Founder of LaRedInnova.com at IE Business School

Entrepreneur session 10:

Pablo Larguia

 

“Should entrepreneurs choose their VC? BULLSHIT! Money is money… get all you can!!”

… ok, perhaps an intensification of the words Pablo actually used…but the message is the same! 

Money is green everywhere… a phenomenon that Jorge Mota, the fundraising guru totally agrees with.

But my favorite line was this one:

“Having as much money as possible is not good? What the H… of course its good to have as much of it as possible!!!”

This was the respond  to some of the tweets we had made in our previous discussions. In the session we had with Gabriel Aldamiz, the Founder of CHICISIMO,  it had been discussed that “having little money is good as it keeps you focused.”

I don't completely disagree with this view, as you really must focus to decide what to spend your money on... but, perhaps not necessarily focusing on what you actually need to do with your business.  

I shared my view on this in a previous blog post: 

“Sometimes, limited resources might make you desperate and could result in you taking the wrong decisions and giving into situations that end up distracting your initial focus. It could also limit your growth to the extent that no matter how great your idea is, it never reaches its real potential.”

So I have to admit that I'm more with Pablo on this one. If you have a plan and you know what you are doing, money surely helps. If you don't have a good execution plan, well then it makes no difference if you have or not!  So... 

....a Good idea + Brilliant team to execute the plan + More money than less to pay for a rapid growth! 

More about Pablo Larguia: 

An outgoing charming young man with a good sense of humor, who between six months of discussing an idea over coffee at Starbucks, planned, executed and launched his company!

Pablo is the Founder and the CEO of LaRedInnova.com  An event based conference that provides a setting for opinion leaders, governments entities, academics, investors and entrepreneurs to share experience, ideas and of course to connect.

It may sound easier than it is. However, while the concept is simple enough, it is rational to assume that it requires constant networking, constant reinvention of an attractive environment for all different participants who are all there for different interests.

At the same time, while choosing a hot theme for the event that is exciting, topic of the day and not repeated, ensuring that all key participant are sourced and are all available at the same time. This requires a lot of relationship building and possibly the reason why Pablo commented that:

“being an entrepreneur is being a sale person 24/7” 

His next event will be held in Madrid on June 2011:

Founder of Digital Asset Deployment

Entrepreneur Session 11 

 Rodolfo Carpintie

This was our last session and most certainly one of the most interesting ones. This post will be updated soon...

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Founder of ReviewPro at IE Business School

Entrepreneur Session 9 

RJ Friedlander

A class with Enrique Dans and RJ Frielander at Managing Tech For Startups...  

The session with RJ Friedlander was a very interesting experience and he offered us a great insight to ReviewPro. However, most information were confidential so I am limited with what I can share but the key concept was about opinions on the net... 

Opinions matter! 

Consumers are no longer convinced by fancy TV advertising or full page promotions in glossy magazines. They look for transparency and for real reviews. They ask friends and peers for advice and recommendations. They search the net and are influenced by what others have said about the product or the service they are looking for. They search for the truth! 

Is this good or bad for your business? Well, this would depend on what actually is truth about your business. It is therfore very important to know what perception your consumers have of your brand and how they are experiencing your services. 

I personaly believe that the transparency is great for businesses. It allows them to get closer to their customers and actually learn from their experience and improve accordigly. 

This however requires the business to constantly being updated with what is being said about its brand and take the necessary measures when need to. It sounds more complicated than it should be. There are different tools that could be used.

Beside tools such as google alart within the google analytics tools, there are actually tools specified for different industires.

RJ Friedlander offers the solution for the hotel industry; 

The first step is to know...

http://www.reviewpro.com/

The second step is to learn...

The third step is to act...

The fourth step is... to stay one step ahead...

Founder of Minube at IE Busines School

Entrepreneur session 7:

Pedro Jareño

Travel....relax and be assured that you would enjoy the experience as someone else has already done it before... 

And this is what our 7th entrepreneur in Enrique Dans's Tech For Start Up class has come up with:

Pedro Jareno has achieved to attract:

• 1.5M users
• 125.000 regisered users
• 900.000 pictures posted by users
• 200.000 real experiences that has been shared by users  

 The above has helped him to generate 2M Euros in revenue in 2010 and provide 20 jobs!

One thing I didn't fully understand was this;  Why is a site that is targeting a global reach not able to be read in English when the most spoken internet language is in fact English?

