AngelCube

It’s January 1, 2015. You’ve put on four kilos over the last 10 days, having stuffed your face with empty carbs – delicious empty carbs – and feel somewhat guilty. So you make the resolution to join a gym, in order to lose that extra weight and then some, and be in good shape for the rest of the summer!

  You go out, purchase the 12 month gym membership – for value – and stop going approximately three weeks in, when your joints start aching and the memories of your recent gluttonous activities have faded.

  The problem? Your resolution sucked. ‘Getting in shape’ is an ambiguous goal. How do you know when you’re in ‘shape’? To have a better chance of keeping the resolution you need to get specific. Say, for example, to lose 8kgs by the end of March. This gives you something quantifiable to work towards. You can track your progress. Measure your gains (or in this case, losses). And there’s a clearly definable point at which you’ve succeeded at your resolution.

  So what does all this have to do with startups? Well, if you’ve been following along with the previous articles in this series, at the least you’ll have a lean canvas drawn up and filled with some assumptions you plan to test. But before you get to testing, you need to clearly define what results will validate your idea, and what falls short. In some cases this will be an obvious pass/fail type outcome, in others cases you will need to be far more specific. And it should go without saying that you need to track your progress as you go.

  Tracking your progress, along with knowing your metrics, is crucial to your startup’s success. But it isn’t as straightforward as you may think. It’s easy to get caught up in tracking the wrong types of metrics: ones that don’t actually give you an indication as to the health of your startup. Such metrics are often referred to as ‘vanity metrics’, because they sound good but don’t really say much.

  An example of this is ‘our product has been downloaded over 1 million times’. Sure sounds impressive, right? But how do you know. The fact that it has been downloaded a lot tells you nothing of the state of the product. And any savvy person in the startup scene will see through this type of metric immediately.

  Metrics that matter tend to be time sensitive. ‘1 million downloads in the last month’ is far more encouraging than the first statement. Better still is ‘1 million active users per month’ – indicating that not only is your product popular but it has sufficient value that people are engaging and staying engaged to some degree. The vanity metrics steal the headlines, but the metrics that matter are those that tell a more substantial story.

  So what type of metrics should you focus on at this early stage in your startup? Entrepreneur-turned-investor Dave McClure came out with a guide that goes by the acronym AARRR (which you can view in full via his presentation ‘Startup Metrics for Pirates’), which stands for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral. In more detail, this looks like:

  Acquisition: The various channels by which people find out and visit your startup. These include both offline and online channels, ranging from traditional advertising in print, events, and PR, to more modern channels like SEO, AdWords, and content marketing.

Activation: The moment a person uses or experiences your product/service for the first time. Note this is not the same as someone visiting your page or downloading your app. Examples of ‘activation’ include the first time you rode in an Uber cab, or the first time you ‘tweeted’ something on Twitter. Merely signing up to a service or downloading an app does not necessarily count as activation. It is the moment a person becomes a user of your product/service.

Retention: Once a person has ‘activated’ and becomes a user of your service, do they come back? A user who comes back to your product/service post their first activation experience signifies that you have created something of value – one of the strongest indicators that your assumption about the problem you are solving is correct. That they come back, and later, how often they come back, are key metrics that you should be paying attention too very early on.

Revenue: This one is the most straightforward of the lot. The more revenue you earn for your product/service, the better! It doesn’t apply to all startups – there are now countless examples of companies that have been valued at and acquired for extremely large sums of money without ever seeing a cent in revenue – but for the vast majority of startups, revenue is a significant metric.

Referral: This refers to the organic growth of your startup. To achieve what is known as ‘viral growth’, you will need every person who uses your product/service to actively refer more than 1 new person to your product/service. Very few businesses ever achieve viral growth, and even then it is more common in business to consumer (B2C) products/services like social networks and games.

  There are a lot of potential metrics to pay attention to, as outlined above. The approach you must take when starting out is to focus primarily on Activation and Retention. If you can create a product/service with strong metrics around Activation and Retention, you will have something worth paying attention to. You are far better off finding 100 people who absolutely love your product/service and could not live without it, than having 100,000 people who have tried your product/service but are only lukewarm about it.

  So that’s it for the series, you’ve now got the know-how, the inspiration, and the time to make something happen over the coming holiday season. Good luck and let us know how you go via twitter with the hashtag #2015istheyear.

Previous article: Interview with Asher T from CoinJar.

Today I’m joined by Asher Tan from CoinJar, a startup that lets you buy, sell, and manage your bitcoin. CoinJar was founded by Asher and Ryan Zhou in mid-2013 and it’s been a whirlwind ride ever since.

  With something in the area of $50 million worth of transactions in their first 12 months of operations, they now have a team of 12 people and offices in Melbourne and London, as they look to become a world leading bitcoin exchange.

  AN: Asher, thank you for taking the time with me today, I know you just arrived back in the country from the new office in London. How is that going for you?

  Asher Tan: London is great. It’s one of the finance centres of the world. The UK have very progressive laws relating to bitcoin that make it an attractive market, and one that we will be focusing our efforts on in the coming year.

  AN: Nice one. To take it back to the beginning, can you tell us what you were doing before startups?

  AsherT: I was working as an analyst, writing economic forecasts for a large firm.

  AN: And so what made you want to do a startup?

