Arengufondi blogi: Founder Institute: Week 1

After months of preparation it is finally happening - Founder Institute is up and running. The reason why accelerators are called accelerators is because they are acceleratingly exciting. At least that’s how we feel like!

First week – done!

The first week’s topic was Vision and Idea. These were the questions that we focused on:

What is a good idea?
How do you come up with good ideas?
Does passion matter with ideas?
How can you tell what you are passionate about?
How do you translate your passion into one or more business ideas?
What basic tools should every founder have from the start?
What tools should founders use to develop their ideas in the beginning?
How does being a founder align with personal goals, objectives and vision?

Our group of mentors

This time we had 4 mentors. Peeter Mark CEO and co-founder of Cloutex (cloutex.com), Rain Rannu CEO and co-founder of Fortumo (fortumo.com), Indrek Kelder investment manager at SmatCap (smartcap.ee) and Linnar Viik Co-owner, Member of the Board, Strategy&Investments, Mobi Solutions (mobi.ee).

What happened at the first session?

When the clock hit 17:30, the pitching began. To start off with, five brand-new entrepreneurs had to pitch their idea in front of their classmates and mentors. After that, it was the mentors’ turn to give feedback and ask questions.

For a lot of the participants, this was the first pitch of their life. The heap of questions asked were challenging, some even surprising:

How many hands do you need to use your app?
What should you write to Google to find your product?
How are you going to hold your position in the market?

Finally the mentors scored ideas on a 5-point scale – interestingly, no-one got a 3.

Mentors share their nuggets of wisdom

All three mentors – Indrek Kelder, Linnar Viik and Peeter Mark – are passionate business people and had fascinating ideas. They raised a lot of questions that the audience hadn’t even thought of. Here are a few:

A huge share of people who think they have a good business idea don’t even bother to Google it.
Moving on to your second client from the first is just as hard as finding the first client.
Just because there isn’t competition right now doesn’t mean there won’t be any in the future.
If you have an advantage right now then you have to move fast. Advantages fade away quickly.
An average idea and a good team is more likely to succeed than a very good idea and a bad team.
Even a man and a dog are a better team then just a man. Find a partner to work with.
Want to find your clients? Write user stories. Describe your client, what kind of environment he lives in, what his values are etc.
If there isn’t any competition then it’s probably not a good idea.
Avoid popular business ideas that occur during economic booms because everybody wants to get in on it.
In the beginning think simple, use simple things like Google Docs to run your start-up. Don’t waste time on complicated and expensive stuff.

What’s next? The weekly assignment

To make their start-ups pick up speed, all young entrepreneurs have to complete weekly assignments. The rules are tough – miss more than one assignment and your out. Here are a few of the many tasks the entrepreneurs have to complete for the next week:

Set up a mailing list with at least 20 friends, family members, associates and potential future collaborators using an online mailing technology. This way they can send them updates on a weekly basis.

Use three sentences to give feedback to your peers about their start-up idea.

Next session is on Wednesday, Nov 26th with new topics, ideas, and challenges.

Bonus: A Founder’s Story

We asked one of the participants, Mariann Liimal, co-founder of Labeltrust (labeltrust.voog.com/et), why she decided to join Founder Institute and what she thought of the first session:

I decided to join Founder Institute to develop my idea further and simplify it. It seems to be a serious program that disciplines me.

It is very hard to start your first start-up without any help. Founder Institute sort of makes the wheels turn.

I thought that the mentor feedback was very good. It certainly made me think and act more. The mentors all had their own different opinions.