Would you give me some money? I’ll make my unicorn dance for you.

Almost two weeks ago we had an interesting panel discussion with two fundraising experts. My impression was (and may be more than just an impression) that one of them was there to embody the capitalist side, the banker, while his counterpart was the start upper, one of those went through the fundraising mechanism – crowdfunding, Angel investors, Venture capitalists etc. – happily surviving at the end. But still looking for £ 2,000,000 I’m afraid.

I have to say something strong: I hate money and talking about money. I’ve never been that good at maths – It could be related to that – , but I think that when money is involved everything become stricter and unclear. Everyone starts worrying about profits, deadlines and how to make the investors happy. There is no more space for Creativity and it’s easy for your Idea to get lost in the effort to make it come true.

Yes, in my dreamlike vision ideas are unicorns.

I may should have said that I hate the money environment as I experienced it, not the money itself. It pays for broadband internet and this Masters after all. And raising some money in a creative way it’s one of the better chance we have to pursue the career we dreamt about, to think about our job smiling.  As young entrepreneurs that dream could be manage our own successful business for the most of us.

In a seeding phase, when it’s too soon to take the risk and establish a company, the best way to gain some weight and confidence, without getting lost (or ruined) I believe it’s crowdfunding.

First of all because It’s about relationships (again) and real people. It’s not just about getting your idea out there and wait but introducing your self and your idea with a story – a good one – to the right community. Secondly, It helps to research your market and discover whether or not there is a consistent market for your product.

There are different types of crowdfunding:

– Reward: your are giving rewards (little object, wallpapers, handwritten cards etc) in exchange for small/medium amount of money, or even pre-sell your product.

– Donation: this works for no-profit and social cause only.

– Equity: you are giving away shares of your business.

– Crowdlending (peer-to-peer lending or debt crowdfunding): many people lending you some money. It’s like a loan that you’ll have to pay back to people that invested on your business.

You can find a detailed explanation on the UK CROWDFUNDING website.

Reward crowdfunding is my favourite for two reasons:  1) You can feel less pressure from the stakeholders and have more freedom; 2) People are investing in your idea because they really love it and because you convinced them with your passion. This is an investment that could last longer then money: it’s pure motivation that will fuel your business.

As regards crowdfunding platforms, we all know Kickstarter, but there are many others less popular but effective. Sometimes you have to think smaller, let’s say locally (you local virtual community) , to have a bigger impact. The are some of my favourite:

KAPIPAL (Capital + Pal)

This is one of my favourite: “You friends are your Capital”. You can raise money for basically everything, from birthday present to business projects. They are not charging anything for this service, you can keep whatever amount you’ll raise and you can even not give any reward. Sounds crazy? Just try.

CROWDFUNDER

This is based on rewards and it’s one of the most popular after Kickstarter. They explicitly wrote on the website that “Crowdfunder loves projects that benefit the community, not just yourself”, which I believe is truly creative-economy-oriented. They also have a well-written guide on ISSUU about how to create the perfect crowdfundable project. There is a 5%+VAT fee though, and they also have a small charge on transactions.

CROWDCUBE

It’s Crowfunder’s younger and – let’s say – more ambitious brother. Our guests mentioned it, Crowdcube it’s based on equity  and lending funding. You’ll have to measure carefully the value of your business to sell shares (has to be a running business or have a detailed business plan) which – in my opinion – is difficult in an early stage. I used EQUIDAM for this purpose sometimes, it’s nice to play with that.

Funding Tree

Pretty similar to Crowdcube. Did I mentioned that they both have a pretty nice blog and events section? If your business is listed on one of this websites book your place, grab a glass of wine and go to meet some investors.

FundedByMe

This is a swedish platform (I love swedish people, could you believe that?) that offers both reward, equity and loan funding models. They are incredibly transparent and you can find the explanation of nearly everything about how their service works and what crowdfunding is on the website.

Our Friday lecturers mentioned also Funding Circle as loan-based platform and, even though I don’t know much about their service and I’m pretty scared about loans and banking stuff in general, I couldn’t help myself from being moved by the first sentence on their website: “Funding Circle was created with a big idea: to revolutionise the outdated banking system and secure a better deal for everyone”.

All this makes me think that we may have a new era in front of us; talking about money could be more human… so, maybe I’ll keep gathering information and start a conversation instead of running away.