  AsherT: I’ve always enjoyed building and creating new things. And I think I’ve always had the startup bug in me, it just took a while for me to find it! In my previous job I had a small team working with me and tried to cultivate a close bond within the team, in order to reach and surpass our targets. The thing was, we bonded so well and met all our targets easily, yet head office didn’t want us to do any more and probably viewed us as loose cannons.

  AN: Was there any trigger point, any incident in particular that spurred you into action?

  AsherT: Nothing specific, I was gradually getting more and more immersed in the local startup eco-system, going down to events, making friends with people actively working on startups. Reading all of Paul Graham’s essays on the subject. Seeing other people build and create great product and companies – I wanted to do it too!

  AN: So how did you get the idea for CoinJar then. Were you on the bitcoin train from the early days?

  AsherT: I had been working on a completely different idea for a good six months before applying to AngelCube. I met Ryan online and another partner at a networking event, and we applied to AngelCube. During the interview process, they told us that they liked the team, but not the idea, and that if we wanted to get in we should change the idea. At the time I thought it was likeDragon’s Den or The Shark Tank, and they were testing us to see our commitment. Turns out it wasn’t a test. So over the weekend we brainstormed a bunch of other ideas, and CoinJar was the one we agreed upon. Thankfully AngelCube liked the idea as well, and the rest is history!

  AN: Haha, too funny! It sounds like you’ve never been short of ideas… When did you know that this was the one?

  AsherT: The early signs were good, even during the first few weeks of AngelCube it was obvious that we were having early signs of success relative to the other teams. For a while things were very stressful, but one of the mentors at AngelCube reminded us that the stress was due to our product being too popular, which is a really good problem to have. It wasn’t too long into the CoinJar journey that we did our first million in transactions. From that point onwards there wasn’t a doubt in my mind.

  AN: Indeed. Given how fast things have been moving with CoinJar, I’m sure you’ve hardly had time to take it all in. But to date what would you say has been the biggest lesson learnt?

  AsherT: When you can't figure things out that's what your co-founder is there for. Ryan built bitcoin businesses before, and especially at the start of our journey it was him leading the charge in terms of what direction we should take, what we need to build, etc. Some of his ideas were crazy, and we spent many a night arguing over what was worthwhile and what was not. Thankfully most of his ideas were right!

  AN: Excellent! And just lastly, do you have any advice for the would-be entrepreneurs out there reading along and getting inspired to be the next Asher Tan and Ryan Zhou?

  AsherT: Hustle. You have to use every resource at your disposal to keep your startup alive. At the end of AngelCube all the teams went to the US as part of the program, with the goal of raising a seed round. As a group we went down to a startup trade show called TechCrunch Disrupt, the thing is, all the other startups looked very slick and professional, with banners and display monitors and everything.

  As a three-month-old startup we had none of this. So what we did was go down to Best Buy and purchased the biggest screen we could get our hands on. We were careful to take very good care of it whilst in our possession and not remove any of the stickers. As a result, we were the only AngelCube team to have a display monitor in our booth, which we returned as soon as the trade show was done, so it cost us nothing”!

AN: Wow, thanks a bunch, Asher. Best of luck with CoinJar in the coming year.

Next article: A resolution to measure.

Previous article: Interview with David Chung from etaskr.

Today we’ve got a case study of the corporate kind, bringing you up close and personal with David Chung, co-founder of etaskr – an online resourcing platform that is an enterprise software version of sites such as freelancer and oDesk. It aims to connect those looking for workers inside an organisation to those looking for work.

  The etaskr story is an interesting one because its roots stem from the corporate world, a world many consider to be diametrically opposed to the world of startups. Unlike many startup stories you hear emanating from entrepreneurship hubs like Silicon Valley – where the founders are college dropout computer hackers who built an app over a beer-driven weekend – etaskr was founded by two work colleagues who left the security of corporate life to pursue their dreams as entrepreneurs.

  I had the chance to sit down with David and find out what it was like to move from corporate to startup, how it helped, what adjustments needed to be made, and what he would have done differently if he had his time over.

  AN: Firstly David, can you give us a quick idea of your background?

  DC: I went along a pretty well-trodden path of good marks, a double degree in commerce and law then getting a few graduate offers of which I chose a management consultancy position at KPMG. I quickly realised that this was not going to work for me and I made the life-changing decision to resign.

  Serendipitously, I was recruited for a position in the innovation department at KPMG as an innovation analyst, and that I feel is the key moment that has led me to this great path of building a startup.

  AN: Interesting. So what was working in the innovation department of a large corporation like?

  DC: At the time, it was really exciting. We had a framework that was heavily directed by your own creativity that moved projects from ideation to testing as quickly as possible. Then if we got the right signals we would go to pilot and then production.

  Looking back on it now though, it’s a much more conservative approach to building a startup but you’re solving your company’s problems and things move a lot slower because of how many stakeholders you have. It was certainly much more suited to me than consultant life though.

  AN: OK. And how did you manage that transition?

  DC: My manager and mentor Tom was really helpful, plus some books he recommended I read, namely: The Lean Startup by Eric Reis, and The Little Black Book Of Innovation by Scott Anthony, the latter dealing with corporate entrepreneurship. I think my people skills helped too as I got on really well with one key product developer, Pat, who helped teach me about product management, and we built some really cool things together. He eventually became my co-founder!

