last time you had a flight delay, or a lost bag, how much money did the airline give you in compensation?

Now, if you’re like most people, the answer is that you didn’t get anything, or maybe the airline gave you enough money for a meal at the airport. But what people don’t know is that the airlines routinely owe much more, often hundreds of euros per person, for a delay or mishandling of bags.

ClaimAir makes sure travelers get flight and baggage compensations when they are lawfully owed by the airlines. Since ClaimAir works as an automated platform which allows us to process claims in high volume, we can provide our service not only directly to the travelers but also to our business partners.

These partners are companies like flight booking platforms, travel agencies, travel itinerary management systems, etc. We believe that our service can help them improve customer relationships, loyalty and last but not least, it gives them a strong competitive advantage. On the other hand, these partnerships help us to overcome our biggest challenge, which is the fact that travelers are not well aware of their rights and airlines usually take advantage of it.

 

Jakub Ladra, Claimair

Jakub Ladra of ClaimAir. Jakub has extensive experience in the airline industry, and wants to fundamentally change the way airlines treat their customers.

Back to your second question, my journey with air passenger’s rights started at the university when it was the topic of my thesis. It was in 2007 and no surprise, the thesis ended up in a box – luckily, not forever. I went through a couple of aviation-related corporate jobs, but I always knew it wasn’t what I wanted. I love the startup environment and the feeling of freedom which, in combination with my knowledge, naturally led to ClaimAir.

Do you see your mission as more than just taking advantage of the laws and regulations?

For us it’s not just about taking advantage of the laws and regulations. We live in an experience economy where customer service should be a priority. Trouble with your flight just happens, and obviously brings a lot of stress and frustration into your life. So our goal is to make the rules around air passenger’s rights as clear as possible and make air travel an even more comfortable way of exploring the world. We also have some plans that don’t relate to the regulated stuff, but I can’t tell you more at the moment.

What are some of the most common mistakes that air travelers make when it comes to getting what is owed them for delays, disruptions, and lost bags?

I wouldn’t call them mistakes. Travelers simply don’t know they are owed compensation and that airlines are in fact legally obliged to pay them out. For instance, when your flight is delayed for more than 3 hours on arrival, you can get €600 paid in cash. Regarding the baggage, the compensation can be up to €1,500. These are pretty good sums that airlines wish to be kept secret. Moreover, when you complain by yourself, the airline usually responds by using complicated legal arguments that you have no chance to understand and work against. The average traveler feels powerless next to the airlines.

What does it take, legally, to get an airline to pay legal compensation? Why is it so hard?

Naturally, it’s a common practice of a majority of airlines to keep their compensation budgets low. Therefore, if you don’t know the rules precisely and if you are unable to submit a strong letter of complaint by using relevant legal arguments, your chances to success are close to zero. The airlines usually respond by using some tricky legal provisions that exempt them from liability, but most of them are taken out of context. Overall, the legislation is damn complex and contains many grey zones, so it’s just difficult for an ordinary traveler to cope with it.

Let’s talk a bit about the numbers. How many travelers a day could benefit from your service? What are some of the other important industry stats?

Although I’ve devoted my professional career to aviation, I’m always amazed about those daily numbers. There are more than 9 million travelers transported by air every day and approximately 800 thousand of them are affected by any kind of flight disruption or baggage mishandling. It’s also worth mentioning that the average compensation we got for our customers in 2015 was €320. There are also projections that air travel industry should double in next 20 years.

Your team is growing quickly. What do you see as your biggest challenge as a company in the near term? What keeps you up at night right now?

A: Extremely quickly! If everything goes well and in line with our plans, we should have more than 100 employees by the end of 2016, which is the thing that actually keeps me up at night these days. Have I mentioned that we are hiring? (laughs)

Looking for a job? Tweet @ClaimAir now!


What kind of people are you looking for?

Anybody who speaks fluent English, has a passion to learn new things from the aviation industry and is willing to use the latest technology is more than welcome to reach out. We are currently based in Prague, but our goals are far beyond the borders of the local market. If any of your readers want to be a part of an international startup environment with a vision and strategy to create something big, I can’t wait to meet them.

Where do you plan for ClaimAir to be, as a company, in 5 years time? What will be your mission then?

We’re still an early stage startup so I primarily hope that we will still exist in 5 years. (laugh) But anyway, I have a clear vision of a perfectly seamless process of customer care that I would love to bring into life.

I would really like to have our service integrated with various travel solutions, so every time your flight goes wrong, we would automatically notify you about important facts and we would get you money without any intervention from your side. In other words, we would like to solve your traveling troubles in real time so you can feel secure, and as a bonus, the compensation will be automatically credited to your bank account.

