How Tech Startups Deploy Agility In
Their Practices and What Affects Their
Choices
A comparative case study research
Statement of Originality
This document is written by Student Thanasis Mandaltsis who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
Abstract
Agile project management is an alternative to traditional project management techniques that focuses on people, communications, product, and flexibility. While originally created for software development projects, agile has started diffusing in the business sector offering ventures flexibility and the ability to efficiently handle change in today’s ever-changing business environment. Nevertheless, as transitioning from traditional management structures to agile might be challenging, more often than not, agile methodologies are being implemented in startup environments to help early ventures deal with the high level of ambiguity that surrounds them. The following research examines how entrepreneurs in thus said ventures choose the agile methods to be used – as well the factors that affect those choices – through six semi-structured interviews with tech startups. The results indicate that the complexity of a growing business venture does not allow for strict adoption of a single agile framework. In contrast, it calls for a combination of aspects from different methods according to the needs of the startup and most importantly great devotion to the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto (2001). Last but not least, the choice of the various agile aspects is affected by the prior knowledge and vision of the entrepreneurs an in turn by the product and its particularities.
Keywords: Agile Project Management, Agile Work Practices, Agile, Startups, Tech-Startups,
Table of Contents
1. Introduction --- Pg. 1 2. Literature Review--- Pg. 2
2.1. Agile Work Practices --- Pg. 4 2.2. Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Startups --- Pg. 5 2.3. ICT and the Nature of Work --- Pg. 7 2.4. Information, Startup Unicorns and Project Management --- Pg. 8 3. Conceptual Framework --- Pg. 10
3.1. Agility and Methodologies --- Pg. 10 3.2. SCRUM --- Pg. 12 3.3. Extreme Programming --- Pg. 14 3.4. Feature Driven Development --- Pg. 15 3.5. Test Driven Development --- Pg. 17 3.6. Dynamic Systems Development Method --- Pg. 17 3.7. KANBAN --- Pg. 18 3.8. Methodologies Comparison --- Pg. 19 4. Research Design --- Pg. 21 5. Research Instruments --- Pg. 22 6. Results --- Pg. 23 6.1. Mini Case Studies --- Pg. 23 6.2. Travis the Translator --- Pg. 24 6.3. The Main Ingredient --- Pg. 29 6.4. ThirdSkin --- Pg. 33
6.5. BrainsFirst --- Pg. 36 6.6. ParkFlyRent --- Pg. 40 6.7. Seedrs --- Pg. 44 6.8. Analysis --- Pg. 48 7. Discussion --- Pg. 58 8. Conclusion --- Pg. 63 8.1. Theoretical Contribution --- Pg. 64 8.2. Practical Implications --- Pg. 65 8.3. Limitations --- Pg. 66 8.4. Future Research --- Pg. 66 9. Bibliography --- Pg. 67 Appendices --- Pg. 71 Interview Appendix: Questionnaire --- Pg. 71 Interview Appendix: Travis the Translator --- Pg. 73 Interview Appendix: The Main Ingredient --- Pg. 77 Interview Appendix: ThirdSkin --- Pg. 80 Interview Appendix: BrainsFirst --- Pg. 82 Interview Appendix: ParkFlyRent --- Pg. 84 Interview Appendix: Seedrs --- Pg. 87
1. Introduction
“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness and life to everything” were the words of ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Music means setting no boundaries, constantly creating new combinations and changing. In those words, it is difficult to find a better representative from the business world for the ‘concept’ of music than the Swedish pioneer, Spotify. Spotify is a company that is transforming the music industry offering a music player where one can seamlessly find and play any song. The number of active users on Spotify recently reached 100 million (statista.com 2016) which adequately shows the impact that the company has on spreading music. However, while this is a noble cause it is not the only reason the Swedish company is steps ahead of the competition. The secrets behind the company’s success that allows Spotify deliver music to such a huge audience efficiently are; alignment and autonomy as well as innovation over predictability (Kniberg 2014).