    AN: So what triggered you to leave corporate innovation and get into startups?

  DC: Well, funnily enough, I was researching an idea for work that involved co-working spaces. I made a visit to Inspire9 and while I was there I was explaining to Nathan (co-founder of AngelCube) what I do. He asked me if I had any ideas of my own and that if so I should apply to AngelCube as applications would be open for another week. Well, that got me thinking and back at work I asked Pat if he would be interested in joining me. He did, we drew up our plans for world domination, googled how to pitch and a few weeks later got in!

  AN: Sounds like it all happened rather quickly!

  DC: Yeah, it was crazy. We had to commit to AngelCube full-time, but to do that we had to resign from KPMG with one week’s notice! Thankfully, my boss at KPMG was really understanding. He told us that he knew that we would one day apply everything we’d been doing and learning to the big bad world and we’d fly the coop. I felt like Anakin Skywalker saying goodbye to Obi-Wan – before he turned to the dark side of course. We still keep in touch and he’s one of our biggest supporters.

  AN: And the idea for etaskr was one you picked up whilst at work?

  DC: So we got into AngelCube with a different idea, but they invested in us as a team, not the idea. So we decided to park it for a couple of days and just throw ideas around to see if we could come up with something a bit juicier.

  And so etaskr was born.

  The idea was heavily based on solving our own problem of working as consultants and being ‘on the bench’. It’s exactly what it sounds like – there’s not enough work and you sit on the sidelines trying to look busy. Not having much work might not sound like a big problem to those who haven’t worked inside a big firm, but it’s a nightmare. You go from being motivated and ambitious to frustrated and anxious – but you’re told it’s all part of the job. What we’ve realised in the startup world though is that you don’t just have to accept that – you can build crazy solutions that can change behaviour.

  AN: How did you find the shift from corporate life to startup life?

  DC: Pretty huge. First your mindset around ‘work’ completely changes. You no longer clock on, do your structured tasks that are managed and reviewed then clock off. You’re constantly thinking about creative, meaningful things you can do for your startup. It doesn’t really feel like work anymore – well apart from the compliance stuff – but you bring so much more energy into it because you don’t see it as doing something for a pay cheque. You’re doing something you’re crazy about!

  AN: Cool. This has been great! Just lastly, what advice would you give to people working in the corporate world who are at this moment thinking about doing a startup?

  DC: If you’re feeling underappreciated, disengaged and underutilised at work – well first off you should pitch etaskr to your boss because you’ll begin discovering awesome opportunities inside your company you never knew existed. But secondly you should trust yourself to go out and build your own dream instead of someone else’s. It’s a huge learning curve, or learning cliff face as I like to call it – but startups bring the best out of you. To sum up – smart people should build things!

Next article: Interview with Asher from CoinJar.

Previous article: Why 'manual first' can help you MVP quicker.

A common refrain in Silicon Valley is ‘manual first’, referring to all the different approaches you can take to validate and grow your startup idea before putting any time into building a web or mobile application.

  The reason this approach is so popular is due to the speed at which you can accomplish things. Speed is everything for a startup. It is one of your few natural advantages over pre-existing competition. Because you’ve invested so little in your idea to this point, it will never be quicker or easier to change what you’re doing, be it slight changes or drastic ones.

  Big companies have mass, and with mass comes momentum. Momentum is great if you know where you are going, but crippling if you need to change directions suddenly.

  So how does ‘manual first’ equate to getting the ball rolling on your startup? The answer lies with an MVP. That’s not a sports reference mind you, rather in this context MVP stands for minimum viable product. That’s startup lingo for doing what you have to in order to learn whether the assumptions around your idea are valid.

  What this means in practice depends on the type of startup you’re creating and the particular hypothesis you’re hoping to test. Typically, you want to test the biggest assumptions in your business first, which usually equates to “will anyone use my product/service?”

  A good assumption to validate before going out and dedicating your life to making it happen, don’t you think? In fact, everything we try to do as entrepreneurs, be it speaking to people, creating a lean canvas, and testing the various hypotheses within, is geared towards de-risking the startup as quickly as possible. So, what might an MVP look like for your idea?

  If your idea is for a product that you plan to sell and distribute online, one clever MVP is known as the ‘smoke and mirrors’ technique, which involves setting up a landing page for your ‘product’ (including relevant information such as price, benefits, feature set, etc), sending people to said landing page (often via some paid ads on Google, Facebook, or whatever platform is relevant for your target audience) and seeing how many people actually click the purchase button.

  The point of this exercise is that you find out relatively cheaply – whatever money you spent getting people to your ‘product’ website – if anyone wants what you have to offer. If no one bites then there’s not much point in building out the product. You’ve invalidated the hypothesis that your product is the solution for a certain group of people, whom you believe suffer from a certain type of problem. From this you can deduce that:

  1. The people who came to your site weren’t the correct subsection of people (change your advertising).

  2. The people coming to the site were OK but the positioning of the product was not (change the content of the landing page).