Have any of the StartupYard mentors had an especially powerful impact on your trajectory as a company? How so?

jakub ladra, Claimair

Jakub talks with other 2016 founders at a StartupYard workshop


Not only mentors but all StartupYard team members, including you Lloyd, are extremely supportive and dedicated. I can’t thank you enough for allowing us to be here and for supporting our goals. I am sure that we wouldn’t make such a progress in just a few weeks otherwise. We’ve met more than 70 extremely experienced mentors yet and sorry, I can’t mention anyone in particular because I value all of them the same. They are busy professionals and they give us their precious free time to move our businesses forward. We got numerous valuable insights into our business as well as several important introductions to our potential business partners. I’d definitely recommend other early stage startups to do their best to make it into the next StartupYard’s batch.

This space has some active players already. Why is there room for ClaimAir in this market?

Of course, but I always find competitors as an important part of every industry. Their presence confirms that our business is viable and they also help us educate and evangelize the market. Why is there room for us? Remember the figures? 9 million travelers are transported by air every day. Moreover, we are the only ones who deal with baggage-related issues and I hope that our focus on a technology will quickly make us one of leading players.

Are you looking to raise investment right now?

Yes. In order to carry out our business plan, we are looking for an initial €300k investment.

Satismeter: Meet the Founders

SatisMeter is perfect for online businesses that lack qualitative feedback from their users.
It’s an in-app feedback platform, that collects NPS data based on specific usage patterns. Unlike a traditional email survey or various in-house solutions, SatisMeter is an easy to integrate, multi-platform solution, perfect for small startups with only a few customers, all the way up to enterprise scale clients.

Satismeter’s current customers include BuzzSumo,  Udacity, Mention, Adroll, Dashlane,and MailJet. I sat down with the founders, brothers Jakub and Ondrej Sedlacek, to talk about Satismeter, and their unique team.

 

The Satismeter Brothers

The Satismeter Brothers, Jakub (left) and Ondrej (right)

You two are not only Co-Founders at SatisMeter, but brothers. Have you always worked well together, or was that a later development? Is it an advantage to work with a sibling as a co-founder?

Ondrej: Before SatisMeter neither of us thought our professional paths would ever meet.
Even though we are brothers, we are quite different.
Jakub is a technical person and a product guy with experience of leading GoodData front-end engineering for five years. I, on the other hand, am a sociable person with a background in IT sales, marketing and NGO fundraising.
Jakub: Being brothers has a great advantage, in that we know each other well and we can rely on each other in good and bad times. We share the same values and because we have different expertise we complement each other well.

Tell us a bit about how you came up with SatisMeter.

Jakub: I worked in the [Czech founded and Prague and San Francisco based] analytics company GoodData before and we struggled with the direction of our product and keeping focus on what our customers need. We started collecting customer feedback and it helped us tremendously with further product development. I was surprised there was no such service that would help automate the whole process. That’s where the idea for SatisMeter came from.

How can SatisMeter be used to improve how SaaS companies develop new features or improve retention of existing customers?

Jakub:  SaaS companies live off of customer subscriptions. They need to keep their customers as long as they possibly can. SatisMeter can be viewed as a churn reduction tool. We identify unsatisfied customers, and let SaaS companies work with these customers before they leave for the competition.

Ondrej: Also, most online businesses do not get enough user feedback. They optimize the whole user experience and new features based on analysing the behavior of users, but know very little about the actual needs behind this behaviour.
SatisMeter gathers this feedback directly inside web apps and shares it back to the right people in the organisation. Unlike most in-house solutions, SatisMeter can send the feedback not only to Support, but also to CRM, Analytics and Marketing tools, as well as other communication channels like Slack. This way the feedback doesn’t stay trapped in some helpdesk database, and the whole organization can see what their customers think.

You signed some very prominent clients pretty quickly, like Buzzsumo, MailJet, Mention, and AdRoll. What do you think got you this early traction?

Jakub:  We made the service very easy to start with and let the users see the value immediately. Also, unlike many surveys on the market, we really care about the experience of the end-user – Satismeter doesn’t block them from working and let them fill in our pop-up when they have time for it. This is why Satismeter has a 30% response rates on average.
Ondrej: Our first users came from partnership with customer data hub Segment.com. For example Mention’s Head of Growth found us on the Segment marketplace, and build their churn reduction process around our NPS platform. Later he even wrote a blogpost about this process, and the word of mouth started spreading. Satismeter have also been featured on ProductHunt, which helped as well.

