Life at an Accelerator Archives - Page 9 of 13

Dealing with Mentor WhipLash

October 30, 2015/in Life at an Accelerator, Startup Tools/by StartupYard

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:

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

October 21, 2015/in Life at an Accelerator, Starting a Business/by StartupYard

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.

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

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.

One Month Left To Apply to StartupYard

October 16, 2015/in Life at an Accelerator, StartupYard News/by 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.

Apply To StartupYard Now

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.

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.

Apply To StartupYard Now

StartupYard’s Viktor Fischer on Quitting Your Job, and Overcoming Fear

October 8, 2015/in Interviews, Life at an Accelerator, Starting a Business, Startups, StartupYard News/by StartupYard

Hi Viktor. You’ve had a really interesting career, co-founding Innovatrics a decade ago, and most recently becoming a junior partner with McKinsey and Company. Can you tell us your personal story as an entrepreneur?

Hi Lloyd – sure, thanks for having me.

When we founded Innovatrics in 2004, I had no clue how to build a business. We created a software development kit around a fingerprint algorithm, put it online and waited to see who would buy it. When after 2 weeks no-one replied, we started to think about who might be the customer, what were their needs, what was the right product, what was the right pricing, and how we would sell it.

Early on we copied competition (copying is good), and negotiated licensing deals with major biometrics players such as Bioscrypt and CrossMatch – to survive. Over the next several years we found our niche: high-speed AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems), defined the target customer segment. We fine-tuned the pricing and focused on the most efficient marketing & sales channels. Last year Innovatrics won Deloitte Top 50 in 2014 for its 344% revenue growth and last week was designated IT firm of the year in Slovakia. I am congratulating the team for those fantastic achievements.

After 5 years at Innovatrics, I decided to pursue an international MBA to grow my network and then entered McKinsey. Surprisingly, although McKinsey works for corporates, it follows a very entrepreneurial way of working. Projects (called “engagements”) are delivered by small teams (2 to 3 people full-time supported by experts and senior leaders), who work by quick iterations with the end product in mind (similar to “scrum methodology”). There is flat hierarchy and even junior members are encouraged to disagree with the most senior partners.

Aside from consulting, you are also an active angel investor. How do you pick your investments?

I only have 3 criteria: First, would I be a user of that product, and would I be excited to use it? This is my way of validating the value proposition.

Second, I need to know the management team, and have them be introduced by a person I trust.

Third, I need to have the knowledge I can use to help the startup. In broader terms, anything commercial, and in narrower terms, anything related to defining value proposition, validating product/market fit, modeling financial plan, raising funds, orchestrating B2B sales, or expanding internationally.

Fischer chats with fellow StartupYard mentor Ondrej Bartos at a StartupYard event

Have you ever broken one of those rules? If so, what was the result?

Yes, sometimes an edge in 1 or 2 criteria can balance-out the 3rd criteria. For example, recently I invested in MPower Financing via Angel.co. MPower provides loans to US university students coming from ethnic minorities.

Although I would not be a user of such a product, I like the mission of the company: I believe funding should not be a barrier to education. And I know the founders really really well (both CEO and CTO are my MBA classmates).

You recently left McKinsey to open your own club/bar, and focus on startups. What motivated the move? What will your club be like?

:Laughs: how much time do you have? I can talk for hours about this.

I think we do our best job when we do something we love (call it passion). There is one way that really worked for me to find that out: Think that tomorrow is the last day of your life. Really. Then imagine: If that was the case, what would you truly like to do today?

My answers were: A) go for a drink to a nice place with friends, and B) help startups grow. So I left the corporate job and bought an old but legendary nightclub called Meloun. The idea is to create an ultra-lounge like we all miss here in Prague. An exclusive place with great drinks and great music for a fantastic night out. It will be kind of a secret place so I cannot say more about it at this stage – sorry!

To help the startups, I am becoming more engaged with the teams, helping where necessary depending on the stage of the company, and more engaged with the local entrepreneurship community (including Startupyard).

Can you tell us the story of your favorite investment, and, if you have one, your biggest investment mistake or failure?

I don’t have a favorite investment – all my startups, those I invest in or simply advise are like children – no one is preferred.

Failure? Probably those I decided to pass on (yes, I’m thinking Gjirafa), or those where I miss the team’s engagement. There is nothing more demotivating than a non-motivated team. There are two mindsets with which a company is created: either to be a lifestyle business, or to build a company changing the world. There is nothing wrong with either of those. But it needs to be clear from the beginning to the team, the investors and the advisors.

You are an active StartupYard mentor, and you hosted a workshop with us this year. What motivates you to work with startups in your free time?

My sole motivator is to help startups avoiding mistakes I made. Whether it is in their value proposition, defining a target customer, pricing structure, international expansion, or even personal work-life-balance and facilitating discussions between shareholders. I have scars on my back in all these areas. I want to help people avoid getting a divorce, arguing with business partners or putting thousands of work hours into a feature that is not needed.

Do you believe that successful Czech entrepreneurs like yourself are giving enough back to the startup ecosystem in terms of attention, mentoring, and investment?

First of all, I am Slovak. Just kidding, I miss Czechoslovakia and I believe the countries together could again reach the 10th place in industrial production they had in 1938 – although in different industries :laughs:.

It will not happen however without the government’s support. When founding Innovatrics, we received around 150 thousand Euro from the French government to get us up and running. Although there is a risk to receiving government funds (often startups use that funding to delay product introduction to the market), there is an improvement in Government funding: the Czech government spends ~2% on GPD on R&D and Slovak government spends ~1% on R&D versus the US ~3%.