Before the craze of the past years, Spotify was just a Swedish startup from Stockholm taking its first steps. The first public beta of the Spotify player was released in 2007 and a year later the streaming service was officially launched by the startup Spotify AB. Since then the music giant has been growing in rapid rates to more than 1600 employees in twenty locations worldwide (Wikipedia), reaching a point where challenges regarding its inherent flexibility emerged as, while it is easy for startups to embrace agility and flexibility in their work practices, it gets difficult when scaling up. However, these are important aspects that keep employees satisfied and foster innovativeness in a company. Ek and Lorentzon, founders of Spotify understood that, and moreover, that the constant creation of novel combinations was as important in their case as it is in music. Therefore, in order to remain competitive and innovative they had to keep operating without losing their original agility. This resulted in the creation of a tailored agile method of work
that if anything, has helped the company expand in numbers and rise in popularity. According to Bloomberg, Spotify is now the ‘biggest player’ in music industry showing no signs of slowing down despite the recent entrance of significant competitors such as Apple Music, Pandora Media Inc. and an expected reaction to those by Amazon as well (Shaw 2016).
This research will be devoted to the examination of the relation between agility in work practices and startups as well as to the composition of generic guidelines for implementing agility in an enterprise, answering the following question:
How do tech startups deploy agility in their practices?
- Do they create their own or use existing tools? - Do they use a single tool or combine more than one? - What common traits can be observed in their practices?
- Which factors affect the choice of those traits in the distinctive startup/product phases?
2. Literature Review
Almost a decade and a half ago as a reaction to heavyweight methodologies that were popular for software development at time, the Agile Manifesto was created and contained a certain set of values and principles for agile development (Fichtner 2011). The four agile values are the following:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools: The agile mindset prioritizes communication and collaboration between individuals over the strict adoption of a framework
- Working software (product) over comprehensive documentation: Focuses on the minimum viable product creation instead of extensive planning on that
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation: Introduces customers as valuable feedback source in the product lifecycle
- Respond to change over following a plan: Encourages actors to engage with the development of the product, embracing failing attempts as opportunities to learn and adjust instead of aiming at product release straight out from design
(Agilemanifesto.org 2001)
Despite that those sets of values and principles were created based on software development they have been widely adopted in the business world because; in the words of Mary Poppendieck “Organizations that are truly lean have a strong competitive advantage because they respond very rapidly and in a highly disciplined manner to market demand, rather that trying to predict the future”.
Every project that follows the values and principles of the agile manifesto can be considered agile. Nonetheless, it is not easy to stay agile while taking a venture to the ‘big league’ and regardless the extensive literature on agile work methodologies there is very little research in the ways entrepreneurs choose agile methods and how they stick to them as the venture grows. Furthermore, despite the rapid proliferation of startups the past years as well as the increasing interest in them from academic and managerial perspective a general operational framework is yet to be composed. This paper presents an attempt to map the agile practices of different tech startups and constitute possibly a stepping stone for further academic research. The following paragraphs will provide the necessary knowledge and theories about the foretold topic as well as the entrepreneurial aspect
agile methods have and their possible, disrupting, capabilities when combined with new technologies.
“If we are building something that nobody wants, why are we so proud of being on time and on budget?” Eris Ries
2.1. Agile Work Practices
Nowadays, as projects continue to proliferate in the business society, investments account for trillions of dollars annually. One major setback however, is the failure rates that can be observed in those projects as despite the significantly high importance placed on them the failure rates have remained high and relatively stable across over a decade (Serrador & Pinto 2015). A representative example of this paradox that can shed light to the impact these failures can have to organizations is the multi-billion Iridium project by Motorola. From an engineering point of view this project can be considered a success as it was ‘on time’ and ‘on budget’. Although, Motorola’s project team failed to see the quick expansion of the cell phone network, taking place during the course of the project, that would undermine Iridium’s satellite phone business model. This resulted in catastrophic commercial failure for the tech company (Collyer et al. 2010; Serrador & Pinto 2015). With scenarios like this in mind numerous researchers and practitioners started seeking alternatives to the traditional models for project implementation which reach bottlenecks emerging from early planning and the continuous changes during the implementation period. These and other problems account for the rise in popularity agile methodologies have had the past years (Dybå & Dingsøyr 2008).
- Continuous design - Flexible scope
- Freezing design features as late as possible
- Embracing uncertainty and customer interaction and - Modifying project team organization
In other words, agile methods can be considered iterative and incremental as they aim at avoiding traditional approaches that emphasize on early design, specification freeze, fixed project scope and low customer interaction (Serrador & Pinto 2015). At this point it is important to note that the agile methodologies do not completely abandon front-end planning. According Coram and Bohner (2005), more planning is required in agile environments with the distinction that it is spread across the whole development cycle. Balancing traditional and agile methods is quite probably the most appropriate approach (Serrador & Pinto 2015) but its success depends on the proper implementation by the practitioner; manager or entrepreneur.