Do you want to help Satismeter on their journey to the top? Click Below to Tweet about them now.

Click to Tweet about Satismeter!

Have you seen any unexpected uses of SatisMeter since you launched? Something that surprised you?

Jakub: When we launched, we saw SatisMeter as a tool for Product Managers to help them build a product their customers need. It surprised us that most people interested in SatisMeter were marketers and growth hackers who wanted to optimize their growth metrics. We unlocked many creative uses by integrating with other platforms and letting our customers work with the collected data. We already took a lot these ideas and implemented them right into SatisMeter.

What’s the short term plan for Satismeter? Where do you want to be in 6 months to a year?

Ondrej: There are four areas where Satismeter will focus: new platforms, new markets, better understanding of user feedback and actionable advice. We want to cover all platforms where users are communicating with businesses and our mobile survey will be launched in March. We are working with several communication platforms to collect user feedback for their customers. Some of our customers collect tens of thousands of responses a month and we would like to give insight not only whether their users are satisfied, but why. Also we already know how to identify the customers with higher churn risk. We want to advise on how to work with them right inside SatisMeter.

Which players do you view as your biggest potential competitors in this market, and why?

Jakub: At the moment our biggest competition are companies that are collecting NPS using email surveys. A surprisingly large number of companies are still using email surveys, although it’s much less efficient than an in-app solution. There are also many platforms that are doing really nice survey widgets, but don’t work very well with the collected data. Satismeter is trying to focus on an easy to use solution that will help companies to dramatically improve customer retention.

Can you tell us some of the most common mistakes that SaaS companies make when surveying their customers?

Jakub: Common mistake is that they just survey users and don’t follow-up with them. It’s a great way to engage with your happy customers and opportunity to proactively resolve issues of the unhappy ones.

What are some of the most common misconceptions about how NPS is used, and how it works?

Ondrej: The most common misconception people make is to look at NPS score and ask “What does this number mean to my business”. The NPS score alone is an indicator of how satisfied and loyal your customers are, but every business segment, every culture and every country has different perceptions and thus different benchmarks. The right way is to watch the NPS trend, correlate it with product and service changes, and decide how these changes influenced your customers’ satisfaction.
Jakub: NPS can be also used in many other ways to improve your business, for example as tool for better conversion of trial users into paying customers, or a way for better targeted marketing campaigns.

Has StartupYard been a positive experience so far for the team? How has it affected your overall approach to the company so far?

Jakub: StartupYard is a combination of connections, knowledge and experience. This is invaluable for first-time entrepreneurs like us. The first month was intense but Satismeter moved miles ahead in vision of our product and company. We are really excited to see what’s coming next.

Introducing the StartupYard 2016 Startups

StartupYard 2016 has been underway for just over a month now. So it’s time to make it official. After an exhaustive application process, and over a month of mentoring, StartupYard is proud to announce 9 new startups, who will present themselves at StartupYard 2016’s Demo Day, on April 6th.

Satismeter: Know Your Customers

imgres

Czech Republic

SatisMeter is perfect for online businesses that lack qualitative feedback from their users.
It’s an in-app feedback platform, that collects NPS data based on specific usage patterns. Unlike a traditional email survey or various in-house solutions, SatisMeter is an easy to integrate, multi-platform solution, perfect for small startups with only a few customers, all the way up to enterprise scale clients.

Satismeter’s current customers include BuzzSumo,  Udacity, Mention, Adroll, Dashlane, and MailJet

Like SatisMeter? Click to Tweet about them!

 

ClaimAir: Know Your Rights. Get Paid.

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Czech Republic

ClaimAir helps travelers fight the airlines for compensation, because fliers don’t have the time and resources to do it themselves.
It’s is an automated platform that handles the end-to-end process of claiming owed compensation for delays, baggage mishandling, etc. Did you know that the average compensation owed was over 300 Euros?
Unlike travel agencies, ClaimAir is specialized in handling legal compensation claims in large volumes.

Like ClaimAir? Click to Tweet about them!

 

Neuron Software: Making Sense of Sound

NeuronSW_finalfor-web-01

Czech Republic

Neuron Software is a deep tech startup, exploring the use of self-teaching, constantly learning neural networks in a wide range of audio analysis and audio manipulation applications.
Imagine having a car mechanic in your pocket, able to diagnose a problem just by listening to it. Or being able to accurately document the emotions of your customers, every time anyone from your company talks to them.
Neuron Software’s technology will enable a broad range of new capabilities that are just starting to be explored.