When this question was asked, Pedro commented that it is very expensive to add additional languages. First I thought that he was referring to the technology, which would make no sense. However, Enrique pointed out that community management in each language and tracking mentions on the net in any new language is part of adding an additional language. 

This makes sense. But still... I am not convinced that the necessary investment in adding the most searched language on the net is not worth the potential growth that it could provide.

I am however under the impression that Pedro Jareno knows what he is doing...

The only thing I could think of is that Pedro is aware of the growth potential in English and is postponing it until he is ready both on a technical level, sales and marketing as well the required changes in their operations. 

Furthermore, it is much easier to compete with the internet giants once you have a relatively good size user base. Hence, another reason that they may have considered could be that they are more able to grow in 'silence' without generating too much attention in the early stages of their growth, and only enter the big sea, when they are ready to 'swim along'. 

This seems to be a strategy taken by other Spanish companies, such as our previous guest speaker and the founder of Ideaista. 

So once again... the learning is that to be global you don't have to be born global!

Founder of todotaladros.com at IE Business School

Entrepreneur session 6:

Alberto Torron

It is often argued that the life of an entrepreneur is a lonely life where you have to absolutely scarify everything and everyone and only have one thing in you mind, which is your venture! 

Is it really necessary to give up everything when deciding to becoming an entrepreneur? 

According to Alberto Torron the co-founder of todotaladros.com it is not necessary to even giving up your day job!

Alberto, is still working in a demanding job with great responsibilities at the same time of managing todotaladros among a few other ventures. How does he do it? By managing a small but stable growth. 

One of the reasons for their success has been the unique customer experience that they are able to provide. An interesting thing that he mentioned was that, if a customer has any concerns, he will be contacted by the owner of the 'store' personally to rectify the issue on spot. 

This is obviously not a service that is commonly provided within the e-commerce environment and indeed not one that can be sustained if the business was to have a rapid growth.

todotaladros.com is a online ecommerce where you can purchase tools such as Drills. Starting with 5-6 Drills and selling from home, they now have over £150k worth of inventory. 

Despite being a 'part time entrepreneur', Alberto has illustrated that it pays to be one. Without disclosing any confidential information, their revenue proves that a part time venture can still make more than a full time job. 

It also shows that there is absolutely no perfect profile for an entrepreneur and that everyone and with any life preference can turn an idea into profit. 

A great fact that he share with us was the importance of the ROI when investing in SEM.  

He mentioned that it takes 300 visits to the site to make one conversion, which in this particular case is to purchase a product that costs an average of 200 Euros. So as he nicely put it "unless you want to work for google, then it makes no sense to buy AdWords costing 2euros and hope to make a profit just because of an increased traffic. 

So...the advice is to calculate your ROI in all aspects of your business...even when it comes to marketing!

A final comment... I wonder how long Alberto is able to sustain his current lifestyle of being in a full time job and running a venture that is growing. My assumptions is that he would have to choose... It would be interesting to see what he would choose... 

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Founder of Idealista at IE Business School

Entrepreneur session 5: 

Jesus Encinar 

Session 5 in Managing Tech for Startups offered an insight to one of the most successful Spanish real estate websites idealista by the founder himself Jesus Encinar who's blog also offers some interesting posts... if you can read Spanish ;-) 

Regrettably, I was flying when we had this session which meant that I had to do my own research...

Idealista was founded 11 years ago in a business environment which was already very saturated. Despite aiming for international expansion, the business was initially only implemented in the Capital of Spain. 

Having only presence in Madrid allowed the company to focus and achieve great success in this vicinity but it made it challenging to raise finance as the scalability potential was not initially appreciated by the investors. 

Nevertheless, when there is a will, there is a way... 

After being rejected by 100s of investors, Idealista finally managed to raise $6.24M (€6M) in unattributed funding on 1/1/2003, which was achieved with help from Andersen Consulting. 

Idealista has since expanded into Portugal and Italy which seems that their strategy is to initially penetrate countries that share cultural and language similarities. 

The following tables show cultural similarities between Spain, Portugal and Italy. 

Hofstede explains these differences in the following 5 main elements which are very interesting and really worth exploring when considering an international expansion.

