startups Archives - Page 33 of 117

The Silk Road Patron

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the Super Awesome Micro Project. And if you’re not aware I’m about to disclose some of the secret sauce. Mainly because between now and when we launch, it is physically impossible to be copied by anyone. For two reasons – the first is that no one else has Raul, and secondly it took us way more time and money than we would ever have imagined.

In fact, what we are doing has been on line for some time for those who wanted to seek it out – the secret, has been out a while on this Ignite talk I did at a global digital event as linked below:

A Stranger From Romania.

As you can tell from this super fast talk, we are building a world first piece of technology – a technology which at this point has no commercial goal – and no other reason for existing other than awesomeness. A pressure test of what is possible when the connected world aggregate small amounts of money with large amounts of thinking. To see what we can build using democratised digital factors of production and a teenage genius.

It was made possible by 40 people in Australia, also known as the Super Awesome Micro Project Patrons. Normal everyday people having a crack at creating part of the technology narrative. Our Modern Day Medici. The facilitators of the future.

What is it?

We are buildng a full size car, built entirely from lego, with an engine built from lego, and the engine runs on air. Actually, let me rephrase this. We have already built it. It is done. We have succeeded.

This is where the Silk Road Patron comes in:

We are at the point where we need to transfer the Super Awesome thing and the Super Awesome kid from Romania to Australia for the launch. The cost of transferring our adopted son and our fantastic plastic machine to our fair brown land rounds out to approx. $25K give or take. It is our plan to airfreight both artefacts human and construction – for time & safety reasons. The truth is, I can’t ask any of the patrons to put in any more money than they have already donated. Every single one of these people has already stretched themselves financially. I personally do not even want to talk about how much money I have put into this, other than to say it is 100+ times more than I thought it would be. This is no exageration. And so what we need is the Silk Road Patron.

The Silk Road Patron is the internet version of a silk road trader of antiquity. Someone who is intrigued by the possibilities of exchange from lands afar. Interested in new minds, methods and techniques. Inspired by and for the benefit of a populous wider than themselves. This Silk Road Patron has nothing to prove to anyone, because they’ve already done it – they’ve crossed the globe, trekked the path and already made bank with their own spice trade. They want to give back – be the final player who connects the possibilities of the #SAMP. The Silk Road Patron is a person, not a corproation. The Silk Road Patron’s gift of participation in this arduous project, is participation itself – a personal satisfaction.

This is something wider and deeper than the #SAMP – it is in fact the search for Australia’s most generous entrepreneur. A VC whose return on investment does not involve percentages or ROI. Their drive is ROH – return on humanity. (It is worth noting we can provide validation and proof of our achievements via private digital methods.)

And so our search for this person starts today. Please let us know if this person is someone you know, or maybe, just maybe it is you.

The linear hoax

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

There is currently no shortage of people talking about the change of the business environment from a linear model to an omni directional one. What we need to understand is that this isn’t limited to business, it’s a wider eco system change.

Last week I was helping a colleague with his transition into his next revenue phase. He was discussing the need to get his credentials and digital footprint in order before he met up with VC’s / recruiters and the like. He didn’t want to go in and meet people unprepared. And it sparked a thought in mind mind:

Why take a linear approach when lessons from each process can inform the other?

We both agreed it makes sense to do things simultaneously, when they interact with each other, as this case seemed to be. If we do them one by one, then the other there is a very good chance we’ll need to rework our effort once we get real ‘in market’ feedback.

The challenge for all of us is knowing which projects are isolated and which ones live in a feedback loop.

Inspiration or Knowledge?

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was talking today with a colleague who is involved in a consulting business. We discussed that people like us, are often providing is pure inspiration and motivation to our clients. Sometimes more often than we are providing actual knowledge. The all singing, all dancing outsourced inspiration division.

He was somewhat concerned that, the client might not be getting what they actually signed up for – specific domain information transfer.

After some discussion we agreed that it doesn’t really matter. We also agreed that inspiration has more value than knowledge in any case – even if our job is to provide the latter. The reason is simple. There are plenty of examples of people with great knowledge who never succeed, where as a person or organisation who is inspired will some how acquire the knowledge required.

The final allegory for people who help others as a business is this: Unless we have the knowledge in the first instance, we’ll never get hired or given the opportunity to provide the inspiration that is needed.

Scribbles from Startup Grind

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was recently at the Melbourne Startup Grind event down at Depo8. Another great example of people who are prepared to get off the couch in the evening to learn something and meet like minds.

The event had technology stalwart and all round good guy Alan Noble from Google in the house. Alan is the Head of Engineering for Google Aust / NZ and has been in and around computers since the early 1980’s. With serious time in the game he has some interesting stories. These are mostly not ‘verbatim’, but I took notes and thought some of the random soundbites were worth sharing here:

—

Alan originally coded in Cobol, C and C++. he says understanding the evolution of computer language is interesting and worth knowing.

