River City Labs First Friday Bytes!

Last Friday, I got out of the house again! I attended Group Mentoring with Llew Jury (which I wrote about in more detail in a different post) and the newly revamped River City Labs Pitches, which are now called River City Labs First Friday Bytes.

The big change was that the first talk of the afternoon was a from an entrepreneur who had “made it”. Last Friday the found was Bradley Rasmussen of Sizztech. He shared some tips and tricks he learnt along his journey. He explained that his current business grew out of his first business. He also explained that Sizztech was self-funded. I think a lot of people miss opportunities when they become too focused on their current business. Also, too many get caught up in raising capital, when they can create a perfectly viable business by bootstrapping. So it was great that River City Labs highlighted a business that opted not to raise money.

Finally, we went onto the pitches for the night, and AI was over-represented. We first AI pitch from a founder who has created a sleeve that is looking help people with upper limb loss to have fine motor control of their robotic prosthetics. It’s interesting, and I am keen to see how the startup grows and evolves.

The second AI pitch was from Red Realities whose pitch is that they want to free creatives from doing low-value artwork. So one way of putting it is that “AI is now after artists jobs!”

The AI heavy pitches prompted a man with a gorgeous beard to go up and pitch his business Blue Life AI. He offered those in attended a free trial of his training program. During the questions, he mentioned that he has already taught millions of people online and mentioned his main business is called SUPER DATA SCIENCE!

It was then that the penny dropped and I realised the speaker was Kirill Eremenko, or as he is known to my brother and I “the R guy”. I clearly blanked out when they announced his name. So yes, I got to meet that man whose online course my brother and I took to learn R. It was like meeting a minor celebrity. It was fun; I took a selfie. 10/10 would go to another First Friday Bytes!

Group Mentoring with Llew Jury

Last Friday, I attended the Group Mentoring with Llew Jury, at River City Labs. It was a great event that sent me home with some essential tools. The first one was the correct way to fill out the business model canvas. For me, this was a refresher. Still, it’s always good to remember that your focus should be a problem -> customer - > unique value proposition -> solution before moving on to other things. Many startups make the mistake of either trying to start with the solution and looking for a problem. Alternatively, having problems, solution and customers but not having a unique value proposition.

The other concept Llew Jury talked about was market product fit, instead of product-market fit. I think this is a very venture capitalist way of thinking about it. I have heard Steve Corlett express that he isn’t as concerned about a business’s product beyond it can effectively address the problem for which there is a market. I don’t think inventors and innovators want to hear, but it’s true. You can have the greatest product in the world, but if no one is willing to pay you for it, you can’t make a business out of it.

The completely new concept I learnt during the group mentoring was the SaaS Mission Matrix. Llew Jury credited Edward Ford’s Advance B2B Blog post on the topic. The matrix posits that the same sales strategy does not work on businesses of all size. You can’t be hands-on and in-person with a small business who have a meagre customer lifetime value. Likewise, you can’t be hands-off and automated with huge enterprises who are injecting millions of dollars into your business. So you need to work out what you are and focus on the sweet spots. I would like to kickoff a SaaS business one day, and I know that marketing can make or break, SaaS. So getting introduced to the SaaS Mission Matrix made the trip to attend worthwhile.

Following the SaaS Matrix, Llew went on to discuss marketing. It wasn’t anything new per se. But I liked how Llew laid it out (see photo). I need to start marketing Start with Tinni. So I need to start thinking about personnas, marketing channels, brand positioning etc.

One of the last things Llew covered was how to raise money. It flew by quickly. But the biggest take away was that sales speak louder than anything. But he also mentioned team building, and once again, personality tests made an appearance. Llew said that his venture firm uses the Belbin model of personalities. I am currently working on writing an article for Medium on personality tests. So I’ll talk about Belbin more there. But it fascinates me how big personality tests are in startup land.

