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juni 2017

Perfection is the enemy of perfectly good

By | News

What would be the ultimate process to launch a company perfectly? Well this question got swopped out of my head last Thursday during our Startup boot event, because I have learned that ‘Perfection is the enemy of perfectly good’.

I guess that I still haven’t figured out what it means exactly, but when you think about it there’s a certain truth to it. Perfection is when everything is flawless and could not get any better. When something is perfectly good, it is good! Something good can always be better. So, thriving for the perfectly good instead of perfection makes you able to keep growing your company by keep making it better. But for starters: Good enough is good enough.

But, how else can you prevent a failure? In a previous blog, we discussed how failure is the road to success. This is definitely the truth. You can even find your success in your failure. Does this mean that you should not try to prevent as many failures as you can though? Of course not! There are a lot of things to prevent a failure, doing your research and having a plan for starters. ‘Failing to plan is the same as planning a fail’. The second learning to catch me off guard. Off course, you need to be bold, take a risk and jump in the deep sometimes to reach your goals. Still the greater goal behind these jumps can be planned.

And what to do when things do actually go well? What if you are on your way to achieve your goals: your product is launched, it has over 10.000 users and you receive a lot of media attention? Keep in mind that things can always change (for the good and the bad). We have been told how the process of becoming a successful company, can actually cost the founders their success or even their company. In this case, the investor ended up owning 50% of the company, the vision had changed and with that, the motivation of the founders dropped. This resulted into a ‘worst case scenario’ where the founders decided to quit the company. The big lesson here is not only to keep an investor from owning half of your company, but to make sure you are prepared for anything, keep your motivation in place and be able to react quickly as an entrepreneur.

These were three learning goals taught to us by Maarten Boer, Jeroen Malotaux and Rik van Dijk during our Startup boot BBQ event at Eenvoud Media. The subject of the event was about launching a business or product, experiencing failures and turning those into success. There was one important lesson our speakers all agreed on: FOCUS!

To turn launches and failures into a success, you need a lot of things of course. Think about the product itself, a budget, a marketing plan, people and so on, but none of these things matter as long as you and your organization do not have focus. In order to make it all happen, you need to see the bigger picture and be able to focus on the important things to make your goals happen. Make sure to focus on growth and balance, not the golden ticket and you’ll find yourself achieving you finest dreams.

How to get funding

By | News

For a lot of start-ups, creating an innovative idea is not the problem: it is collecting money to execute the idea. Fortunately, there are a lot of creative ways to do so. Sander Waterval has got a lot of experience in the matter, since he executed a lot of his expansive ideas.

Right now, Sander is working on one of his dream projects, the Wikkelboat, on which we have actually organized a barbeque last night after a cruise with Ronald Scholtus on one of the boats of Rotterdamishot. The Wikkelboat project is due in two weeks from now. It’s the first Wikkelboat ever to be made and will be located at the also to be expanded harbour ‘ The Red Apple Marina’ in Rotterdam. This project costs a lot of money as you can imagine and so, you need to be a bit creative funding it:

  • By involving your suppliers and partly paying them after delivery. When the project is done, the Wikkelboat will create turnover because it will be rented out. This money can be used to pay off the suppliers;
  • By involving your clients and let them pay on forehand with an interesting discount;
  • Get some extra cash by leveraging this by the bank;
  • Check for possibilities to get some subsidies.

When going on board with investors, there are some things to keep in mind. The most important lesson of today if you ask me, was to make sure that you are still the chief of your company after the investments. If the investor pays for most of your company, they have a lot of rights to make big decisions as well. Because of this and because quite a few investors do not like to take risks on their own in an early stage startup, it’s a good idea to match investors to fund the company.

After finding the right investor(s) for your company, always make sure you do your research on them and make sure that when they do research on you, which they will, your story will be good! Your story should be the one that makes them go on board with you and the idea of your company should be clear and unique. Doing research about them might seem a bit out of the ordinary, but when you promise someone to spend the rest of your life with them, you want to know them first right? Well guess what… when you choose your investors, you will spend your business life with them! You can ask around for information about the investor in your own network or find someone the investor has worked with or invested in already. Make sure the ideas and goals your investor has, are the same as yours.

Most (angel)investors know each other and are willing to invest in your company together. Know this: they will nog arrange this for you! Be on top of it and make sure to find the right mix of investors for your company.