Category: Uncategorized

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Accelerators Bragging about Fundraising

This week I attended an information session by the founder institute. They have an accelerator program in Berlin for people in idea stage where they fund the company with 15000 Euros and get 3.5% in warrants.

The whole event the speakers were talking about the amounts of funds raised post graduation from the program, and the mentorship you get during the program.

The questions part was all about post program fudning. There were two graduates from the program and the audience questions were mostly on how much they raised and how long it took them to do so.

I don’t think accelerators key value proposition should be the amounts of funds raised post program, while this is the most post important, fastest to measure metric for the accelerator’s health given other metrics such as exits need a long time to measure, it shouldn’t be the key selling point to entrepreneurs.

I would trust an accelerator if they help founders focus to reach product market fit. Money is important for the company to live but building something people want that’s growing at a high rate is the most important thing for a startup to survive.

I think this is the best thing about YC. They talk about the financial value of their companies but they talk more about how they help entrepreneurs build something people want, and push them to go talk to users, iterate, and grow.

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How to build a wheelchair phone mount?

When I got my new wheelchair one of the problems I wanted to solve is not having to get the phone in and out of my pocket. It is not easy when you have to do it while sitting, also it makes it harder to navigate while rolling on the street.

I didn’t find any off the shelf good wheelchair mounts, so I built mine. I got inspired while searching for GoPro accessories. So here is how you build your own.

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On the picture from the right

  • GoPro Jaws Flexible Clamp Mount (The first two pieces).
  • GoPro Basic Buckle
    • It comes with any GoPro. If you don’t have one you can buy them from Amazon.
  • These 3: The one to the right you can get from any camera accessories section, they are used to fix cameras on tripods and mounts. The other two I took off an $8 selfie stick. You can also find them in the camera accessories section but they are harder to find.img_0154
  • Zacro Universal Smartphone Static Adapter (Amazon Germany), or Vastar Universal Cell Phone Tripod Mount Adapter  (Amazon US).

The final product

Tie everything together in the same order of the first picture from right to left. The final product will be like this.

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Pro editions

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extra height with a selfie stick
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The Arab tech scene and its impact on Egypt

Egypt has been losing its Arab leadership politically, and I can say it is also coming to tech.

Gulf led by Saudi Arabia and UAE understands that oil is running out, and the world won’t be as dependent on it as before. So they started finding new ways to secure their future.

Luckily, we are witnessing the second industrial revolution, this time it is happening in tech. So Saudi and UAE decided to double down on tech investments, and the first macro and micro trends started to show up.

Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) the country’s main sovereign wealth fund invested $3.5 billion in Uber earlier this year.

It also announced a new 100 billion – with a b – dollars fund with Japan’s softbank to invest in tech startups.

Then UAE announced it will be the first place in the world to build Hyperloop to connect Dubai to Abu Dhabi. Hyperloop is a new technology that enables the transportation of humans and goods at 1200km/h without flying. The original paper of the technology was published by Elon Musk. The company that will build the Hyperloop in UAE is Hyperloop One, a company founded by ex-SpaceX employees and one of silicon valley’s top investors.

Earlier this week, Emaar’s Chariman (The company behind Burj Khalifa) announced that he is building a new ecommerce startup with $1 billion investment, half of it coming from Saudi’s PIF, the other half comes from him and other Emarati investors. The new venture will be headquartered in Riyadh.

Yesterday, Saudi announced another 200 million Saudi Riyal VC fund to support local tech startups. It is still unclear how the fund will be deployed and managed.

I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds – Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator

Gulf has rich people, it lacks nerds. Egypt has higher ratio and number of nerds than Gulf.

To attract these nerds, most of whom already left Egypt to chase better opportunities in Europe and US, these gulf companies are paying hefty sums to attract them to go and work there.

Careem, Uber’s middle east competitor is paying unmatchable salaries for engineers to join its Dubai office, they are even opening an office in Berlin to attract Arab engineers who don’t want to leave Germany. They are paying higher than most of Germany based companies.

These new ventures need engineers, and with such levels of funding they will do whatever to get them on board.

I do believe this snowball will keep getting bigger, funding will increase in the Arab world, with competition between different Gulf states to attract tech talent.

There could be a bubble, mostly because these companies are not started by nerds but rather by rich people who think if they put enough money into it, it should work. Which is also another reason why we will see most of these companies as localized copycats to successful global ones, mostly in ecommerce, logistics, and payments since these have the easiest to understand business models.

Overall I think this is mostly good, because if things are changing it means there is a chance for someone to create something really innovative on a global scale. Even if most of the current experiments fail the knowledge will be passed to other people and everyone will learn from their mistakes.

I lost hope in Egypt becoming a good tech hub during my lifetime long ago, but these are other signs to confirm that.

I hope I am wrong.

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The expected probability of paying a fine vs buying a ticket

The Berlin transportation system is based on trust. Unlike the Dutch one which requires you to check in and out every time you use public transit. 

To enter the bus or the tram in Holland, you have to go through either the driver or the conductor, random checks mostly happen on trains because they’re more expensive.