Llew Jury ended the session with some book recommendation. He recommended Good to Great, Scaling Up and Secrets of Sand Hill Road. I will be adding them to be Audible list, Overall, it was a good session, and I would recommend attending the next one!

Brisbane Social Enterprise Drinks & Networking

January was much slower event wise then I would have liked. But as an Impact Boom Alumni, I couldn’t miss the Brisbane Social Enterprise Drinks & Networking!

Congratulations to the cohort of 2020. It’s going to be the strong group and very different from my cohort because the mix includes lawyers, investment-oriented social enterprises and more! I am looking forward to the pitch event later this year.

During the event, I also found out that the Brisbane City Council is sponsoring a Social Enterprise Hub at The Capital. I guess the hub will be in level 4, which used to be Little Tokyo Two. I think it’s a good idea to go niche. Because I feel as if Brisbane is suffering from too many co-working spaces, I don’t have any stats to back it up, mind you. It’s just how I feel. But any rate. I will be checking out the Social Enterprise Hub when I get a chance!

Happy New Year!

I am sure I am committing a faux pas by waiting until January 7th before making a New Year post, but 2019 did not end well for me and this is the first chance I have had to sit down and post an update.

Let’s start with what happened last year. My grandparents passed away. First, my grandfather passed away on Monday, March 18th. Then my grandmother on Monday, November 18th. On the same day as my grandmother, I also lost one of my aunts. My late father had five sisters. Three are now gone. Finally, my great aunt passed away on December 11th. I left for Bangladesh after learning about my grandmother’s death. But I was distracted from early November when it became clear grandma wasn’t doing well. I was away for most of December and came back to meet up with my first cousin once removed, who is the granddaughter of my great aunt who passed. So I ended the year and decade hosting my cousin. But she’s returned home, and my immediate family are all now back in Brisbane. So it’s time to get back to work.

I start 2020 still the CTO of Josari, Birnam Wood, Abide and Kyco. Although at the moment, only Josari needs my active attention. I have also taken on collaborations with Sharka Bosakova, and that’s one of my active projects in January. Finally, I am also doing a project with a cloud backup company. So a lot of things to keep me busy. Especially since I also have plans to undertake some sales and marketing for Start with Tinni. To that end, I commissioned some new logos for the Start with Tinni. I mean, it’s been a year. So it is time to move away from the Squarespace stock logos. So check out my new logos and watch this space for updates relating to all my ventures and my continued journey with Start with Tinni!

The NEIS Program

On Saturday I made a small post to celebrate the 1st Anniversary of Start with Tinni. One of the things I mentioned in that post was that Start with Tinni was part of the NEIS scheme during its first year. It was a good experience.

The NEIS grant amounted a little over $10k, most of which I used to upgrade equipment, insurance, necessary saas service, pay for travel to Launch Festival, costs beyond tuition I had in associated with the MIT Bootcamp. Finally, the out of pocket expenses I had for Impact Boom Elevate+ accelerator. So, in essence, I used the grant to expand my network and build my knowledge.

I am incredibly grateful that I am in a position where I could spend the grant like this. I know that for many, the grant goes towards more essentials things as they wait to generate revenue

I also received training and mentorship through the NEIS program. The training happened in a group setting, so if you believe that the value of accelerator programs is mainly in the cohort, I am glad to have made the acquaintance of such a great bunch of people.

As for the training, I started my six-week in-person workshop-based training in July of 2018. But I didn’t officially launch my business until the 1st of November. I needed the extra time to implement everything I learnt properly. The workshop training also led to a formal qualification in the form of Certificate IV in New Small Business.

I went through the Sarina Russo Group, and so received my certificate through their institute. I thought I had a good grasp of business basics, but there were holes in my knowledge that the training helped to fill. Also, it was nice to have time and space to stop and think about the business.

Finally, I was assigned an official mentor through NEIS and Sarina Russo, and that was extremely helpful. Because sometimes, you need a mentor who has been there, done that and can help guide you. Mine was Sandra Gartner, and I am very grateful to her for her year-long mentorship and support.