I know I am not answering your question, but I don’t know yet whether local entrepreneurs are helping enough. I know some of them invest through [prominent venture firms] Credo and Rockaway, or directly, and they mentor via Startupyard. But I don’t have a benchmark. It would be great to compare for example the amount of Czech angel and VC funding to overall angel and VC investments in the UK, and US, but I don’t think there’s a clear benchmark.

What is a piece of advice you find yourself giving over and over again to startups? What is the hardest piece of advice for startups to really listen to?

Overcome fear. Often I see startup entrepreneurs doing what is easy: sitting behind a computer developing the next feature set.

Call a prospective buyer or an expert to get early feedback. Find an expert via LinkedIn. Send the deck or a link to the demo and set-up a call. There are plenty of people out there who would help you. Doing it you have nothing to lose. Not doing it, you lose the opportunity to score your first customer or a future team member.

Sometimes it feels the hardest part for startups is to listen. Whether the founders are really able to listen, hear, reflect and incorporate the advice is what I am looking for during interviews.

Your career has been split between The Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, and recently Switzerland. How do you view the development of startup culture and investments in these different regions in recent years?

I cannot compare yet. But what I really like about the investment culture in other countries is the humility with which the investors and advisors help the entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is the shit, and our only mission is to help her succeed while increasing her self-confidence. Not the other way around (ie beat her idea and her self-confidence to death).

Are there things that bigger economies like France could learn from the startup and investing cultures in Slovakia or the Czech Republic?

I like how some of the local VCs really help the entrepreneurs think about the business during the investment process. They help to define and validate the value proposition, set up pricing, create financial model, key KPIs and develop a first 100-day plan. This process is beneficial to both parties and if I were the entrepreneur, I would embrace it fully.

Andrej Kiska recently told me in an interview that Czech (or Central European) investors are not as conservative as their reputations suggest. Do you agree with him?

I agree that the mindset is changing. That’s good. From my experience however, even as recently as the Webexpo couple of weeks ago, I noticed some investors using traction as their investment criteria (quote “For us to invest, you need to have customers. At least one.”) I think people should be the first criteria of choice and overseas that is understood.

What about StartupYard makes you keep coming back? How do you hope to have an impact on us as and our program?

This comes to my 2nd passion: helping startups grow. StartupYard is the largest local accelerator. Still however, some people do not know it. David Semerad from STRV mentioned during his talk at Webexpo that “YCombinator is like StartupYard but million times bigger”. I would like to help StartupYard bridge that gap, by making connections to the international market stronger and by voraciously helping startups export. If we’re Czech only, we will not be successful and our startups will not be successful.

Are Startup Accelerators Useful?

October 1, 2015/in Life at an Accelerator, Starting a Business, Startups/by StartupYard

This is an abstract of the talk I gave during the last WebExpo Prague on how startup accelerators can be useful for entrepreneurs.

I have an idea!

This is how it always starts. You’re alone at the terrace of a cafe gazing into the void, thinking. You’re having a conversation with some friends or acquaintances. You’re reading an article about a current state of affairs and suddenly, out of nowhere, it hits you. Hard. You’ve just had the-best-idea-in-the-world. Ever.

This is going to make you rich and famous! How come nobody before you had thought about this? The more you think about it, the more excited you become and the more in awe you are of your own awesomeness. Congratulations. You’ve just joined the horde of entrepreneurs who have had that moment of grace… but what should you do first?

Forget about it.

You know the statistics: more than 80% of new companies fail in the first 12 months. Some might even argue that up to 95% of startups fail in the first 2 years. In other words, you have almost no chance of success.

Therefore, when that genius idea hits you, the first thing you need to do is to kill it. Convince yourself it is a bad idea. Yes this is hard. Obviously you’re a smart person, so it’s not like you expected to come up with a bad idea. Try harder.

If you really can’t convince yourself that your idea is a bad idea, then talk to your friends and beg them to convince you it is a bad idea. Don’t be defensive; on the contrary, listen to all their objections meticulously.

If you can’t convince yourself it’s a bad idea; if your friends can’t convince you it’s a bad idea; if your grandmother can’t convince you it’s a bad idea, then and only then, act on it. Obviously you don’t want to spend the next 5 to 10 years of your life pursuing a bad idea. That would be a total waste of your time and talent.

Positioning, Positioning, Positioning.

Now that the world is waiting to see your idea become reality, you are going to have to convince a few people (co-founders, first hires, investors), by explaining to them the why’s and who’s and how’s of your venture. You need to be able at any moment, under any circumstances, sober or drunk, to position your raison d’etre. The best way to do that is to spend some time working and polishing your product positioning statement. Make sure it flows and can only generate Wow’s in your audience’s mouth.

Should I apply for a startup accelerator?

At some stage, you’re going to have to ask yourself this question. Accelerators have now been around for 10 years and it’s very likely you will find one in a large metro area not far from where you are. Is it worth it? Should you apply to one of them, a few of them, all of them? I get asked this question often, and so far my answer has always been the same:

Should I maximise my chances of success?

Remember the statistics: you are more likely going to fail than succeed. Therefore instead of wondering if you should apply for an accelerator, try to figure out a strategy on how to beat the odds of going under. One of the ways is indeed to go through an acceleration program like the one we run here at StartupYard. So far 60% of the companies we have accelerated in 5 years are still running. Compare this with the previous statistic on failure.

So put that arrogant, know-it-all attitude away for a moment and think about what you would need to make your startup a success. As it turns out, your chances of success are much higher is you are accepted to an accelerator.

Nothing replaces experience.

Participating in an accelerator is not like attending a school. You won’t be treated like a kid- quite the opposite. By joining a mentor-driven accelerator like StartupYard, you will, in a very short time, meet with an impressive number of other entrepreneurs, corporate people, and professionals who not only are going to be excited about what you are doing (this is why they are mentoring you), but will also help you a lot by digging into their own experience. You can learn a lot by yourself, but you can apply more focused knowledge by relying on the experience other people have. For that an accelerator is extremely useful.

