“The way to learn how to do it is just to do it” Paul Graham

I worked my way through the first three weeks at the University of Reykjavik and I probably understand much better what studying really means for me now compared to the last 3 semester back at my university in Berlin. 

That doesn’t mean that I wasted any minute in my life or regret (almost) any decision. I will turn 25 next month, I’m in the second year of my Bachelor’s, I took around 1,5 years off before I got to the point to decide to start studying. And that’s what life is about, doing things you’ve never done before, making these unique experiences, building up your own vision of life and setting up all the adjustments to CHANGE the world to a better place.

So far so good, but how does that fit to a startup?

Let’s reflect the last couple of weeks to see what I’ve learned about startups so far and why I chose this obvious quote this time… 

“No school can teach you to be a good CEO.” 

Bala Kamallakharan

Of course a uni can teach you stuff like Management, Leadership or even Marketing and techniques how to become  what you want, but just listening to that doesn’t turn you into a good entrepreneur. What really matters is your enthusiasm, your faith in your idea, because that is what keeps you motivated and convinces investors and founders to join your startup. The 6 counter-intuitive beliefs about startups Bala mentioned, based on Paul Grahams’ talk a year ago in Stanford University, emphasize what I mean:  

#1 Startups are weird , don’t follow your instinct

#2 You don’t need expertise in startups to succeed

#3 Gaming the system in startups doesn’t work

#4 Startups are all-consuming

#5 You can’t tell if you succeed doing a startup

#6 Don’t consciously think of startup ideas to do a startup

Well, my conclusion out of the first part of the lecture and the last couple of weeks is that this fast growing business model is something special. Everybody can do it, but not everybody will do it the right way because there is no right way. There is a little guidance available and there might be a few people who are willing to support and join you. Nevertheless, to draw attention to your idea and your team you have to bring the idea to life and start talking to the people and networking.

“SomethingVentured” - the documentary film about the evolvement of the venture capitalism in the mid-20^th Century was a matching second part of the third lecture. It showed us how everything started. In this highly risky business, the focus is not on the money, it’s rather on whether the entrepreneur is able to lead a startup and reach his vision by using Venture Capitalists as mentors and experts as well as their business networks. For instance, many VCs didn’t see the capability of Apple (or Airbnb and Uber) as a unicorn and neglected to support Apple as a startup in their early ages. Now they are surprised at Apple’s success and regret not having invested in the first place.

Quote of the movie from Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari) about an investment in Apple:

“He asked me if I would put $50,000 in and he would give me a third of the company. I was so smart, I said no. Big mistake! “ 

So it’s up to you if you wanna call it a mistake or learning for the future.

Like Professor Dave Valliere mentioned in the book "Startup Opportunities":

"... that most VC have a one to ten chance that investments become successful.  But most VC investors are unable to learn from it because they are caught in their own over-confidence."

Again, life is about making these experiences, going a rocky path includes detours towards the summit. This Reykjavik street art I discovered the other day visualizes the long and tough way to the summit very well.

„If you wanna run a startup, run a marathon!“ Bala Kamallakharan

Well, before I will review the last lecture of ‘How to Start a Startup’, I would like to give you the opportunity to gain insight into the presentation and skype interview with Sean Wise from the first lecture.

We started the lecture with the question ‘Why to start a startup?’. To be clear from the outset, this isn’t the best choice for work life balance. A startup means a lot of work, especially for the CEO.

Making money and being your own boss with flexible leisure time sounds good to you? Then forget about the idea of a startup! You have not just a night dream about how to change the future, it also keeps you awake during the night. So start your startup now and make something people love!

The idea of running a marathon is actually absurd . I mean you start with hundreds or even thousands of people at point A and run 42.195 kilometers to point B, what for?

Of course, for some people it’s about the competition: Who’s the first? Who runs the most marathons? And who gets the fame and the honour? For others it’s more about the experience and reaching their personal goal, but many of them run the marathon for the first time and they might get addicted as well.  Furthermore it’s time-consuming and you are a ‘slave’ of your own mind. Nevertheless, that’s also what keeps you motivated, because you wanna get through this challenge.

