Stockholm's talent pool outweighs the benefits of proximity to Silicon Valley VCs
Carl Waldekranz · FF 010: Becoming Europe's Hottest Startup with Carl Waldekranz, Co-Founder and CEO @ Tictail · Aug 28, 2015 · at 19:12
Carl Waldekranz, co-founder and CEO of Tictail, discusses why Tictail chose to remain headquartered in Stockholm instead of moving to Silicon Valley.
0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.1s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The advantages of being in Silicon Valley close to all of these investors were outweighed by the advantages of being in a city where we have an amazing network, and we have access to this incredible pool of Really talented engineers and designers.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Carl Waldekranz
Startup ideation should be a scheduled process, not a eureka moment
“There's this belief amongst people that, like, building a startup or building a company, you're supposed to have this eureka moment, this idea that no one has ever thought of, that just came to you, and that's when you can start a business. And I actually thin…”
E-commerce design directly correlates aesthetic choices to revenue and traffic
“As a designer, it's one of those few areas where kind of like your input and an impact correlate. As a designer, you create logotypes and branding and things like that, and it all looks beautiful, and you feel good about it, but it's really hard to see how it …”
Brainstorming sessions work best when spread across multiple days
“I think brainstorms work best when they're spread out over, over a time period. I just find it really valuable that, like, as you come up with different ideas or different directions, to let those digest for a day or two, and then come back and continue the br…”
Reverse bad ideas during timed post-it brainstorming exercises
“Create a structured form of brainstorming, and this is something you learn when you work at an agency for a few years. I love the concept of just working a lot with post-it notes, and just sort of, like, having different themes, like, let's output as many idea…”
Pitch decks should provoke questions, not answer everything about the business
“Because as it turns out, the purpose of a deck is not to answer all questions about a business. It's to create ground for, like, interesting discussions to come. Like, VCs, in general, are interested people, and they want to be curious at the end of a presenta…”
Series B pitching requires data and KPI impact over pure vision
“Well, they're different in the way that you're pitching completely different things. Like, when we went out and raced the Series C, we had a 10 slide long pitch deck, and it was all about the team, the product, and the vision. As you go on to race the Series B…”