Nothing replaces personal contacts

Whether you will be looking for clients, partners, or investors, you are more likely going to succeed in meeting them if you are referred by someone else. Here again, an accelerator, armed with its network of partners and mentors, will help you meet the right person in the right organisation in less time than it takes to send a cold email. For that an accelerator is unbeatable.

We’re not called an accelerator for no reason

Ask any alumnus of a world-class accelerator, and they will tell you how invaluable the new contacts and knowledge they have gained in such a limited time are. 3 months is very short, but during these 3 months, you will be more exposed to the market than you could be when going it alone. This will help you to either fail faster, because if you are going to fail you better fail fast, or reach new KPIs faster. For that, an accelerator is where you should be.

Money is irrelevant.

Some startups I meet with are in the market for accelerators, comparing them based on the amount of funding they offer. This is probably the biggest mistake a startup can make when deciding on an accelerator, because the value of such a program is not in the amount of money they will give you. In fact, some of the best accelerators offer less cash than the less famous ones.

The value is in the network, the management team, and the calibre of the mentors, but certainly not in the tens of thousands of euros you will receive. Anyway, if your project and team are right, and the accelerator is doing its job, you’ll get the funding you need after the program. If you are only looking for cash for a few months, then an accelerator is not useful.

Married until the end.

In exchange for your participation in the program, you will most probably be asked to give up a small percentage (usually up to 10%) of your company. This is actually a good thing! Don’t view this as a loss. Making the accelerator a minority shareholder means that they now have a vested interest in your success. That’s not negligible.

In turn, this vested interest means they will probably do whatever is in their power to help you after the program is over. Down the line, they might be able to unblock a situation when you are stuck on a business deal, for example, and it’s in their best interest to do so. The success of early stage startups can depend on the influence of its investors. For that an accelerator is extremely useful even after the end of the program.

Don’t live in regrets.

“We would not be where we are now if it was not for StartupYard”. This is the typical feedback we hear from our most successful startups, and this could also be you. But don’t fool yourself. It is actually pretty hard to be accepted in an accelerator. Less than 3% of companies who apply are selected and, at a time when everybody wants to hear about your traction, being accepted to an accelerator is a clear sign of traction.

I meet tons of smart, seemingly ambitious entrepreneurs, with great ideas. Sometimes I invite them to apply to StartupYard. I even encourage them to join any accelerator, because I know what it can do for them and their young company. But when I hear “well, I’m just not sure right now,” I back off. I can’t sell a startup on its own chances of success. The drive to succeed, and the willingness to take a risk is a necessary part of your success as a startup. We can’t give you that, and we won’t try.

But I can tell you this: I’ve run successful (and unsuccessful), startups for 20 years, and I did it in a time when accelerators weren’t a thing. I would have killed for a chance to join one back then, so my advice to all those young Cedrics out there is this: go for it. As a founder, you will have a lot to lose (sleep, reputation, money, hair) but your startup has everything to gain.

Update! StartupYard FastLane: Pitch Us in one of 6 Cities in September

September 2, 2015/in Life at an Accelerator, Startups, StartupYard News/by StartupYard

The time has come! Today, we kick off our 6 city tour of Central European capitals, visiting incubators and workspaces in the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, and Poland.

Startups in these countries will have the unique opportunity to pitch StartupYard’s team in person, and jump ahead to the final rounds of selection for StartupYard 2016, kicking off in January.

After applications close November 1st, StartupYard will select up to 10 teams to join us at StartupYard 2016, where they will receive 30,000+ Euros in investment, and over 500,000 Euros in perks, as part of an intensive, 3 month mentorship based program with dozens of workshops, and meetings with scores of mentors. Our program has accelerated 35 startups since 2011.

StartupYard, Fastlane 2016

StartupYard is expecting hundreds of individual startup applications from about a dozen countries for our 2016 cohort. We work hard to make the application process as fair as possible, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a perfect process.

Through a written application, much less one of hundreds like it, it’s very difficult to judge the passion, excitement, intelligence, and flexibility of an unknown startuper.

StartupYard is forced every year to relegate the vast majority of applications we receive to the dustbin, usually without ever meeting or really getting to know the applicants. We have to make very difficult decisions about hundreds of startups, based on very little information.

We probably miss out on amazing startups every year, because we don’t have time to get to know them all.

And that’s a shame. We don’t believe that a startup’s success in our program and in growing globally is necessarily connected with their ability to make themselves sound good on paper.

The decision to accept a startup into our program can have a massive impact on their future, but paper applications can’t communicate passion, people skills, poise, and responsiveness to feedback. These are things we only learn about the relatively tiny number of startups we interview in our final selection rounds.

We owe the startup communities in the countries where we recruit a fair shot at getting our attention. So we’re coming to you.

Pitch StartupYard in Person: In any of 6 Cities

There will be 7 events, all in the month of September.

Prague, Czech Republic, September 2nd at Node5
Pristina, Kosovo, September 17th, at Innovation Center Kosovo
Sofia, Bulgaria, September 22nd at VivaCom
Bucharest, Romania, September 24th with HowToWeb
Krakow, Poland September 29th at HubRaum
Warsaw, Poland, October 14th at Reaktor

How to Sign Up

Startups interested in pitching us at any of these events should sign up using the form below. Once we have verified that you meet the basic requirements to pitch us (that you are in our field, and other details), we will share your info with our local partners, and choose which teams to invite to pitch.

