Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine Entrepreneur, Nerd, Gamer and occasional Blogger Sat, 14 Aug 2010 09:22:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 7 Tips for Very Early Startups http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/07/02/7-tips-for-very-early-startups/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/07/02/7-tips-for-very-early-startups/#comments Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:55:00 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/?p=237 I’ve been coaching 10 teams at Summer of Startups for 2 days now. Though it’s been a short period of time, this has plunged me back in the time when I too was starting.

Be a sponge

I forgot how much time early startups spend thinking and reading. Many of the teams are spending considerable amount of time gathering knowledge: they’re looking at what other players in their space are doing, they’re reading articles in the big blogs, and advice from role models.

While it is important to gather information about the world around you, make sure you don’t do it for the wrong reasons: learning from other’s mistakes is a great way to save time. But seeking out information shouldn’t  take precedence on executing  and trying things for yourself. This is the best way for you to learn. Nobody ever flew a plane by reading the training manual.

Two excellent resources I recommend reading thoroughly are Founders Space and Venture Hacks

Plan and do

It is very easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of possibilities. There are hundreds of technical routes, potential customers, business models, sales channels etc ahead of you.

Spend time thinking about them. Starting building a plan of simple tasks as early as possible: “make user registration possible” is good, “work on marketing” is not. Don’t be vague, get results quickly.

Make sure you can keep on succeeding quickly, give yourself a way to measure your progress, as well as a clear plan.

Practice pitching

Pitching is difficult and scary. It isn’t normal to be in a situation where you have to talk in front of several people while they judge you and you have to sound smart and convincing. Nobody’s used to this.

Don’t panic. Don’t try new stuff during your pitch. Don’t try to make up answers. Don’t downplay competitors. No one will take you seriously if you start making fun of Apple or 37 Signals and you don’t have something revolutionary.

Be honest. Be passionate. Be inspiring. Everybody knows you’re early. It’s ok that your tech isn’t there yet. It’s ok you don’t know how you’ll make money yet. Explain that you’re working on it. Say that you need team members. Say you realize where you don’t have the needed skills.

Practice pitching at every single opportunity. To your family, to your friends, to someone you’ve just met who asked you what you do, with your school teachers, people who have sales experience. In every situation, it will not be as brutal as when something is really at stake.

I used to do very shy and plain presentations. I took the basic Guy Kawasaki slide deck, recited it with excitement for my vision. Fuck that. You’re a rock star. Wow people. Impress them, be memorable.

If you can’t sell your idea, nobody else can.

Be an opportunist

Go to events. Network, meet new people. Every person you meet is a potential client. Often, they’ll be happy to give you advice. Free market research! Don’t have money for a lawyer? Find one who’s speaking at an event and ask him questions!

Find all the events in your area. The barcamps, the open coffees, the startup meetups, the social media meetups.

Write a blog, share other people’s things, respond to them, connect with anyone who’s relevant, be active on social networks. Make yourself visible. If nobody knows you, your ideas, your startup, it will be more difficult. Get your foot in the door. Ask for introductions. Seek face time. If people know you, if they like you, you’d be surprised how much your life can be. Make sure this works both ways. Help others when they need it. So what if it doesn’t pay off now?

Don’t focus on technology

I know. You want to use the latest sexy script, widget, coding language and APIs. You’ll totally blow away the competition with your compressed javascript and your fancy Ajax.

Talk to your users. Ask them what they want. Do they really want these things? Are you building something they’d use? Something they’d buy? Make sure you don’t build things because you can, but because you need them.

Learn to listen

It’s easy to read. It is difficult to listen. People who don’t know your field as well as you will criticize your work. Sometimes, they will do so very harshly.

Any person who criticizes you does so for a reason. Maybe they don’t like the color blue, maybe your registration is too difficult. Don’t counter argue. Don’t justify your choices. Listen, and try to make the next person happy.

Believe in yourself

While watching our teams, I realized most of them don’t consider themselves entrepreneurs or CEOs yet. They feel like they’re just hacking something together. But at the same time, this thing will be the greatest thing in the world. It’s their baby, and it’s going to be the best.

