Archive for category i-muse

Togunà Interactive is dead, definitely deleted from the business register of Como.
An insignificant -1 for the statistics of closed companies e 5 people gone one’s separate ways.

Three years ago I celebrated its birth, full of hopes for the future.
The idea was good, someone said, but an idea is nothing without an execution just as good, as anyone who started a hi-tech company knows very well.

I committed myself full-time in this adventure and I certainly did mistakes, starting from the choice of the partners with which to establish the company.
And it’s right on this matter that I’d like to share some suggestions based on my experience, hoping they could be useful to other startuppers.
I read a lot of decalogues about the different aspects of the life of a startup, from establishment to financial issues.
This one is then focused on the relations with partners:

1. The “chemistry”: be sure it’s present between you and your adventure companions. It’s that feeling coming from the positive thrill of a handshake, making you feel at ease in company of another person. In my case I didn’t feel it with two of my four partners since the beginning, with the proper negative consequences.
2. Money psychology: money is an important tool, to be managed consciously and without prejudices. Talking about it since the beginning with potential partners can be useful to catch signals such as an excessive fear of falling into debt, or the will to do it all without spending a dime. These are signals of a incorrect approach to the use of the money needed to start a company, typically a very limited amount for a software startup. I underestimated these signals from the partner who, on paper, had the best skills on the matter.
3. Penalties in agreements: it may seem annoying, but if you have to sign agreements binding partners to dedicate their time to the startup, it’s better quantify and set up penalties, also involving money, if the agreements are not met. We didn’t do that, making the agreements actually useless.
4. Complementary skills: I believed that having partners with different skills was a good thing and we pointed that out on our website and in team presentations. It does, indeed, but not so much when skills are neatly different, without a little overlapping. In my case none of my four partners used smartphones or PDAs and thus relied on me even for the most trivial technical issues.
5. Remote work: you can do great things even if you work without physical contact, sure, but in my experience I believe that the best things come out when such contact has already been established and consolidated in the past. Something that in our case we didn’t get (or wanted to) even when we rented an office that would have allowed it.
6. Haughtiness: you have to stay humble in a startup, and haughtiness is the opposite attitude. After we created a product that people liked, when I was discussing about competitors’ solutions, snooty phrases and attitudes prevailed in partner’s comments. In the meantime competitors sold their products and we just looked.
7. Looking at the back of everything: having “experts” at looking at the back of everything in the management board is a really bad thing and it annihilates the spirit of initiative. In a startup, scenerios should be made only in the future, not in the past, maybe by remarking past mistakes due to personal hate or sadism.
8. Meetings: they’re effective when brief and planned at the beginning of the work week. We had long meetings on Thursday evening or on Friday, the only time allowed by the working routine of my partners. The week was actually over and the weekend was coming, during which no one obviously preferred to be disturbed. I recall that an expert consultant I had the chance to talk to about the way we did meetings, ironically named it as the “bridge club”.
9. Siena’s Palio syndrome: an italian journalist who follows the startup scene defined it in this way. It’s a sickness that takes place when the objective become “loosing is ok, the important is that you don’t win”, in confrontations among partners for example. There’s no cure for this virus. Probably it comes from a negative jealousy feeling (since there’s also a positive one that drives you to make better).
10. Mentor: being able to count on a mentor, an experienced person, above the parts and respected by all partners, is among the most important things for a startup. It’s also one of the most difficult to find, so keep your “antennas” active to find him since the beginning among the people you know or encounter. I found a mentor too late, when things already went awry, but he has been important nonetheless.

I hope these can be useful recommendations. As for my particular case, maybe it would take a book to be able to tell the whole tale that made me elaborate them.
If you’re in doubt about the choice of partners, rather than risking that mediocrity could take its place in the management board, my recommendation is: start alone and devote yourself to your project.

JUST MAKE, and since talent attracts talent, you’ll certainly find better partners along the way.

The entrepreneurial adventure started with i-muse goes on.

From the work of the last months come the new website, launched in italian and english, the first newsletter, and a series of activities that had a strong acceleration thanks to the effort of our new marketing assistant, Francesca, a brilliant girl who gets things done, with whom I daily share the office in Como.

At the same time, the development of the platform is going through another important step: we’re working on i-muse Creator, the content management system of i-muse, the tool that allows to visually create tours for the video guide by assembling and synchronizing audio-visual contents. A software that reserved for me a number of technical challenges during its construction.

Happy for the challenges overcome, after the summer stop I think an intense time is waiting for us.

It’s really difficult to explain how hard startupping is, especially in Italy and in a time of crisis: with good will and patience it’s the right time to build and hope for a better future.

In the meantime we enjoy a healthy summer stop to recharge batteries, physical and mental ones! 🙂

After almost two years spent working in the spaces the Acceleratore d’Impresa of the Politecnico di Milano assigned us, since september we moved to a new office: always in Como, pretty close to the University, roomy and with costs compatible with a startup budget. 🙂

We share the new space with other two ICT companies, Oplà and Ennova Research, and we’re going to maintain the great relationship we built with the staff of the Acceleratore d’Impresa.

I’m happy because not only we enjoyed playing as house-painters (the picture is self-explanatory! ;)) and interior decorators, but mostly because in this way we can knock down a barrier that was limiting the internal communication of the team.

Being able to see each other almost everyday, certainly will speed up the decisional process and we’ll be able to make more things together.

This while we’re getting ready for an october really full of important events: Innovation Circus, SMAU and Lu.Be.C..

Togunà’s adventure continues from the new office!

Windows Mobile Italy published an interview about our entrepreneurial adventure.

Editor-in-chief Diego Magnani opens the interviews section of the site by posting a series of questions and answers about Togunà and i-muse.

I know Diego since he was editor of the italian printed magazine Il mio palmare, so he introduced me in the interview by recalling Euro Coins Pocket Collector, the first software I made for Pocket PC platform.

Since then, mobile devices with the Microsoft operative system conquered a good market share, especially convergent devices with phone capabilities, and the name of the platform changed to Windows Mobile.

There’s no lack of news at all in this world and Diego has the experience to report them to his readers in an pretty appealing way. Good luck then to Diego for his editorial adventure. 🙂

Enjoy the interview!