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This is a small report on some things that we have learned to be very
important in the process of becoming an entrepreneur, although
I think there are more parts to follow since one thing we learned was
that we don’t know enough.

We applied to the Seedcamp week and were initially not invited to the
shortlist interviews, we were told that we were a “reserve team”, so
here’s where we needed what we think of as the number one quality of
an entrepreneur :

1. Tenaciousness
Yes, that’s it, most of the time nobody but you will be able to
SEE YOUR VISION and nobody will camp in front of your door to listen to your pitch, give you money or become your partner or customer, so GO AFTER THEM, CALL THEM, MAIL THEM, just DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO to get to where you want to go.

So we booked anyway and at the same time wrote the Seedcamp crew that they have to reconsider and listen to us!
We even thought about doing it Shaolin-monk-style, just going to the temple and waiting in front of it until they let us in.

Another attribute of entrepreneurs is:

2. Flexibility
If things don’t go according to your plan or your wishes, react and make
alternative plans. This is also what the first law of cybernetics says:
“The unit within the system with the most behavioral responses
available to it, controls the system.”

So we made some alternative plans and appointments in case we weren’t
invited. But 36 hours before the interviews we got a mail saying that they
found a slot for us and if we could be in London for the interview.
So we went there, our presentation was at the end of the day and I think
we woke them up which was good enough to get us invited to the
Seedcamp week.

During the Seedcamp week, everyday we learned something new which
we consider to be fundamental:
First day:
3. Focus
The guys from Pollenizer made us realize that focusing on one particular
market and a particular problem is the first step to conquering all markets
and solving all problems. If you’re like us, you probably start with a great
vision and how you want things to be in three years, but you have to come
up with a way to get there which we thought we already had but you can
always break it down into tinier fragments and more specific tasks
and strategies –> laser-like focus
Second day:
4. Entrepreneurship is an experimental science
Eric Ries pointed out that as a mathematician I use deductive reasoning to
solve problems or find answers but that that is not the way to run businesses,
entrepreneurship is an experimental science and therefore much more about
doing little experiments i.e. getting to know your customers, trying out different
features and then correcting the course according to the outcome and
factual evidence rather than deductively constructing chains of reasoning.
Third day:
5. Find important metrics:
To find out if your experiments worked or if you are making progress, find metrics
to measure whether your actions helped you advance in the right direction.
This also helps you clarify your goals because it forces you to come up with
quantifyable entities that correlate to your goals.
Fourth day:
6. Business is a little like war
The very insightful Fred Destin said to us that we have to devise a battle plan.
So business may be a lot like war, meaning that you have to identify your
competition, devise a strategy on how to conquer the market,
and then just execute it.

So to sum up the whole week in one word: AMAZING!!
We really learned AMAZINGLY much, met some AMAZING people and will
make the most of this experience by becoming an AMAZING company.

Thank you Seedcamp, Saul, Reshma, Alasdair, Stephanie, John and Mirwais,
and as we wrote in our “reserve-team”-reply, YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!!!