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Presentation delivered at Startup Bootcamp Madrid, July 2011 (acting as a mentor)

Hello Everyone!

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I have a lot of things to say and so little time to do it, so this is gonna be real fast. Keep up!

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My name is Angel Medinilla, and I’ve been on the ICT market for more than 14 years. I ran into Agile six years ago and I’ve been an Agile consultant for the last four years, helping companies like Vodafone, Ericsson, Electronic Arts or Infojobs on their Agile adoption path.

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But let’s go back to the nineties so I can tell you my whole story as an Entrepreneur

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Back in the nineties I was like studying a lot

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I used an approach to studying that, later on, I discovered to be Lean Procrastination: waiting until the last responsible moment and then drinking coffee like mad while squeezing my brain

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This of course had the side effect of leaving a lot of free time during the year so I could party…

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But I also had time to engage on my first entrepreneurial projects, like bootstrapping the Junior Enterprise at the Engineering College or working as an intern for Sun Microsystems opening new markets in the University.

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When I finished my studies, circa 1998, I joined a Startup. I entered as employee number 46 and we ended up with, like, 1500 people in three or four years.

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This was an amazing experience, as I got to work with a level 5 team, capable of absolutely everything and thinking that impossible is nothing. We had a huge success as a team and we were promoted to manage five other startups.

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Unfortunately the dot.com meltdown hit us hard, but having had such a success inside a company we decided to go out and start our own Startup. Funky Business was our bible, and we were ready to rock the world…This was 2003

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A year later we were broke. We made all the mistakes by the book (this one is in Spanish, but it is very good, it lists a lot of pitfalls of entrepreneurs)

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Some of the mistakes we made…

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So I had to go back to the mine and work for in a corporate environment for four years…

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Around 2006 I was feeling the entreprenurial call again, and I starting writing a blog about Internet, startups, business, project management…

Finally in 2007 I started my own company, providing Project Management services in the beginning and later on pivoting to Agile consulting, training and coaching service

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Here you can see some trading cards of the companies I’ve been working for since then

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Now I’m going international, so I started a blog in english…

And my world domination plan is doing just fine!

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Nice to meet you!

Here you can find some of the boring same-stuff like advice that you can find on every Start-up book. While they are very true, these are pretty conventional…

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So I would give you some unconventional advice you’d probably find harder to find out there

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First one: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN SPAIN? WRONG COUNTRY FOR START-UPS!

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Fortunately there are low costs flight to virtually everywhere. Start traveling, and start now!

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Don’t be too eager to take the money. Stay away from politicians, bankers and, in general, from the establishment: they will crush your souls

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There is no secret ingredient in the secret ingredient soup. Just the right ingredients, prepared in the right way by people that have been cooking for years and now how to do their stuff. So perserver and work hard. Do deliverate pratice.

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Pivot. Maneuver. Change your track in search of your goals. This is not about following a plan, but about tracking daily your progress against measurable goals.

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It’s all about people: understand brain and emotions. There are excellent books and seminars about this: engage them!

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Create a corporate culture. Understand both the values of your employees and your community of users. Honor that values! Live by them!

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Don’t do Cargo Cult! Copying great companies practices won’t make you a make you great…

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…it will make you stay insane hours eating pizza and, in the end, ship a crappy product nobody wants.

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Form a comunity of people that are like you. Everyone else will tell you that you are crazy and press you to abandon. Eventually you will, unless you see that you are not alone. This will also help yoi find talented employees and cofounders. Go network!

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Learn Story Telling: • Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it. • Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them.

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If you suck at presenting (and you probably do), go join a stand-up comedy group, or a theater class, or a story telling class. There are awesome and will make you the star in family meetings, but also help you pitch investors.

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“Masakatsu Agatsu” – O sensei – True victory is victory over oneself. Understand that this is not about you against your competition, but you against your self. On the long distance.

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Self develop! Care your health, do sports, burn stress, learn how to breath, meditate. You are supposed to be the eye of the hurricane around you!

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Eventually you will be tempted by the dark side. Avoid the temptation. When you get power, don’t go and do to people the same things that corporate stupids did to you, things that force you to quit and start your company…

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So don’t be evil! Let people start-up inside your start-up!

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I would like to finish with this words by Konosuke Matsushita…

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And be sure that these are advice I’m applying to myself. I eat my own dog food!

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