2.2. Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Startups
According to Lazear (2005), entrepreneurs must be the jacks-of-all-trades who need not to excel in a single skill but are competent in many. In this term, entrepreneurs have a variety of capabilities at their disposal which in turn leads to the exploitation of arising opportunities in order to create successful ventures. Schumpeter has defined entrepreneurship as the novel combination of goods, markets, sources of supply, methods and – organization of – industry. Moreover, entrepreneurship and new combinations are inextricably connected with creative destruction; in the case of new entrepreneurial activities this creative destruction could very well mean the substitution of traditional work methods and organizational structures with new ways of conducting business.
Existing literature in the field of entrepreneurship indicates that innovation is a highly important feature of entrepreneurship. Boyer and Blazy (2014) have pointed out that the importance of innovation in entrepreneurship originates from the fact that innovation can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage that can help companies acquire market share over competitors and can even lead to the creation and/or establishment of a monopoly situation.
Many researchers, among them, Schumpeter have attempted to show that new small firms are major source of job creation, technological innovation and consequently regional growth. According to Luger and Koo (2005), in order for a firm to be considered a start-up it must be new, active and independent. More specifically, a firm is considered active if it sells goods and services to customers and independent if it is not related legally, financially and functionally with another firm. Similar to the relation that entrepreneurship has with innovation is the one that startups have with agile methodologies as, if anything, startups are basically built on hypotheses regarding a future product or service.
Relating to the famous Spotify model and its internal small-sized team structure with tribes and guilds, numerous studies have focused on the importance of teams in the discovery of opportunities, the innovativeness of the firm and consequently the success of the startup (West 2007). West has pointed that the heterogeneity of teams in new ventures can be linked with higher performance and perseverance of the venture as long as it is accommodated with good prior experience. In that view, building heterogeneous teams can mean broader resources and different ideas that in turn can contribute to better recognition and exploitation of opportunities (Munoz-Bullon & Sanchez-Bueno 2015). The following interesting question emerges from those observations: Why do nine out of ten startups fail since agile methodologies are among the startup essentials?
2.3. ICT and the Nature of Work
Work has always been necessary to human as it defines a person’s identity and constitutes a key part of the experience and condition (Applebaum 1992). In these terms, technology has been involved in the changing of work in every phase of the human history. Around ten thousand years ago when the human mastered the technology (more specifically the tools and knowledge) to sow and, in turn, mow seeds the result was the Agricultural Revolution. That shifted the locus of work from vast, dangerous valleys where people used to hunt animals and gather seeds for living to applying these newly acquired skills in delimited areas close to the safety of their own homes (Harari 2014).
One concept that has always been intimately related to work processes is that of information. In the previous example, knowing how to hunt, when to plant the crops and when to sow are issues of major significance in order to successfully conduct these jobs and so is information in all its different aspects when conducting any job. Nowadays, there is a widespread belief and the supporting evidence that the nature of work still changes. Existing literature points that information and technology have brought unprecedented changes in the nature of work (Forman et al. 2014), changes that may continue to alter not only the way people work but their perception of work as well. According to Alan Moran’s “Managing Agile” (2015, pg. 40) the rise of online media has already started altering the way firms develop, deliver, market and consume solutions. This can be traced back to the explosion in the amount of data captured and processed from those media. This increase in data entails a high level of business digitization that presents yet another confirmation of the ubiquity of ICT and new technologies in our era and in the years to come. This technological omnipresence may, not surprisingly, bring upon an array of novel ways of work regardless of the nature and/or industry of each job.
2.4. Information, Startup Unicorns and Project Management
In his book, ‘Entrepreneurship – Strategy and Resources’ (2008), M. Dollinger has suggested that “In the new millennium, the ideas, talents, skills, and knowledge that promote entrepreneurship are evident in people all around the globe, but especially in today’s generation. This new direction is a change from previous times when the forces for economic growth tended to favor more established businesses from the corporate world. But the face of the world economy has shifted, and young people today are well suited for entrepreneurial activity”. In a way this realization seems prophetic when thinking of startup unicorns; ventures that have managed to grow almost exponentially – like Uber, Airbnb, Dropbox, and Spotify did – reaching valuation of at least a billion US dollars. What these, and other unicorns, have in common is that they were created by entrepreneurial individuals without the expertise or the money that multinational enterprises possess and yet have managed to reach a highly competitive level putting them in the position to antagonize with those long established corporations.