Alan spoke about the first multi functional PC remembers is the Xerox Star Workstation – I found this promotional video for it on Youtube. I’m sure most of you already know this, but Steve Jobs was just as good at stealing ideas as Bill Gates was.

After University Alan moved to Japan for 2 reasons: He could speak the language, and he thought it would be a cool place to live. Sometimes the best advice is fun & functional.

In 1983 Alan worked on some of the first attempts at creating software which could translate human languages. Back then he thought, how hard can it be? Really hard. So hard it is only now becoming functional 30 years later.

NetMind: Alan was a cofounder of this startup, which he said never really made money. Though he had a successful exit from it. They made a trade sale in late 1999. When asked how one should value a company that doesn’t make any – he said the ‘Cisco Valuation Model’ is best. Which I am assuming is either a reference to them paying too much for acquisitions, or not making money for a long time themselves ?? [feel free to comment on this one]

2 quotes I did get verbatim:

“If you are working with great people that is what keeps you going.”

“The culture of a company is a special thing. You need to design it in the DNA because you can’t reinvent it later, it bubbles at birth.”

Alan also said the keys to what he thinks is a good culture are: Trust, Transparency & Openness.

Alan was then asked to give some startup advice:

– Don’t get caught up in startup hype. None of the philosophical ideas are new. A pivot used to be called adapting.

– Angel investors really look for entrepreneurs who want to build something, more than make money.

– Events can create innovation, but they are not sufficient for an innovative culture.

– Hire people who are innovative and passionate. This passion is usually transferrable. if person is passionate about one thing, there’s a good chance they’ll be passionate about another. The best ideas come from these people.

– 20% time is not good for a startup.

– How to value a company at an FFF round? – Keep bumping the value up. (I think it was said in jest)

– His core web mantra: keeping individually identifiable data confidential is a must.

– He believes in a mission. Not so much the statement, but the reason for being.

– On hiring good people: If you don’t hire well, you can’t leave the fort… go into the market.

– Valuation is a funny thing: You’ll get 12 different answers from 12 different investors. The truth is that the whole process is mainly bullshit.

– Think beyond Australia (or your home). if Google only developed products in Mountain View, it would have a very slanted view of the world & warped product output. Sydney has the 10th biggest Google engineering team in the world, yet it is the only the 28th biggest internet population.

Closing Thought When asked about AI.

Every time we solve a problem in AI, it is no longer AI. It just becomes a normal piece of technology. But most technology around us is in fact AI. So we shouldn’t get hung up on terminology and just solve problems instead.

Am I a Startup? – Tomcar

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was at a startup party in Melbourne a little while ago. It was organised by Ned Dwyer as his startup ‘Tweaky.com‘ had just reached profitability. In usual fashion the local startup illuminati were all gathered talking about their latest idea, site or app. Who is moving to Silicon Valley, who got funded and who just pivoted. It’s kind of a strange scene. If you’d just arrived from mars you would think that the only type of startups on earth were web related. In some ways it is an absurd form of closed mindedness. It’s as if there was no such thing as a ‘new business’ before the internet and silicon valley arrived.

Then I got talking to a guy called ‘David Brim‘ – only because we happened to be standing next to each other. He then offered to buy me a beer – seemed like my kind of guy.

He asked me what I did, and I went straight into startup mode and told about my ‘web’ stuff. (I’m one of the guilty souls from the first paragraph) But when it was David’s turn he surprised me. I asked what do you do? And his response was nothing I expected. He said, I’ve got a car company. I had to ask the question again and clarify if he meant he worked for a car company, was helping a car company or he genuinely owned a car company. After it was clarified that he actually owned a car company he surprised me even further to say that the cars were being made here in Australia, in the heartland of Melbourne in South Oakleigh. He went on to tell me that he’s been working on his startup for 8 years…. and only started selling the cars this year…. and that he had invested several million dollars through private investors and personal funding. I was totally blown away. After this he said:

“Am I a Startup?”

My reply was something like: ‘Of couse. Man, you’re the real deal…. were moving around 1’s and 0’s, bootstrapping ideas cheaply and hoping something sticks. Where as you’ve bet the farm and your life on something big and crazy.’ It’s the kinda of thing we don’t hear about much in Australia – especially when the local car industry seems to be closing down, rather than starting up.

His company is called Tomcar and it is different to every other car out there. Firstly they are not made for the road. But specifically for the Mining Industry, Farming and the Military – you can read more about it here tomcar.com.au. They are the most versatile all terrain vehicle in the world and I feel like they are about to become pretty famous. They eventually plan to sell the cars on road too – it will be a bit like Hummer (sans negative environmental impact) – a cool car with off road cred’ kinda thing. Anyway – for me it just makes me proud that we’ve got more than web startups happening. It should also remind us that there is an entire underground of ‘other non digital’ startups that we need to welcome into our community to cross fertilise with. More so – merge our skills as part of the startup revolution…. Digital meets physical, or shall we say hardware on steroids!