Guess what. That’s what entrepreneurs do.

6 Comments

]]> http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/07/02/7-tips-for-very-early-startups/feed/ 6 A quick chat with Alan Moore http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/20/a-quick-chat-with-alan-moore/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/20/a-quick-chat-with-alan-moore/#comments Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:59:29 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/?p=234 I interviewed Alan Moore, author of Communities Dominate Brands, last week at Startup BBQ in Helsinki.

We talk about Nokia, how large scale companies are changing their processes, how crowdsourcing fits in management, LocalMotors (a crowdsourced car company), the difference between open source and community, and being lean.

Watch or download the video here (sorry, my blog can't embed!).

3 Comments

    At 20/06/2010, Olli Gunst wrote: I've read about the Lego case. They basically put up a web-based design tool where you could design a lego set and order the pieces. While the process and logistics is highly automated you can achieve a very personal experience and product. What enabled Lego to do this was that Legos consist of standard modules/pieces.

    What if Nokia enabled you to order a phone, designed by you online out of standard Nokia modules and software?At 20/06/2010, ramine wrote: Yeah, any mobile company that'd do this would be great. I think Android is probably the best OS for that. I saw a customizable MP3 player the other day, but I can't find the link anymore. Would be great to chose a screen size, accelerometer, ram, cpu, keyboard, etc. Kind of like Localmotors but for phones basically.At 20/06/2010, fandi yaicne wrote: I think that would be such a great Idea but for sure it will add the cost to manufacture such a device. Especially if the hardware parts are being outsourced .
]]> http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/20/a-quick-chat-with-alan-moore/feed/ 3 Summer of Startups Feedback – SRC http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/19/summer-of-startups-feedback-src/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/19/summer-of-startups-feedback-src/#comments Sat, 19 Jun 2010 11:07:06 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/?p=232 Himanshu sent us an application for his team, SRC. Their team consists of two students based in India, who both study in IIT Delhi, making them some of the top tech students in India. Here is my feedback on his submission.

First of all, I have to say I’m impressed by your resourcefulness. Very few people monitor what’s possible to help their early startups, fewer actually dare to apply, and even fewer are abroad.

1. Problem
Lack of food-warming facilities during its transportation resulting in its degradation and loss of nutritional value. For eg. As in pizza home delivery business.

I can see how that is a problem. However, I would need better examples of business implementation. In the case of pizza, they’ve always arrived within 30 minutes and this has never been a problem. I know Pizza Hut in France has special carton boxes which help also. Sometimes food is also delivered in aluminum foil. However, maybe this is different in India and China, where traffic can be a real pain? Or maybe your solution can be cheaper than using specific carton or bag wrappings?

I would need to see:

- are there cases where this is a real problem?

- in those cases, will the pain be enough to drive towards buying your product?

2. Solution
The first stage will focus on development of a heating assembly which can be installed on pizza delivery bikes and use exhaust gases as the energy source.

Ok, that sounds like a cool technology idea. After all, Nokia recently released the charger for bikes. I really need to see business applications though! Why only sell something like this to pizza delivery for example? are there consumer cases? or other types of services that require transportation which could use this?

3. Profitability
Will tackle the huge problem of food degradation during its transport & will fulfill needs of a very huge market, especially in developing countries like India in a sustainable way by recycling the waste gas effluents from vehicles. Thus, helps environment.

You insist again on the importance of food degradation in developing countries. I would really love some numbers there, and again some way of knowing this is a real problem people are willing to pay for.

Also, it would help to know if this technology can be adapted to other vehicles or use cases.

48 Comments

]]> http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/19/summer-of-startups-feedback-src/feed/ 48 Summer of Startups feedback – Shobu http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/18/summer-of-startups-feedback-shobu/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/18/summer-of-startups-feedback-shobu/#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:53:46 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/?p=230 Fandi Yacine has been very active with Shobu. He participated to an earlier Aaltoes pitching competition, and applied to Summer of Startups. He was also commenting actively on posts that are related. Today he discovered that Shobu was not selected in the top 20 applications and asked me for feedback. I really like his approach, so here is my review of his application.

