Corporate Management and Entrepreneurship

Participation of established companies in young, innovative companies (Corporate Venture Capital -CVC) or

spin-off from innovative departments in start-ups

Goals of established companies for doing corporate venturing:

• Securing new innovaitons
• early detection of technology developments
• Promotion of entrepreneurship
• Combination of concepts and resources
• Participatoin on returns when exiting the conpany (secondary)
• Money usually comes from parent company (corporate)

• Pros
  • Big investment volumes enable the fast growth of companies
  • Access to contact networks and partners of corporate
  • Corporate brings expertise which can contribute to the better development of the start-up
• Cons
  • Huge efforts previous, while and after the investment process
  • Dependenco vo CVC-Company and corporate
  • Partial likelihood of loosing the control of the company
  • Possibility for the start-up of being integrated at a very early stage of development (usually strategic CVCs)

• Basic idea "Crowd"
  • Instead of asking individuals, the open public is asked (mostly via internet) for a concrete support
• Crowdsoursing
  • It is openly asked for support in terms of information or services to solve a concrete challenge
  • Examples
    • Programming: Open-Source Software
    • User Generated Content: Social Media
    • Information: Brainstorming Platforms like Atizio
• Crowdfunding
  • It is openly asked for the financial support for a concrete project/enterprise
  • In return the money givers receive certain rewards

Categorized on basis of the reward:

• Crowdinvesting (Equity-based Crowdfunding):
  • Monetary rewards (equity/shares of company, profit shares)
  • Primarily for (scalable start-ups
  • Pros: Big financial volumes possible / umcommitted capital / build up of investors contact network
  • Cons: Possible difficulties for trade sale or exit / no feedback from the market or customers / marketing character is moderately low
• Crowdlending (lending-based Crowdfunding)
  • Monetary rewards (interest payments)
  • For privates and SMEs
  • Pros: Low effort to set up platform presence / fast availability / no shares have to be handed out 
  • Cons: Cash is committed to an object/purpose / companies have a cash out flow
• Reward-based Crowdfunding:
  • Non-monetary reward (symbolic rewards, products or services)
  • For private individuals and companies
  • Pros: Additional benefits for companies: PR, Marketing, Pre-Sale, Open Innovation, Community-Building / money can be used very independently / no shares must be handed out to investors
  • Cons: Very challenging to prepare and conduct a successful campaign
• Crowddonating
  • No rewards

• Enthusiasm: The founders and the team need to be able to inspire the Crowd
• Innovation: The product or service offered is innovative and shows a clear USP
• Scalability: The business model is sustainable and can be adapted to different frame condidiotns on the market, because it is easy and fast adjustable
• Founders team: The founders are willing to take the challenge and bring competencies and experience in their field of works into the start-up
• Communication: As a start-up you need to communicate a lot and you are willing to go into a critic questioning by investors
• Proof of concept: The idea is already working and placed in the market

1. Application
   1. Hand in of pitch deck
   2. Internal evalution
   3. Detailed information
   4. Personal meeting
2. Kick-off and funding preparation
   1. Juristically agreement
   2. Inline content (vidoe, investment story)
   3. Communication work
3. Start of funding
   1. Preview: Publishing of the video and story
   2. Preview +: Publishing of business plan and dialogue feature
   3. Funding start: publishing of all content and investor relation section
4. Crowdfunding-Campaign
   1. Ragular Timefrime: 60 days
   2. News and updates for the crowd
   3. Benefit from feedback of the crowd
   4. Implement first milestones and goals
5. After the funding
   1. Building up the company
   2. News and updates for the crowd
   3. Use platform for further communication with the crowd

1. Fill out loan applicatoin in website
2. Fill out the details for the auction and the creditility check
3. Your credibility ill be checked directly online

• Inspire innovators and innovation that RBSF is more than fundraising
• RBCF supports the constitution and development of Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs)

Too many technology-driven start-ups spend weeks and months working on a product without ever speaking with a prospective client. By applying the lean startup methodology, you can:

• Minimize risk
• Maximize success (learning)
• Receive quick feedback
• Reduce overhead
• Make measurabel progress

• A MVP can be defined as the least amount of work we can do to in/validate a hypothesis, or a problem a solution is designed to solve
• Minimum
  • Small, earliest point to gather feedback
• Viable
  • Must have utility (e.g. not only the login feature)
• Product
  • Must be cohesive (e.g. not a random collection of features)
• Quick, Responsive Development
  In contrast to tradtional product development, in which each staghe occures in linear order and lasts for months, agile development builds products in short, repeated cycles. 
  A start-up produces a "minimum viable product" - containing only critical features - gathers feedback on it from customers, and then starts over with a revided minimum viable product.