Power Distance Index (PDI) 

Individualism (IDV)  

Masculinity (MAS)  

Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) 

Long-Term Orientation (LTO) 

Going back to the actual website, I must admit that I personally do not find it particularly user-friendly, but the company apparently makes great efforts and uses technology to track user experience in order to constantly improve the site accordingly. 

I cannot comment on what technology Idealista uses for this purpose, but an eye track technology is an mazing tool which allows to track and actually analyse a user's behaviour on the website. The process would require a number of different users using the site while tracking their eye focus. The system is then able to analyse preferences according to age, sex or any other relevant demographic facts. 

Another useful tool is google's site overlay which provides information about where and how often the user has clicked on different buttons/links on the site and illustrates this in percentage. 

This tool is extremely easy to set up in google analytics and is a very useful when testing the design of a new site. 

Technology aside, the success of Idealista illustrates that it is not always necessary to be 'born global' and it is still possible to establish an international presence and in a pace appropriate to the business...

Only when the business is ready to explore new markets!

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Founder of CHICISIMO at IE Business School

Entrepreneur session 4: 

Gabriel Aldamiz

An afternoon with Gabriel Aldamiz right here at IE Business School... 

 "How many of you are planning to start your own venture" was the opening speech by Gabriel Aldamiz...and wow!!!....almost all hands were raised. This was the MBA spirit at our Tech For Start up Class ! :-)   

Gabriel Aldamiz is behind a series of successful ventures and today he shared his entrepreneurial experience with us. Although he started by saying that it was his first time that he ever had to give such a long speech, once he began, he was unstoppable... in a very nice way of course! 

Full of energy and so much to tell that it was actually hard to keep up with him. His stories were very interesting and really made you think …  but before I had a chance to think it through, he was already sharing another interesting concept!

I am guessing that this might be how Gabriel Aldamiz is in business as well. He is probably one of those people who can create a business out of nothing. Starting a new venture, and ideas keep popping into his head and tempting him to pursue the next idea... maybe wished he could be more than one person and in more than one place at a time...

Chicisimo is a good example of making business out of something, which could have been seen as nothing by many. 

He spotted a behaviour that might be seen as ‘strange” and turned this into a successful platform that is not even close to have reached its full potential:

Girls who took photos of themselves wearing different fashion items and sharing these on Flickr. 

He provided the platform where these photos could be shared easily. Simple! 

        

Now, the potential for generating money from this platform is simply phenomenal. The most obvious one is that this could be turned into an ideal place for shopping. The numbers as seen above, provides a link that shows all other items tagged with the same brand. 

However, the link could in fact allow the user to purchase the product which obviously would require integration with the store and of course an updated catalogue. 

In the meantime, Chicisimo could also offer a link to the store website next to the pictures that show the particular brand and simply generate advertising money through the clicks. 

Now to increase the items posted, a simple phone application could allow the users to take pictures even in the changing room and post this into the site. 

These are of course the most obvious ones and there is scope for a lot more creative and innovative ideas which could serve this platform and increase its revenue potential. A social game as an example... 

Going back to the entrepreneur... despite the diversity in Gabriel's ventures, he shared a valuable tip with the class, which was to "stay in FOCUS while keeping a diversity". 

He mentioned the mistake that he had made in the beginning of his venture, which was to diversify too soon and into too many things such as sport, financial services, fashion etc. 

He also suggested that in the beginning of a business, having little money is not always a disadvantage but could in fact work to your advantage as it ensures focus and concentration.

There is no doubt that limited finance would ensure great focus, You truly think everything through several times, you try not to do too many things but only the most important…but there could be another side of this story. 

Sometimes, limited resources might make you desperate and could result in you taking the wrong decisions and giving into situations that end up distracting your initial focus. It could also limit your growth to the extent that no matter how great your idea is, it never reaches its real potential.

There is no ‘right’ recipe and everything truly depends on the situation, timing, preference, attitude, execution and perhaps a little bit of luck!  

However, one of the very important takeaways from this session for me, which is not going to change is the importance of bloggers and how to motivate them to write about your product. 

It is important to know your blogger's interests and as obvious as it sounds, you must read past posts to really get to know the blogger's style and likings. 

Also, when suggesting your product, find something that might relate to a recent post/article that the writer has written or perhaps some issue which is currently in debate.This increases the chance that the writer would get interested in your 'topic' and write something that could turn your business upside down... depending on what he/she writes and who the readers are... so if you want to get free PR, do your research well! 

Not all publicity is good publicity!