My Customers

Part of my discovery journey is to become a (my) self-expert and to decide on the domain of my next startup project. In this post I will explore the different domains that I am attracted to, because I think it is meaningful and believe in the opportunities. Continue reading

Mental Models to think

In this post I try to list out the different business concepts, mental models or frameworks that I believe are important for founders to understand and to use as a rough guide when working on their startup and to help them think thru the decisions they need to make.

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All paths lead to Rome

In this case all paths lead to a startup.

The genesis of a startup may come from different sources depending on the experience, knowledge, motivation, inspiration and context of it’s founder or founding team.

The starting points could be:  Continue reading

Lesson learnt : why I decided to quit QuickGetit

Today, 4 months after working on QuickGetit, I decided to quit before we cross a critical milestones (financially, psychologically and contractually). During my last holiday break I managed to find time to think through what I had have done, being doing and more importantly what I want to do in the next 3 to 7 years.

I come to realised that Continue reading

Evaluate startup ideas before starting

Firstly, the purpose of this article is to illustrate my approach to evaluate startup ideas. More importantly to decide if I want to invest the next 3 to 7 years of my life developing the startup into a viable company. It helps me to think thru each idea and to map it with my personal aspiration, ambition and development. This analysis is helpful for the vetting of new ideas.

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Mobile commerce is not e-commerce

Buying online with your smartphone remains difficult. This is especially true if you are searching through a catalogue, trying to create your new user profile or check out on the small screen. If you ever tried mobile shopping yourself, you would understand why cart abandonment rate on smartphone is so high.

Mobile shopping should not be a hassle and we want to change this.  Continue reading

#BEStartupManisfesto for policy makers

I have being following this ‘hashtag’ on twitter since the Xavier Damman first post and subsequence mainstream newspaper articles where different stakeholders jousted for limelight or attempt to ride on this wave at regional, national and European level (ie. #singledigitalmarket). This is a good thing, if we can ‘bottled’ this enthusiasm and forged it into real action locally.

I would like to start mine with a paragraph of disclosures and disclaimers. Continue reading

The up side of your first hire

The other day a friend and I were talking about salary. This got me thinking about the cost of employment in Belgium that prompted me to write this post.

Imagine you are a Startup, you got your ideas, solution and market figured out. You started to develop your minimum viable product (MVP) and getting ready to launch. You plan to hire your first employee and started looking into such investment.

Here is a quick calculation for a ball park figure for such investment. More importantly the level of revenue and profit you would need to sustain it. Continue reading