Locomizer joins San Francisco Accelerator 'Momentum'

One of our startups, Locomizer, has just been accepted to the startup program Momentum, based in San Francisco. Alex Polyakov, Locomizer's Co-Founder, says "We are very excited to have this opportunity to get access to the Silicon Valley's network of mentors and potential investors."

Duncan Logan, the Founder & CEO of Rocket Space, said "Here at RocketSpace, we love meeting the top startups from all over the world, so it was only natural that we'd open our doors to great startups in London. The environment, networking opportunities and changes of scene will all help Locomizer continue the excellent work started at Collider12 to achieve their goals."

Momentum startups will benefit from RocketSpace’s startup services and access to their corporate innovation program, as well as spending 12 weeks at RocketSpace’s highly coveted San Francisco campus. They will be joining four other startups who have also been accepted into the program, which are:

• Fiverun
• Orbeus
• PocketMath
• Squrl

The 12-week program provides the class with weekly workshops, networking dinners, and an enviable mentor list of Silicon Valley’s top 50 mobile executives. The program team consists of Mario Tapia (AT&T, Disney, Yahoo!), Arte Merritt (Motally,Yahoo!), and Mike Rowehl (Admob, Chomp, Metaresolver, Skyfire).

The Momentum program is more of a graduate level program, geared to help accelerate businesses in the mobile space, as opposed to teaching startup basics, making it perfect for Locomizer, who are more than ready to take on Silicon Valley.

A Few More Gems from Rory

After our group session with Rory earlier in the week, our heads were reeling with book recommendations, poignant questions, and telling quotations. Here are a few of my favourites.

1. Queuing for a nightclub is a good thing, queuing at the airport check-in is a terrible thing.

2. Pay the price of imperfection for the sake of clarity.

3. Our behaviour is not the product of our attitudes; our attitudes are a product of our behaviour.

4. Bright-line rules have their place in society, especially concerning tax evasion. 

5. All human choice is path dependent.

6. Everyone should read Nate Silver's book 'The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don't'.

7. TripAdvisor is an example of a reputational feedback loop, where the consumer can only benefit as service gets better.

8. As the banking system has proven, you can't trust people who can't get hurt. We need a means of retaliation to develop any sort of trust.

9. Changing one little thing can have a hugely disproportionately effect, such as the $300 million button from a  large e-tailer.

10. The SCARF model, as shown below,  is a summary of important discoveries from neuroscience about the way people interact socially. The internet has the potential to tell us a great deal more about human behaviour.

Colliding with Rory Sutherland

Yesterday Rory Sutherland paid our startups a visit to share his wisdom, experience, and humorous (yet informative) stories. We decided to turn what would have been a private session into a very public, and live, Google Hangout. Rory spoke about a wide range of topics, including a $300 million online button and why airports compel us to buy Toblerones. You can watch the whole 2 hour session here, and as this was such a successful experiment, we will definitely be hosting more Hangouts (with even better recording equipment). 

Check back tomorrow for some of Rory's key topics, book recommendations, and tips for startups.

Workshop with Matchbox Mobile

Last week the Collider12 startups had a workshop with Andrew Farrell, co-founder and CEO of Matchbox Mobile. He shared a few of tips for startups based on his experiences during the last eight years.

Sales and Relationships

• In order for any business to grow, you need someone selling your business, making a decent sales team essential.
• You need to have people speaking for you and about you at every opportunity, and this can only happen by meeting lots of people
• By building rapports you can create a mutual understanding and genuine friendship that could take you anywhere in the future.
• People can transcend companies and so one relationship could be your key to many different opportunities.
•  Never turn a meeting down, you never know where it may lead.

Maintain standards and Reputation

• The individual values behind the reason you started need to be maintained and shared with employees and customers. If you lose this vision, you’ll lose direction and your principles.

Hire the Right People to Build the Right Team

• The single biggest challenge I have ever faced is trying to hire the right people. Perhaps it’s a bit simplistic, but I've always found the pub test to be the best way to decide. If you could go and have a beer with them and happily chat for a couple of hours, 90% of the time they’re going to be the right fit for you. You need a rapport that goes beyond their skills and talents, as a time will come where you need to depend on them.
• I don’t think it is cheating to hire friends, as long as they have the skills you need.
• If you have to offer them an incentive to join your startup, they aren’t the right person to join your startup. You need people who are committed and that have the passion and interest already there. Once you start offering incentives, you have to keep it going which is a commitment you cannot make.
• How you manage your mistakes with the customers (as, trust me, everyone makes mistakes) is can be incredibly important. We have made some of our strongest relationships by handing our failures very well. You have to share your successes and failures with your customers as well as your team.

Adapt to Change

• There will always be multiple and rapid changes in and around your business that you will need to adapt to.
• There will also be changes to how your product is used, what your product is, and changes within your company. If you cannot evolve with these changes, you are going to fail.

Make Decisions

• The worst thing you could do is to make no decision at all. It is far better to make a wrong decision as that’s all part of the process to the right decision. By recognising your mistakes you can correct your course to get on the right path to success.

Being the cleverest person in the room counts for nothing if you’re unable to manage your business:

• Taking care of the business is your number one priority.

Monday Wake-Up

Here is the startup equivalent of the chicken and the egg to get your mind back on track after the weekend.

How do you get customers without investment, and how will you get investment without customers? Here at Collider12, Matthew thinks that gaining customers should be your number one priority, but we'd be happy to hear your thoughts too.