A Busy Start to February!

Yesterday was packed and today is the start of the intense period that is the MIT Bootcamp! I am just hours away from meeting my fellow boot campers at the QUT Gardens Point. Most of them, coming here from all over the world, are already in Brisbane the Whatsapp group is awash with FOMO inducing pictures. But I, as the anti-social local, have to wait to join the fun. So what did I do instead?

River City Labs Friday Open House Drinks and Pitches

I forgot to take pictures, so here’s one featuring me from the River City Labs Facebook! That’s me holding a Red Bull Cola… I didn’t know they made Cola either!

The pitch was a big event for my CEO at JOSARI, Paul Buckwell, who pitched JOSARI to drum up some publicity as we get ready to launch the iOS version this month! We got some good questions during the Q&A. I’ll write more about JOSARI to mark the launch. So watch out for that!

Little Tokyo Two End of Month Drinks

I left the RCL pitch event straight after pitches, and apparently, I missed out on a TV crew showing up, because I wanted to at least show my face at the Little Tokyo Two end of month drinks. Yes, I realised that yesterday was the start of the month, but scheduling is never perfect.

So I attended my first LT2 drinks, they only had hard liquor so I couldn’t drink anything. But that’s okay; I had fun getting to know some of my fellow co-working space users. As I was going up to the rooftop, I ran into Hallie Wang from ACIC. She was putting up posters for the Pitching to China 2019-Australian Startups Breaking into the Chinese Market event. So I decided to drop by for that!

Pitching to China 2019-Australian Startups Breaking into the Chinese Market

The event was mostly an information session about what ACIC does, and they had a panel discussion with the startups that went to China last year. There were some familiar names, Codebots (who I first came across way back in 2017), Happy Dinosaur ( who were in the iLab demo day), and BOP Industries (who were in the Collider demo day), all of whom I have posted about before. I couldn’t stay for the panel as I wanted to get some rest ahead of the start of the MIT Bootcamp today. But I did get a lot of useful information and will keep the ACIC in mind for the future.

So it was a packed day, and it’s only going to be more packed as I start the Bootcamp in a few hours. I’ll be posting on Twitter, and Instagram during the Bootcamp. So follow those to keep abreast of what I get up to what is likely to be a long, exhausting week!

Women Who Code Meetup: Networking for the Socially Awkward

I made it! Seriously, after a year of flaking, either because I had last minute work come up or just being too tired to make it, I was finally about to attend a Women Who Code meetup! One New Year’s Resolution down, several more to go. As it happens, I choose a great meetup to break my “non-show” streak because Trish Khoo gave a great talk about networking for the socially awkward.

Trish is someone I have to know for a while now. She’s a talented software consultant and trainer specialising for software testing. She’s also an artist and designer. In short, she’s multi-talented, and one of her talents is being able to, in her own words, delivery a “stand-up comedy masquerading as a tech talk”!

In all seriousness, social awkwardness can hold people back. I have a strict “people” quota and have done or said stupid things once I am “peopled out”. I also have a good memory, and while a lot of people probably remember that embarrassing thing they did from five years ago, my memory itself has led to awkward situations where I remember conversations other people do not. So I can give the wrong impression just because I remember conversations from years ago that the other person has long forgotten.

However, as they say, practice makes perfect and also, you will never win a debate against yourself. The world revolves around connections, so socialising is important. So Trish’s talk that encouraged practice and to embrace awkwardness was something worth listening too. The fact that she made fun and not a serious talk, as a lot of self-help talks tend to be, will probably make it stick!

Made to Stick

With less than a week to go to the start of my MIT Bootcamp, I am focusing on getting through the pre-Bootcamp checklist. To that end, I finished listening to the Made to Stick Audible over the weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The book was well written and made me flashback a lot of the mental models, schema and other things I learnt during my PhD and my post-doc with Middlesex University. Marketing is not my strong sweet, and while I have no issues speaking in public, I always felt I communicated less then I intended. So this book covered exactly what I need to know about effective messaging.

The book promotes the "SUCCES" (with the last s omitted) model where each letter refers to a characteristic that can help make an idea "sticky".