 

Stream.Plus: The Last Video Platform You’ll Ever Need

stream_plus_logo-05_720

Czech Republic

Stream.Plus is the future of branded video distribution. Brands who have quality video content often lack control over the distribution and monetization of that content. Stream.Plus creates mobile and web apps for branded, interactive online TV channels that create a direct connection between consumers and brands.

Like Stream.Plus? Click to Tweet about them!

 

NeuronAd: Ads for Everyone

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Czech Republic

Online publishers rely heavily on advertising for revenue. But 20% or more of internet users now have adblockers installed. NeuronAd helps online publishers show relevant, unobtrusive ads to adblocked visitors, while maintaining the speed, security, and experience that led those visitors to employ adblockers.

Like NeuronAd? Click to Tweet about them!

 

Speedifly: When in Doubt, Travel

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Bulgaria

SpeediFly is for spontaneous travelers who want to get away last minute, but don’t know where they can go on a budget.
It’s a mobile travel discovery platform that locates the customer and finds the 15 cheapest flights departing from and returning to the nearest airport in the next 10 days. Unlike clunky old-fashioned search engines, SpeediFly combines social dimensions like group travel planning, with the ability to discover destinations based on activities and interests.

Like Speedifly? Click to Tweet about them!

 

TotemInteractive: Make Ads People Love

toteminteractive-icon-square

Poland

TotemInteractive enables Digital Out of Home Advertising to become more than just a one-way brand-to-customer ad channel.
It’s a cloud based advertising platform that supports interactive content, like games and contests, by allowing people to control ads directly from their smartphones.
Drive real audience engagement with your live ads, by making ads people love, and love to play with.

 

Salutara: Your Health Matters

Salutara, Startupyard

Czech Republic

Salutara is a full-service online platform for medical travel. Every year, 11 Million people seek medical procedures that are not accessible or affordable in their home countries. With Salutara as a trusted advisor and intermediary, patients can search and compare clinics, arrange procedures, plan, book, and pay for a whole trip in one place. Travel for your health, with Salutara.

Like Salutara? Click to Tweet about them!

 

boatify: hop onboard (a boat!)

boatify

Switzerland

Boatify is for people who want to go on a boat ride, but don’t have easy and affordable access to a boat. It’s a web and mobile platform, where boat owners can earn money renting their boats directly.
Unlike typical boat rental services, boatify relies on a network of partner “officers,” who take responsibility for the end-to-end customer experience of each boat rental, making it a snap to safely rent and take a trip in a boat near you, anytime.

 

The Teams

partnerships

Build Real Partnerships as a Startup

Building real partnerships with the right companies is something we emphasize in the StartupYard program. But what is a “real partnership” are all about? Many startups aren’t too sure.

Partnerships and “Partnerships”

A startup in our 2016 cohort approached me this week, with a simple-sounding problem. Could they prioritize a meeting over StartupYard mentoring sessions, if the person couldn’t meet at a time when mentors weren’t here?

Yes, they could if it is was really important. But what was the meeting about?

The meeting was about a potential “partnership,” with the CEO of a company that provided a key piece of technology that this startup was going to need. This was not a huge company, which is why the founders got a meeting with the CEO. But it wasn’t a startup either.

What did they want to get out of the meeting?

“Well, we’re hoping that he will be willing to let us use it for free or for a discount.”

And why would he do that?

“Because we’re a startup.”

Partnerships in Name Only

In a way, startups have become trained to expect this kind of thing from bigger companies. They assume that companies are willing to sponsor them just because they’re a startup, and they’re not always wrong. Many of StartupYard’s partners do give an amazing value in services to startups for free.

But those are our partners. While we have real, and thriving partnerships with some of these companies, this is not because we get free stuff. It’s because our organizations share complementary goals. In this case, it’s getting early access to the best startups in Central Europe, and helping them grow (us as investors, our partners as future providers of a paid service).

But this level of partnership, which looks more like sponsorship than a real relationship between equals, is probably not what many smaller corporates and other startups have in mind when they agree to meet a startup.

Based in Mutual Interest

It’s very easy to agree to partnerships that don’t require a lot of work or follow through. So it’s tempting to do this whenever possible. Many partnerships boil down to two companies putting their logos on each other’s websites.

This happens because in the course of exploring a partnership, one or both of these companies comes to realize that they don’t share a real mutual interest.

This is why it’s so important to pursue partnerships in the same way you pursue your sales goals. Partnerships are a part of your sales strategy.