  3. The offer wasn’t compelling enough for the price (change the price).

  4. People aren’t really interested in the product (put more work into researching the problem – is it really a problem?)

  If your idea is more service than product, then you can utilise ‘the Wizard of Oz’ technique to validate your assumptions (the name bears homage to the old man who hides behind a curtain pretending to be a powerful wizard in the children's classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). If your startup revolves around some type of service, the Wizard of Oz technique means physically complete the service by emulating the actions of what you would eventually code and automate.

  As an example, say you had an idea for an online gift recommendation service. Manually emulating the service in this case may take the form of finding potential gifts for a user by personally going through shopping catalogues looking for gift ideas that match said users preferences, then returning the results online as files in an email.

  To the user, there is no difference between an algorithm sourcing the gifts automatically and you working behind the scenes doing the same job. This approach often involves creating a site that is slightly more complicated than setting up a simple landing page and some ads, but generally not much more than an extra form field or two. Note that if you are completing manually what you intend to offer as an automated service, you shouldn’t be shy about taking money for said services.

  Some tools that you might find useful for this part of the process include:

  Balsamiq – a wireframing tool that lets you sketch out your website or mobile application.

Unbounce – a tool that lets you create, publish, and test landing pages for your startup.

FluidUI – similar to Balsamiq, but with a later stage focus, higher resolution designs and the ability to put your prototype onto your mobile and test it out directly. 

Google AdWords – you know Google, you know ads on Google, this is where you go when you want to put your own ads on Google. Facebook have a similar platform you can find viahttps://www.facebook.com/advertising

Wufoo – a customisable online form builder with no coding required.

  Regardless of what tools and techniques you use for the job, keep in mind that speed is the essential ingredient. The faster you can prototype, iterate and prove an assumption, the faster your idea transforms into a viable startup. So, get out of the building, speak to customers, figure out what they want, what it looks like, put that online, and see if anyone buys! From there it’s wash, rinse, repeat… with one caveat which we’ll cover in the next article!

Next article: An interview with etaskr founder David Chung

Previous article: An interview with Tablo founder Ash Davies 

Startups, like genius, are 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Successful startups execute. But executing drains your energy, so it’s important to go back to the well of inspiration somewhat regularly, to make sure you’re up to the task.

  With that in mind, we’re taking a break from the ‘how to’ of getting your startup off the ground, to tell you the story of a young entrepreneur called Ash Davies, and his journey into entrepreneurship.

  Davies is the founder of Tablo.io, a self-publishing platform that is often likened to ‘YouTube for books’. Tablo went through AngelCube in 2013, having since gone on to raise further funding to realise their vision to create the future of publishing. And whilst this may sound a million miles away from where you are with your idea right now, you’ll note that his story was borne from solving his own problem, a familiar theme and great way to end up working on something you’re genuinely passionate about.

  Below is the transcript of our conversation.

  AN: Hi Ash, thanks for taking the time! First things first, what were you doing before Tablo?

  AD: Prior to Tablo I was writing and pursuing a career as an automotive journalist. I was fresh out of high school and studying journalism at university. I was self-employed, running a photography blog and selling my photography book.

  AN: Impressive. Sounds like you were already self-sufficient in terms of making a living off your own projects. Is that what made you want to do a startup?

  AD: Truthfully I didn't mean to start a startup. I didn't know that startups existed until I was a few months into my idea and colleagues began introducing me to accelerators like AngelCube. I started Tablo because I was struggling to publish my own book and knew there could be a better way.

  AN: So it would be fair to say this startup had its roots in a problem you had experienced first-hand?

  AD: Yes. I came up with Tablo in a rather natural way. I was struggling to publish my own book. As a blogger I was so used to being able to write something, click a publish button and connect with my readers. Publishing my e-book was an awful lot more complicated. It took me six months to go from a finished book to e-bookstores and when I launched no one was there to read it. I knew there had to be a better way, so Tablo was born as a sort of 'YouTube for Books'. It’s a platform where you can create, publish, read and discover new books.

  AN: And when did you know this was the one?

  AD: There was no lightbulb moment. During my second year at university, Tablo was the only thing I really wanted to be working on. I took the leap to drop out and focus on the idea full-time. Getting into AngelCube was further validation that this idea had potential.

  AN: Cool. What would you say has been the hardest part of the journey so far?

  AD: The learning curve. Building an early stage company isn't something you can learn how to do from articles or mentor sessions. You can only learn by working hard and effing up occasionally. In September of 2013 we had a spike in growth, I was running out of money and my lead developer quit. That kind of sucked. My incompetence bit me, but the experience taught me how to better manage people and money. I can't describe how much better off the company and I are for having gone through a few near death experience.”

  AN: Sounds like it’s been a school of hard knocks…biggest surprise along the way?

  AD: The people and companies we've attracted attention from is kind of crazy. I spend a fair bit of time working with people that I used to read about, from Silicon Valley investors to major corps. Every now and then I have to remind myself that this kind of work is not normal for a 21-year-old. Going through a program like AngelCube helps, you learn from the mentors and startups alongside you, which keep unpleasant surprises to a minimum.

  AN: You’ve certainly put my 21-year-old self to shame that’s for sure! You mentioned the learning curve being the most difficult part of doing a startup, what’s been the biggest take-away from that learning?

