Author: Itnig Startup Ecosystem

Technology

Hacker Bootcamps VS. Universities: What to choose and what's in it for the future?

Sep 16, 2016 by Itnig Startup Ecosystem 0 Comments , , , ,

Hacker schools or bootcamps are getting more and more popular. You’ll learn a programming language in 2–3 months, and you’re more or less guarantied a full-time well paying job.

If you compare this to signing up to a four-year degree at a University and getting tons of study loan, the short-cut through a hacker school is obviously tempting.

But what are the incentives to attend university, and does a “degree” from a hacker school limit you in any way?

We asked the experts.

“If you want to work go to a hacker school, if you want to work at Google, go to University”

The big pro about hacker schools is obviously that the distance from the school to work is a lot shorter, but is a person well prepared to work in a startup after graduating from a 2–3 months program?

“You can not become a CTO with just a bootcamp experience!” (Marc Alier, UPC)

CEO and co-founder at Codeworks a Barcelona bootcamp, Alessandro Zanardi, acknowledge that universities are vital for training specialists in more complex computer science areas:

We need engineers that have stronger theoretical experience. If you’re dealing with big data or artificial intelligence you need developers that have a university degree. If you want to work at Google with AI, get a Ph.D.

The university problem

Marc Collado is director at Iron Hack Barcelona, a bootcamp that also have campuses in Miami and Madrid. Even though Collado now represents a bootcamp, he himself went through a five-year University program at IQS:

The universities are too embedded in society. At Iron Hack we analyze the job market, and work towards creating a program that actually helps businesses hire a much needed workforce, and gets people into jobs.

Ludo (Marc Alier) hopes universities change the way they treat their professors and teachers, and agrees with the bootcamp hackers that there is a lot to be improved with the institution stretching thousands of years back:

The problem with University is that the professors are incentivized to be researchers, not to be good teachers. You get promoted if you’re good researcher, not if you have experience from tech companies or do a great job as a teacher.

Bootcamps do not build CTO’s

Professor Alier is grateful that bootcamps fill a whole and a demand in the market, but he wants to make one thing very clear:

I have seen examples where people have finished bootcamps, and they’re told that they can start a company. I’ll tell you this, they always screw up, always!

He continues:

You can not become a CTO with just a bootcamp experience!

Zanardi at Codeworks does not like the negativity towards the concept of screwing up:

This is a classic example of the difference between bootcamp mentality and university mentality. The best people from all sectors and industries are people that know what it’s like to fail hard.

Also Iron Hack’s Collado weighs in on the CTO statement:

A CTO needs more soft skills than hard skills, it’s about experience, recruiting, mentoring, but yes of course the guy needs to be technical, that’s for sure.

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The post/video/podcast was produced by Sindre Hopland & Masumi Mutsuda, the itnig media team.

https://goo.gl/forms/gBIKRZP0fnqmaFda2

Startups

How to write a press-release journalists actually want to read

Sep 9, 2016 by Itnig Startup Ecosystem 0 Comments , , ,
One of our hard thinkers at itnig.

All entrepreneurs believe in their product, even those who maybe shouldn’t, and that’s great. But how to get journalists to believe in what you’re building?

I’ll give you some tips on how to let your press-release stand out amongst the thousands of developers that hope get their startup presented in the media.

As a journalist both at regular newspapers and for tech blogs, I got tons of press-releases every day. Some were good, others were horrible, and a few were really great.

It’s not given that these guidelines will guaranty that a tech blog picks up your product, but it will dramatically enhance your chance of “being discovered”, if you didn’t do any of these things in your earlier press-releases.

Remember that before your product has any market validation, you and your team are the product. Who are your team-members, what have they done before, and why will your team work well together, are all questions you need to answer.

Tell your story (briefly, not from birth). If something special in your life has led you to start your company, this is important to express. Journalists love a good story, and people do too. A good concrete example is Ryan Green who made the computer game That Dragon, Cancer, to help people confront cancer. He did so after his son was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of four. Not all stories are that powerful, it can be any kind of story, but if there’s a personal motivation for your startup, share it.

Multimedia is key. Present good pictures of you and your team, and the product your building, as well as the interface of your app, or the design of your website. If you make a video or a GIF, that’s even better. This is a great example from Amity, a messaging app.

Journalists are lazy/busy (depends who you ask). But one thing is for sure, it will help you a lot if your write finished quotes, so the writer can copy-paste the lines into the article, and doesn’t need to contact you. Make a team-member interview you, and answer the key questions about your project. The vision, the market, the product, etc.