Even if you are not invited to pitch on-stage, this does not mean that you can’t meet us and pitch us in person. Some startups just don’t sound good on paper. That’s ok! We want to meet you, and we still want you to pitch us.

We’ll be in each city for at least a full day, providing time for you to do just that. The StartupYard team will host open hours in each of the venues we visit to give startups a chance to meet with us in person.

How it Works

StartupYard will visit 6 cities and 6 tech hubs such as incubators and workspaces (plus hold one event in our own city of Prague), where we will make ourselves available for a full day of mentoring, pitch training, and finally listening to the pitches of any local startups who are interested in joining our program and getting funded in 2016.

Local startups can choose to meet with us for mentoring and introductions, or come to pitch their startups in person, and talk to us afterwards. We will be providing constructive, experienced based feedback, in cooperation with our local partners in each city. These are not competitions, and there is no grand prize. However, they serve as an opportunity to grab our attention, as well as the attention of local influencers and investors who will also attend these events,

Those teams that impress us during this series of events will be invited to move directly from an initial application to StartupYard, directly to our final selection rounds, bypassing hundreds of other applicants in the process.

This is your chance to show us who you are.

What We Look For When Screening Applications

September 1, 2015/in Life at an Accelerator, Startups/by StartupYard

Though we receive a lot of applications at StartupYard (240 in our most recent round), that doesn’t mean that every application we receive is worth much of our time. In fact, more than half of all applications don’t make it past the first screening.

Here, we’re going to talk about what makes applications to StartupYard successful, and what you can do to give yourself a better chance of reaching the final rounds of selection.

Completed Applications

This seems easy enough, but it’s too much to ask of some applicants. Our first screening disqualifies any applications that are disorganized, incoherent, or incomplete. Do we ask for a team video? Did you provide one? No? Well, better luck elsewhere. The process is not that cumbersome. A disciplined person can get through our application in a short afternoon. There are no trick questions.

Global Solutions

Aside from the completeness of an application, our first screening also disqualifies projects that ignore our open call guidelines in other ways. Most often, these projects are local in nature, or they are not really “startups.”
Sometimes, we get applications from digital agencies, or people looking to found a small business, like a shop or a local service. Those may be profitable ideas run by smart people, but that’s not what StartupYard is looking for.

It’s not that we don’t believe in small and traditional businesses. But StartupYard, our roster of mentors, and our program is designed to benefit startups that have a global potential, and are scalable on the world market. What advice and support can we give to someone who wants to open a shared workspace, or a local flower delivery company? Can our mentors help you get the best local delivery partners in a small town in Slovakia? Probably not.

And besides being accelerated at StartupYard would be a bad deal for a small business. If you want to open a shop, make up a business plan and get a bank loan like everyone else. You don’t have to run it like a startup.

Platforms Enabling New Businesses

The type of businesses we are looking for, our “bread and butter,” as we’ve put it in our open call announcement, are platforms that enable new businesses to thrive.

What does that mean, really?

Platforms like Gjirafa, BrandEmbassy, Shoptsie, TeskaLabs, and TrendLucid, among many others, are platforms that allow individuals and businesses to accomplish things they would never be able to do otherwise. They provide more than just a service. They enable entirely new ways of doing business.

Platforms have the potential to grow into new, as yet undeveloped markets- providing technologies that people don’t know they need yet. And platforms also have more potential to adapt and grow in parallel with new markets. A game or a cool tech toy are nice, but they get old, and they are hard to revitalize once the novelty is gone.

One-off tech products are more likely to be victims of change, rather than its agents, but platforms can adapt to an evolving world.

Deep Tech, Visionaries

Maybe 15 years ago, startups were about being first. That’s not really true today. Most of the pitches we hear now are for ideas that have either been tried before, or have already become big industries.

A lot of entrepreneurs think that success is “discovering” something no-one has ever thought of before. But that’s just not reflected in the history of technology. Great entrepreneurs don’t discover entirely new things. They build things no-one has ever tried to build.

On the other hand, a surprisingly small number of inventors ever capitalize on their discoveries directly. Guttenberg, Goodyear, Turing, Whitney, Tesla, and Meucci are names most of us know. But they all died poor, seeing their inventions benefit others.

We aren’t looking for inventors. We are looking for visionaries. Visionaries see the potential in new ideas, and instinctively see how to take advantage of them.

Ford didn’t invent the automobile, he invented a new process for making them. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the phone, it invented a new way of using them. Gates didn’t invent software- he invented the market for software. Facebook didn’t invent social networks, and Google didn’t invent search.

The ideas behind those companies and their successes can’t be written down in two sentences. They are ideas about doing things differently, and doing them better. This is about ambition as much as inventiveness. This is what “disruption,” is really all about, and it’s the ethos that will make a good idea into a great startup.

When we say we focus on “deep tech,” we mean that we look not just for a catchy idea, or something that sells, but for the drive and discipline and depth required to execute it in a way not tried before. We look for companies that are interested not just in being in a hot market, but in doing more with their technology than anyone has done before.

This is the reason that we bet on Gjirafa, a search engine for the Albanian web, in a world where Google dominates almost every market on the planet. And why we picked TeskaLabs, even though the Czech Republic alone has two giant security companies who are working on similar technology.

Big companies can’t move fast enough to out-think and out-innovate scrappy startups, and so great technological advances can come from unexpected and unlikely places. Those insights are the ones we are looking for.

We are interested in businesses that use technology as their unfair advantage, and can outwit bigger competitors with their mobility and flexibility, and their willingness to risk it all with a new approach.

B2C, or B2B

Much of the experience of the StartupYard team is in B2C SaaS products, but about half of the startups in our last cohort were in fact B2B businesses.

What startups will find in our program, is a focus on positioning and growing a company that is customer focused, and has a strong focus on design, user experience, and marketing, as well as agile development and plans for global growth.