Problem:

Targeting users with the right adverts that match their interests and their location is impossible. Also, no accurate statistics on the efficiency of campaigns can be provided at any moment.

This is not true. I invite you to look at this chart http://rameen.mysites.com/-2010-week-24/advertising-chart.jpg. You will find several (DSP) Demand Side Platforms and (RTB) Real Time Bidding are doing this: AdBrite, Google DCX, Pubmatic, Admeld, AdExchanger. Unless you meant some different thing and I misunderstood.

It would help if you can explain your positioning in the ad space, and how you differ from existing targeting approaches. Do you want to use cookies? Do you provide stats? Do you process stats? Do you get ad inventory? Do you optimize key value pairs? Do you provide better keywords? Do you do user-centric targeting, or do you want to optimize specific media? Do you do banners? Text ads? This needs clarification.

Solution:

Solution And Profitability: Shobu is a mobile application that aims to provide a new marketing channel. Our services range from: exposing physical store fronts, sending the latest campaign offers in real time, relevant to users and offering accurate and up to date analytical data

So, you are doing a mobile app, which will show me ads based on my location. And from what you said earlier, you want to use the data from the user stats, to provide better results to the advertisers. Fair enough.

I see a few problems with this approach:

- I believe you will find it difficult to reach consumers who will want to install your application to view ads. There needs to be an offering, which will attract them. For example, a game, a service, a smart map, something like that.

- You need to get a good local ad inventory. For example, if I’m in Finland, you need ads for Finland, that’s easy. If I’m in Pakistan, that’s trickier. I need to see you’ve thought about where to get the ads, which market you’re aiming. I also need to see which value added you’re bringing. Are you saying you’re bringing better stats to advertisers? In that case, this means you most likely have to get the inventory, or do revenue sharing with a 3rd party, which won’t consider you until you’re much bigger.

- This precise problem is being solved by Foursquare. Fun app, user behavior, ad impressions (check in, show nearby things).

Once you have a good answer to those questions, you’ll have a great product. Mobile advertising brings in the highest CPMs on the market. If you find a good segment for Shobu, you can win. Good luck!

If other Summer of Startups teams would like feedback, I'd be happy to do so.

5 Comments

]]> http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/18/summer-of-startups-feedback-shobu/feed/ 5 My Review of Summer of Startups Applications http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/13/my-review-of-summer-of-startups-applications/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/13/my-review-of-summer-of-startups-applications/#comments Sun, 13 Jun 2010 16:43:46 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/?p=225 I’ve just finished reviewing the applications to Summer of Startups. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s a program like Y-Combinator that’s being organized for the first time in Finland.

Selection process

First of all, thanks to everyone who’s sent an application, the turnover was phenomenal. We’ve received 60 applications in total! We will pick 10 companies in the program. I’m one of the 4 people who are rating.

What this means is that right from the start, you have 16% chance of being taken. You might think it’s low, but it’s much higher than in TechStars or Y-Combinator.

I decided to share how I reviewed the applications, so that you understand my reasoning, and that you get some constructive feedback if you haven’t been selected.

What I don’t care about

I don’t care about your age, if you’re a guy or a girl, if you’re a local or a foreigner. I don’t care which school you are from, or if you have experience in your field. This program is aimed at newcomers, we know that your idea is unclear. New startups have ideas all over the place, and that’s a good thing, you need to refine them, challenge them, that’s how they improve.

Are you a startup?

A good way to answer this question is: do you think Techcrunch, Venturebeat or Mashable would write about your company? Are you a technology company? Are you scalable to millions of consumers? or are you targeted at a very difficult to enter, super profitable niche? If you’re not, you’re not a startup, so I can’t pick you for Summer of Startups.

Passion

The most important thing in a founder is passion. It’s pretty difficult to judge passion based on a short summary from someone. However, if I see that you are clearly very passionate about what you want to create, that’s definitely a plus. Startup founders will fail a lot of times, so showing that you have energy for your idea is good.

Less is more

Bold statements (ex: “We will make seven billion in 2 weeks”) impress no one who has experience. Don’t force yourself to write “business-y”. If you write something that looks like your life story, it’s not very helpful, try to be concise. If you start listing features, it’s not very helpful, because they will change in the future, so just focus on the core idea.