Partners should have the same sorts of customers you have, but not be directly competing with your offering. Ideally, your partnerships should make the offering of both companies stronger, so that a customer who uses one, gets even more value from using the other.

At the core, a business partnership is about both sides developing their indirect sales channels, sharing, and better serving your mutual clients. It is a force multiplier for sales, because in a true partnership, much of the sales activities that the two companies undertake support the sales funnels of both companies.

This finds its most pure form in online affiliate partnerships, which is essentially an “automated partnership.” But that is only one form of partnership. You can base your partnership on sharing know-how and technology, but ultimately a partnership that lasts is one that makes the two companies interdependent, and stronger as a result, and that means both companies having a stake in the same pool of clients.

What A Company Needs to Be a Good Partner

Again, agreeing to a partnership is relatively easy in theory. It doesn’t take all that much. But in order to be a good partner, a company needs to have a team (or at least one person), dedicated to building and maintaining partnerships.

SendGrid, a StartupYard partner, is a great example of this. Instead of sponsoring accelerators and events directly, they have a dedicated innovation team that travels around the world, meeting with and advising startups and accelerators on issues involving transactional and marketing email infrastructure.

Every company they meet with gets at least a year’s worth of service with SendGrid for free, which is an enormous value for startups. And for StartupYard, it’s of great value to have a skilled and knowledgeable mentor team visit and do a workshop with our startups too. That builds the value of the accelerator and gives our startups a greater chance of success down the road. Meanwhile, SendGrid gets access to potential clients who could be worth thousands of Euros a month in a few short years. Win, Win, WIn.

Companies that have strong partnership programs also know what to look for from startups, which isn’t always just another client. They may be interested in sharing data, or even investing in certain kinds of companies.

A good partnership manager bridges a gap between sales and marketing, and has the pull necessary to bring your company to the attention of executives, even as a prelude to an acquisition, or sharing clients. They aren’t incentivized the way a salesperson is, so they’re more flexible about what they’re willing to bring to the table- it’s not about the bottom line for that person, which frees them up to explore other ways of seeking mutual benefit.

Preparing For a Partnership

One of the key mistakes that startups make when they approach partners, aside from the “gimme gimme” attitude described above, is by trying to “sell” them. A partner isn’t necessarily a customer, and you can’t approach them in the same way. You have to sell them on the mutual benefit of working together, and on your ability to do that; not on your ability to sell your product to their clients.

A good partner in indirect sales offers a few things. One is added value for shared clients, and another is defense against competitors. If you can make a partner’s offering to its clients stronger than its competitors, and if your partners (and competitors) know this, they will be willing to work hard to keep you as a partner, rather than see you support someone else’s sales pipeline.

So when you meet with partners, you need to ask questions. What do your customers need that you can’t provide? Why do customers choose competitors over you? What would make more of your clients stay with you? These can all open up opportunities for you to partner with that company, and those opportunities will be based on what that company needs, not only on what you need from them.

mentors engaged with founders

Dealing with Mentor WhipLash

Startups in any mentorship-based accelerator program should, obviously, meet a lot of mentors, investors, and advisors over the course of the program. Even outside of an accelerator program, early-stage startups tend to seek a lot of advice, and should try to meet with and listen to a broad range of people with different opinions.

Hard Questions

Something that we notice happening with our startups toward the end of StartupYard’s “mentor month,” is that founders start to get a bit tired of meeting with new people. This is, overall, a good sign. Frustration with mentorship means that they are starting to notice a consistent theme in the feedback they are getting, and they are probably ready to start executing on the feedback they’ve received so far.

This is why we do virtually all of our mentoring in such a compressed period of time. And It is time consuming. Every startup we’ve accelerated has given us the same feedback: “this is really taking a lot of time and energy!” It does, but if it’s used effectively, it will be worth it.

Common objections to a startup’s idea, to its plans, to its approach and view of the market, tend to become quite obvious when a founder hears them many times in quick succession. A period of organized mentoring can allow a founder to develop strategies for answering the most common objections, and it can reveal objections to which their answers aren’t good enough yet.

If you aren’t tired of mentoring, you haven’t done it enough.

The best startup mentors are not necessarily those who just give startups clear instructions on what to do next. The best mentors ask the hardest questions. “How do you know that?” “What proof do you have for this assumption?” Good, searching questions can reveal to founders how weak the foundations of their thinking can at times be. When startup founders tend to rest their hopes on these assumptions, good mentors seek to poke holes in the theory of a startup, in order to make it stronger.