While it’s easier in some ways to grow a B2C startup on the global market, where the needs of customers are broader, more flexible, and less specific than in the corporate world, that doesn’t mean a great B2B idea doesn’t have a chance at explosive growth. While the skills necessary to run a B2C company are different in detail from B2B, the general principles are the same, and many if not most of the skills overlap.

Our roster of mentors includes many veterans of B2B startups, and corporate environments, and our B2B startups have benefited just as much from our focus on communication and marketing as have our B2C companies.

Transactional and Subscription Models

We don’t often say what we aren’t interested in. But one thing we can do without is advertising based businesses.

Can they work? Yes. Many successful startups get a leg up from advertising, or survive on it. But advertising is a fickle beast, and unless you are able to generate millions of pages impressions per day, you’re unlikely to be interest us.

We are looking for businesses that are making something people are willing to pay for directly, through subscription or transactional fees. If your idea isn’t worth 9 Euros a month (or even .99 cents), to someone out there, then it may not be worth our time.

On the other hand, if you are building a platform that can leverage a network of advertisers, then we’re in business.

9 Ways to Make Pitching Easier On Yourself

August 27, 2015/in Life at an Accelerator, Marketing, Startup Tools, Startups/by StartupYard

For some who join us at StartupYard, pitching before an audience of 300 is as natural as brushing their teeth. Some people do have a knack for public speaking that can’t exactly be explained. Others have to work at it. This post is for those people- the majority of us, to whom pitching and selling our ideas in front of a bunch of people feels about as unnatural as reciting Shakespeare.

Don’t Overestimate the Role of Talent

Certain people are naturally good speakers. But most great speakers have to work at it. The chances are that if you hear someone who’s great at public speaking, that ability is the result of many years of practice.

On the flip side, many people with genuine talent are unwilling to put the work in, and really use their talents to full effect. I don’t worry about the worst speakers we have at StartupYard- I worry about the talented ones. Those are the ones most likely to slack when it comes to preparing their pitches and really putting in the work. They are used to coasting on their natural abilities, and they often under-prepare for the overwhelming experience of pitching to a big audience.

When the real talents put in the work, we have magical moments. But more often, the best pitches come from the entrepreneurs who thought they couldn’t even do the pitch.

Be the Biggest, Loudest Person in the Room

This also has to do with natural inclination, but also experience. As a result of meeting so many people in the technology field, I’ve come to be able to spot certain things about people that I couldn’t before. For example, Jan Mayer, Founder and CEO of 2015’s TrendLucid, is a lecturer at Masaryk University. When we first met, and when he pitched StartupYard at our final selection rounds last year, I asked him if he was a teacher.

“How did you know that?” he asked, surprised. It was his ability to project his voice, as I like to say, to about 130% of the available space, and to appear larger than the space he occupied. If you watch teachers teaching, they command attention by speaking in a voice which is slightly louder than it needs to be, and addressed to what seems to be a group which is slightly larger than the actual group they are speaking to.

This “4/3s” voice allows the teacher to command the attention of the audience (often unruly teenagers), in a way that a normal speaking voice could not. By giving the appearance of size and energy that is slightly larger than the room, the teacher makes the audience feel as if they are smaller than they truly are.

So be big. Be bigger than the room.

Don’t Pitch or Present. Explain and Share

There is a positive example that you can take from Steve Jobs, and more recently Jony Ive or Tim Cook. The best “pitches,” are really not a sales pitch, but a narrative of events, trends, and technologies that explains why a product is the way it is, and why that makes sense.

In best pitches I hear, the emphasis is not on the fact that something can be done cheaper, or that money can be saved or earned- nor do they lay heavy emphasis on the size of the market (a classic rookie mistake is claiming you’re in a “Gazillion Dollar Industry,” as if that means something).

Pitches that tell me a company will be hugely profitable are at best eye-rollers. If you’re a startup, then that’s not a claim anybody should put much faith in. And anyway, the most important thing is the reason your new idea or business model is revolutionary, not exactly how much money it’s going to make. Those predictions will be useless in 6 months. So focus on what you can control, which is the execution of your vision.

Instead, the best pitches tell a story, which is something we work on at StartupYard quite intensively. The story is shared, and the processes involved are explained. If you approach your pitch with this perspective in mind, then you can relieve yourself of much of the burden that many entrepreneurs place on themselves of “selling,” with something much more organic- something that they do every day with employees, friends and family.

Investors and partners want to see that you can clearly explain and share your vision, so make your pitch about that- not about your ability to sell. This is in many ways easier, because it demands that you stick to your strengths, rather than

Remember, then Talk. Not the Other Way Around

When we’re engaged in normal conversation, sometimes we start a sentence without really being sure where it’s going to end.

Here’s a fascinating exercise- record yourself talking about something casually, and then write it down exactly as you spoke it aloud. What you’ll find, typically, is that it makes almost no sense at all. It will be full of runon sentences that lead nowhere, and ad-hoc phrases that only make grammatical sense if you cross your eyes.

Nobody talks the way they write. But often, founders doing their first pitch will write it, expecting themselves to be able to say it out loud. Well, your mouth and your brain are not accustomed to actually speaking the language that we recognize in writing. That’s just not the way people talk.

Find Your “Beats”

When working with our startups, I constantly harp on the idea of “beats,” in their pitches. A beat is a moment of particular emphasis. It is a phrase or a word, or a particular idea that is central to your narrative. It needs to be remembered.

Great pitches have a clear sequence of important points, or beats, which are memorable. For an example of this, it’s useful to look at someone like Tim Cook, revealing the Apple Watch (go to exactly 1:00:00 in the video.