  AD: Focus on your product, focus on your users and everything else will come naturally. I made the mistake early on of thinking that building an early stage company was all raising funding, building pitch decks and having partnership meetings. I now know that funding and partnerships are by-products of having built something people really want to use. In an early stage you need to focus on making your users the most interesting people at the dinner table. Be relentlessly focused on your product and, if people love it, funding and partnership opportunities will then start coming to you. It's easy advice to hear, but it's incredibly hard to understand what it actually means for your company.

  AN: Great! And just lastly, have you any advice for those reading along at home wondering if they should get into startups?

  AD: Generally, don't. Building a startup is the hardest thing you'll ever do and I wouldn't advise anyone to start a startup because they're interested in the startup scene. The best ideas are organic, and the most successful founders are the ones who are so obsessed by an idea that they can't avoid making it a reality. Don't start a startup because you like startups. Instead, start one by accident”.

AN: Haha, nice! Once again Ash, thank you for taking the time and best of luck with Tablo.io in the future!

Previous article: How to validate your idea over Christmas

Next article:  Why 'manual first' can help you MVP quicker

You’ve got an idea for a startup – good for you. What most people don’t realise is that ideas are worth next to nothing.

  The majority of startups change their idea markedly between start and success. What you really need to focus on is the problem your idea addresses. Make sure that, above all, you’re solving a real problem.

  Focus on the problem and see that your idea is one possible ‘solution’ of many. And whilst it might be the ‘perfect’ solution in your mind, you ought to be open to changing your idea should the market demand it. Now, if the problem you’re trying to solve is something big – world hunger, say – whilst commendable, it’s rather difficult to tackle directly.

  What you want to do first is try and find a small subset, a niche if you will, of the problem to solve. In the instance of world hunger, you might try focusing on hunger in a particular region, group of people, or period of time (think a ‘world hunger hour’ initiative).

  Chances are your problem is a little closer to home, maybe something you’ve experienced personally. It’s important that the problem isn’t too personal, meaning it’s not a problem experienced by only you and two other people around the world (unless of course those two other people are billionaires willing to part with small fortunes to solve said problem). In other words, make sure that there is a market for your problem.

  Don’t get too caught up in the size of the market and all that jazz, for now, rough estimates (such as big, really big, ginormous) will do the trick. Above all, make sure you’re at least reasonably passionate about solving the problem. Startups are marathons, and it will be passion that sees you through to the end.

  OK. So you’ve got your mind around thinking about your idea in terms of the problem it solves, and you're reasonably confident it’s a real problem shared by others. Time to validate that assumption by doing what's known in startup parlance as ‘getting out of the building’. You need to find people who suffer from the problem you’re trying to solve.

  You want to find out if they do indeed suffer from said problem, how big a problem it is in their lives, and how they currently go about solving the problem – be it using a competitor's solution, taking a different route to avoid facing the problem, or hacking together their own solution to the problem – the latter being your best case scenario.

  Sadly you can’t just go up and ask someone those questions directly, as people being people, will generally just give you the answers you want to hear.

  There’s a couple of techniques you can use to get around this. The easy way that is somewhat useful; namely asking open ended questions that indirectly address the problem (e.g. “so what are your biggest problems at work?”) and following up when appropriate for more detail (e.g. “OK, you mentioned ‘x’ being a problem, can you talk more about that?”).

  Or the hard way that is very useful, which involves actually trying to sell your solution to said problem. Really go through the process of selling it (this may require a few props, perhaps a landing page or slick PowerPoint), it’s tough, but a worthy exercise to get real feedback.

  Again, because people generally want to be supportive, if you ask them directly what they think of your idea, most will be positive, unwittingly giving you a false picture of reality. Ask them to buy your solution and things quickly change. You start hearing excuses, AKA real reasons why your idea doesn’t quite solve the problem they have. Or you hear that the problem itself is not that big in their eyes.

  It might even be that the problem is one they never knew they had. Conversely, if halfway through your pitch they have their wallets out, cash in hand, you know you’re onto something! Note that you shouldn’t actually take anyone’s money before you can deliver on what you’re selling, at least not without their consent and understanding that you’re validating an idea at this stage of the process.

  Aim to speak to a half dozen people (phone is fine but face to face is better), and validate that the problem you’re trying to solve exists. At which point it’s time to put a framework around the business case.

  Mercifully, long gone are the days of the 50 page business plan, with forecasts, projections, and many, many words on paper. Today it’s all about the ‘lean canvas’ – a one pager that covers all the important bits of your business, and how they fit together. You can find an online version of the lean canvas, as well as an explanation of what it is exactly that goes into each section of the canvashere.

  The purpose of the canvas is to make sure you’ve properly thought about the various parts of the ‘business’ around your solution. Don’t get too attached, don’t spend too long getting it perfect. It’s important to understand that most of what you put into the canvas are assumptions and educated guesses.

  As you delve deeper into the problem, gaining insights and understanding that you didn’t have when you first started, you can (and should) update the canvas to reflect this.

  In fact, you get the most out of the lean canvas by treating what you’ve put in it as a basis for what you need to ‘test’: Treating every assumption about your business idea as a hypothesis to be proven or disproven.

  Just how you go about that will be the subject of the next article in this series, so stay tuned! And remember #2015istheyear.

Previous article: The year for my idea #2015istheyear

Next article: Interview with Ash Davies, founder of Tablo.io

This is the first of a series of articles that first appeared on StartupSmart here.

