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How To Make A Startup Community Grow And Become More Inclusive

There’s tons of events in the Barcelona startup ecosystem, you can find all the itnig events here.

Everyone that works in startups desire a strong, growing and inclusive community. It’s something everyone benefit from, founders, VC’s, developers, marketers, the list goes on.

How you perceive a community often depend on if you’re a local or not. In Barcelona the startup community is a good mix of both Spanish people and expats from all over the world, which is a great thing.

I’ve been a member of the startup community in the city for well over a year now, and I’ve been impressed by how inclusive and fast-growing it is. To help me analyze why and how the ecosystem has been growing, I spoke to a local expert.

Want to go fast or far?

Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit is the CEO and founder of MarsBased, director of Startup Grind Barcelona, and the man behind the Slack group StartupBCN. As a local, he’s seen the community grow fast for the last years, and have recognized a clear difference between certain companies:

Some companies fail to understand that an ecosystem is a perfect sum of the actors that contribute. Go alone if you want to go fast, go accompanied if you want to go far, as the African proverb says.

Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit at Startupgrind’s two year anniversary in Barcelona this year.

Even though tech startups is dependent and built by developers, it’s important that all events isn’t exclusively for this group. Bacardit says entry-level events are key in building and growing a community:

Events provided by new startups or even public administration, where you get free non-technical content, not using acronyms or tech-jargon so people can start soaking the startup vibe and culture without feeling lost.

Too many “rockstars”

As Brad Feld wrote in the well-known book “Startup communities”, inclusion doesn’t just mean to invite as many of the people you think will fit into the community, it actually means everyone, according to Feld:

“Welcome everyone to the startup community. Everyone should have the perspective that having more people engaged is good for the startup community.”

Wise, experienced startup founders are essential in all communities that want to grow, but it’s important to not forget the youngest group of the ecosystem.

Young people who’s hungry for experience with their whole life ahead of them, and with“nothing to lose”, can be an incredible resource to a growing (or a stagnant) community. They’re often not limited by the same things as older, more experienced members of the ecosystem can be. Limited time, money, pride, are things young people more rarely have, and make them more free to be active and engaged.

Bacardit explains that even though the Barcelona ecosystem is getting better every year, there’s still too many older “rockstars”.

There is an established “startup mafia” which is everywhere, pulling the strings of the community. If you’re not friends with them, you won’t make it. The biggest pitfall is the conquer-all attitude of some companies that try to gain foothold within the community without caring about other companies.

The founder believes giving before getting, is the key to growth.

An inclusive startup community is where being a competitor does not matter. At this level, companies should partner more often than not, even if they’re competitors.

He continues:

If even Microsoft and Google or Apple partner from time to time, why shouldn’t startups?

Build something that lasts

In Barcelona we’re very lucky to have an extremely strong city brand, but not all cities have the world’s best football team, and millions of people coming to visit every year. If you don’t have a strong identity, it’s easy to start drawing lines to other places that have fostered world-famous entrepreneurs.

You often hear that cities brand themselves as the Silicon Valley of this or that, but if you want your startup community to develop in a healthy way and be a reference to other communities, I think it’s important to stay true to who you are.

For instance to call Barcelona the Silicon Valley of southern Europe would look good as a title in news articles, and create a bit of buzz, but to base your brand on your own talent and success is something that will last much longer, even though it takes more time and effort.

So if you’re part of a startup or a tech company you now know some of the things you should, and shouldn’t do. And Bacardit has one last encouragement to you:

I believe most companies should host an event or two a year just to learn what it can bring them, and how difficult it is. It’s a nice way to pay the community back.

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

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GymForLess Will Now Let You Work Out Across Borders

CEO Oriol Vinzia checking up with his team at their Poble Nou offices.

The Barcelona-based startup will in October launch new features to their product, and let people work out across borders in both Spain, France and Italy. This was a natural move for the startup that recently have grown a lot in the B2B market, says CEO Oriol Vinzia:

We work with international companies that have workers that travel a lot. If you live in Barcelona, but work a lot from Paris, you’ll be able to choose amongst hundreds of gyms in both cities with our programs.

The itnig company recently closed a bridge round of €160.000 to keep focusing on their technology, as they’re planning on closing an A-round in the beginning of 2017 explains Vinzia:

We’re aiming for a round of €1 million or more, so we’ll start approaching investors from October.

2017 will be the year people talk about the disruption of gyms

At least that’s what CEO Vinzia think is coming as one of the big industries of disruption next year.

There are several big online gym marketplaces that are growing, and we’re the biggest one in southern Europe. I think the industry we’ll read a lot about the next year, is the disruption and digitalization of gym-services.

Brazilian competitor Gympass recently landed in Spain, but they’re only focusing on the B2B market, says Vinzia.

We’ve already established a strong B2C market of thousands of users, and we’ve recently seen great growth in our B2B market. Our challenge now is to find the perfect balance for our focus on the two markets.

Crossing the million mark

GymForLess offers three different programs that gives you access to hundreds of gyms. Here’s the map of Barcelona.

GymForLess had a turnover of €350.000 last year, and expects a turnover of €1 million by 2016, according to the CEO:

By 2017 we’re predicting a turnover of €2.5 million.

The company will now focus heavily on their tech product. With over 100.000 active users on their app they aim to add additional features that goes beyond working out and locating a gym.

We want to add personal trainers, possibly a marketplace to buy gym clothes, but also to add a social layer between the clubbers, so friends can challenge each other, and compare results from their exercises.

CEO Vinzia also adds that they’re looking into possibilities with connecting the app to pulse watches and other devices.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.