Be exclusive. Obviously, you want to get your product in front of as many eyes as possible, but being a bit exclusive can actually help you a lot. Journalists wants to be the first to publish the story, in that way, other outlets need to reference to them in their stories. If you have a particular news outlet you prefer, send it to a journalist, and tell her that she is getting the story exclusively until tomorrow, when you’re sending it to the whole list.

For those of you that didn’t read the whole article, and just scrolled down to see if there’s a summary, here it goes (but you should read the whole thing):

Remember that you are the most important product, present your team.

Connect your own story with the story of the company.

Good pictures and videos/GIF’s of your product & team are key.

Write quotes, so the writer don’t have to track you down.

Give your favorite news outlet exclusive access to the press-release one day before everyone else, let them feel important (because they are..).

If you have any tips that worked for you, feel free to comment under.

We had Jeremiah Gardner visiting this fall talking about Value Creation. He made a lot of good points on creating a company journalists (and everyone else) actually cares about:

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This post was written by Sindre Hopland, media & brand manager at itnig.

Startups

How important is networking for your startup? (Isn’t hard work enough?)

Sep 2, 2016 by Itnig Startup Ecosystem 0 Comments , , , ,
Some of our hard-working people at itnig.

If you’re running a startup, or working in one, you probably know how much work it takes to build a brand new product from scratch. It’s not unlikely that you’re reading this post by your desk at 10pm, just because you needed a break from your sweaty keyboard.

But no matter how much and how hard you work, it’s not enough. At least that’s what some experts claim.

Most humans are social creatures, and even though the tech world is built by developers (not famous for being super keen on networking), the startup industry arranges more networking events than most other industries.

In Barcelona you can go to several events every night if you have time.

Is hard work enough?

As I’ve worked as a journalist, meeting founders and entrepreneurs every week the last year, I’ve been asking several of them why I haven’t seen them at tech events before?

The answer is usually:

“We’re busy working, I don’t have time to attend events and drink beers several times every week.”

It’s a valid point. Nine out of ten startups fail, so working day and night makes perfect sense.

I went to cover a startup competition for a major European tech blog earlier this year. After tough competition between some of Spain’s best performing startups, one of them were crowned the winner. Me and my college were surprised that we hadn’t heard of the company before, and asked them how they went beneath our radar. The founders told us:

“We usually never go to events. We actually signed up for this competition almost by accident.”

This made me wonder how many other great startups go under the radar, missing out on important exposure because they’re too busy working (too hard?).

Another example is the founder of Tradesy’s, Tracy DiNunzio, who says she thinks too many founders are wasting time going to tech events:

When I was bootstrapping through Tradesy’s first two years, I never attended events. Instead, I stayed focused (obsessed, really) on improving our product and technology. I was glued to the computer for 17 hours a day.

Building a network

It’s clear that networking is important, but it’s probably also true that many entrepreneurs would benefit more from working, than from sipping beer at tech events every other night.

To some people networking is the most natural thing to do, the ones that have the gift of speaking to anyone, anywhere about anything (or nothing). To them it’s like breathing.

For others it’s more about building a network, doing a job, rather than talking to a massive amount of people. And to some people, a small group, it’s torture.

But no matter what group you belong to, as long as your startup is being built, you’re the product. Before you have users, customers, a physical product, or any metrics at all, you and your team are the only thing representing your startup.

Connections are key, and good advice are extremely valuable, especially from people with experience from your own industry. But tech connections are not necessarily found through going to events.

It’s about being present, and especially talking to the right people. It does not have to be at tech events, but any place you can meet people caring about the product your startup is building.

Connecting to people via mail (or social media etc.) can be just as good as going to an event. Mark Suster made a good Snapstorm on how to send email intros, because there are mistakes to be made.

To sum it up:

Growing a solid network of people in your startup ecosystem can never go wrong, not to think about the vital support you can provide to other entrepreneurs building their respective upstarts.

But hard work is still as crucial as it always has been. Just because there is an event every night with great headliners and interesting topics, does not mean you have to attend.

Tech events are often a blast, and networking is good, but not for the sake of networking itself. Going to events will rarely create more value than a well-functioning team can accomplish in the same amount of time.

However building a network and providing value for your ecosystem is guaranteed to benefit both you and your startup. Just don’t do it on the expense of your startup.

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This post is written by Sindre Hopland, Media Manager at itnig.