As mentoring goes on, there are fewer “ahah” moments for founders, and it becomes easier for them to answer tough questions that insightful mentors bring up. They start to be better at handling common objections, and identifying objections that do really demand more work on their part. They start, in short, to grow a pretty thick skin for new feedback, and they become less questioning of themselves, and more questioning of the mentors.

I can spot founders who have had good mentors by the way they deal with my questions: they’ve heard them all before, and they have answers that make sense, and that don’t ignore the question, or attempt to change the subject. They don’t dismiss the objections: they answer them convincingly and easily.

That growing confidence is double edged of course– too much mentoring can make founders immune to hearing new ideas over time– but just as importantly, it can make them more immune to what prominent VC Fred Wilson calls “mentor whiplash.”

Mentor Whiplash

Every startup has at least a handful of these experiences in our program, and in every accelerator program in the world. Mentors often leap to radically different conclusions, and offer radically different advice to startups.

When one expert tells you that you absolutely have to do X, and another equally experienced mentor tells you that Y is absolutely, without a doubt, the way to go, and X and Y are mutually exclusive, what do you do? You may not know who to believe at this point.

The fault isn’t with the mentors. Mentoring can be difficult for both sides of the equation. I sometimes feel like my advice roles off startups like water off a duck’s back. It takes a long time, and a lot of effort, to make certain ideas stick. So I become quite forceful with my opinion. That’s a natural tendency for a mentor to have. Suggestions become commandments to be followed.

What startup founders learn over time, is that clearly two mentors with opposing views can’t both be right, but that both mentors may not necessarily be wrong. In the aggregate, over many sessions with many different people, a path will emerge. The founder’s job is to synthesize all that input into a plan that makes sense.

There will always be smart people who don’t buy your ideas, or who think you’re doing everything wrong. But if there were someone who knew exactly what you should do in all circumstances, then that person would surely be the richest person who ever lived.

Sounds Smart Vs. Is Smart

Really engaged mentors and advisors get to be fans of their chosen startups. We root for them, and we start thinking we know what’s best for them all the time.

Like being a fan of a sports team: it’s all the feeling of accomplishment, without having balls kicked at them at high speed.

It’s easy to spend 30 minutes with a startup, and give them the impression that you know your stuff. It’s much, much harder to do the work that startups do, which involves making something out of nothing. Mentors are domain experts, but not always startup founders themselves. They know their domains and they know their own jobs, but they won’t really appreciate the responsibilities of the person sitting across from them. How could they?

Sounding smart takes only experience. You can make an idea sound appealing if you know how to sell it. But being smart involves trial and error. An idea isn’t smart until it actually works, and this is largely in the execution, which can change over time. The work always ends up being worth more than the inspiration.

Keep Your Compass On You

We work hard to make sure our investor mentors aren’t seagulls (the kind who shit on an idea to make themselves feel more important, and then fly off). And we also work to make sure our mentors are focused on the needs of startups, rather than the needs of ego.

But one inherent danger, especially in a formalized mentorship setting, is that mentors never have the same motivations as startups. They can try to put themselves in the place of the founders, and sympathize with their experiences. The best mentors do this well, and continue to do it long after the first meeting.

However, mentors have things that they also believe in, and a way of seeing the world that they don’t necessarily share with a startup founder. Mentors can push a startup to think about things from their own perspective, which is fine, but they can also forget that their perspective is unique to them.

If a mentor is a VC, they may complain to a startup that they aren’t thinking big enough. If the mentor is a marketer, they may push the startup to think in terms of their own experiences.

This is all necessary input for startups, if they keep in mind that mentors speak for themselves, and about themselves, as much as they do about the startups they are counseling. A mentor has to dig into their own history, to offer startups the benefit of their experience. It is still the founder’s job to make sense of that experience for themselves.

A mentor’s experience and their opinion are separate things, which is important to remember. A mentor may have failed at what a founder is trying to do, or may have seen others fail. The founder can learn from that experience without heeding all the mentor’s advice; advice like: “don’t do it, it won’t work!”

Make A Mentorship Map

Effective mentors accelerate the growth of your ideas, but also, just as importantly, the growth of your personal network. They can give you contacts and directions to explore, and it becomes a complex undertaking to follow up on and use all the input and contacts you get.

One of the single biggest failings that early stage startups have, is that they don’t adequately follow up on the contacts offered to them by mentors. Every startup is guilty of that to a degree, which is unavoidable. Still, our most successful startups have been those who have pursued contacts relentlessly, both during and after our program.

