Startup founder and academic, Dr. Abdalla Kablan, was recently interviewed on The App Guy podcast by Paul Kemp. During the podcast Dr. Kablan shares a number of insightful entrepreneurship lessons from his experience that every founder should know:
1) Always Be Networking
Knowing how to network effectively is an important part of being a successful founder as literally, meeting the right person at the right time, can change your life. Making networking easier is one of the main problems that Dr. Kablan’s startup, Scheduit, is actively working to solve.
Scheduit is an online network that helps bring compatible professionals together. Available on web, iOS and Android, Scheduit actually shows users how compatible they are with each other and it then helps them organize face-to-face meetings together.
This is done using Artificial Intelligence which is basically an area in computing in which data scientists design machines that mimic human intelligent behaviour. The vision for Scheduit is to create an intelligent system available to the masses which helps connect the right people together, facilitate synergies and create more economic value.
To learn more about Scheduit, you can visit www.scheduit.com or you can download the apps from the App Store or Google Play.
According to Dr. Kablan, an important detail about networking to keep in mind is that often times, “the most powerful contacts are within the second or third degree of separation”. This is why it is important not to limit networking to people you already know.
2) Open-mindedness vs believing in your idea
One of the bigger challenges of being an entrepreneur is knowing who to listen to. Some people will love your idea while others will be less enthusiastic.
Dr. Kablan pointed out that “one has to adapt to the different challenges and different terrains that one works through”.
As an entrepreneur “whenever you walk into your office and speak with your team, the ego has to be left outside the door, because everyone’s opinion is as valuable as the founder’s opinion and the founder should be the one with the biggest ears and listen to as much feedback as possible”.
“The biggest problem with founders is when they think that their idea is the best idea out there, and they are not willing to … optimize it and to adapt it according to the feedback that they’re getting. At the same time, one should be persistent, never give up on the dream, never give up on their ability and their ideas, but be dynamic and be willing to change.”
3) Being able to turn a bad situation into an opportunity
An interesting story that Dr. Kablan shares is about how Scheduit managed to turn bad news into a media opportunity (which resulted in more downloads).
On the 12th of May, 2015, LinkedIn decided to restrict its API. Most companies saw this as a challenge but Dr. Kablan saw an opportunity.
Instead of relying on LinkedIn, he states “We managed to make a very nice, quick and dynamic sign-up process that doesn’t take more than 60 seconds, and in that sign-up process we actually capture most of the information that we needed from the LinkedIn API anyway. So I just blogged about what we did and said that this LinkedIn API restriction turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because we are now getting all the data that we needed, without having to rely on LinkedIn’s full API. That’s when the external media outlets picked up on this, saying these are the first companies that have reacted to restrictions of the API, and we had a spike in the number of downloads.”
Dr. Kablan points out how the story ended being picked up by respected media outlets such as Yahoo Finance! and Bloomberg.
So here are the main takeaways one last time:
- Always be networking. Remember that a meeting can change your life.
- Believe in your idea but be ready to adapt as necessary.
- Be creative and look out for opportunities others might not be seeing.
To listen in on the full interview (30 minutes) with Dr. Kablan, you can click here. If you’re also interested in listening to more insightful interviews with app entrepreneurs, make sure to regularly follow The App Guy podcast by Paul Kemp.
This piece was contributed by Jeffrey Romano, PR and Community Manager at Scheduit. He regularly writes for a variety of business blogs covering startups, innovation and technology trends.