Cook organizes his beats in a very simple pattern. When he needs to emphasize a point, he says it as a slide appears with the same words and an image behind him. Simple, and elegant. If you’ll notice, he only uses words on the screen when he is making a specific, memorable point. At no other time are there any words on screen.

A common mistake for founders is to make their “big point,” or “ahah moment,” a part of a slide that is so complex and full of information, that the audience is busy looking at it instead of listening to what is said. Your “beats,” have to be moments where nothing else gets the attention but one simple idea.

So Nice, You Said it Twice

I’ve talked in previous posts about repeating the name of your company during your pitch (by the way, repeat the name of your company in your pitch). But this piece of advice is simpler. If something is really important in your pitch, don’t be afraid to repeat it.

Repetition is a powerful way to emphasize what is being said. A very powerful way.

You see? People frequently repeat things when they’re speaking, but they rarely do so in writing- which can make a pitch feel pretty stilted when you haven’t rehearsed it enough.

Your Slides Are the Plan, Not the Pitch

Our Managing Director Cedric Maloux repeats this same piece of advice to every startup we accelerate: “Your slides are cues, not content.” When we write our presentations, the tendency is to try and accomplish communication with slides that can’t be done verbally. That’s a mistake, because it leads founders most often to try and pack slides with too much information.

Here’s a good general principle: if you can’t say it 10 words, it’s too much information for a slide. Your slides should be nothing more than a framework for what you want to say. Nobody wants to go to a pitch and spend their time reading your slides. They want to hear from you.

German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke famously wrote: “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” As I’ve pointed out, one of the downsides of planning a pitch, is that what you end up with is a plan. Whether that’s a plan of exactly what you’ll say, or exactly what you’ll show the audience, that plan is not what is going to happen.

As I often tell my startups, the trick is not to say what you want, but to avoid saying what you don’t want. So be clear, be precise, and don’t over-write your pitch. Organize it into simple chunks.

Use Real Numbers

When I say “real numbers,” I’m going a bit beyond the “big numbers on the screen,” sense of the word “real.” I see plenty of pitches that are full of impressive numbers that, when you actually consider them, don’t say anything about the startup that’s actually pitching.

Worse, I often see pitches that include the numbers of competitors- as if the startup is just going to magically carve out a slice of the pie in their industry just because they showed up at the table. It doesn’t work that way, and investors know that. Even worse than that, I have heard pitches that included the valuation of companies in the same market. Now we’re in La La Land for sure.

Do Vocal Exercises

It’s silly. It’s embarrassing. It really, really works. For the past 2 years, StartupYard has engaged coaches leading up to Demo Day to work on voice training. The impact, over and over, has been startling- and not just for those founders who began as novices in public speaking.

Your voice is like anything else- an instrument of coordination that you use to do certain things. We are all accustomed to talking. But like the difference between walking a kilometer, and doing a pole vault, the body is not accustomed to the feats of energy and strength that we do not practice long and hard.

For those without extensive practice and training, public speaking is surprisingly exhausting. It takes an unexpected amount of strength to use your voice to address more than a handful of people, and adrenaline causes your heart to beat faster and consume more oxygen, meaning you need to breath more deeply and quickly. This all causes a person to expend more energy, to sweat, to be out of breath, and to feel exhausted, even after only a few minutes.

Bonus: Don’t Forget to Smile

This isn’t part of my 9 tips, but it’s important. Smile! And you’ll get smiles back. That’s reassuring, and will make you feel better about what you’re doing.

Co-working: the Future of Work? Our Interview with Prague’s Node5

July 21, 2015/in Interviews, Life at an Accelerator, Starting a Business, Startups/by StartupYard

StartupYard’s connection with Node5 dates back to the founding of both, in 2011. Born as an incubator/accelerator program, Node5 and StartupYard quickly split into two separate programs, with separate investors.

Node5, founded by Lukas Hudecek (an original co-founder of StartupYard) became an open co-working space, with a mix of public and private offices which companies and freelancers, as well as startups, share. The space offers a dynamic and social workplace for people who would otherwise be working in small teams without large offices, and is a cost-efficient solution for small companies who would like to offset and share some of the costs of running an office, including reception, food and drinks, meeting spaces, security, cleaning, and other services.
Last year, StartupYard returned to Node5, launching a new partnership, and making some of the accelerator’s resources available to members of the Node5 community.

Node5 is conveniently located near Andel, in Smichov, part of Prague’s “Silicon Valley” district to the west of the city center.

You can read about Node5 on their website, or tweet to them @TheNode5

Hi Petra and Lucas! First, give me some background on yourselves. How did you come to work together?

Petra: I’ve stood on my own feet since the age of 13 and the rough struggle of everyday survival made quite an “iron lady” out of me. I learnt to go and achieve anything in any profession, and make money for the next day under any circumstances. This heartless method helped me quite a bit when I decided to set aside my university studies and enter the tough world of PR, marketing and sales in which I founded a company, later sold it and used the money to move to Amsterdam to finally pursue further self-development.

Petra Koncelikova managers Node5, and a team of between 5 and 8

Time spent in Holland was quite therapeutic, and an eye opener. I created a local business- a leisure programme for hard working women which kept me financially independent. But more importantly, it taught me to love and respect myself as I grew alongside my business.

I met Lukas through a friend of mine while still living in Amsterdam. Meeting a businessman who cares more about helping others than making money was in my world just as much Sci-Fi as flying a rocket to Mars to shop at a Bio market. We had a couple of discussions and after a while it turned out we complemented each other in many ways. Particularly in business matters.

We found each other pitching in where the other got stuck. His philanthropy and my rigid attitude proved to balance out perfectly and after just a couple of months, real results showed and it’s kept rolling ever since. We make money and do good at the same time.