Fred Wilson recommends that startups keep a feedback spreadsheet for input and contacts from mentors. That’s sound advice, and it’s something we require our startups to do. But I would also suggest a slightly more creative approach, that might work better for startups who are getting a lot of mentor whiplash: a mind map for feedback.

Your mindmap might look very different from this one, but here’s a possible example using MindMeister.com:

Mindmap General

You could go into much more depth, and create a mindmap for each general category, employing each one for each different type of mentor, with a mindmap for Marketing, another for Investment, one for partnerships, etc. Or you could create a mindmap for each mentor individually.

It takes a bit of time to get used to mindmapping, but it’s a good skill to have when you need to have a reliable way of processing a lot of input from many different sources. Over time, you can customize your map to show your own priorities and the frequency of certain types of feedback as well.

8 Reasons Not to Join an Accelerator

Yes, yes. We’re always trying to convince people that accelerators are generally a good idea. And they are, for a lot of you out there. But not for all of you.

Here are 8 reasons not to join an accelerator. If any of these speak to you, consider very carefully whether going to one won’t be a frustrating waste of your time and energy.

1. You Need the Money

Time and again, we meet with startups who only have questions about the money and terms we offer to startups. If you’re joining an accelerator for the money it provides, think twice.

First of all, it isn’t a lot of money, really. 30,000 Euros might seem like a lot  -older accelerators like Y-C give up to $120,000- and more in follow on financing. But if your idea is really workable as a business, you can find that money somewhere else. And when you do, it’s likely you wouldn’t have to give up a sizable stake in your company for it.

The money-for-equity equation doesn’t make sense by itself, but the accelerator model makes sense when you look at the results. StartupYard companies are at least 3 times more likely to survive their first year than companies who don’t join an accelerator, and our vested interest is in every one of our companies becoming a success, and fetching a high priced exit. The funding we provide couldn’t accomplish this. It would be a poor investment. But the connections, guidance, and support we provide can make the difference between a company falling off the map in a year or two, or getting seriously funded, and having a shot at real success.

2. An Accelerator Means Instant Growth and Recognition

Sorry, it won’t work that way. DropBox, Twitch, Stripe, AirBnB, Softlayer, and SendGrid (all companies that went through accelerators), did not become successes just because they were in accelerators. Quite the opposite: these companies made Y-Combinator and TechStars famous.

No, they became successes because they had dedicated founders who made the right decisions and just as importantly, worked hard. We can’t make you work hard, but we can help you make the right decisions, and forge important connections. That’s it. It’s hardly rocket science (though some of our alums are rocket scientists).

Every startup, to some degree, has to be in the right place at the right time. An accelerator can help you be in that right place, and help you determine whether it is the right time. We can be a firewall against your worst impulses, but we cannot do any of it for you. If you expect that an accelerator will make you famous and win you funding, don’t be so sure. You’ll be the one doing the work.

3. You’re a Solo Act

You’re a lone wolf, who plays by her own rules. You don’t need a co-founder, because that person would just get in your way. The glory will be yours alone.

That’s all fine, except we’re not interested. A single founder can become a bottleneck for new ideas and input. He or she can also become a blocker for needed action. A single person with too much control over a startup will find it easier and more tempting to resist doubts, and to avoid stopping to reconsider strategy. Beyond that, a single founder usually just can’t handle all the demands of attending an accelerator and running a company at the same time.

Anybody who has ever watched a police drama knows the dynamic. A partner is somebody who can play good cop to your bad cop, and can back you up when you’re in trouble. They’re someone who can tell you you’re crazy, or can confirm that you’re really onto something. Nobody wants to approach a lone wolf, so get a partner you can trust.

4. Your Ideas Are Perfect

You don’t tolerate criticism. Why should you? You’ve been successful all your life, and this situation is no different. You will just make your company work, no matter what, doing what you had it in mind to do.

My advice is, go for it. If it’s a perfect idea, then it really will all work out without you having to question it. But if you’re coming to an accelerator thinking that even the basic idea behind your company can’t change, then don’t come. Stay home.

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Accelerators are for failure as much as they are for success. Better to fail early on, and in a controlled way, than to build an empire on sand. We will push you to falsify all your notions of what will work, and what won’t. Most startups discover basic, critical flaws in their concepts while attending our program, which is exactly when they should discover them.

5. You’re a Tourist

Like a weekend wine-taster in Napa (or maybe Moravia), you’re just dipping your toes in the water to see what this whole startup thing is about. You’re not about to buy a winery and start mashing your own grapes, unless somebody can convince you it’s a good idea.