The Animal Instinct

I’ll start from the conclusion, just to turn things around: are we more animal / less civilised than we would like to admit?

I’ve been thinking about the last month, what I’ve learned and my feelings after the impact with the MACE, and the more I think the more I realise that it’s always and all about People and relationships.

My thoughts are used to dancing in circles, coming and going like people at an open party; therefore, I tried to hold them together mapping my reflections and, even though I’m sure it will look incredibly messy to most of you, it clarified a lot to me.

The Frieze Art Fair we visited a couple of weeks ago made me realise that the value was not in the Art works themselves but in the overall experience of the Fair as hub for cross-pollination.

As I wrote in my essay for Mapping the Creative Economy, it looked like a proper Ecosystem where people gravitating towards the world of the Art Industry – Critics, Curators, Artists, Galleries, Audience – cooperate in building an evolving meaning.

It’s a herd. We are influenced by the society we dive in, we feel the need to understand and to be understood, be part of something bigger, share rules and problems for many different reasons. The designer’s hand – from the first tool created by the first man –  is driven by people.

Prototyping, as a conversation between mind and hands, reminds us once more that we approach the world better when we have something tangible to gather around. It’s our fire; as pitching and storytelling it’s our way to share meaning though symbols.

We need to built friendships fostering trust and playfulness to collaborate to modify the world around us. It’s the only way to overcome the fear of judgment and discuss pre-existing patterns, as Tim Brown explain in his amazing performance at TED:

We need mentors as we needed leaders and guidance, it’s once again the need to share meaning and be encouraged (as Dr Sugata Mitra proved us) that can make the difference.

Moreover, after our panel discussion last Friday about funding and how to get the investors’ attention we realise that “People buy People”. Investors are looking for Good Teams rather then perfect products. Our speakers suggested to find a way to build a personal relationship attending networking events. Once again enter a community and share. It’s about trust and balance and passion, something far from the cold and inhuman world of banking and finance as we imagine.

It turned out that if your business fits your personality, if you do what you love following your ethics people around you can feel it and this makes a difference.

My opening question could has been a bit above the lines, I was trying to wind you up. I’ll be honest.

We look at ourselves as emancipated animals and indeed we are, but there is a huge share of instinct in our lives. We are fighting and embracing unconsciously and at the same time our being “animals” and I think this is exactly what makes us unique.

Thinking. Feeling. Doing. We can accomplish anything.

Don’t fall in Love!

“Nobody wants your idea!”, David Stokes struck me with this single sentence.

It is a common fear when we believe our idea to be unique and valuable that somebody could steal it, but  it’s really unlikely to happen. As Dr Stokes said, “Think about facebook. If Zuckerberg had told you about that, it  would probably have sounded like something not that great”.

facebook’s revenue in 2013 was $7.87 billion

His main point was that we have more to gain from getting our idea out there than keeping it to ourselves. Talking with people about it could help you consider different angles, to ask yourself “What is unique in my idea? Am I really adding value for someone?”. It could be your first focus group, just a few minutes after you had it.

“Don’t fall in Love with your idea!”, he struck me again.

“Many people find themselves married to their idea and jump directly from Thinking to Trading, but the real opportunities that a new idea opens reside in the Testing phase”.

We are supposed to be passionate and to back our innovative idea, but once more turns up we can look at things differently. Testing our idea with the final user, in the market, could looks like a waste of time if you are fully convinced but could avoid an expensive failure – both in energies and money. Moreover, even finding out that nobody want to buy or produce your product you will gain a new insight into your market and hopefully you’ll be able to formulate more effective ideas or make the right pivot.

The USA Company Raytheon invented the microwave while researching on a military radar

Dr Stokes, during the last ENTERPRISE! meeting last Wednesday said many times these two words: eliminate waste. It’s the core of the Lean Start Up system and I think it is embodied in the testing phase: we will prototype our MVP (Minimum Viable Product) > measure how customers respond (he focused on the significant difference between end users who’ll use your product – for example a kid with a videogame – and customer who’ll buy it – for example their parents) > and decide either to pivot or preserve the original idea. And we can also have a Lean manufacturing, building our product eliminating anything that does not create value for the customer.

He suggested to follow this simple methodology developing our business:

DISCOVERY – define your idea. 

EVALUATION – adjust your product to be fit for the market.

EXPLOITATION – write a Business Plan.

