The Roller Coaster: Elemental Lessons Part 2
Two weeks ago I posted what might have come across as a moan. It probably was though I didn’t mean it to be. What I was trying to explain was why the oil tankers of big business struggle to engage and act quickly on fresh ideas. To balance the negativity of last time, this post will be full of flowers, unicorns and all things nice. On a more realistic note there are some really positive things that have happened which probably apply to all start-ups
1) Who you are does matter
Once in a while something happens that reaffirms your faith that who you are and what you stand for is important to people other than yourself. We were fortunate for that to happen with our landlord in our new office in Barbican. Rather than simply want a huge deposit and personal guarantees they were more interested in finding out more about us and deciding if they would like to have us in their building. So what could have been a painful process became a pleasant experience where we got to share our ambitions and projections and on that basis take on a rental contract that worked for us as a start-up.
Whilst I know the approach by our landlord is unusual it led to a quicker and less expensive process all round as both sides were willing to concede on points as we felt we were working together. Such an approach does work and perhaps purchasing teams at bigger companies could take note that by finding out a little about companies they might get a better and quicker deal which would enable their employer to be more agile.
2) Trusting relationships are lasting
In the majority of my posts I have emphasised how important trust is and that the essence of our business is to partner with companies and build long term relationships. That philosophy has served us well as in this past year we have been fortunate enough to get back into business with some familiar faces from our past. Whilst I don’t want to come across like a blubbing Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars I do want to take the space to say a few thankyous;
a) To the team – we were so lucky that people who had worked with us before were willing to take the plunge and join us when we had no customers and simply a name. The team has grown rapidly over the past year from 6 to what will soon be 35. There are a number of past colleagues that we have been delighted to welcome into our new adventure
b) Source Central – (www.sourcecentral.co) . Having worked with this ground breaking Fin Tech start-up in Singapore we were given the opportunity to make Source our first project and investment. In such a slow moving industry its been a pleasure to move this start-up forward and see it progress
c) Joe Hall – We got close to starting a project with Joe in our last company and thankfully Joe brought his new role and company to us. Joe runs the market leader in loyalty and reward stores http://www.initialrewards.com/. Their platform needs to stay at the pinnacle of the market and Joe has entrusted us to deliver the new version of their platformwhich will be demonstrated at ICE and will go live in the 2nd half of the year
d) Telerail and Elemental Connect – www.telerail.net and www.elementalconnect.com Some of the most enjoyable and challenging times in my career were when I was working with Dr Nigel Wallbridge and Caleb Carrol to make Nomad Digital the market leader in communication and WiFi sytems to trains. Those days are gone but the relationships are not and it is with great pleasure that we at Elemental Concept have embarked on a new journey with Nigel and Caleb to create the next generation of connectivity to trains. We are now partners/cofounders in two companies that are at the forefront of communications on the move and we can look forward to many more enjoyable and challenging times.
3) Stay true to your convictions
One of the hardest things to do as a startup is stick to your beliefs. Whilst we are advocates of lean start-up philosophy, it can encourage you to pivot too soon. There is always room for learning and adapting to the market but sometimes companies change their essence by chasing the short term gains. We didn’t want to chase the short term opportunities of building products and services we didn’t believe in. We were lucky enough to be able to be patient and take the risk so that we took on customer/partners that we truly believed in.
A great example of waiting for that ideal project is our partnership with www.corperformance.co.uk We are working with them to create a digitally delivered, truly unique, lifestyle change programme called CorResillience. We met Dr Adam Carey back in March and have worked with him over the past 9 months to design and start building a digital programme that can truly improve participants performance and health. We have all become true believers in this programme especially as Adam was kind enough to put a number of us through the programme for free so that we could properly understand and experience the benefits. Not only have all of us lost significant amounts of weight we are all fitter, sleep better and are more productive at work. Adam has successfully raised capital to get this into the market and we are really pleased to share this journey
4) Be prepared to grab the Golden Opportunities
Once in a while you meet a business partner where everything just fits; you share the same philosophy and immediately realise that there is something special that can occur. Quite often the fact that it appears too easy leads you to back away as human nature has suspicion built in to its survival instinct. It is then that you have to trust your gut and take the risk to grab that once in a lifetime opportunity. We have that with Wade Smith of Aladdin Blockchain Technologies. See www.aladdinid.com
The opportunity was to work with Wade to develop a proposition that can make an impact on World Health. We are at the very beginning of a mission which will mean launching a blockchain proposition in China and then India which will give people control of their health in a way that hasn’t been done before. The technology we will need to deliver and the challenging timetable make this multi year proposition something that will allow us to showcase all of our capabilities in a way that we can really believe in and be proud of.
5) Have fun and don’t waste time
One of the ideals we have is to produce our own ideas. What we do is driven by a democratic vote based on propositions any of us bring to the table. There are some prerequisites; the product should show some of our skills, we should learn something and it should solve a problem that we believe should be solved. The beauty of building our own products is the buzz. We get this with all of our projects but when it has evolved from our team it is extra special.
For a business like ours building your own product brings all these benefits which binds us closer but also it enables us to continue to be productive even when we are not working for someone else. If you can imagine when we started we had a new name, some money in the bank and no projects. Rather than spend six months naval gazing (and I do have an amazing naval) we decided to invest in our processes by creating our own customer and building an application. Over the year we have picked up some wonderful opportunities (as noted above) which has meant that our first homegrown application is still only in beta on android, but www.pinlandia.com was the first project we did and really bound us as a team
So my conclusion for our first year of existence is that I’m incredibly lucky and happy. We have obviously learned a few lessons (see previous blog) and had some challenges. But the relationships we have and the opportunities that have presented themselves show that the small guys can win.