Click on the links below to view subsequent articles in the series:

How to validate your idea over Christmas 

Interview with Ash Davies, founder of Tablo.io 

'Manual First' the fastest way to an MVP!

Interview with David Chung, founder of etaskr

Interview with Asher Tan, founder of CoinJar

A New Years resolution to measure

Greetings and salutations!

  It’s that time of year when we look back on what was, and ahead to what’s next. It has been a huge year for startups, from Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion to Melbourne’s own LIFX raising a $12 million A round from Sequoia.

  There’s been more than a few local success stories, and we’ve been lucky enough here at AngelCube to count some of our alumni amongst those. Australia has even got its very own Startup Show. The local startup scene is rocking!

  No doubt you’re looking forward to some well-earned R&R over the Christmas/New Year period, spending time with the family, spending money on the family, eating enough food to feed a small family… And as you sit there, eyes glazed over in a food induced coma, you think about how the years fly by, each faster than the last.

  You start reflecting on what’s going on in your life, what you’ve achieved and accomplished, and what you haven’t. Chances are good that if you’re reading this, one of those unfulfilled ambitions is to run a startup.

  The good news is, now is the best time, bar none, to do something about it! You’re already set to make some New Year’s resolutions right? Make one of those resolutions the commitment to starting. Do something about that frustrating problem at work. One thing that would make your life, or the life of someone close to you, that much better. That stroke of genius which will change the world and make you so rich that you could literally buy Christmas next time it rolls around.

  Now for the bad news: if you stay on the couch, nothing much will change (surprise surprise). This isn’t a 12-month gym membership that you give up on by February, nor is it 12 months without drinking that you forget by Friday. It’s simply a resolution to start.

  We’ll cover what you need to know to get your startup off the ground over Christmas with some follow-up articles. But for now it’s on you to make that commitment. Write it on your hand. Tape it to the back of the toilet door. You can even tweet about it – we’ve got you covered with a snazzy hashtag – #2015istheyear – should you decide to do so.

  Remember; there’s no idea too crazy; no idea too small; no idea too ambitious. No one is saying your idea has to change the world. No one is saying you have to make the next Facebook, or be the next Elon Musk. But you have to do something. Otherwise it will be the end of 2015 before you know it, and you’ll be sitting on your couch, eyes glazed over in a food induced coma, reflecting on how the years pass by ever faster, and your startup dreams remain unrealised.

Remember:#2015istheyear

AngelCube 2014 is coming to a close, and our startups have validated their products, and are ready to scale.

To mark the completion of the program we're announcing our Melbourne and Sydney Demo Days.  These events are the key Australian pitch events on the AC calendar, and provide investors, mentors and advisors the opportunity to experience the startup pitches.

The Melbourne event will be held Tuesday, September 2nd from 6pm at the Apartment on Little Bourke St. A ticket is required to secure your attendance to this event.

Attend the Melbourne Event

The Sydney event will be held Thursday, September 4th from 6pm.  This event also requires you to secure a ticket.

Attend the Sydney Event

AngelCube is about providing startups with the opportunity to accelerate their growth.  We're also aware that this means get more and more people into the startup scene and growing the Australian startup eco-system.  For this reason, we're also holding a community demo day so that everyone can come and hear from the startups.

The AngelCube community demo day is being held Friday, August 29 from 6pm at Inspire9.

Attend the Melbourne Community Event

If you're US-based, tickets are also available for our SF and NY demo days.

AC14 is well underway, and the startups have been busy applying lean startup principles to validate markets, engage with customers and build their products.

We’re delighted to announce the teams in our 2014 batch.

Arcade A mobile platform that gamifies sales and customer engagement for brick and mortar retailers.

  BrandSpot Centralised management and distribution of your digital brand assets.

  Class Uber for hotel bookings - a mobile app for booking premium hotels.

  Dropin The fastest ways to book last-minute hair and beauty appointments in your local area.

  Ediply A platform for international students to search and apply for the perfect university course for them.

  Moodswing A social network for sharing your mood.

  The teams have been exposed to the experiences and knowledge of the AngelCube mentors over the past 6 weeks, and are working towards the AngelCube Demo Days held in September across Melbourne, Sydney, San Francisco and New York.

AngelCube is open for applications for the 2014 intake. Having just relaunched with a renewed focus on the importance of mentorship for early-stage startups, we're hot off the success of our last intake.

Included in the 2013 batch was bitcoin startup Coinjar.  The team was accepted into the 2013 AngelCube intake with just an idea, and after launching their bitcoin product they raised a further $500k from Blackbird Ventures to grow their company and the bitcoin market in Australia.

Coinjar is on a mission to bring bitcoin to the masses, and have established themselves as Australia’s largest and most trusted bitcoin company. Their new blog series ‘Stories’ explores how Coinjar is being used by every-day people to help them leverage the technology for their needs.

Pete Williams, one of Australia's leading experts in digital culture and trends remarked "CoinJar demystifies the [bitcoin] currency and provides a secure platform for all Australians."

The company has over 22,000 customers and processed over $40m worth of transactions in under 12 months.

We're excited to announce some changes for 2014 for AngelCube.

Having now accelerated 3 batches of startups, including LIFX, App.io and Coinjar, we're further along on our mission to fund teams and help them grow globally scalable startups.

