ICO Instead of Series A?

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Picture showing a black frog and tited: When Joke Coins Win

Emitting publicly listed shares instead of diluting ownership by a series A financing round sounds like a very tempting way for founders to get going at early stages: Instead of having to “prove” their company’s worth to notoriously skeptical VCs and angels, they would simply have to pimp their equity story and promise things that need not come to fruition. … Read More

Prognostic Fallacies

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Gartner Chart of 2017 on the future of mobile apps

My most recent blog post dealt with fake problems (and corresponding fake solutions). Today I want to direct my “spotlight” (kindly notice a dose of self-irony here) at fake reasoning and fake explanations. In today’s newsletter “Pioneers’ Breakfast” by the excellent German special interest magazine t3n the reader is invited to read an article on the allegedly inexorable surge of … Read More

Startups Fake Problems Revisited

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Clowds with added caption: On Fake Problems

My post on Monday raised the contention that many pitch decks invent or magnify problems in order to make their “solutions” appear more impressive. I also stated this was an issue particularly pertaining to Germany and less so to start-ups in America, China, France, or the UK. My third claim was that over there, investors operate on more solid empirical … Read More

Think Before You Pivot

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Build-Measure-Learn? Yes, but think about what you need to measure and how you want to do it.

Today I just want to quote a recent post by @andrewchen from @a16z which I really liked. It’s from an interview Andrew gave to @AdamRisman from Intercom an (ex) start-up I also truly like. The podcast can be listened to here: https://blog.intercom.com/andrew-chen-on-growth. The pivoting passage I want to quote goes like this: “Adam: You’ve consulted with a lot of growth … Read More

Problems & Solutions: Footnotes on German and American Pitch Decks

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The German start-up way: A problem needs to be found for an existing solution...

The way start-ups are generally supposed to pitch is to present to investors an industry’s problem to which they can provide an, ideally unrivaled, sound, and singular solution. There is hardly a deck that does not follow this rhetoric. And for good reason so. What is problematic though is that, in continental Europe, or, to be more precise, in Germany … Read More

“AR/VR Shows Signs of Advancement – and New Worries”

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Which target markets are expected to peform best for AR and VR?

Movie, TV, Live-Events, Education and Gaming are the fields which proved most disappointing as target branches for AR & VR technologies whereas manufacturing, automotive, real estate and retail give new hope. PerkinsCoie’s Survey Industry insights into the Future of AR/VR – AR/VR shows signs of Advancements  – and New Worries of March 2018 shows that gaming’s lead position has suffered … Read More

Aspirational Marketing 2.0

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Hallo Hamburg Music Boot Camp Run Invitation sponsored by Reebok as an example of alternatives to conventional celebrity endorsement marketing strategies

For years on end, celebrity endorsement has been celebrated as the ultimate kick for consumer brands seeking to unleash mass desire. From Borg/ Federer & Rolex to Ronaldo & Nike the strategy was straightforward and – indeed – quite successful. It went like this: If a superstar with mass appeal in sports, entertainment, or whatever publicly praises the brand and/or … Read More

3D & VR Entertainment – Nice, But a Blue Ocean it is Not

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Graph with US Demand for VR and Model wearing Oculus Go Glasses

I just learned that Zuck’s Oculus Go, which will hit the market today, may finally allow Facebook to arrive in the hardware world. Apart from a super reduced user interface, prime visual performance, and, yes, price, Oculus Go achieves what made Apple great as well: combining excellent hardware & software with good and more or less mutually exclusive content (via … Read More