Like all businesses, startups exist in different sizes and industries and serve different purposes. Nevertheless, if one takes a look at the unicorn companies lists maintained by several trustworthy organizations (“The Wall Street Journal”, “Fortune Magazine” or “Techcrunch”), one will realize that most of those companies do no profit from tangible products. The foundation for their success is based on software, applications, programs, and widgets. In other words, knowledge, data and manipulation of information.
Despite the fact that knowledge has been crucial for every job conducted and advancement achieved by our race (Harari 2014) according to B. Fuller’s “Knowledge Doubling Curve” up until early in the 20th century the knowledge basis of our race doubled approximately every century. By the end of the second world war that rate quadrupled leading to quarter-century cycles (Russel
2017). Nowadays, different types of knowledge double in different rates but on average the doubling cycle lasts 13 months and according to IBM (2006) the emergence and wide adoption of Internet of Things will lead to the doubling of information every 12 hours.
As information prevails, so do those who exploit it effectively to innovate through their business model design by adding novel activities, linking activities in novel ways or changing one or more parties that perform any of those activities (Amit & Zott 2012). Looking at certain startup unicorns and their disruptive business models, their innovativeness is easily observable and not surprisingly, as their rapid scale-ups also suggest so. A great example is that of the famous hospitality platform Airbnb. The Californian startup has disrupted the hospitality sector by “changing one or more parties that perform the activities” making the possession of expensive hotels and resorts obsolete and creating an peer-to-peer community, seamlessly connecting individuals who look for or offer accommodation. The lack of need for expensive facilities has launched Airbnb to the third place of the “Fortune Magazine Unicorn List” for 2016 with a valuation of 25.5 billion U.S. dollars (Fortune Magazine 2016). Nevertheless, Airbnb is more the exception that proves the rule than the rule itself. Startups failing at the incredible nine out of ten rate has been the motive for vast research in the specific field. According to the analysis of 101 Startup Post-mortems (CB Insights 2014) the top three reasons for startup failures are:
- No market need (42%) - Ran out of cash (29%) - Not the right team (23%)
This and the fact that other failure reasons on that list relate to the lack of management skills leads to the realization that more effort and devotion should be put in business planning. A way to succeed at that is project management.
Based on the project management definition (Project Management Insitute) being; the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to reach project requirements – the creation, growth and establishment of a business can be seen as the increments of a project. Adding to that, Accenture’s Strategic Pulse – Towards High Performance (Rodríguez 2014), suggests that; “Today, every business is a digital business. The world is changing around us and the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are driving a significant part of this metamorphosis”. Combining the above, the following conclusion can be drawn; as business planning is crucial in attempt to reduce failure rates of ventures and as most young businesses today are connected to digital then agile practices should be the road most taken for boosting the survivability of startups. The central objective of this research is the comparison of the agile methods entrepreneurs tend to follow in tech startups throughout three distinctive phases;
- Phase 1: The period from the idea conception until the minimum viable product is ready - Phase 2: The startup has started gaining customer base and achieves repeated sales without
significantly altering its business model
- Phase 3: The startup scales up – regardless if the venture is at that stage or planning towards it
This is achieved through the use of relevant literature and case studies on 6 innovative ventures.
3. Theoretical Framework
3.1. Agility and Methodologies
Drawing inspiration from the essential agile notions of iterative development and incremental delivery as well as the twelve agile principles specified in the Agile Manifesto (2001) bestowing emphasis on
and combining those with certain, high popularity, agile methodologies a framework is used to constitute the base on which interviews with suitable candidates take place to acquire the data needed for analysis.
Several agile methodologies are being used nowadays. Some of them, such as Extreme Programming (XP) and Scrum, focus on lightweight approaches favoring strong product development and others, such as Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®), on heavier approaches favoring project management and architecture, respectively. Each of those methodologies has certain particularities, i.e. XP and Scrum are more human oriented whereas DSDM is focused more on structure – e.g. business need, on-time delivery, collaboration, control demonstration.
Furthermore, when it comes to agile project management Alan Moran (2015) considers its major elements as they are perceived through the lens of the DSDM Agile Project Framework. The reason for that is that DSDM can be seen as a framework that structures and embeds daily agile work practices. This entails the transition of the traditional project management triangle by introducing fixed time for delivery, referred to as Timebox, fixing costs the earlier possible and allowing
features to vary instead of being fixed from the beginning. The result as illustrated in Figure 1 constitutes a simple visualization of the differentiation between traditional and agile approaches displaying with simplicity what agility deployment brings to a venture.
