I am a master student in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Aalborg University (Denmark). Currently I’m doing my graduation project for VentureLab International, which is related to entrepreneurial teams and growth of new tech-ventures.

Lots of red posters on VentureLab walls with catchy phrases kept raising my curiosity, but the decision to join the event came few days before it took place. To be honest, it was a challenge for me to participate. Since I am still a student, I was wondering about my potential contribution at the event. I set several goals regarding my participation.

First I wanted to know what I am capable of. I believe that competitive environments are best suited to reveal our strengths and weaknesses. Second and foremost goal was to learn how ideas evolve into a viable and promising business models. I’ve studied a lot about business development and multifunctional teams etc., but it was about time to experience it in practice.  Apart from that I knew I would meet lots of professional, spirited, entrepreneurial people and extend my personal network.  Rigid time frames set for the development of ideas (54 hours of work) added some spice to the vent. So I joined. Now I am way closer to starting my own company.

Startup Weekend Enschede is a 54-hour event.  Developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups. I enjoyed the company of about 60 attendees from technical and business backgrounds. We listened to impressive key-note speakers like Arthur van Hoff (CTO of Flipboard) and the winner of Startup Weekend Amsterdam, Henk Willem Beks (Goddess Alert).

The format of a startup weekend is to begin with open mic (microphone) pitches where attendees are encouraged to bring their best ideas and inspire others to join them as a team. Over Saturday and Sunday, the teams design and develop business models and first prototypes, listen to experts’ feedbacks and prepare 180-seconds final pitches.

After the first pitches, 8 ideas out of 26 survived the viability test and had teams formed around them.  I happened to become part of the MoRally team (online social impact game on sustainability). Our team was formed with difficulty.  The idea itself did not get a significant number of votes, and therefore also people to work on it.  Despite that, the idea owner –the aspiring entrepreneur- succeeded to attract me and another person to form a team.

The pitch of MoRally contained too many unnecessary details at first. This diverted the attention of the audience thus leaving them dumbfounded. They did not find the idea attractive and rushed away to join other, more explicitly presented ideas. Basically the only content I was able to grasp from the pitch was the term “CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) game”. Entrepreneurs are so into their ideas that they forget that others are not! Easy language, less details and better structure is what makes other people comprehend the message! I have been involved earlier into a project on corporate social responsibility so I found the topic quite interesting, especially since it was to relate to gaming.

Compared to other teams I thought ours did not inspire great hopes. Other teams consisted of experienced professionals, and ours mainly of students and solely business people. But the game inventor was surprisingly motivated by strong belief in success. After the pitches were done, the teams turned to work. First we spent 5 hours to comprehend the idea behind SCR game, by playing several game sessions. It appeared quite difficult to identify roles within the team, because members having very similar professional backgrounds. For years I’ve been studying that multifunctionality in teams is paramount to success. And  knowing that we were not “multifunctional ‘’ enough raised some discomfort at first. Monofunctionality, however, was still to some advantage. We had lots of meaty  discussions, which added new details and enriched our business concept.

Over Saturday and Sunday all teams subscribed for several experts sessions. First sessions with experts did not boost our confidence at all, especially because their body language said „I understand nothing of what you’re saying”! Despite ups and downs our lead- entrepreneur was still convinced of the greatness of CSR game. Commitment and belief is what led our team throughout the whole process. We kept working on the business model!

One of the important points is to realize one’s own capabilities and drawbacks. Despite being the owner of an idea, but being not such an expert presenter, one must delegate that task to someone who is more professional in this area. Entrepreneurs guard their ideas as chickens protecting their eggs. Interfering and further shaping the Ideas becomes really challenging then.  But I think it is also quite understandable.

After 24 hours of work, our team realized that without technical team members it was not going to succeed. We needed someone to create the graphic mockup of the game. And here all my entrepreneurial spirit came to the fore. Thanks to Facebook and quite a large number of engineer friends I was able to lure some of them to join the project. All together we kept moving forward. It’s not to say that we were ready by 19:00 Sunday, but what’s done..done!

We were really astonished to win the 3d award in the competition. It was an incredible experience.  I’ve learned from this event as much as I would learn in one year of my ordinary life.

Some lessons that I learned:

• Plan a pitch very carefully and present the underlying idea as simply as possible!
• Don’t give up your idea, no matter what they say!
• Understand your capabilities and drawbacks within a team!
• Leave space for others to work on and shape the idea, you may get surprised by the results!
• Show your commitment, it motivates your team!
• Negative feedback from people is a valuable source of information to get the next one positive, so love it!
• No matter who you are- experienced professional or a student- everyone can make a difference!