It seems so straightforward: focus more on the substance rather than on the complexity of the process.

10 reason why I will never look at lemons in the same way again

It was more or less a couple of weeks ago when Corinne asked us to form a group and think about a campaign to promote breast cancer awareness online.

I know, I’m late, I should’ve written this post before and, I know, summed up like this it looks pretty  simple. But it was not, at least for 10 reasons:

1) Our group was formed based on where we were sitting, so random people and a mysterious International Business student we just met. Strangers, because anyway we still don’t really know each other and this makes the situation both exciting and unpredictable.

2) The topic was the Pink October, the breast cancer awareness month. Every social campaign is a challenge, you are supposed to “sell” a new behaviour, but to speak about cancer and breast make the issue even more delicate and filled with taboos.

3) From the briefing to the actual thinking went by roughly 15 minutes, then 5 minutes to write down 20 ideas and 30 minutes to discuss them in our group with a positive approach (anything negative would’ve been literally “knocked out”).

4) Then 15 minutes to prepare a pitch introducing what we were supposed to work on for the next Thursday.

5) We had to use lemons, for their similarity with the breast shape.

6) And It had to be a viral campaign online. A real one.

We came up with an “IceBucketChallenge-style” campaign. We would’ve picked some guy up off the street giving him two lemons to hold while we would’ve asked questions like “what do you know about lemons?”, “and about breasts?”, “and about breast cancer?”. This should’ve been a video posted online and other girls, that we would’ve nominated through some social media, had to do the same to keep the viral campaign going. And here comes the 7th reason:

7) I went to Central London on a Sunday to test our idea on the field. Of course it was embarrassing, but only doing it I realised all the difficulties: to stop someone filming with your phone while you’re holding two lemons and then ask weird questions about cancer. All this trying not to scare him to death. Moreover, we found out that to be filmed seems to be a problem for a lot of people.

8) When we met again with our team we had to quickly think to an alternative. The temptation to pick the first thing coming to our mind was significant, instead we brainstormed again. We were aware of all the barriers this time but ideas still flowed freely.

The new concept we came up with was a single viral video: 13 men (not that tuned) singing one line each of the popular song “Lemon tree”. Link and hashtag of the campaign had to be shown just in the end, to tease the watcher nothing too specific had to be said.

9) So again we went hunting participants, explaining to each one what we aimed to do and why in the most convincing way. Filming and singing are not the average guy’s favourite activities, but we made it anyway!

This is our #knowyourlemons tree video:
It scored 226 views during the first 24 hours.
The short URL of the official website has been clicked 70 times so far.

And 687 people have been invited to the facebook event.

Obviously, it’s not a stunning success in the web marketing world but it taught me a lot.

I recognised all the Lean Start Up phases we went through – Thinking (1-6), Testing (7) , Pivot (8) and Trading (9) – but, moreover, I discover that people can always surprise you as you can surprise yourself. With short time and strangers coworkers coming from unknown backgrounds it’s easy to think “It’s impossibile, we won’t come up with anything valuable”, but if you only let this prejudice go and your mind free of experimenting you can get unpredictable results. So, my conclusion comes with the 10th reason:

10) It will never be simple to work seriously on something new, as it will never be simple working with people who (surprisingly!) live outside your head but in the end it’s far more satisfying than anything else. And the best part is that each of these experiences teaches you something about yourself, who you can be and what you can do.

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Campaign update and reflections

Media & Numbers

 Pinterest

We posted our video on Pinterest on an pre-existing targeted board.

Instagram

We posted 15sec of our knowyourlemons video on instagram with some trending hashtags.

Twitter

We tweeted and retweeted posts about our campaign with different hashtags and teasing sentences during the first week and some people followed.

Facebook

Our campaign went pretty viral on Facebook during the first 2 days. Many of our friends shared the link to the video, but some of them forgot the link to the main website.

 Facebook event



We created a facebook Event inviting all our friends. They spread it reaching up to 671 invitation. Even though just 53 people clicked “Going” many of them shared it, saw the video and visit the website.

YouTube

The video on YouTube scored 333 views so far, 226 of which during the first 24h.

Personal email campaign

I personally emailed some people I thought could’ve been interested on the topic, people that I know are not that involved with social medias.

Google Shortener

Our short URL has been clicked 75 times, from Italy, Russia and Britain mostly. Social medias played a role, but 36% of our visits have been direct.