Is this a business, or a feature?

Are you building a feature (eg: let’s make a comments system), or a business (let’s create a generalized commenting platform, which we’ll sell to blogging platforms)? Very often you will start with a technical idea, simply because you can do that. Those who are further down the road thinking about who they will sell to and how they will make money from this technology, will be better.

Do your research

The first thing you should do when you have a startup idea is examine the competitive landscape. Is there a demand for your idea? how big? where? are they willing to pay for that? Are others offering something like you? how many? can they copy your idea easily? how much leverage do they have which you don’t?

If you claim that something is difficult to do at the moment when it is not, or that you want to enter a market that is completely crowded without any sort of edge, this will not receive attention.

I hope this will help you. I have submitted a list of 20 applications I find very good, so good luck! I’d be happy to give you feedback in the future also. Please feel free to ask any question or to leave a comment.

4 Comments

    At 13/06/2010, fandi yaicne wrote: "I don’t care about your age, if you’re a guy or a girl, if you’re a local or a foreigner. I don’t care which school you are from" . As a foreigner studying outside Aalto University this made my day. Thanks for everyone who made it possible to people from AMK to be able to join in and keep it open for everyone !At 13/06/2010, ramine wrote: No problem, good luck.At 13/06/2010, -aku wrote: Very nice criteria.

    -akuAt 15/06/2010, Nataliegaudet wrote: Nice Ramine! We all cant wait to hear who has been selected into SOS!
]]> http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/13/my-review-of-summer-of-startups-applications/feed/ 4 MySites Grows Up http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/12/mysites-grows-up/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/12/mysites-grows-up/#comments Sat, 12 Jun 2010 13:53:07 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/12/mysites-grows-up/ I’ve been blogging a lot about entrepreneurship lately. I’d like to share what we’ve been up to at MySites. We haven’t communicated much with the media lately, in favor of talking directly to our users and improving our service for them.

What’s up?

Since August, a bit less than a year ago, we launched what we call internally “MySites 2.0”. We decided to focus only on saving and sharing files, and skip everything on the side. Essentially, we’ve become more lean. That means a much lower team size. It also means focusing more on listening to users and thinking about how to make things easier and prettier. We learned to listen, which is why I’ve invested so much time on Google Buzz, and we’ve managed to reuse some of our great previous technology and behave like a smaller startup.

Great new people

The other important thing is that we’ve got new people who’ve joined us as advisors, mentors or investors.

Taneli Tikka, who’s known for his work on Irc-Galleria, the Finnish social networking site with monetization levels beyond any others social networks, using high brand value advertising.

Sonja Kangas, from PAF, one of the leading online gaming companies, also involved in the Nordic Game program and organizer of IGDA (the International Game Developer Association) in Finland.

Valve, who’s one of the leading design firms in a country known for its great designs, and responsible for making us look so much better.

and continued support from Peter Vesterbacka, who’s helped us in the mobile world.

They come in addition to our 4 current advisors in Germany. I’m very happy that they’re here to provide the expertise. Each of them is simply the best in their field. Knowing that they can tell me when I’m wrong and help us avoid trial and error or simply open new doors lets me sleep better at night.

Partnerships

We launched a fully open API, which allows any 3rd party to do exactly what we can.

We’ve been developing partnerships with great startups:

Xihalife, who uses us for their video hosting, players, media conversion and file hosting.

Dazzboard, who offers MySites as a way to save your files online.

Breezetags, for which we’re the first implementation, who provides us with sharing by sms.

WreckAMovie, who is going to use us to offer media and file hosting and players to all their projects.

New features

Since January, half of the work we’ve done during the last 6 months has been simply trying to keep up with the growth. We’ve had our hands pretty full simply trying to make the site usable for as many people as possible, and launched a new design, which we keep on tweaking. Our goal is not to add many new features, but to make our existing ones better.

We’ve added support for documents, using Google Docs. You can now view Word, PowerPoint, PDF files directly on MySites (example here), and share them with your friends like you would on SlideShare.