While I was writing this blog my colleague “Rob” was in Indonesia, my neighbor passenger “Senta” was preparing for a backpacking tour in New Zealand and Asia and I was approaching North Carolina (USA) where one of the VentureLab participants presented his company “SolMateS” in a worldwide conference on the commercialization of micro- and nano-systems. Worldwide presence no longer is restricted to large multinational companies, governmental leaders and scientists. All of us enlarge our scope. As tourists or backpacker, we get a personal experience on global diversities and at the same time, our community at home is also multi-culturalizing.

Young, small and medium-sized technology-based companies also have to cope with a global marketplace. Having limited resources they are open for support and easy access. Apart from existing support mechanisms like trade missions, fairs and agents, new way’s of internationalization are coming up.

Examples:

• * VentureLab participant Euro dev, the

European Business Development Group

This fast growing company is specialized in facilitating medium-sized US companies to get full access to the European market.

• *

Embedded coaching: Via this initiative, high tech companies in Twente get a few months residence in Silicon Valley with the support of a coach who introduces the entrepreneurs in the local business community in other to find clients and local representatives.

• *Softlanding incubation. The largest global incubator association (NBIA) started several years ago with a designation of members as a softlanding incubator

• Recently also the European Business & innovation center Network (EBN) started a soft landing club

• One of the first NBIA soft landing incubators in

Europe was VentureLab International

• Besides their existing incubator services as training, coaching, networking, and office space VentureLab International provide entrepreneurs from abroad support in acquiring visa and housing, dealing with another language and culture and local different legal and tax systems. Venturelab soft lander Pramod Agrawal (Ecolabs) from India explains to a group of interested potential entrepreneurs from 20 nationalities about his soft landing experience in Twente, see a short

Facilitating entrepreneurship in a global market place doesn’t end here! Of that I am sure.

Whether you develop a new business or lead an existing one, its all about the money. Or is it? As the industrialist Henry Ford reminded us a long time ago, “A business that makes nothing but money, is a poor kind of business”. I full-heartedly agree and think this remark bears even more value today than in Ford’s era. But if it is not for making money per se, why should your business exist? A careful scrutiny of the various purposes a business may have, shows us that there at least four types of purposes relevant to any business. These lead to four questions entrepreneurs may want to ask themselves occasionally.

Purpose with the business: what should it do for you?
The first question you may want to ask yourself, or your teammates, is what you are or were trying to achieve with the business. Did you want more freedom? Is it the realization of an ideal or an idea? Were you trying to get rid of paper work and red tape? Putting this question first place does not suggest that self-interest always comes first. What it does suggest, though, is that it may be smart to keep in mind whether your business is still doing for you what it was supposed to do and whether you’re still in the right business. If not, this is a signal to make some changes, or to leave, perhaps.

Purpose for the business: what kind of business should it be?
As long as it exists, your business will evolve into some kind of business no matter what. But if you don’t like to be surprised with the kind of business you end up with in a couple of years, it may help to think about this second question upfront. What kind of business should your business be? Should it be large? Innovative? Efficient? The best in its kind? Always the first? The answer to these questions is not a pure derivative of market forces or an automatic result of organizational dynamics. No, the kind of business you end up with, is largely influenced by what you want it to be.

Purpose of the business: what should it do for others?
It is probably this third question that Henry Ford referred to in the famous quote above. It says that your business is a poor one if it fails to be more than a money-making machine. This question concerns the intended and unintended impact your business has on others. Your business has many direct and indirect stakeholders – all of which cannot be served at the same time. Who are yours and how does your business affect them? How does your business matter and for whom? The answers to these questions can give you some insights about the added value of your business.

Purpose in the business: what guides your actions?
Finally, there are values and criteria that guide your everyday choices and actions. Whether implicit or explicit, all your business decisions will be guided by a normative view on what should and what should not be done – according to you. How is this for your business? How do you decide what is right and wrong? Is everything legal also appropriate? Is everything appropriate also legal? Answering this fourth question may help to make explicit how you make your choices and whether you like it that way.

These are not easy questions and answering them may require substantial time and effort. Yet, asking them every now and then in a moment of reflection – in the train perhaps or when driving home – can help you to make sure that your business should indeed exist.