Shortcomings

Language – the website and the campaign in general are in English and the majority of our connections are not English speakers. Having everything translated in other languages could’ve been more engaging for them.

Video – The video was funny and went viral among our friends because of the people involved, common people they could know. Despite this the link to the campaign was not that visible and the one at the end of the video couldn’t be clicked directly. We should have focused more on strategies to lead people to click.

Target – With more time to target the campaign, picking out which of our connections and Groups could’ve led to a more interested target, could’ve been more effective in spreading the campaign.

Time – Posting and reposting many times and at different time on all our social media, testing different approaches and keywords, could’ve helped us to “pivot” our campaign.

Designing worthy conversations

During the last week we have been introduced to Sir Ken Robinson and Dr Sugata Mitra‘s theories about the traditional Educational System, its shortcomings and how to implement it to keep up with the current society.

Tu sum up (not to trivialise), they claim that our schools are built on old needs and academic basis killing creative thinking and the natural instinct for testing and innovation that belong to every child. Kids are told that there is always a “right” answer and to get stick to set paths to do the “right” thing avoiding mistakes.

They don’t mention how a clear distinction between right and wrong is reassuring but I think we could read it between the lines.

“Someday the other museums will be showing this stuff” – at the Design museum entrance

I visited the London Design Museum this weekend and I found it surprisingly not-human-oriented. I was looking for the process, explanations about how that brilliant designer went through research and prototyping, keen to know why he choose those materials etc. but I found just technical explanations of a series of successes.

Ettore Sottsass – Logos Olivetti (one of my favourites)

After my visit I asked myself the fateful “why”. I don’t believe this approach to be intentional, but just tuned on the general practice.

As in the academic environment, in every field – from law to architecture – there is a technical language that contribute to cut out anyone who is not a professional. The feeling that there are things many of us can’t understand – knowledge we haven’t been introduced to – ends up drawing elite circles in which only some like-minded people are allowed to take part to the conversation. Everyone else stays outside scared to make mistakes.

Innovation comes from inter-disciplinary collaboration, from discussions with people with different backgrounds. Innovation in design comes also from emphaty, it’s made for people researching people’s needs.

It’s not about building walls but reevaluating human capacities: on one hand, the capacity to understand beyond scholastic notions and take part to the conversation with different point of view that worth listening; on the other hand, the capacity to put oneself ideas into discussion and to change.

This needs courage and humility and it’s scaring because leads us to potentially “wrong” unexplored paths, but I guess it’s the most effective way to innovation.

The KFF team experience: innovation is contagious

I’ve been thinking about the last week, the MACE 4 days full-immersion and the Lean Start Up experience with Dan Lockton last weekend. As I often do when something get stuck in my mind, I couldn’t stop myself to talk about it with basically anyone who liked to listen.

I also spoke with my mom, she’s a nurse. She was impressed by this approach: adapt the environment to meet needs. Your first thought could be that, since she is working in an hospital, taking care of someone would probably be something she sees everyday set as first priority but it’s not. She meets everyday people in need (patients) and on the other side people who don’t pay much attention to these needs (many doctors). Bureaucracy and medical procedures replaced the human dimension and empathy ends up to be a luxury.

Then the miracle happened. She told me that observing patients she noticed that, sitting on a wheelchair, they felt uneasy about having someone they couldn’t see driving them somewhere (not very funny places mostly) as baggages. It makes difficult to communicate and they keep turning round. So she just googled the problem to find the solution: a wheelchair with rear-view mirror. Simple.

I know that Google is not the final answer, but what surprised me is that giving people a different prospective can actually encourage them to be innovators and framing problems.

With the Lean Start Up workshop and the “blind/disability” exercise we did earlier happened something quite similar. We have been asked to look for a question before to answer, to observe and to be emphatic and communicative doing research and as a group.

This is the video blog of our experience:

We confronted ourselves with someone else’s attitude and point of view, it was not about us. Testing the KFF (Kingston Friend Finder) we found out that we needed to adapt our idea to each new need we discovered in the next interview. It can be a never-ending process, we can make mistakes and admit that it is not working and start all over again, but even this is a vital part of the thinking process.

There is not just one way to address a problem but seeing it and keep going deeper is the first step. As this was our first week.

The 1st day, the 1st post

I’ve just set up this blog for the MACE course. Hope you’ll enjoy it!