• Simple – find the core of any idea

• Unexpected – elements grab people’s attention

• Concrete – examples make the ideas easier to remember and recall

• Credible – give an idea believability

• Emotional – can help people see the importance of an idea

• Stories – narrative empower people to use an idea

The Succes Model

The most interesting part of the book to me was the concept of the “Curse of Knowledge”. While not a term I used in my PhD, but Loculus was all about computers supporting novices through their gap in knowledge. Made to Stick, talks about the reverse, what happens when experts get lose their audience in the details or on concepts that are obvious to them because they are experts. But we need experts to talk to novices in a way that the novices understand. Because based on my observation, a lot of bullshit movements like the anti-vax movement are a result of the fact that people understand the misinformation more readily than the actual science.

For example, people understand mercury is poisonous, and so it’s easy to make the idea that mercury in vaccines is bad “sticky”. But the truth is that mercury wasn’t present in the vaccines in quantities to make it harmful and the only thing removing mercury did was make vaccines more expansive for poor people. But such is life, the great thinkers are not always the greatest talkers, and the greatest talkers are often full of misinformation. But that’s another topic.

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much, and I would recommend it to everybody who wants to learn how to communicate better!

Two Weeks in Little Tokyo Two!

As part of my business development strategy for Start with Tinni, I wanted to get membership of a co-working space. I thought it would be an excellent way to have space away from my home where I could focus better and meet clients. I also wanted the opportunity to offer my services to the community of the co-working space and get some clients that way. I took a tour of all the major players, but in the end, I felt that Little Tokyo Two offered just a bit more for a comparable price.

I look their Starting Stage Plan, which includes monthly business workshops, advisory services, frameworks and accountability. I think I can benefit a lot from something more structured, and in the end, that’s what sealed the deal!

Technically, my membership started 1st of January, but since the staff wasn’t back until the 7th, I waited until then to pick up my key card. I used the space for the first time on the 10th catch-up with Nigel, on Your Happy Place business. I had my first meeting with Jock Fairweather, the founder of Little Tokyo Two, on Monday. I’ll be back there next week, and I hope to work at least 2-3 from The Capital!

Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup

Finally started tackling the reading list for my upcoming MIT Bootcamp. I started with listening to the Disciplined Entrepreneurship on Audible. The book was a good choice because it covered a lot of basics, including terminology I was not familiar with or had forgotten. I am not going to do a full review; there are plenty of those on the web. Instead, I want to highlight three points that stood out to me.

Firstly, the book exists because the writer, Bill Aulet, believes that you can learn to be an entrepreneur. The idea that you can learn to be an entrepreneur is not something universally acknowledged. We, humans, are prone to mythologisation and so naturally, successful entrepreneurs a turned into myths. You also have people in the entrepreneurial space who talk about entrepreneurs as a people apart. Now I am not saying that some people don't have the personality to be more inclined to go down the entrepreneurial path. The truth remains that anyone can learn to the skills to be an entrepreneur and often, it is circumstance, and not personality, that dictates who does and does not become an entrepreneur. But personality might indicate who becomes a serial entrepreneur.

Secondly, the author expressed the belief that you don't have a business unless someone pays you something for your goods or services. E.g. he didn't consider Instagram a business until Facebook bought it. While this might seem a bit extreme in the age of platforms and apps, I have to agree with him. Take for example something like Tumblr. It was a very successful microblogging platform that attracted people active on various fandoms and as well as people making original content. However, they didn't have a monetisation strategy and Yahoo, which bought Tumblr, has had a rough time trying to monetise it. The reason being that "fandom" isn't always advertiser-friendly, and fans can be very entitled. Trust me on this; I would be sending DC comics hate mail on a regular basis if I wasn't so easily Googlable. So it is a fair point to say that you don't have a business until someone is willing to pay you.

Lastly, I was intrigued by what the book had to say about the competition. The author suggested that while we should be aware of the competition, focusing on them, especially trying to crush others in the market is not the way to go. The suggestion was that if you create a new market or industry through your innovation, both you and your competition can thrive. But if you focus too much on the competition, you end up losing to the bigger enemy: the status quo! I support this idea wholeheartedly. A lot of things in life is not a zero-sum game. For you to win, someone else doesn't have to lose. You can win together.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and learnt a lot. I am looking forward to completing the other books on the reading list.