AngleCube works with exceptional teams who don't just think outside the box, they challenge the traditional confines of our whole way of being.  The new AngelCube logo symbolises this disruption and represents the innovative excellent in each of our startups.

Joining the AngelCube mentor network for 2014 is prominent Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Susan Wu. Susan has been actively involved in the earliest stages of some of the world's leading consumer technology startups, such as Twitter, Square, Obvious (Medium, Lift and Branch) and Findery, amongst others. Fast Company named Susan as one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" and "Most Influential Women in Technology." She was named by the San Jose Mercury News as one of the "10 Most Influential People in Silicon Valley."

As we look to the future, we can only see more and more opportunity to identify and enable startup teams to build amazing products.

The teams are now two-thirds of the way through AC13 and only four weeks remain until our Melbourne demo day and Sydney demo day. Both these dates signify the final countdown to our U.S pitch tour in September.

Since entering the program the teams have undergone a number of Pitch or Pivot sessions, mentoring sessions and interview sessions. Since AC13 kicked off, c8apps has become the number one fantasy sports app in Australia, LifeGym has pivoted and is now Habit21app.com and CoinJar is now the cheapest platform to buy bitcoins in Australia.

In recent weeks mentor sessions have been taken by:

Scott Julian of Effective Measure, who discussed the processes involved with fund raising.

Steve Sammartino of Rentoid.com, who discussed ways in which you can pimp your startup.

James Tuckerman from Anthill magazine, who spoke on lead acquisition.

PJ Murray from Tweaky, who spoke about his Tweaky story and the dos and don'ts.

Darren Sommers from Meerkin and Apel who spoke on the general legal issues startups must watch out for.

Alex Holmes of Envanto who spoke on SEO and SEM strategies to drive traffic.

We have chosen seven teams this year from an application pool of more than 150 and we are excited to announce that we have been joined by an international startup. The cofounders of startup Battletrip, have flown from Chile, Portugal and New Zealand to take part in our Melbourne-based incubator and are the first international team to participate in an AngelCube program.

We are also pleased to announce that 2012 graduate Kickfolio (now App.io) have closed their series A round of $1.075 million. Entering the AngelCube program without a business idea, Kickfolio, were able to establish product market fit over the course of the 13-week program, and go on to graduate 500 Startups. Kicfolio’s series A round investors include Quest Venture Partners, 500 Startups, Geekcelerator, Maneesh Arora of MightyText, former Facebook executive Ankur Pansari and others. Kickfolio have now expanded their business from three to six people and are looking to release support to run fully native iOS apps on Facebook timelines. This year we are focusing on targeted mentoring. Each week throughout the course of our three-month program, the startups participate in one hour sessions held by members belonging to our extended mentor network. More than 60 names affiliate with this network, meaning this year’s startups have access to a number of carefully selected individuals, each of whom contribute an invaluable wealth of experience, knowledge and perspective. Here is the full list of AngelCube’s 2013 startups:

BattleTrip - Travel experts battle it out to create your next holiday experience.

c8apps - Fantasy sports apps that leverage your social network.

CoinJar - The fastest way for merchants to reconcile Bitcoins to dollars in their local bank account.

eTaskr -Task marketplace that solves underutilisation of resources within organisations.

LifeGym - A mobile app to help women build their fitness through real-life rewards.

Ozirig - Online marketplace connecting wholesalers and photography professionals.

The AngelCube 2013 program is now underway and seven startup teams have made the cut. Receiving around 150 applications, including a number from international startups, we underwent the difficult process of shortlisting the best 20. With the help of the AngelCube selection team, made up of Leni Mayo, Guy King and Scott Handsaker, together with Adrian Stone and myself, we interviewed the shortlist and selected the final seven startups to make it into the program.

Each year we kick off the program with our AngelCube induction day, which is hosted by SitePoint. The day forms the first obstacle in the program, where each team has to work through Anthony Mittelmark’s rigorous startup interrogation, followed by Scott Handsaker’s lean canvas session. However, it’s not all torture - Chris from AngelCube 2012 came and told the inspirational story of how the Kickfolio team entered the program without an idea and after graduating 500Startups is now set to close their Series A.

Three weeks ago round two of AngelCube kicked off at one of Melbourne's most successful startups SitePoint (the home of 99Designs, Flippa, Sitepoint and Learnable). It was an epic day, a startup bootcamp of sorts, hosted by AngelCube mentor Tony Mittelmark with a program overview by myself. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="AngelCube mentor, Tony Mittelmark, opens the AngelCube bootcamp at the 99Designs "Sauna" pic credit: Nathan Sampimon."][/caption] The pace definitely hasn't slowed since. There's been late nights; countless hours of hard work; hundreds of customer interviews and a lot of time spent building MVP's; testing assumptions; getting customer feedback and iterating on product and marketing. There's also been over 10 mentor sessions including; 

Alan Downie from BugHerd on "Where you should be by demo-day"

Steve Sammartino on "How to pimp your startup"

Scott Handsaker from EventArc on "The Lean Canvas"

Nathan Sampimon on "Creating personas and user stories"

Adrian Stone on "The intersection of product, market and team"

Melissa Shawyer from ClickPR  "Creating PR stories, angles and content for mass media"

Brownwen Clune on "Disruption and creative thinking"

Jonathon Weinstock on "Pitching and capital raising"

Diesel Laws on "The importance of UI & UX"

Joe Ziegler on "AWS and scaling your business in the cloud"

James Tuckerman - "Gattie Pitches and the four things you need to know about marketing"

Andrew O'Brien on "Artscrowd's story, MVP, Capital Raising and Pivoting" and

I ran a condensed session on day 1 on Product/Market fit; MVP's and how to test your business model before writing a line of code.

