Three things I learnt from a Swedish start-up
2012 was a curious Summer. The weather in Berlin peaked too soon and the excited glory and promises of sunshine that were proposed in May fizzled out into an anti-climatic abortion of hope.
The Summer was a let down, but the guests in our co-working space most certainly were not. And it wasn’t as though they were just renting office space: they actually slept on the couches in the back room of Weserland for a whole month and worked there during the days. There were initially 5 of them and they brought a pristine air of beauty and stealth into the dehydrated walls of the Neukölln base. Initially cautious, the rest of us co-workers curiously watched as they ingested their new home. With health and good genes on their side, we projected that the Swedes could not have been a day older than 23 and much too immature to actually want to work.Â
They were founding Linkura, a service which allowed people with diabetes to track their diet and sugar intake and this is what I learned from them:
One thing that especially struck me about the Linkura team was that they would all be equally accountable for what went right. And what went wrong. On the first day that they arrived, they were told that there was a “magic number” for the door. This magic number was actually a phone number which was installed into the roller door by the crafty developers and upon calling the number, would open in a brilliantly futuristic fashion. What may have seemed clear and precise instructions by the landlord were interpreted as a completely different thing for the young team. Scrambling to find a place to finally set up their camp of the next months and lay their travel-confused heads, they began frantically searching for the place to input this magical code number. Hastily lifting and heaving the roller door, they destroyed it together and found their way inside. Upon later talking to the team about it, they confessed that feeling guilty together brought them together as a team because they shared the connection and emotion associated with the mistake.
2. Lose your inhibitions.
We went out together. In Berlin, going out means not doing anything by halves and allowing yourself to fully succumb to the delights and temptations of this untamed city. I would have thought this a dangerous and revealing pastime, wanting to save my alcohol-induced opinionated passion for typography (especially the letter g) for close friends and family only. Losing their inhibitions and sharing their dreams, visions and worst dance moves brought a high level of understanding into the team and built empathy.
3. Lose your expectations.
I chatted to the developer about networking. It felt like such a dirty word to both of us and we discussed just how incredibly stressful it felt to get out and talk about ourselves and our visions. To do our elevator pitch somehow felt a little duplicitous and not because we didn’t believe in what we were doing or talking about, but because we are both natural introverts. After chatting from sometime, we realized that without actually having to do the awkward pitch to each other, we had gained a huge understanding into each others visions and ideas just by opening ourselves up and losing the expectations of how we should act. By clearing the slate and opening our minds, we were able to fully communicate in an honest and effective way without ever having to feel like a slimy american salesman.
Written by Danielle Reid, co-founder and creative director of Capsule.fm
Text source: foundinginberlin
Photo source: Danielle on EyeEm