from Ballou PR Public Relations is not easy to master when you’re doing your startup. Yes, you’d like to get press coverage. But you don’t know how to handle it and how to get in the mind of the journalist you try to attract attention. In one sentence: you don’t know how to hack public relations. There are many public relations agencies out there, but most don’t tell entrepreneurs they shouldn’t hire a PR firm before raising a proper Serie A financing round. But so does Colette Ballou, a PR expert active for startups in a European level (with offices in London, Paris and Berlin) and who provides mentoring at famous startup accelerators like TechStars, Seedcamp and 500startups. Colette hosted a workshop at NEXT Berlin 2013 (study and bookmark the Slideshare presentation above!), extremely insightful and with directly actionable advices. …
Berlin startup hotspots
As you already probably know, the two biggest startup scenes in Europe are London and Berlin. The last one is growing. And making extremely good progress to catch up. I’ve published some thoughts and facts about London some weeks ago. As well as you often hear about the European startup capitals, you often don’t know where to go to get the pulse of the scene. Here are the two hotspots I’ve discovered and visited during my trip in Berlin: Sankt Oberholz and Betahaus (if you know other places, please comment!). These place are 2 co-working places, but are basically…restaurants for the public side. Seems strange, no? Is there a place like this in Switzerland now? Nope. Or at least I don’t currently know! You can simply come there, benefit from a free wifi and that’s it. Sure, they also have …
One week left to Next Berlin!
We are getting closer to NEXT Berlin, happening next Tuesday & Wednesday. Program of the conference has just been released (discover it) and… it looks really exciting! For keynotes to workshops, actionable content and advices are key. The only problem I see: I cannot duplicate myself! The conference has now selected the NEXT100 Top Influencers of the Digital Industry in 2013 (remember my post back in February). Two Swiss entrepreneurs have make it, even in the Top40! Samuel Müller, founder of mobile barcode scanning company Scandit. Dominik Grolimund, serial entrepreneur who has, to date, already founded and sold 2 startups: Wuala and Silp. Big applause to Samuel and Dominik, who deserve it! I’m happy to have suggested and registered these 2 smart guys to NEXT100. If you have once the opportunity to grab a coffee with them… seize it, you won’t …
A unique chance to network with top media executives
Did you know that one of the biggest media event of the world will happen in Lausanne area end of April? As well as I know that there are many things that I don’t know, this event hasn’t reached my ears… until Eileen asked me if I was interested to attend as an official blogger! Of course, it has directly excited my curiosity. And what I’ve discovered is that it seems to be a MUST-attend event, at least for everyone active in the media and brands industry! Main objective of Festival of Media Global, taking place from 28th to 30th of April 2013 in Montreux, is to bring together professionals of media trading (which is the art of buying and optimizing advertising spaces). And to show what’s next in the brand communications industry… so, something where media startups can easily fit! Event …
A new opportunity to pitch your startup in Lausanne!
In Switzerland, many people think you have (too) many opportunities to pitch your startup. A recurring comment I’ve been hearing for a while is that there are not enough valuable/promising startups… I can only disagree to this! If the condition for a valuable startup is to be enrolled in CTI Startup program or beeing a spin-off from ETHZ or EPFL, yes, it’s probably right. But in Switzerland, too much emphasis is put on startups coming from academia (that could be the topic of another post!). My opinion is that you neither need to be from a technology institute nor part of the CTI Startup program to be successful, at least when you’re moving in the web and mobile space. Here, you mostly don’t need patents to protect your innovations. What make the difference for web and mobile startup is EXECUTION …
You’ll fail… so what?
If you’re planning to start a business, you probably know that the odds are big that you’ll fail your venture. Or if you don’t know it, wake up. There are many smart guys out there who did many things right and finally failed their startup. You’ve probably heard about these statistics: on 10 investments, only one will be a big success, 2-3 will reimburse the investment and all the other ones will be worthless. What can be scary is that it only takes into account the funded startups. But how many get financing? One on ten? If we take these (probably wrong) numbers as a basis to evaluate your success chance, we can assume that you have a 3-4% of beeing financially OK with the company you’re putting in so many efforts. OK, here, I’m consciously neglecting lifestyle business (you’re …
Where to get the skills you need for your startup journey
It is (or it should be) common sense that the team is what matters the most in a startup. And its ability to execute. Because if you have a rockstars team which fails to work together, well… It doesn’t bring the venture anywhere! You can be extremely competent in sales or in UX or in software development. But starting is a business is often tricky. You have suddenly many things to learn on the go, alongside working on your product. And no time. Yes, no time. The scarcest resource for startup entrepreneurs is T-I-M-E (well, money comes second and is really close, of course). As an entrepreneur, you only have “priority 1 tasks”… and everything seems urgent. Scaring? But so exciting, too! How do you get the skills you need as quickly as possible? Yeah, you can read blogs and …
It’s time to plan your trip… to Berlin!
We are already only 28 days away from NEXT BERLIN 2013… which is special for me, as it was the first conference I attended as a blogger, last year! Next is one of the leading European tech conferences, and probably the biggest in Germany. The conference’s main theme is, as you’ve already guessed with it’s name, “what’s next?”. Many technology and business trends will be discussed there. As well as there are some similarities with LiftConference (which is more about disrupting innovations), the main point of Next Berlin is: START-UP! Theme of the 2013 edition is “Here be dragons”, a phrase used to denote dangerous or unexplored territories, like in the medieval practice (where people put sea serpents and other mythological creatures in uncharted areas of maps). The digital map for the future will be discussed, that is, topics and …