We’re 90% done with our desktop uploader, which will work on PC and Mac, and let you upload multiple files with drag and drop. It will be live in a few days, but ask me if you want to try a beta. Here is a preview from our dev version:

We’ve started work to simplify the Home page once you login, and on social gaming features, which we’ll explain more soon. You can expect our background in gaming to come much more into play in the near future.

PS: Don't just stand there, leave a comment!

]]> http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/12/mysites-grows-up/feed/ 0 We’ve Come a Long Way, Finland. http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/12/weve-come-a-long-way-finland/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/12/weve-come-a-long-way-finland/#comments Fri, 11 Jun 2010 23:17:21 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/12/weve-come-a-long-way-finland/ Four years ago, as I was starting to work on MySites 1.0, I was living in Tampere. It was a pretty lonely thing. I knew of no other startups in the city. I was involved in IGDA (the International Game Developer Association), because the gaming industry was so much more organized (they had monthly meetup in Helsinki with ~20 people) and it was the closest thing to my interests.

I would take the train to Helsinki every 2 weeks, because there was this young guy Ville who was doing Open Coffee. We’d be something around 6-10 people, chit chatting about cool startup stuff we saw on Techcrunch, Mashable etc. Cool startups of the day were Jaiku, Sulake, Irc-Galleria, and soon Scred and Zipipop.

ArcticStartup didn’t exist. In fact, practically one blogged about the Finnish startups. TV or press coverage was beyond our wildest dreams (heh, it still is </sarcasm>). I’d ask feedback from my schoolmates in TAMK, some of which worked at Nokia and were interested in that stuff. I’d talk to my teachers, ask them for contacts. Some people would tell me I was completely insane and I should aim at being the biggest startup in Tampere. There were no entrepreneurship societies.

Our role model was Nokia. They were clearly the world leaders in mobile and were opening to 3rd party developers with Symbian. Finland was one of the leaders in Symbian, actually. Irc-Galleria and MySQL hadn’t exited yet.

Now.

Last month, a bunch of students from Aalto University organized Bootcamp, the largest startup training program ever made in the country.

Today, we gathered with a group of 100 people in what used to be 6 months ago an empty hangar in the forest, to talk with Tom Keller from TechStars and Alan Moore, co-author of Communities Dominate Brands, in spite of the rain and the opening of the World Cup.

In two weeks, we’ll be running our very own version of Y-Combinator, called Summer of Startups; I’m honored to be one of the coaches there and I’m looking forward to helping the newcomers.

We’ve come a long way.

PS: Don't just stand there, please comment!

9 Comments

    At 12/06/2010, Tweets that mention We’ve Come a Long Way, Finland. -- Topsy.com wrote: [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ramine Darabiha and Ramine Darabiha, Ramine Darabiha. Ramine Darabiha said: We’ve Come a Long Way, Finland. http://ff.im/-lT9Kq [...]At 12/06/2010, will cardwell wrote: Could not agree with you more on this Ramine! it is extremely important for us to realize that some things are massively better today than 5 years ago.

    Also to realize that the vast majority of countries out there would be thrilled to be where Finland is today. Are there challenges? Yes, definitely. But the direction is positive, and the level is strong.

    It is also critical to realize that any one of us, no matter how active we are, only observes some fraction of the activity in the ecosystem, and it is dangerous to draw deep conclusions about the ecosystem as whole without understanding that fact. It can lead to some crazy policy mistakes. Just got back from 7th trip to Israel (dating back to 1997) where I was again reminded of this by some real pro's. Will post something on this when I get a chance (and some sleep :).

    Thanks again for this post!At 12/06/2010, New languages come to Android Voice Search | Blog Network wrote: [...] Ramine Darabiha» Blog Archive » We've Come a Long Way, Finland. [...]At 12/06/2010, Riitta Raesmaa wrote: Ramine, thank you for the important reminder of the progress of the Finnish startup ecosystem during the last few years! Having my background in the 'established' software business in Finland (and in the Nordics), and now the last year and a half that I’ve been part of the Finnish startup scene – I must say that I’ve experienced the spirit of the latter overwhelmingly positive, full of enthusiasm, and innovation. This has been a very interesting step from one environment to another, very happy that I’ve taken it.

