Month: December 2014

If you check out seed accelerators for long enough, you’ll come across one relatively consistent criticism. (Particularly for the lower quality programs, I have to say.) That criticism is that accelerators focus way too much on Demo Day. I believe that founders that say this don’t understand the real “why” behind the preparation.

I joined Techstars at the beginning of June this year, and in that time have seen the preparations for the Demo Days of the Techstars London 2014 batch of companies, as well as the first Barclays Accelerator batch of companies. So I’ve already seen, up-close-and-personal, two cycles of companies spending time and getting ready to pitch at Demo Day. And Demo Day is important: there are hundreds of angels and institutional investors there and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most companies. They need to work hard to make the most of the opportunity.

But the subtle secret about preparing for Demo Day is that it’s not just about one 5-minute pitch, it’s a month of deep critical-thinking about how to communicate a product, a company, a market, a team, and an opportunity. Sure, the direct output is that 5-minute pitch, but founders learn how to give a one-line description of what they do, an elevator pitch about their company, and how to talk about the company in ways that really resonate with a particular audience. This process, and particularly the feedback from experienced entrepreneurs and mentors, is critical to founders. (And while it involves the whole team, it should only be the day-to-day job of the CEO, leaving everyone else to continue working on the company.)

Let me give two examples from the Barclays program:

ClauseMatch — Evgeny from ClauseMatch was not a natural speaker, and his company (a platform for contract negotiation) is in the legal world, which tends to make peoples’ eyes glaze over. And at times, he struggled to communicate how revolutionary their product is. But he cracked it with a simple (and amusing) anecdote to start his Demo Day pitch. He took the audience back to 1995, when Microsoft Word introduced “Track changes” and e-mail started to become widely introduced. For the first time, instead of faxing manually annotated contracts back-and-forth, lawyers could e-mail Word files back and forth… it was a revolution. Then he made a simple statement: after twenty years of internet and cloud technology development, lawyers are still working the exact same way. It was a massive “a-ha” moment for the audience that grabbed their attention for the rest of his pitch.

GustPay — Werner from GustPay actually spent a bit of time at the start of his pitch talking about Disney… specifically about the NFC wristbands that Disney has developed for their theme parks. He talked about the “magic” of the experience, in that the wristband becomes their ticket and their wallet and their room key, and everything they need for their stay. Then he told the audience that Disney spent >$1billion in developing this technology, but GustPay provides the same experience for venues and events for just $1/wristband. Again, it was an “a-ha” moment that got people to recognise what they did, and why it was important.

Being able to communicate your startup to a wide variety of audiences (investors, early adopters, sales prospects, press) takes a lot of hard work. And while it may seem all that hard work is just in service of a 5-minute pitch, the real benefit is far, far beyond that.

Earlier this summer I read two posts by Jake Knapp (a design partner at Google Ventures) about his “distraction free” iPhone: how he started it, and what it felt like a year later. In a nutshell, he found himself getting constantly distracted by his iPhone, and consciously made choices to take key applications off his phone: Safari, Email, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

I decided to try it for myself and my Nexus 5 Android phone. I didn’t want to be that guy that always had his phone six inches from his face, even when out to dinner or playing with my daughter. So these are (some of) the apps I deleted from my phone:

• Chrome
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Kindle
• NYTimes
• Google+
• Facebook

All of these were apps that had a strong risk of the “infinity” effect, where once you get started you just get lost. I had a particularly bad habit with opening tabs in Chrome (from Twitter, e-mail) that I then left open, always meaning to go back but never actually closing.

Apps I kept include: Calendar, Music, Maps, Camera, Photos, SMS, WhatsApp, Hangouts, USAA, Todo.txt, Voxer, Slack, Beeminder, Runkeeper, and a few others. The one app where I chose differently from Jake and did keep was Gmail (and now Google Inbox). E-mail in my job is just too important, and living several time zones away from the majority of the people I work with means that I can’t rely on just dealing with e-mail during the UK business day.

What I’ve learned

I’ve noticed a few things from this experiment. First, I’ve started to see how critical a web browser is to a mobile phone experience. Disabling Chrome means that a small number of apps (that aren’t well designed) just don’t work well, if at all.

Second, Google has made Google+ a key layer of infrastructure. I can’t use the modern, built-in “Photos” app on my mobile because it requires the Google+ app to work. Instead, I use a previous version of the stock Android Gallery app to view my photos.

Third, it’s fascinating to watch human behaviour. Pulling out a mobile phone, even when out with good friends, has become a reflex for (seemingly) everyone. The number of times that a conversation over dinner goes down a thread where once person checks their phone (to look something up or Tweet something), and then a second person does, and the next thing I’m looking at a table of people that are all staring at their phones instead of interacting with each other. I even find myself feeling like I should join in, but then realise I don’t have to stress out about it and can just enjoy the moment… even if no one is paying attention to me or each other! 🙂 I’ve become comfortable with momentary moments of boredom.

Fourth, you have a different relationship to a mobile phone when it’s purely a tool for messaging, navigation, health/fitness and not a tool for broad media consumption and broadcasting. I liked feeling that I had a less “emotional” tie to my phone.

How I cheat

It’s not like I’m no longer using a web browser, or Twitter, or reading Kindle books, or checking Facebook. But I decided that I would make my Nexus 7 tablet my “distraction” device. I have all of those apps there, and so then I make a conscious decision to consume media and be distracted.

