Superangel Weekend: luck & stuck
For this Superangel’s weekend list we have selected 4 pieces on topics of getting lucky as a founder and how to move on when you are out of luck & stuck.
Superangel team is right now reading early-bird applications to our accelerator Alpine House (deadline is 15 August). As investors we are looking for founders, who have global ambitions and can turn getting stuck into luck. Therefore we have selected “luck and stuck” pieces to our weekend list. Enjoy!
Getting lucky
Some of successful startup founders have said that “I was lucky”. Sounds like a pretty crappy advice: in order to be successful, try to be more lucky like me. Stanford entrepreneurship professor Tina Seelig has taken a more scientific approach and makes an argument that you can actually do something in order to be more lucky. In 3 minutes interview with Tina Seelig she differentiates fortune, chance and luck and describes some patterns in being lucky. Watch Tina Seelig’s TED talk and get some more detailed overview of her 3 principles, which help startup founders to catch winds of luck.
Out of luck and stuck
More often than they like startup founders find themselves out of luck and being stuck. Atrium CEO Justin Kan lists 5 problems startup founders find themselves facing most often:
- I don’t have product-market fit
- I need money to run my business but investors don’t want to give it to me
- I have product-market fit but I hate my job
- We aren’t making progress against our goal
- Critical people keep leaving my company
Read Justin Kan’s “Debugging your startup” if you are interested in finding out what are the potential solutions to these problems.
Stuck with a connector problem
Founders building Bolt or Uber-like connecting platforms can have a very specific problem to get stuck with. Entrepreneur magazine editor-in-Chief Jason Feifer calls it the “Handy Problem”: how to keep customers and service providers using your connecting platform even after the connection has been made? Jason has interviewed Jaron Gilinsky, who has figured it out in his company. His platform Storyhunter connects media companies and giant brands to freelance video producers and journalists in 180 countries. They were stuck with the same problem. After media companies got in contact with good video producers in a particular country, they wanted to do next deals directly without Storyhunter platform. The solution is obvious in hindsight, but it took Jaron quite some time to figure out, what is the problem in media companies’ and freelance video producers’ current relationships, which Storyhunter could solve. To find out the solution, listen to the podcast “How Do You Keep Buyers and Sellers Inside Your Marketplace?”.
Good fortune of being a European startup
Usually European startup founders do not feel particularly fortunate about being an European startup. Many founders see their Holy Grail market in the US and Silicon Valley seems like a much more fortunate place to launch your startup. In her article “Why I Moved From San Francisco To Europe To Invest In Tech” venture capitalist Maren Thomas Bannon argues that European startups are actually more fortunate than they think. In addition to more universal advantages Maren lists three sectors where European startups have significant location advantages over the US counterparts. Check out her article to find out is your startup in one of these fortunate sectors and what location-based advantages you have in beating the US startups.