Lukas: Being thrown into world of entrepreneurship since the early stages of life, I had my ups and downs starting a couple of companies.

Lukas Hudecek, founder and owner at Node5

I started a computer hardware store and B2B platform for local computer shops, a creative agency making websites in FrontPage 97, a hardware manufacturer of heavy-duty wifi routers for rural areas and finally, a retail shop for home automatization systems. I raised capital for future endeavors by employing myself in companies as a developer, one of which happened to be Skype.

After a while I thought it would be great to share my experiences with others, and so I started to support younger entrepreneurs by organizing events and hackathons. Those efforts turned into founding StartupYard, where I had the amazing chance as CEO to put our first batch of eight companies through the 3 month program. I founded Node5 soon after.

The two most significant events in the existence of Node5 were when we became break-even in February 2014, and when I decided to hire Petra and make her my General Manager. She proved yourself ever since, and as an extra bonus I’ve gotten a couple of lessons on how not shoot myself in a foot.

What problem did you originally hope to solve by opening Node5?

Lukas: When I was with StartupYard, companies were missing two things especially. A venue and community. Node5 was exactly this, just without the acceleration program. When we started, we thought using London’s TechHub franchise was the way to go, but later we decided to stay independent. It looked like a crazy decision back then, but worth it because now we have the venue, community and accelerator under one roof with complete independence.

This is simply something neither Node5 nor StartupYard would have been able to achieve on it’s own at this scale. And that infrastructure was something I’d originally been hoping to solve for companies like we use to be in the beginning. The time is now.

Was there a model that you followed when you founded Node5? How have the space and business diverged from your original vision?

Lukas: As we were in close talks with TechHub during the early stages of Node5, we knew some of the essentials. We knew some basics about community and real estate business around this type of work. Even though the purchasing power in London and Prague differ greatly, we saw an opportunity in combining community and real estate in a nearly non-profit business to engage talent in an equity-based program, to slingshot ready made entrepreneurs out to the world.

But I was thinking about Node5 from the wrong angle at that point. Very soon we realized we are unable to pay for Node5’s operations costs with equity, so we started looking for stronger monthly revenues. In Feb 2014 after a long hard 2 years, we became break-even strictly on the real estate and space rental business side.

At that point, we had something of an appetite to crank up the old acceleration program too, but then StartupYard fortuitously returned [StartupYard was located elsewhere from 2012 to 2014] and did a fantastic job on the last batch. I would say that this helped us to properly realize Node5’s original vision for the first time.

On the business side, what has proved to be the hardest part of running a co-working space? Has anything surprised you?

Petra: Running a co-working space of this size and form proved to be slightly schizophrenic, because you are internally dealing with different types of businesses and professions in a team of 3 – 8 people max. A thousand square meters require constant maintenance. We keep that space up and tidy 24/7. There’s always something going wrong, somewhere. You have to do not just your promotion but also promote your partners. You’re a salesperson, project manager, event coordinator and HR, all at the same time having only 24 hours in a day.

You have to deal with smaller unreliable service providers since we don’t reach wholesale quotes. Its hard to describe the hustle we arein when we have to find an alternative so our clients won’t spot the difference. Fair usage policy is NEVER fair enough. You always step on someone’s toes and your good intentions usually interest no one.

Sometimes we help enthusiasts to throw their own gig to support their community, while planning events 6 months ahead in the background just to try hold still on a tight schedule. We have this policy to do our best and always walk the extra mile for our clients. But we can’t fit it all in all the time, and there’s always something we miss. It can be pretty frustrating!

Lukas: I’ve been surprised by the diversity of core tasks that are essential to running a coworking space. On a daily basis, we bounce between being a catering firm, an event production company, and real estate and business consultancy agencies. Each of these functions require a great deal of brain cycles on its own, so it’s hard to keep them profitable and running.

It’s like running four companies simultaneously, and that is really the hardest part. I wouldn’t be able to handle it without the great team Petra has put together. Running a coworking space isn’t exactly the easiest job ever, but what is?

Are there some success stories from Node5 that you’re particularly proud of?

Node5 and StartupYard cooperated last month on PragueHacks- including over 80 local programmers.

Lukas: I think that I am speaking for my whole crew when I say that there are many successes our members achieved over the time we’ve been here, but I’d rather spotlight something else I am proud of. That’s the current state of our startup infrastructure and its ambitions. I am proud of all those 2-4 year old companies that still push forward like crazy! I am amazed how many failures were forgotten over the past months and years. I am sure that if there is anything like the Czech Startup community, it has never been better. I am proud of what we have achieved together over these last couple of years.

Do you see this or other alternative work spaces as a viable path for a larger part of the workforce in the future? If so, what are its main advantages and disadvantages?

Petra: Well as a former freelancer I’ve tried it all. I worked in a co-working space back in my early days, and I didn’t find it that awesome. But it was still better than being at home, where I either worked too much or not at all. Efficiency was quite arguable.

The open workspace at Node5

When I founded a PR agency with 10 employees, renting A-class office space in the city center, it was great at first. But every time we got stuck on something we had no one to turn our heads to. No doors to knock on. If there had been something like co-working for marketing agencies back in the days, I’d probably let the nice office go at least in a first 1-2 years of our life. Having like-minded people around means having opponents for your ideas all the time. It’s resources you could often use when you’re short handed or worse, when you have too many people. Just a simple coffee at the bar could save you hours of work. I see Node5 members get together everyday and I see them creating things, companies and values, helping and supporting each other. I find it simply priceless.