• They started out doing A, testing A in the market, learning from the market reactions, and then pivoting to B
• Pivot = change directions but stay grounded in what we've learned
• In order to succeed, you need to pivot quickly (i.e. before you run out of cash
• Examples:
• Ziim in Pivot: In this case, what previously was cinsidered a single feature in a product becomes the whole product. A zoom-in pivot, refocusing the product on what previously had been considered just one feature of a larger whole.
• Customer Need Pivot: The problem you're trying to solve for them is not very important. However because of this customer intimacy, we often discover other related problems that are important and can be solved by you. The target customer has a problem worth solving, just not the one that was originally anticipated.
• Business Architecture Pivot: A startup switches architectures. Some companies change from high margin, low volume by going mass market (e.g. google's search "applience"; others, originally designed for the mass market, turned out to require long and expensive sales cycles.

• Whenever an entrepreneur presents infromation about his or her business, product or service he or she is pitching.
• Goals
  • Generate attention
  • Fix a next meeting
  • Send a business plan or sales brochure

• Elevator Pitch (30 seconds)
  • Draw attention
• Investor presentations (5-10 minutes)
  • sell your project / company
• Sales calls
  • sell your product

• Albert Einstein: Keep it Simple
  • If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough
• Steve Jobs: Be Unique
  • Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower
• Henry Ford: Be Enthusiastic
  • Ethusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in oyur eyes, the seing in your gait. The irresistible surge of will & energy to execute your ideas
• William Shakespeare: Tell a story
  • I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young bolld, make thy two eyes like stars, start from their spheres

• Do's
  • Plan the multimedia
  • Frame your story
  • Deliver a strong opening
  • End with fire
  • Start with the problem
  • Make your slides visual and avoid too much text
  • Sell the company AND yourself
  • Know and relate to your audience
  • Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse
  • Follow-up and stand out
• Don'ts
  • Try to be funny if you're not
  • Leave your personality backstage and pretend to be someone you're not
  • Read your slides
  • Pretend that your company can do things that it cannot
  • Forget to prepare for questions
  • Use crowded slides
  • Sharing false data or references

• Stand tall, chin up, legs shoulder width apart
• Look in control - do not move too much
• Speak clearly, slwoly and with confidence
• Maintain good eye contact 
• Rapeat questions before you answer them
• Rememver that public speaking is a skill that can be learnt - so practice
• If, like many people, you are scared of public speaking - do not ignore the problem, address it

1. Who is my audience?
2. What is my objective?
3. How long do i have?
4. Are there any special considerations (e.g. difficult attendeed)?
5. How should i incoporate visual aids?
6. What other tools can i use?
7. Set the stage; whatever goes wrong, it is your fault!
8. Practice, practice, practice

Market estimations are the life insurance for entrepreneurs.

TAM = Ho big is the universe
SAM = How many can i reach with my sales channels
Target market (for startups) = who will most likely be our customers

Use of branch analysis, market research reports, press releases, competitor analysis

Caution with market data and market research companies
-> Market research companies are excellent in predecting the past!

• Physical
  Separation in the following category groups:
  • Product vision: Only because an Earlyevangelist believes in your vision, they give money for an imperfect, faulty, almost not functionable product
  • Product features and benefits: Imagine the benefits as problems, you want to solve for the cutomer
  • MVP: A goal of the Customer development is to understand, what should NOT be delivered
• Digital
  The first two steps are the same. In the third step we go with a low fidelity product to the customers
  • Low-Fidelity-MVP: The Low-Fidelity-MVP tests, if the problem the customers have was identified exactly
    -> Specialty of digital channels: User Stories instead of function lists

• The best start-ups discover a situation, in which customers already tried to buildt a solution on their own
• Customer discovery discovers and tests the fidderent customer need
• Examine how your customers are operating and design a typical day in the life of a customers

AARRR sounds like a screaming pirate. But acutally, it describes the customer lifecycle.

• Acquisition: Users coome to our page from different channels
• Activation: Users have their first "happy" user experience
• Retention: Users vom eback and take repeatedly a look at the page
• Referral: Users appreciate the products so much, that they recommend them to others
• Revenue: Users show a monetizable behavior on the page