We don’t have the energy or the heart to sell your own startup to you. If you’re not sure it’s something you want to dedicate your life to working on for at least several years, then don’t join an accelerator. You’ll save everyone, yourself included, a lot of grief.

On the same token, don’t join an accelerator expecting to pick and choose what you’ll get out of it. “I just need the mentors, I don’t need the workshops.” I can’t say how many times I’ve heard words to this effect. And yet, these are usually the founders who need our input the most. But if a founder isn’t open minded and open hearted, there isn’t much we can do to change that.

6. You’re Not a Startup

That sounds a bit silly, but it’s a real thing. Part of the problem is something we’ve discussed a lot, which is that tech companies today seem to think they have to be “startups.”

Startups are companies that need to scale quickly in order to survive. They are companies that are innovating a new technology or business idea or process that hasn’t been tried before in just that way.

But every year, we get applications from game companies, digital agencies, and e-commerce providers who want to tap into the “startup mojo,” and experience hyper growth without having a hyper-growth product.

The line between a traditional business and a startup can be unclear at times- sometimes their products do essentially the same things, but in radically different ways. Make sure your path forward involves rapid growth, and global reach, and that it isn’t, in the parlance of Y-Combinator, a “lifestyle business,” set up to make a small profit over many years of steady business.

7. You’re Looking to Cash Out

Your results may differ.

I wouldn’t compare running a startup to gambling, but there is one parallel that is inescapable. When you go to a casino, the best practice is to give yourself a limit, and expect to lose all the money you’ve committed to gambling. If that’s an amount of money you’d be comfortable simply setting on fire and walking away, then it’s ok to play a little blackjack. Otherwise, don’t play.

So it has to be with running a startup. If you’re not comfortable with existential risks to your business, then you should probably be in a different field. And if you’re drawn to running a startup because you know that some startups get large payouts in the form of acquisitions, then it’s unlikely that you also have enough affinity for the idea behind your startup, to stick with it even when things look bad. And they will, at some point, look bad.

8. You Want to Be Famous

Let us not dwell on this. Just, no.

Central Europe Accelerator

One Month Left To Apply to StartupYard

The cutoff for applications to StartupYard 2016 is now less than a month away, on November 11th.

Over the past few months, StartupYard director Cedric Maloux and I have travelled all around Central Europe, meeting startups and entrepreneurs eager to take the next step, and accelerate their businesses. It’s been quite a ride so far, that’s taken us to 6 cities, where we’ve met scores of people with talent, energy, and great ideas.

What Are We Looking For?

Why do we do all this work to reach out to startups? Finding a gem among hundreds of new and untested ideas is a tricky business. We never know what the next big idea is going to be. If we did, we wouldn’t be running an accelerator!

We are looking for startups who can convince us that their idea may just be the next big idea in the areas of Mobile, Data, Anaytics, and IOT.

We are looking for talented engineers, but also dedicated and tireless advocates for a new way of doing business, a new way of thinking about an old problem, or even something entirely new and untested.

Above all, we are looking for teams that we can believe in, and who are ready to use our knowledge, connections, and experience to grow on a global scale.

Demo Day

Why You Should Apply to StartupYard

You shouldn’t think of StartupYard as a menu of things you’ll get when you join.

Of course, we provide 30,000 Euros in funding, and up to 250,000 Euros in follow on financing. We also provide over 500,000 Euros in perks exclusive to members of GAN, the global accelerator network. We also provide workspace, resources, training, and our extensive business network. And who could forget the pizza? We hope you like pizza.

But we are not looking for startups that view us as a source of funding, or a stepping stone they are obligated to use. An accelerator is not a box you need to check off your startup to-do list. At least StartupYard isn’t.

We cannot do anything for a startup that it is not willing to do for itself. But what we can do, is put a startup in the best possible position to succeed. We can’t create relationships for you, but we can provide connections to an unbeatable network of mentors and investors, and the context for building relationships and building trust.

We can facilitate, encourage, and act as a safety net and a sounding board for startups that are willing to take leaps of faith and of imagination. We can push startups -and provide them with the right tools- to improve their communication abilities, refine their business models, sharpen their customer focus, and hone their pitching skills until they can speak convincingly about their ideas in their sleep.

In short, we can be there every day with startups, making sure they have no excuses for failure.

We are often asked what our relationship to our startups is. Are we investors? Are we teachers? Are we consultants? None of these descriptions is right.

We are partners in the plainest sense. We neither lead nor follow, and we don’t profit from our startups until they are successful in the real world. Our interest lies entirely in helping you to succeed, and we accompany our startups on every step toward becoming a real, thriving business.

In short, we live and die with you.