In addition the teams have been given prescribed reading including 

Running Lean 

The Entrepreneurs guide to Customer development 

TechStars - Do More Faster 

And a tonne of blog posts, most importantly Marc Andreesen's post on Product/Market Fit

And a series of milestones that have included 

Developing, testing and refining their business model using the Lean Canvas

Running problem/solution interviews over 20 real customers

Creating the "Board-room as bits" style presentations each week

Developing and testing Non-software MVP's and Concierge MVP's 

Pre-selling their products to interested customers

Developing their investor pipeline and relationships

Working out key metrics such as COA, APRU, LTV, Churn Rate etc. and many more.

Overall we feel this has helped their progress dramatically and you only have to read their blog posts such as; 

Week two of AngelCube by David, David and Cyril of Broccol-e-games.

Week two AngelCube - "Become your product" from Adam and Paul from Giftless and

Week three AngelCube - Vinspi's Milestone presentation. 

Or check-out the weekly Podcast that Jake and Phil have been recording each week. AngelCast2012. 

So, what exactly are the each of the teams working on?

Well they're finally at a point where we can reveal their ideas, without fear of too many changes. Whilst a startup should always be learning and open to adapting and pivoting I feel we're at a point now where each team has a clear direction and clear vision of who their customer is; the problem they're solving and the market they're entering.

Rather than recover existing ground I'm going to link to a recent press release that explained each business nicely from ShoeSringLaunch (which IMHO is becoming the best startup publication in the country) and talk specifically about two of the teams and the journey they've been on since joining AngelCube week 1.

The full article is available here.

PicksterApp 

Pickster App entered the AngelCube program as BrickTrack.co, a software as a service analytics platform for retailers. After Scott Handsaker's brilliant Lean Canvas session; and after a lot of customer testing the founder Jake Lawton realised the most important assumption to test was "Are retailers interested in analytics?" After a series of difficult interviews, conversations and an incredibly slow reply rate - the overall conclusion was, not only are they not interested, but reaching them is incredibly tough. The testing led to the conclusion; that there wasn't necessarily a business model here, and even if there was it wasn't likely it would reach product market fit easily or quickly. The resulting pivot has been huge, but based on Jake's desire to build a valuable niche marketplace and bringing amazing, hard to find products online. The response so far to PicksterApp from our targeted retailers has been incredibly positive and we're excited about the opportunity Jake and Naveed have discovered.

KickFolio

It's no secret that when selecting teams to participate in an accelerator the main emphasis is on teams. In KickFolio's case it was 100% on the team. We met Chris Nolet and Ed Dowling and whilst we weren't enamoured with their existing idea, recognised how talented and smart these to two gents are and the raw entrepreneurial energy and drive each had.  Within a week of coming into AngelCube they'd literally documented and written a Lean Cavnas for over 20 ideas. The determined search has ended up yielding in our opinion, and certainly the opinion of customer's they've spoken to, a brilliantly simple and clever idea that will solve real problems for app designers around the world. We're incredibly impressed by the work, energy and learning that Chris and Ed have show and I'm guessing their story will be an inspiring one in the not too distant future.

So, what else has been happening?

Well, if all that wasn't enough we've had a few social events, including AngelCube's launch party which wasn't quite as large as the 2011 one, but a great night nonetheless. We've also jumped on the bandwagon of Inspire9's new regular Friday night drinks. So, if you want to, come join us. There's beer and foosball and if you're lucky you won't' come up against Inan Lim (Vinspi) and Nicola Gracie (FitIntegrate) who seemed to occupy the table for most of the night last night!

Note, this isn't them, but it's awesome.

Some other, non-foosball related highlights of #AC12 thus far include.

Brocole-e-gaming's SpringBird cracking the top 10 in the Education section of the AppStore

Vinspi's continued growth, and the forthcoming redesign by the incredibly talented AC mentor Diesel Laws

KickFolio going from an idea, to having a small group of loyal customers queuing up in less than a week

PicksterApp moving away from a tough, enterprise sale, low value play to a really exciting marketplace

Team Giftless relentless approach to customer-solution interviews, which has led them to some fascinating insights.

FitIntegrate founder Nicola Gracie  being recognised as one of the top 10 female tech entrepreneurs to watch in StartupSmart

The amazing response to AngelCube TV Episode 1 - produced by the super talented Kealey Nutt (hire her if you're ever doing video!!)

Starting the year at SitePoint HQ; and enjoying the perfect welcome to the program courtesy of AngelCube friend of the family Leni Mayo.

And just generally, how well the teams are getting along, collaborating, pushing each other and creating businesses that we're really excited to be part of.

None of this could be done without the amazing support of the AngelCube community and the following people need to be thanked for their contribution thus far (listed in no particular order!).