    The Finnish startup ecosystem – with figures like you, Ramine, and Antti Vilpponen, Ville Vesterinen, Antti Akonniemi, Taneli Tikka, to name a few that I have personally met during my first steps here – has a welcoming, open attitude that strengthens and speeds up this positive progress .

    Keep up the great work! Curiosity always kills the ‘can’t’!At 12/06/2010, Mobile Phone Games, Look How Far They Have Come | Games wrote: [...] Ramine Darabiha» Blog Archive » We've Come a Long Way, Finland. [...]At 12/06/2010, Pekka Front wrote: And were still just seeing the tip of the iceberg... I've been involved for 4 years now in spreading the spirit of enterprise among my peers (students) and am now looking at the next generation of kids comming in to school.

    I've got to tell you, if you keep pounding that drum the whole jungle will come. That drum that we hear in the distance is now on our doorstep loud and clear. While we are looking back at this, the next generation is emerged into it which will undoutable be something even better.

    So as we've all discovered it doesn't need millions to make the greatest encyclopedia in the world, the world of communications can altered by devices from a former rubber boot factory and enthusiastic positive people can make a change in the future of Finland and entrepreneurship - and they have all ready.

    So thank you's go out to all the people involved in the efforts mentioned and the ones made by everyone in the "community" for their sweat equity - the magic potion of all entrepreneurially minded.At 13/06/2010, ramine wrote: Thanks, looking forward to more comments in the future too :)At 13/06/2010, ramine wrote: Yeah, we need to keep supporting each other more and more. It's great that the newcomers are so active, it's giving the country a lot of momentum.At 13/06/2010, ramine wrote: That's a very good point. You say you have students btw? Where?
]]> http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/12/weve-come-a-long-way-finland/feed/ 9 Who Cares About Finnish Startups? http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/11/who-cares-about-finnish-startups/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/11/who-cares-about-finnish-startups/#comments Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:58:23 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/?p=209

When I posted the Nevermind the Valley: Here’s Finland post last week, many Finns asked me about who read the story. A lot of people here are curious if others in the world know we exist!

Some statistics

  • 8600 page views. This is huge! It is one of the top ReadWriteStart posts ever
  • 463 Retweets from the orginial @rww tweet. That's comparable to other RWW stories (other RTs from individuals not counted)
  • 406 Likes on Facebook
  • 40% of the traffic came from Finland (very nice to see all the community being active)
  • 27% from the US (the top cities are the big metropolitan areas, with San Francisco at the top)
  • 5% from the UK
  • 1.4% from Sweden, who apparently doesn’t like us too much :)
  • The rest of the traffic is fragmented
  • The story was also the most voted so far on the new ArcticStartup

What did we learn?

One thing that really surprises me is the lack of Nordic participation. It seems that we need to do much more efforts for us to be connected to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Of course, one may attribute the low figures to the lower population, but you would expect that to be balanced by higher interest, which did not show.

Finnish startups are very excited to promote the ecosystem, and very eager to receive attention worldwide. This enthusiasm is creating some buzz, as some people are starting to see Finland as a hot spot for entrepreneurship.

Some were disappointed that I didn’t list more, but I decided to limit it to 30 because I think a longer list would have been too unfocused for US readers. The post inspired some follow up posts:

Never Mind Finland: More Start-Ups, Looking Good, which lists 8 startups from the Aalto Start-Up Center.

55 Finnish Startups Everyone Should Know About, written by Technopolis Online.

2 Comments

    At 11/06/2010, Tweets that mention Ramine Darabiha» Blog Archive » Who Cares About Finnish Startups? -- Topsy.com wrote: [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ramine Darabiha and Ramine Darabiha, Ramine Darabiha. Ramine Darabiha said: Who Cares About Finnish Startups? http://ff.im/-lR4Hg [...]At 11/06/2010, Johnfurrier wrote: I care about them. We need to have entrepreneurship be part of the global growth plan and startup are a big piece of the equation.

    I'm happy to promote on SiliconANGLE the entrepreneurs ( "heros") who take risks to create opportunity and wealth for society.