Startups

itnig exclusive: Talking with Olapic founder Pau Sabria after the $130 mill acquistion

Aug 15, 2016 by Itnig Startup Ecosystem 0 Comments , , , ,
Pau Sabria from Barcelona co-founded Olapic which recently was sold to Monotype.

A couple of weeks ago Olapic was acquired by Monotype for $130 million.

For those of you that don’t know Olapic, is a startup that helps brands promote themselves with user-generated photos. Even though it’s not a registered Spanish company, the founders; Pau Sabria, Jose de Cabo and Luis Sanz, are all Spanish.

We sat down for a chat with Pau, which was quite relieved after the acquisition was final.

My co-founders and I are very excited about the next chapter for Olapic. It has been an amazing six years for us. At one point early on, we had a make-it-or-break-it moment, so to have come this far is quite satisfying.

Looking back, the three founders could not have chosen a better time to launch a user-generated photos startup.

We launched before Instagram even existed, so we really did not know what was in store for us. We were looking for a way to share photos after attending to a friend’s wedding. Fast-forward six years and we have shifted the way global marketing organizations are interacting with consumers and are influencing hundred of millions of transactions.

Not done with Olapic

None of the three founders are leaving Olapic after the acquistion.

We’re all staying on board to continue to build out the Olapic platform and to affect change in the marketing industry with the use of consumer-generated imagery. We are entering a new era of more authenticity in marketing and look forward to the next few years.

The three Olapic co-founders (From right to left) — Luis Sanz, Jose de Cabo, Pau Sabria.

He explains that there has been many sleepless nights, long days, endless travel and tough choices in the last years, and expects more of the same in the years to come as well.

An entrepreneur’s work is never done!

In total Olapic has raised around $21 million in funding since launching.

Apart from working day and night with Olapic, Pau recently got engaged, and will spend a fair amount of time planning the wedding.

Keeping an eye on Spain

Olapic is based out of New York, but Pau is always keeping an eye open for Spanish startups.

It’s always interesting to see how the business environment is growing and evolving in Spain. My family is still there and all of my siblings are also entrepreneurs, it’s in our family blood, so I do like to know what’s happening.

He thinks the biggest difference between Spain and the US is the rapid pace.

Being based in New York, I can say there is an intensity and a deep drive to create new things at a rapid pace. As Spaniards with a broader worldview, being based here allowed us to expand rapidly into Europe and build a global business.

Pau is confident that Monotype will develop Olapic and help the company to expand even further in the future.

Monotype will be able to expose Olapic to creative agencies, creative directors and designers who are increasingly looking at how to include user-generated content as part of the design mix.

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(Written by Sindre Hopland)

Fund

Parkimeter Closed €250.000 To Make Sure You Never Have To Look For A Parking Spot Again

Jul 17, 2016 by Itnig Startup Ecosystem 0 Comments , , , ,
Never look for a parking spot for your car again with Parkimeter.

The itnig startup Parkimeter recently closed a new seed round of €250.000 to consolidate their market leadership in Spain, and to develop their product.

Parkimeter’s technology lets you book and pay for parking, in most big Spanish cities, but also many smaller towns around the country.

This is the second seed round for the startup that plan to raise another bigger round by the beginning of next year.

The two co-founders of Parkimeter, Jordi Badal (CEO) and Ferran Gatius (COO).

The Barcelona-based company have established a presence in more than 80 locations in Spain and will reach 500 car parks by the end of 2016.

50.000 parked cars

The latest round of funding was led by local business angels and will let Parkimeter continue to expand their network of locations.

Since its launch back in July 2013, the startup have parked a total of 50.000 cars.

With your phone through their app you can easily choose where and what kind of parking you want, either by price, location or additional services.

It’s also convenient for corporate parking and for freelancers, as you every month can receive a single invoice with all parkings made and unbundled VAT.

According to the company, there is a lot to save on using the Parkimeter, instead of normal parking. In some cases you can save up to 50 percent using Parkimeter.

Parking changed by technology

Parkimeter serves customers in eight different languages. It’s mostly Spanish users right now, but they also have international drivers using the service.

The parking sector has remained traditional, and almost unaffected by the huge digital transition most industries has been adapting to the last decade.

One of the founders Jordi Badal thinks the sector will be drastically changed by technology over the next years:

“How parking has been changed through technology, is similar to how the travel sector was disrupted 15 years ago.”

Parkimeter is also developing a brand new app, to make the process of finding, reserving and paying for parking even easier.

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