Also, when I’ve traveled to the US I’ve had to cheat and re-enable a bunch of apps. I don’t want to have to buy and use two SIMs, one for my phone and one for my tablet, and I need to have a phone connection when I’m traveling.

Going forward?

I’m definitely going to continue this going forward. I may re-enable Google+ just so that I can use the full functionality, and because I think I can resist any G+ distractions. But I like constraining myself to use my mobile phone purely as a tool and not as a magic sinkhole of time.

One of the companies in the current Techstars London batch just launched their website yesterday, Knyttan. They’ve got some of the most interesting/unique technology I’ve seen in a while: they turn current industrial knitwear looms as 3-D printers for knitwear. The founding team includes three graduates from the Royal College of Art, and they’re full of passion and knowledge of knitwear. When it comes to disrupting an industry… they’re about to do it.

Current state of affairs

Knyttan is currently focused on classic knitwear: sweaters/jumpers and scarves. Today’s technology is literally archaic; the current code/protocol is 30–40 years old, and can be directly traced to punchcards! To create a sweater, a designer has to communicate the design/dimensions as best they can to a factory that has the loom manufacturer’s software to create the punchcard-code necessary to knit the sweater. These are then sent back to the designer in a series of back-and-forths until the designer gives their okay for manufacture. And when you’re a designer in the US/Europe dealing with a factory in China/Southeast Asia, this is a long, painful process.

For manufacturers, they also have significant constraints in what they can do. To knit a particular design of jumper, the different colours of yarn have to be on very different specific spools on the machine. And once a machine is set up to knit, it is time-consuming and costly to set it up to do something else.

Knyttan’s technology

What Knyttan can do with these existing industrial looms is incredible. They have essentially re-created the entire stack of code necessary for these looms to run. Instead of having to use complex software provided by the loom manufacturers, Knyttan has created a web interface that anyone can use. For people with knitwear factories, they can use Knyttan to turn their looms into general-purpose knitwear printers. It doesn’t matter what spool each colour of yarn is on, Knyttan can adjust. A loom can knit a sweater, and then a scarf, and then something else entirely without any costly change-over time.

For the first time, a designer can have complete control of the design/manufacture process. And for the first time, a manufacturer can radically improve productivity of their existing machines.

The two BIG effects

1- Democratization of design. Right now knitwear design is a pain in the ass, because designers don’t have the full set of tools necessary to go from what’s in their head to the actual creation of the item… manufacturers have to be part of the process. Knyttan allows any designer to create something they’d like to have/wear, and print/knit it out right away. This is transformational in the industry, particularly for designers that want to do more with knitwear, but don’t because of the pain involved.

2- Radical change in supply chain. The design cycle to design/develop knitwear is extremely long, potentially weeks/months as samples are sent between western designers and overseas manufacturers. Knyttan upends this process… designers can get back a prototype of their design in a matter of minutes to hours. But perhaps more importantly Knyttan disrupts the supply chain by making it far easier to create knitwear in smaller batches that can be manufactured on demand. Instead of being forced to make an order months ahead of time, either getting stuck with excess inventory (or having demand for product that can’t be filled), designers can order stock when they get low.

How you can check Knyttan out

If you’re in London, go check out their shop! You can buy some of their existing stock designs, or even design and print yourself an item in-store! (Literally, they have a loom in the store where they can create items immediately.) It’s in Somerset House, and you can find information here: https://knyttan.com/find-us/

If you’re not in London, you can design and create a sweater/jumper or scarf today, and have Knyttan deliver it straight to you. They just launched their site yesterday, so check it out here: https://knyttan.com

One of the most consistent email productivity tips is that you should ignore e-mail, turn it off, and only check it at specific times during the day. (Otherwise you just become a trained monkey, chained to your inbox.) But how do you do that?

For someone that does a lot of actual work via e-mail, turning it off completely or not looking at it isn’t an option. And while there are extensions that can “pause” new e-mails coming into your inbox (or at least you seeing them), I haven’t seen any that worked well or that I trusted.

But there is a simple, super-magic productivity button in the new Google Inbox that does exactly that, the “pinned” toggle. So when you switch this:

to this:

Suddenly the only e-mails you see are the ones that you have selected as action items. Any new e-mail to your inbox is hidden, because you haven’t “pinned” it yet. Each of your pinned e-mails can also have a short description of what the task is, in case the sender wasn’t as explicit as they should have been. Slide that toggle, and you have your e-mail todo list laid out before you. You can also add todo list items (reminders) directly that aren’t attached to any e-mail, but show up in the normal & pinned lists.

When I was at Google, I was a very early tester of a previous version of this new Inbox, absolutely loved it, and am so happy it finally got rolled out. At least for me, e-mail is a todo list, and the new Google Inbox has these simple tools to both treat e-mail as a todo list and become MUCH in dealing with that list. I just keep my e-mail in the “pinned” state for the vast majority of the day, making my way through the todos, and un-pinning/triaging only occasionally.

Sidebar

All of that said, I can’t wait for Spatch to launch. Spatch is a Techstars London ’14 Spring company that’s re-thinking e-mail, and making structural changes to e-mail that can turn e-mail into a real productive tool. (All while keeping it backward-compatible for e-mail users that don’t use Spatch.) If you care about e-mail and productivity you owe it to yourself to also sign up for Spatch.

PS — If you’d like a Google Inbox invite, drop me your details in the comments below. [UPDATE]: It only works for @gmail.com addresses right now, so please share that e-mail address.