Company culture

This week we had the pleasure of having Gunnar Holmsteinn as our quest lecturer. Gunnar has much experience with starting companies and currently he is working as a CEO on the startup QuizUp. The topic for the lecture was company culture but we also had a Q&A session with Gunnar about general aspects of being a startup CEO.

Company culture can be all these things and more. Source

When Gunnar started working at QuizUp as the CEO he wanted to know the opinions the employees had about the company. He wanted to get to know the company and the possible strengths and weaknesses it had. He came to realize that the company was seen by the employees as a fun and exciting place to work with many talented employees. However, it was also clear that there were some issues with the culture. Some things which were causing frustration were lack of clear orders and poor information flow. Employees responsibilities weren't clear either. A lot of important things were not discussed. For example retention of customers, long term planning, and the core values and beliefs of the company were not articulated. This all deals with the culture of the company which is something that has a major effect on the performance of a company. At this time the culture of QuizUp was not clear. There was no clear vision and so something needed to be done.

As a response the company took two days off the establish clear image, values and vision for the company. The stated their values as follows:

• Help others learn: help others grow so the talent in the company increases
• Fun with every action: not too serious when experimenting with new things
• Drive the vision: every action should in alignment with the vision (connecting people through shared interests)        
• Wait for nothing: get things done!

QuizUp culture is nowadays also based on the model “the 5 dysfunctions of a team". A representation of this model can be seen in the figure below.  Starting from the bottom of the figure, to deal with lack of trust Gunnar established FridayFeelings where they discuss what's going on in both their work and personl life. Fear of conflict on the other hand is now handled at QuizUp by meetings were they discuss what went well and what did not go so well and what are the things that need to be fixed. Building commitment is handled when you have the right amount of conflict and trust. QuizUp uses small teams so that no one can hide and everybody has their voice heard. To deal with accountability they keep all meeting notes public. To the results they pay attention by having town hall meetings once a month and also by having one on one conversations about the results of each individual.

The 5 dysfunctions of a team. Source

That's all for now. There was also a great quote said in the class about startups in general. I'll end this blog post with it (and with style). See you in the next post!

What is the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. What is the second best time to plant a tree? Today.

Don’t regret not doing things sooner – but get them done

Products that users love?

Hi there, welcome back! This time the blog post will be all about the story behind a startup called Bungalo. We will also discuss how to create great products in general. So on last week's lecture we had the founder and CEO of bungalo.com, Haukur Gudjonsson, as our guest lecturer. He shared his story as an entrepreneur and provided us with great tips concering startups.

The man behind Bungalo, Haukur Gudjonsson. Source.

Haukur has founded 5 companies himself, latest one being the successful Bungalo, a cabin rental service. In total he has over 12 years of experience with working with startups. He has a preference of starting companies without much money and growing them organically as the below quote illustrates.

"I am a big advocate of bootstrapping your business or essentially starting your business for little or no money and building and growing it naturally. A lot of entrepreneurs feel like they need to get investors to be able to create a successful business but the truth is that they only should approach investors when they need money to grow and know exactly what that money should be used for. "

 - Haukur Gudjonsson

Haukur also gave us tips on what to focus early on in a startup. 

While designing your startup company, you should be aware of every aspect of your idea. You need to inspect your idea from multiple perspectives and play devil's advocate a lot.  If you do not do this, you will notice that you will waste company's resources later on researching matters which you could have done yourself. This will leave the company with extra unnecessary costs.

Once you have finished your design, it's vital to get the product out to the market as soon as possible. Entering the market will enable you to get feedback from customers and you will gain a great insight on your product.

Lastly Haukur mentioned one of his mistakes with Bungalo. The mistake was spending too much time on the logo of the company. He summarized his tip as do not waste money on things that aren't vital for your company to flourish. A company can do well without spending much money on a logo.

After Haukur's lecture Bala held a lecture about how to create products which users love. Bala summarized two key points in this topic.

1. Empathize with the user: You have to understand exactly what is the user's problem you are solving, and what the problem is about. 

2. Design matters: Bala stressed that even the simple details such as phrases, fonts and paragraph spacing matter when creating a great product. The devil is indeed in the details  

This quote really fits here perfectly! Source

Bala continued to describe what is a good design. In his mind it is something that is simple and timeless, while also being daring and something innovative. However, the most important part of a good design is that it provides the solution to the right problem!

 

This is all for now. Until next time! 

Startup and PR?

Hi again! On this week's lecture we discussed public relations (PR) and what it has to do with startups. To get things going and to set the mood here's a quote from the Bill Gates:

There's plenty of great quotes of PR quotes but this one was definitely my favourite. Source

So this week we had a guest lecturer Paula Gould talking about PR this week. She has had much experience working with both startups and PR so she was a great fit to the lecture series. Here are few of topics I would like to highlight about the issues discussed.

A great emphasis was put on the meaning of a story behind a startup. A good story is the greatest asset when doing a pitch for an investment. This was something that made me think back about the pitches I've seen in Shark Tank / Dragon's den episodes. I found myself always rooting for the entrepreneurs with the best stories. I think the power of stories should never be underestimated. Great stories have great power regardless of the medium. For example an ad which tells a great story is often very memorable. The same of course goes for movies and books as well. Stories are weird in a way since they have a tendency to get under our skin and influence us without us even realizing how great of an impact they have on us. I can truly see the value of a great story for a startup founder. If you got yourself a great story go out and share it.

So do you have a story to tell? Use it to your advantage! Source

 

I also really liked the very practical tips our guest lecturer gave us regarding research for PR. For example you should get to know how your competitors use social media and what are the common hashtags in posts related to your market. What do your competitors tweet about? You need to know your market fit, your competitors and how you are different from them.

We also discussed the affordability of PR. It was stated that PR is something you should build in your budget very early on. If you can't afford PR there are many ways around it. You just have to be resourceful. Use whatever means you have at your disposal to get some PR. Stunts were mentioned as one example. However, we were also warned about stunts. They have much potential and can be very effective if done right, but do it wrong and you'll just end up looking silly and causing more harm than good. It was also mentioned that PR can be simply done by scheduling some time to simply be active in social media such as Twitter or Facebook. And of course never forget to take advantage of your network of friends, family and fools to promote your idea. They are your best means of getting started with spreading the idea and getting traction.