Tomcar have done all sorts of cool things too – like all their computer systems, bill of materials etc is cloud based (Google Australia even use them as a cloud use case study), cell based manufacturing, everything is outsourced for lean manufacturing, but all done locally. It’s seriously mind blowing. They’ve taken the digital ethic and transposed it into manufacturing.

Australian Government: They also told me the government have never given them 1 cent / handout / or any funding…. while they throw millions to other auto players for zero return and exits from our country! A classic story of our government not having a clue about where to allocate votes which will actually benefit our country, rather than buying votes.

This surprise meeting taught me a few things:

Go to events: you never know who you’ll meet. You might be surprised. Chance meetings and lessons like that never happen while we’re sitting at home watching TV.
Don’t try to network: just talk to who is near you. Listen, learn and remember that one valuable discussion is more worthwhile than a number of cheap handshakes.
Open your mind to the revolution: this re-organisation of capital and society around digital is impacting all forms of commerce. Startups are a symptom of something bigger – the maker revolution is next, new methods of manufacturing and niche products replacing legacy industries. It’s bigger than the web.
Help others: Which is what I tried to do with David and the marketing of Tomcar… given I was so inspired by the company.

Since our chance meeting, I have shared an espresso a few times with David – and he then asked me to join the Tomcar team as member of their advisory board. A pinch hitting CMO if you like – to help them let the world know they’re here. And it is going to be super fun.

The 200 year shift

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I was recently in Perth for and presented at the Agile Perth MeetUp. The presentation I gave was entitled the 200 year shift. It’s a ‘living’ presentation which I’ve been working on for around 7 years – and it explores the end of the industrial era and the transition into a digital age. An age where most every industry is up for grabs as the rules are reinvented and barriers to entry are entirely evaporating.

I was totally thrilled when local UX legend Gary Barber did a live sketch of the concepts I was sharing. As is by séance Gary managed to visualise all my words into exactly what was in my head. He then shared the results on Flickr and posted in his twitter stream. What is amazing is that he did it all live, and some the the pieces I spoke about for a mere minute, and yet he managed to capture the essence. I later found out that he has a habit of creating such cool visuals. A picture of it is below. But before you have a look at it, here is a simple idea:

Next time you are running an event or conference with thought leading ideas: Get Gary on board to draw up some live info graphs for everyone to take home and remember what they learned, to pin on their offices walls, and just appreciate the power of thought and poignant art work.

Nice job Gary – and thanks!

The Moldova connection

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

In what seems like a century ago I built and launched one of the first peer to peer websites – rentoid.com

In order to build the site, I outsourced the coding on a site called oDesk. This site and others of its ilk are a great entrepreneurial equaliser – for they reduce the barriers to entry. Not just in terms of price for the services, but also by allowing non techies gain access to techie services. They also allow eco systems to flourish across international borders. But they have an added benefit… a real benefit which isn’t spoken about all that often.

They facilitate an important cultural exchange.

Meet Vasilii Racovitsa – Pictured below – sharing a meal with me in my home. Doesn’t seem like such a big deal…

… Until you know that I first met Vasilii via oDesk as a freelanc web developer back in 2007. And that Vasilii was born during the cold war in the old USSR in a province called Moldova. [Moldova is now an independent country] While the relationship with Vasilii started as a commercial one, it is much more than that now. In fact, it has been much more than that for many years… he is a dear friend and business confidant for whom I want family and financial success as much as I want it for myself. But I just met him in real life for the first time last week.

Besides the fact that he made my first web play rentoid.com come to life, he also taught me more about technology than anyone else. The truth is that the lower labour rates in Eastern Europe allowed me to arbitrage my way into techie / startup land. But most people falsely believe that lower labour rates in developing economies are a one way street. The the people in developed economies are the only beneficiaries, and that we ‘take advantage’ of those in less developed markets. In truth we’ve both benefitted dramatically. Through my local connections Vasilii now generates more that 50% of his business from Melbourne, a mere 14,854km from Moldova. Which is why he is here. He is here on a large project totally independent of me. A project which dwarfs anything he ever did for me. But it was facilitated through the network I was introduced him to. What’s more interesting is that his business employs more people in Moldova than rentoid ever did here in Melbourne. And his development team now work in every form of coding / language / mobile dev you can think of.

Since he’s been here, it is like hanging out with a long lost relative. He’s just like the guy I used to speak to every day on skype… Which is a great reminder that the on-line and real world should only ever be pre-ambles to each other – seamlessly interchangeable.

I’m keen to introduce him to everyone in our local startup community who likes to meet amazing, smart, helpful people. In the time and multiple projects I’ve worked with him on, he has never once gone over budget and always delivered to spec. Put simply, he keeps his promises.

This week I’ve shipped him into the abode of big Scott Kilmartin, who he has also done some work for. But if you’re keen to offer:

“a bed for beta”

“divan for development”

“a cot for code”

“a hammock for HTML”

…or a simple welcome to someone from our global community, then just let me know.

While the tools this digital revolution have provided us are amazing, it’s the connection to our world that we should be truely thankful for.