hi everybody, I'm David and this is Jan. Hi. And we would like to present
you our learning story with our startup Universator. For those who don't know, Universator it's
something like trip advisor for schools and universities, so we give a space to people
to give, to write a review and write a feedback to the universities, so other
people can search and find their university and study program abroad according to the needs
and possibilities
we achieved some... we won Starcube last year and what we achieved in last year
will tell you Jan
twelve months ago, we were standing at this podium, stage and holding the first prize
ticket
it was great, really great ego boost
enjoy it and what we did is actually locked ourselves in their offices for four
months, South Moravian Center, to launch our public beta version as soon as possible and
it happened... it happened two thousand eleven, on October
at the same time, we actually were Seedcamp Mini Seedcamp Prague finalists, which is also
great competition, we can recommend it. And that time one of the things we brought
from this competition was that guys, students are visitors that's great but you need focus
on customers
so focus on them, and we did it. Next twelve... next two months we created
administration for universities to add their stay programs
and from January two thousand twelve 'till March two thousand twelve we approached over four
hundred universities
and what we learned from that is that they don't read e-mails at all, but
what was even most important is that they are not interested in
and, at the same time, we are running out of our money, what we saved.
It was twenty thousand euros. We spend this probably same amount of money in our
time as opportunity cost and other twenty thousand euros of other team's members, that were
actually involved and weren't paid
so it was, somehow, called aha moment, something like: okay, now we need to stop,
otherwise we are heading to hell
so we stopped
and what is our current state? Because we... we're now out of money and the
business model which we thought would work didn't work, we had to fire our team,
which was like we were eight people, now we are just two of us and
we started searching new ways, new business models for... for the startup. We had several
mentor meetings for... with the people all around. And this day we got some advices
and tips and nowadays we are stucked anyway. Because we know there is the need
on one side, but we still don't know how to monetise it properly, so we
don't know if we should... we should work more on the project or we should
shut it down completely
but
even though we have this experience, we... we got really big learnings, which I would
like to present to you
first one is
find paying customer as soon as possible
hear it all the time, and we also heard that and we knew it, but
our business model was based on something which our competitors had and it worked
and we asked Masaryk university here in Brno if they would use our service, that
we have it, and they said: yes we will, so we said: okay, great, the
business model is approved, because competitors gained a lot of money out of it and
universities here, even in Czech Republic, they would use it
but nobody picked us, actually. We just thought it will work and we saw it
in the competitors but nobody picked us, real money. And this is the first learning
which we will share, keep in mind in the next startups in the future as
well, and I would like to suggest to you to do the same. Like, get
the paying customer as soon as possible even if you are ashamed for the product
or service, find the paying customer. And I'm really glad that... that startups here at
this competition, they already have some
second thing is team
hard times will come, that's for sure. Really, for sure. And at that times you
really need to support each other. As they did mention, we were a team of
eight and now we are again a team of two
but that's what we
should suppose to do next time and be better way. So really, prepare for hard
times and even test your colleagues
okay. So, whatever
they will come
yeah. The third thing, which is really crucial for us, don't hide... don't hide your
idea. People always think that, if you present the idea to others, they will steal
it from you or
they will somehow scam you or something
what we experienced. Since the beginning we talked about the idea about the project on
every event with as many people as possible and it helped us a lot. We
got feedback, we got some advices, and we built a network of people which can
help us in the future as well. It really helps, nobody will almost share, nobody
will steal the idea from you or if somebody is interested in it, they can
join you or you can join with the others and gain.. like, gain other member
of the team, which is motivator for the project
don't spend money. It's a truth of a life for startups. So hey, what we
did? Spend six thousand crowns for terms and condition, in English, for customers we'd never
had
yeah, but, the good message is
you all Starcube teams are winners. Really, you got the experience which only few have
and that's already something. And I would like to congratulate you. Very good
mister Forbes says: failure is a success if you can learn from it
and we had a lot of learnings, so are we successful?
thank you