Lukas: There was a study by DeskWanted in 2013 saying that demand for shared workspace rises by 89% as the independent workforce hits 1 billion. There’s no current number of how many coworking spaces are there but back in the 2013 the number was 2.500 coworking spaces around the world. There are activities such as remoteyear.com showing us, that people like to work not just independently, but also remotely. The same signal we’re getting from big corporations who sends their small teams to work from Node5 remotely and independently from the rest of the company departments. Working in shared workspace isn’t for everybody, except it is 🙂

What’s in Node5’s plans for the next year or so?

Petra: We were working extra hard in the past four months on event production to earn some extra bucks that will allow us to refurbish our residential area, to provide much better working conditions for our residents and bring back a high level of comfort. Other than that, we are also working on a couple of business deals that will provide our members certain perks, that’s something we’ll be releasing soon so you have to wait for that!

Lukas: Recently, we faced a hard decision whether to expand to upper floors to ramp up our revenues, or improve the comfort in the current setup. We’ve chosen improvement and are currently undergoing reconstruction in the residential space. This will provide our members with more privacy for salespeople, more meeting rooms, leisure room, various options of privacy in coworking space and more.

Additionally, what we might be looking at from the longer-term perspective is a program for further support of companies after graduating from acceleration programs, and on growing the real-estate in size and level of quality, as well as range of provided services . We hope our team will help us to build it up for an interview next year.

StartupYard seeks Graphic and Web Design Intern in Prague, January 2016

July 8, 2015/in Life at an Accelerator, StartupYard News/by StartupYard

Are you a self-starter looking for real, hands-on experience in graphic and web design, working with a diverse group of startups? We have a job for you. We are seeking a graphic and web design intern to join us in Prague for 3 months in 2016.

Last year, StartupYard welcomed Ian Abildskou, from Denmark, as our in-house graphic design intern. Whatever Ian lacked in experience, he made up for in his enthusiasm, his willingness to try new things, and a very positive attitude. He made a lasting impact on StartupYard, and all the projects that he worked on with us.

Ian (right) with Exec in Residence Phillip.

Over the course of 4 months, in which he spent several days a week at the StartupYard offices, first working with the StartupYard team, and then our 2015 startups, Ian designed our new logo, and a presentation on the Czech tech ecosystem that was among the most popular content we have generated all year. In addition, Ian contributed to the designs of almost all of the 2015 startups’ logos, and to many of their websites and other marketing materials as well.

Dates: January 2016 – April 2016

Email us your CV and Portfolio

The Job

We are looking for someone like Ian, who wants to gain some professional experience working on real startups, with real users and real products. The designs that this person works on will be seen by potentially millions of people who use the products and services our startups create.

The candidate should be familiar with basic visual effects software such as Photoshop, visual design software like Fireworks, as well as basic website design tools like Dreamweaver. The candidate doesn’t need to be a photoshop wizard or a total ace when it comes to website design and CSS, but they have to be willing to learn, and interested in receiving guidance and feedback.

A “good eye” is essential. Someone interested in photography and drawing, with some experience in those areas, will have an advantage.

The internship will be what this person makes it. Whether they choose to come in just a few times a week, or to devote themselves more fully to the learning opportunity we offer, this person will have the chance to work with up to 10 new companies, all of whom will be looking for help designing logos, making web pages, crafting email templates, and making ads for social media, among many other creative tasks.

They will experience the day-to-day challenges of working with startups, including having to deal with unclear or incomplete ideas and requests, and having to tweak and re-work designs and ideas many times, until a consensus can be reached. Startups learn by doing, so the candidate will have to be prepared for shifting objectives and shifting focus. If you are willing to hear: “I love it… but we need to completely change it,” then this is the place for you.

The candidate must also be willing to have and to share their opinions and ideas. Startups don’t always know when they need help, so the ideal candidate will speak up when they think something needs doing. Startups also don’t always know what works best, so a great intern isn’t afraid to disagree, and to fight for their ideas.

Language

As StartupYard’s program is conducted entirely in English, good communications skills in English are essential to this position. Czech language skills will not be factored into the selection of candidates, so Czechs or non-Czechs should not hesitate to apply.

The Benefits

Aside from small perks like free lunches (the first month of the program), and free coffee and other snacks while working, the intern will have the opportunity to meet and interact with many of StartupYard’s influential and interesting mentors, many of whom run successful businesses, and may provide valuable contacts for work and professional development.

During the second month of the program, StartupYard hosts dozens of challenging and informative workshops, which the intern will be encouraged to take advantage of. This will give the person an opportunity to learn about working in startups, picking up valuable knowledge about marketing, sales, UX/UI design, and other fields related to their work. We don’t want an intern just to put them to work- we want to help this person in their professional development, and the StartupYard team will spare time for guidance, direction, and encouragement when needed.

Over the course of the program, the intern will have a chance to build an impressive portfolio, and the bragging rights that go along with having their work featured by real, working businesses. The intern will have many opportunities to showcase their work to people who may be hiring, such as at StartupYard’s Demo Day, and StartupYard will reward hard work with strong recommendations and other help landing a job after the internship is up.

In addition, there will be startups leaving our program with the need for graphic and web designers. The candidate may have the opportunity for further paid work with those companies following the program.

Logistics

As this is an unpaid internship, the ideal candidate is a student or young professional who will be in Prague during the internship period, and will provide for their own accommodations and living expenses during that period. We would expect the intern to spend a minimum of 10-12 hours a week at the accelerator, and any effort above and beyond that amount would be welcome and encouraged.

Join Us

If you’re a student or a young professional looking for a leg-up in the startup business, and real, hands-on experience in design, then StartupYard is offering you an unmatched opportunity.

In order to apply, please click on the button below and submit a CV, along with a portfolio or a few representative samples of your work. If you have a personal webpage, or a LinkedIn profile, please provide a link to that as well.