TIL

Building a business entirely on top of someone else's is usually a bad idea

After last week's news on Beeper, the Android app that plans to unify native cross-platform messaging in one single application, that Apple cut their access to iMessage, I reflected on my time at oratio where we built our own WhatsApp Business API years before Facebook/Meta released their

TIL

Use AI to enhance your product's capabilities – not to define them

This week's OpenAI Dev Day probably killed thousands of startups in less than an hour. See it for yourself: I'm in a WhatsApp group with a few other founders and we discussed the outcome of the announcements made on this day – some of us even directly

TIL

New ideas emerge within ecosystems

About 10 years ago I read a book by Steven Johnson named "Where Good Ideas Come From" and the main take-away at the time for me was that no idea is created in isolation, but rather within ecosystems. For example, every app on the market is dependent on

TIL

Defaults matter

Sometimes little thought is put into the decision on what to set as default option, sometimes however it can be a major factor contributing to a product's success. Defaults matter, because changing them is oftentimes overlooked by users or not even considered to be relevant enough to do

Manifesto

The Independent Technology Business Manfesto

We often hear stories that technology companies "must fundraise" in order to capture relevant market share and become leaders in their industry. This thinking originates from a time where technology companies needed large sums to get started, and then create a business that can scale at little marginal

TIL

Why Nigerian scammers say they are from Nigeria

The other day I read an interesting paper titled Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria? published by Microsoft Research (!). It immediately caught my interest and, to make it short, the outcome is pretty interesting. Although I have to say that it's worth reading the 14-pages

Ads

How to block ads on Safari for iOS

I hate ads. I know that for some types of companies they are the only way of earning money, but I absolutely dislike the context switching when consuming content and – generally – the intrusiveness of the whole ecosystem. In this quick post I will demonstrate how you can easily install an

TIL

Contracts are not made for when everything is good, but when things turn sour

Of course, not many people want to talk about what steps to follow when they should get divorced or when a co-founder leaves a company. But this is exactly the reason why such contracts are made in the first place. Setting aside emotions and ego, and diligently drafting these contracts

TIL

Don't work with assholes

Assholes come in many forms. They can be your customers, investors, colleagues, advisors and sometimes family and friends – though I hope your judgment in friendship is sound. Now in my mid-30s, I've sharpened my skill of saying "No", particularly when it comes to dealing with assholes.

TIL

One year in a startup is 3 years in a corporate company

Of course, putting an exact factor like 1:3 to life in a startup vs. life in a corporate can only be a guess, but I think the logic still holds true. By the very definition of a company pre product market fit, constant iteration and quick learning in a

TIL

Employee departures are tough, but can refresh and refocus a company

This week I let go of a third of the team. I have been thinking for some time now Is this really the right talent? or Although the person is not yet performing, will s/he adapt soon? or What if not, should I fire him/her right away? In

TIL

Life as a function of time, energy, health & money

As a daily reader of HackerNews, I visit the regularly to browse through latest tech news and other sorts of interesting articles. It's a gold mine of many not-yet-known-to-me niche topics. I love it. One articel that caught my interest this week was about the question 'what

TIL

When to sell stock

Since a few years I have been investing in stocks and ETFs. When I do a selection of assets to invest in, I follow a long-term strategy. For this to work out, I try to answer the following questions before doing an investment: * Do I know the market well enough?

TIL

In-person meetings > online meetings

It really depends on the occasion and the context of the business meeting, but my experience is that in-person meetings almost always outperform online or virtual meetings. While online meetings are an incredible powerful tool for talking to and getting to know people at scale, it's in-person meetings

product management

Exploring the Dark Cave of the Market: Finding Product Market Fit

Exploring the Dark Cave of the Market: Finding Product Market Fit for Your Startup

entrepreneurship

How market leaders disappear

A few days ago, the WSJ published a new episode of Tech News Briefing titled How Mobile Chips Overtook Intel and I couldn't help but think that only a few decades ago, many experts would have doubted that giant chip maker Intel would lose massive market shares on

skills

What 2-3 things are you really good at?

An interesting conversation with over 370 comments as of writing this article has been going on over the past few days over at Hacker News. User tmatthe posted an article from her blog on Being OK With Not Being Extraordinary and she makes the point that especially on the internet,

trick

How many piano tuners are there in Berlin?

This is a Fermi estimation problem and it's easy. You have probably heard of similar questions (Google asked them in interviews!) and there is a simple lifehack to solve this by finding an answer within an order of magnitude (10^1): How many people live in Berlin: 100k,

marketplace

Apple's house rules

The debate between Hey.com and Apple has definitely dominated tech Twitter this week. In short: Hey.com released a new email client for web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android and it's charging a monthly fee for it. This subscription is set up on the web, but

News

The joy of building your own newsfeed

It's probably no surprise to most that algorithms define what we see and what we not see when it comes to news. After all, that's how the constant stream of news and updates keeps being manageable. But algorithms have a dark side as well. As a

entrepreneurship

How to come up with ideas for your next business

The other day I sat down with a friend for lunch and he said after working for five years at Facebook, he is finally ready to start his own business. "I'm really looking forward to this", he said "but I just don't know

digital identity

Your SIM card is your identity

I remember the time many years ago when I would get a new phone along with a new SIM card. One of the most important things I did right after registering the SIM was to change the default PIN code of the SIM to something more secure. It was simple

oratio

Ending oratio

Today, I'm turning 30 and I would like to share with you my journey of ending oratio over the last couple of months. As some of you already know, my co-founder David and I phased out our work at oratio over the past few months since we had

startups

After two years in, this is what I learned from organizing ChatbotConf, an international tech conference

Just recently in October 2017, we hosted the second edition of ChatbotConf in Vienna. We, that is oratio, a platform for business-to-consumer communication on top of messengers. Organizing tech conferences was therefore never the core of our business, but in June 2016 we figured that bringing together people at an

africa

East Africa through Western eyes: startups & entrepreneurship

Every country has its own entrepreneurial spirit. While many trends and best practices such as the Lean Startup model are considered as common knowledge, their execution varies between countries, cultures and environments. The Kenyan entrepreneurial culture is surprisingly different on one side and surprisingly common on the other side, compared