In Berlin this is not the case. There is no checking in and out. Random checks are rare.

I have been here for five weeks, I met the transportation police only once.

The monthly ticket for most of Berlin costs 80EUR per month. The fine for not having a ticket is 60EUR. Given these two numbers and the probability of meeting the transportation police, what is the expected probability of buying vs not buying a ticket. Which has a higher probability of paying more?

I am not saying that you shouldn’t buy a ticket. I buy my tickets all the time. I am just questioning the reliability of the system, and curious to know the answer.

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LinkedIn Recruiter Signals

I was browsing a GoEuro job on LinkedIn when I saw a banners saying something about signaling to recruiters that I am ready for my next move. As usual I clicked to see what is this which took me to a LinkedIn page with a switch button that I could turn on to tell recruiters I am ready for my next move.

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I played with it a little, turned it on and off. As soon as I turned it off, I got the following email.

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I liked the reply to share feedback. Makes the feedback process natural and easy. Not many big companies do this.

Second, here are the two feedback points I sent to the team

  • Can recruiters in my company see this? It would be embarrassing if yes.
  • The feature didn’t indicate whether it is about just being interested in hearing from others, or by turning it on it means I am ready to move and leave my current job. I know that both seem the same, but for me they are a bit different.

 

Now, if you know someone who is suitable for this Business Operations Manager opportunity at GoEuro, please introduce us.

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Branding in a tech company

One of the things I learned by watching Garyvee is the difference between branding and marketing in the online world.

On the internet, you can either be a transactional marketer, or a branding guy.

You can spend money on Google/Facebook, drive a % of users to your funnel, optimize CTR & CPC, repeat. Or you can spend money on snapchat stories, fun competitions, blogs, any valuable content that may not drive direct results to your funnel but increases the volume of the conversation about your brand.

You could do both. It depends on your size & goals.

One thing I never understood when I read marketing and branding user research for an online product. What action should I take if I knew that 20% of our users shop online, spend more time on social media, or like to buy the cheapest thing?

When you read these reports, there isn’t much one can do. Online products are not sold on shelves and advertised for on TV. I don’t have to find the best retailer to put my product in. I don’t have to define upfront how the TV campaign will be perceived.

The online cycle is way shorter. You have to keep testing ideas all the time, optimize what works, and get rid of what doesn’t. It applies to branding, transactional marketing, and product features. The principle is the same, the difference is what you are optimizing for.

Maybe I am wrong, tell me what actions you could drive by reading such reports.

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Google Docs

I am frustrated by Google Docs. Google got the collaboration part right, very right. Then they stagnated on making it better. It hasn’t improved much since then.

Google spreadsheet misses some features that are used on a daily basis by anyone using excel such as cutting and pasting columns. Whenever you cut a column in excel and paste it somewhere else on the document, excel will shift the other columns to the right and insert the cut column in the middle. Google spreadsheet replaces it.

I am helping a friend write an application for a scholarship. Since this is a lot of collaboration, we are using Google docs. The scholarship application requires specific word count to every section. In Microsoft word, if you select lines of text, the application will tell you how many words you’ve selected and how many there are in the document overall. I now have to select text, copy it to word, check the word count, edit, copy and paste again in Google Doc.

I won’t talk about manipulating tables in Google Docs and Google Slides. This needs a series of posts.

The problem is not the lack of these features, the problem is it hasn’t improved much since inception. When Microsoft released it’s office online suite, it was no where close to Google’s. I don’t know how far Microsoft’s product went but now there is a switching cost to move to Microsoft. I also have to use Google docs at work for collaboration since we are on the Google stack.

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The message I use to search for apartments

Finding an apartment is a tedious process. I hate it.

One of the things I gave a lot of thoughts to is the message I send to landlords to get a viewing. I used to write quite lengthy messages until Khaled Kandil gave me the following one.

Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is Mostafa Naguib, working as a Product Manager for GoEuro in Berlin.

Would you please tell me when can I visit the apartment for viewing?
Looking forward to hear from you.

Best Regards,
Mostafa Naguib

The message above I would say converts very well. At least in Germany. Feel free to use it. You are welcome.

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Wunderflats

If you are a foreigner looking for a long term (1 Month+) place to stay in Berlin, Wunderflats.com could be a good option to find a house.

It is like Airbnb but for long term rentals. I used it to find the place I am currently staying in.

Units on the website could be a bit pricey compared to what’s on the market. But you don’t need Schufa (Credit score report), or crazy 3 months deposits that you will get back 3 months after leaving the place.

At least this was my experience. Give it a try if you are coming to Berlin and looking for a place to stay.

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Sneaky UX – Deliveroo

I decided from now on to call dark patterns sneaky UX. I feel dark patterns is so evil, while most of the times it is not that dark.

Today’s sneaky UX comes from Deliveroo. A food delivery service in Europe.

If you start adding things to the basket, it will tell you the minimum is X for this restaurant.

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If you click check out without meeting the minimum order price, you will get this.

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I find it sneaky because it doesn’t tell me I could do this. I am sure many users who don’t meet the minimum order price either quit or keep adding things to their basket to reach the minimum.

This could be clearer.