Seedcamp Experience (Berlin 2011)

Apr 19 2011

Wow! Just, wow! That was my first reaction after finishing the last mentoring session. It was just after the afternoon full of to the point questions and actionable advice. The great party was to come.

We were at Mini Seedcamp Berlin 2011 with touchqode - code editor for mobile devices. Here is our experience.

Mentoring

We definitely got some interesting suggestions from the mentors. Additionally we got recommended to read Four steps to epiphany by four different people. Is it really that apparent we are missing some customer development?

Personally, I have distilled three points of advice from the sessions:

• Know your users - know who your best use cases are, what they need, how they use your app and if they are willing to pay. Don't just track them, call them, engage with them (and read Four steps to epiphany).
• Start charging money, now! - if you have just free users you can't really predict anything about the market - start charging them and test various business models. No amount of market research can replace real paying customers.
• Don't be modest about users - we have more than 23 000 downloads and I always considered it modest number. Turns out for such a niche application as ours it is a good start, but we need embrace them better - see item 1.

Mini Seedcamp Event

Before coming to Mini Seedcamp Berlin I was not very sure about what to expect. So in addition to advice by friends from online radio service soundz.fm, here are few practical tips for seedcamp attendants:

• Pitch presentation is important - it won't save you if you don't have great product but other things equal it can make a difference. Good pitch can make people remember you for later talks. They can also share your words, which helps publicity (we got "angry birds for programmers" and "stay in touch with your code" retweeted few times).
• Go to pitch training the day before and present there - the feedback and practice helps a lot. My biggest takeaway from the training - talk slowly and practice some more.
• Be concise - don't try to impress people with cheap tricks - they have probably already seen them. Most of the people came here to hear facts about you and your company so be concise and clear. Show the need, show the social proof (important customers like large companies and famous people, press coverage). If you have paying customers talk about them. Show the numbers, show the team. Short sentences work best.
• Practice your pitch - talk aloud and watch your time. There are few people who can pull great presentation off the cuff, chances are you are not one of them. Save yourself embarrassment of unrehearsed pitch and practice.
• Have at least some questions for mentoring sessions ready
• If you are looking for money have following ready
  • amount of money you want
  • spending allocation - e.g. hiring, marketing...
  • number and roles of people you want to hire for the money
• Use concrete numbers when talking to investors - sentence: "If you give us 200k to 300k we will hire couple of people." - is entirely wrong! Rephrase to: "We are looking for 300k, to hire 2 developers, 1 biz dev and external graphic designers for 10 month."
• Attend the party afterwards - some great networking can happen there.

All in all it was very intense day with a great after party, we are glad we got chance to attend. Anyone considering applying to seedcamp event should definitely do so. Check out Seedcamp Calendar on seedcamp.com for upcoming events.

If you want to know more about our product visit touchqode.com or contact us for more information.

miso@touchqode