    @furrier
]]> http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/11/who-cares-about-finnish-startups/feed/ 2 Why Consultants Often Make Bad Advisors for Startups http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/10/why-consultant-make-bad-advisors-for-startups/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/10/why-consultant-make-bad-advisors-for-startups/#comments Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:44:57 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/?p=203 A large portion of the public support money in Finland is aimed at paying consultants. The belief is that by hiring an expert to come join your company, they can help you improve your structure or your offering. The curriculum in most business schools is also designed in a way that encourages students to become consultants. Let’s look at why this is counter-productive for startups.

Edit: I'm not happy with how some of my points have come across, especially about the value that consultants may bring in terms of vision. I will add to those points later.

What is a consultant?

A consultant is somebody who sells his expertise, to other companies, for a certain period of time. They are people who are (hopefully) very knowledgeable about a specific topic, where the company is lacking. So in short, they are experts for rent. They can be helpful not only because of their knowledge and their experience, but also because they come as an external party, which enables them to be more detached about things. They are also rather costly, with an average consultant charging roughly 1000e a day.

This should not be mistaken for services. Lawyers, accountants sell their services on a regular basis, and usually have a continued relationship with companies.

When is this a problem?

You will find no argument from me that consultants are very helpful in enterprise cases. In that case, outsourcing your non-vital needs can be very helpful, and bring some fresh air into your organization. In that sense, consultants little to no value to the team, but can add greatly to the company. The problem is that in startups, very few things are non-vital by definition.

Commitment

As startup’s value is very rarely in its offering. Most code or design can be copied for extremely cheap. What defines it at the core is its team. However, what value is a team member who is there only for a short period of time, and not financially tied to the future of the company?

Competence

When you charge 1000e a day, you better be worth it. In Finland, a country with very few successful Internet cases, I’d say the value of consultants for startups is more than limited. Case in point, the completely disproportionate amount of social media consultants, who happen to are active on extremely few services, have not created, developed or managed any large sustainable community online, and blog very rarely. If somebody’s got only limited actual experience, he/she is not an expert.

Importance

Consultants can help with aspects that are not the core focus of a company. I would say they should be mostly irrelevant in terms of code, design, management and sales. It would not be wise to place such key elements of an early company in the hands of people who have no stake in it. And as I explained earlier, I do not consider lawyers and accountants as consultants. This doesn’t leave much space for anyone else to come in.

In that sense, an external non-committed team member will be significantly less valuable than a real team member.

The value of advisors

One may think that I find no value in experts coming in to help your team. This could not be further from the truth. MySites has 10 advisors. They help me know when I’m wrong, open doors, get contacts, perspective on things. They are extremely valuable, as they help me delegate a lot of my time and remain focused.

Advisors are great for startups when they are committed to your team. People who will stick by you in helping you grow, and will stay long enough so that you can rely on them and learn something in the process. You cannot fight all the fights yourself, so this is very welcome. In that sense, the Vigo program is very good for the startups in Finland. It constitutes a definite step forward. Let’s hope we see more in the future.

]]> http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/10/why-consultant-make-bad-advisors-for-startups/feed/ 0 MySites is looking for interns http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/09/mysites-is-looking-for-interns/ http://siliconangle.com/ramine/2010/06/09/mysites-is-looking-for-interns/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:46:15 +0000 Ramine Darabiha http://siliconangle.com/ramine/?p=200 We're looking for people who want to help and learn!

We could use your help with:
- scouting for partnerships in tech / media
- talking with and managing users / community
- developing new features using our API

For now we'd like to start for free, but we're definitely interested in working on the longer term with you if you're good :)

We had 2 interns last year, and it was a really nice experience for each of us. Basically if you want to learn how it is to work with a startup, put a cool name on your CV, get school credits, or simply work with one very active startup, drop me a line!

2 Comments

    At 10/06/2010, Anonymous wrote: Ah, slavery. You should post this on reddit as well!At 10/06/2010, ramine wrote: Heh. I don't know, I think most summer internships are that way. I don't think this fits Reddit though, I wanna work with people I can meet face to face.
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