There we got the commonality with an entrepreneur! On my last post, I already wrote about 2 out of the 4 most important areas to maximize the success of a startup. The third one is EXECUTION! For the marathon runner I would say start running, same for the entrepreneur. But it’s not just about starting, it’s more important how to do it. You’ll never reach point B, the 42 kilometers if you just keep running straight forward. There are two key question you should always ask yourself to follow your strategy: 

“One, can you figure out what to do and two, can you get it done”

 Sam Altman

Regarding "what to do", you should know the execution. But even more interesting is the part "can you get it done". During the lecture we talked quite a while about this topic and Bala figured out two main points: Focus & Intensity!

Focus on your goals: For your job it is the same like when you do sports. You will have to repeat them over and over again, so that they get settled in your and your running buddy's or employee's mind. In addition, a startup is running on an extremely high intensity level during a certain time. If you can’t run on this level, you are not ready for the marathon yet. 

To put it in a nutshell, if your business is not growing it is going to die!

To complete the four areas, the last point is the ‘TEAM’– including investors, founders and employees. Actually the most important question for all 3 categories is:

“Are they smart enough to get things done, so that I would like spend time with these people?”

Sounds pretty easy - I mean would you choose someone being your friend if you even don’t know him/her? Of course not. You would start talking and communicating until you know the person. Same in business - Make sure that you know the people who are willing to join your startup.

“That’s probably why school or uni is one of the best places on earth to find a co-founder!”

Bala Kamallakharan

To sum it up, what I’ve learned so far in 'How to Start a Startup': You’ve got an idea on your mind which keeps you awake during the night? You figured out a product which people will love? You sold your story and your vision to at least two investors who are willing to support your startup and you convinced 2 to 3 co-founders who are able to keep focusing under extreme pressure to reach the goal of your startup? 

“So guess what? Launch your unicorn, because Life isn't a lottery ticket!”

"You can do anything if you have enthusiasm." Henry Ford

How to start a Startup!
That was one of my first courses at the Reykjavik University. Before I'm going to talk about the first lecture I would like to use the opportunity to give you an understanding of why I chose this course.

Let's start with the name 'Startup': you hear this word so many times a day, you find articles about startups in every newspaper and almost every magazine. It seems like everybody is just talking about this type of company, but what makes the startup scene so special and why is there such a big hype about this fast growing business model. Well, to be perfectly honest we had these kinds of rapidly growing 'bubbles' already a few times and the last crash just happened 7 years ago here in Iceland...

But the topic startup keeps on going, year by year. It doesn't matter from which country you are, even smaller countries or developing countries, you will always hear and read something about the startup scene all over the world and even after crises.

So what I'm expecting from the course and our group project for the next upcoming months is: How does a Startup work? Why is not every company supposed to be a startup? How to handle all the business ideas in my mind? How to develop a strategy? How to attract venture capital and get money from other people for my business? And finally how to get 'rich' (on experience of course)?

So quiet a lot of things which are already on my mind, but let's review the first lecture with Bala Kamallakharan.
The course is based on 3 books, which are required for us to read:
1) Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
2) The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
3 ) Startup Opportunities: Know When to Quit Your Day Job

The first book is from Peter Thiel, who is born in Frankfurt -GER- he lives in the US now. Quiet a big name in the startup business, you should probably know him as one of the first investors in facebook, he co-founded PayPal and manages a VC fund now.

The third book was written by Sean Wise, a professor of entrepreneurship. Impressive thing that Bala got him for a skype session during our first lecture for around 45 minutes. He talked about his book, how the entrepreneurship became part of his life and his family and how he deals with that now, he gave us some unique recommendations and we were able to ask a bunch of questions.

Furthermore we talked about the definition of a startup and entrepreneurship, Bala made the lecture interactive and asked many questions about what we already know about startups and gave us the opportunity to help forming the course which makes it even more interesting. We also talked about 2 out of the 4 most important areas, like if you do really well in these chances are good that you will be successful.

The time just flew by and at the end we started finding our groups for the project which is probably going to be an adventure for the next couple of month, but now I'm looking really forward starting my first startup.

#1lecture #HtsaS #RU

http://startupiceland.com/2015/08/21/how-to-start-a-startup-lecture-1/