Figure 1: Traditional vs DSDM Perceptions on Project Variables (Moran 2015, pg.73)
Prior to the composition of the conceptual framework of this research a brief illustration of the most popular agile methods is considered essential. The following explanations and illustrations are based on the work of Anand & Dinakaran (2016) and other project management sources across the web such as the Project Management Institute and project-management.com.
3.2. SCRUM (Schwaber 2016)
One of the popular agile frameworks, maybe the most well-known. According to Ken Schwaber, creator of SCRUM, “It employs an interactive and incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk” and it involves
c) the Scrum team (project team)
The SCRUM Process
Product Owner: Receives inputs from end-users, customers, stakeholders and creates the Product
Backlog (a list of features prioritized by the Product Owner in accordance to business requirements). Backlogs are kept alive and owned by Product Owners who constantly revise them and are the only actors
that can alter them. From the Product Backlog the team pulls the Sprint Backlog (a procedure that happens for every sprint) and executes the building of products in Sprints.
Sprint: Fixed period of time that the team commits to work in developing the product. Its length
is decided by the team and the product owner. The committed deliveries do not change along its duration, nor does the duration itself. In case of major obstructions the Product Owner can terminate it and start an new one.
Scrum Teams: They consist ideally of 5-9 people. They are self-organizing, self-managing and
must be cross-functional. Teams select their delivery commitments for each sprint and plan the each respective task for that delivery. Every day, teams update a Burndown Chart showing the remaining tasks and the hours left for all of them and have short meetings to update each other on
progress and obstacles. The aim of the Scrum Teams is to complete 100% of what they committed and potentially add it to the project. These respective increments must be fully implemented and tested without major defects.
Daily Meetings: Casual meetings, up to fifteen minutes in duration where each team member stand
up and report three things: 1) Done since yesterday, 2) done by tomorrow and 3) blocks and obstacles.
Scrum Master: Makes notice of the obstacles the team has encountered and is responsible for
protecting and serving the team. The Scrum Master is essentially the guide of the team and coordinating it and solving internal/external obstructions.
Sprint Review: Takes place at the end of each Sprint among the Product Owner, the team, the
Scrum Master, stakeholders. At this point the increment is checked and feedback is taken. In other words, can be considered a product review.
Retrospective: Primarily concerns the team, the Product Owner and the Scrum Master. Those
actors meet to review their way of working and improve their effectiveness, what can be also considered a process review.
3.3. Extreme Programming (Wells 2009; Dudziak 2000)
XP bestows a lot of emphasis on teamwork and according to its creator Kent Beck “it is a lightweight methodology for small to medium sized teams developing software in the face of rapidly changing requirements”.
XP Essentials
- Communication: Extreme Programmers constantly stay in contact with customers and other programmers
- Simplicity: One of the main target is keeping the design as simple and clean as possible
- Feedback: Taken constantly from day one by continuous tests
- Respect: Every small
success strengthens the respect of the team for each individual contribution in the project - Courage: Self-starting and ready to attempt and even fail
XP delivers to customers as early as possible and implements suggested changes even late in the life cycle.
3.4. Feature Driven Development (Pang & Blair 2004)
Is one of the lightweight agile methodologies that uses a short iterative and incremental model. Basically it is a combination of other agile methodologies and recognized best practices from other industries and is considered best suited for scaling up larger projects or teams.
Feature: A small valued function that is expressed in client valued terms. If the set of given
features is not that big it is supposed to be completed in a two-week window. Otherwise, the set has to be broken into smaller sub-sets of features that can be completed within two weeks.
FDD Roles: • Project Manager • Chief Architect • Development Manager • Domain Experts • Class Owners • Chief Programmers FDD Steps:
1. Overall Model Development – Gain knowledge and shared understanding of problem domain
2. Feature List Building – Organize features in certain hierarchy
3. Feature Oriented Planning – Construct initial schedule, assign team members’ responsibilities
4. Feature Oriented Design – Form feature teams, collaborate, update model 5. Feature Building – Implement and test designed feature
3.5. Test Driven Development (Duka & Hribar 2010)
Is based on the repetition of a very small development cycle. It can be used for testing before taking a product live i.e. for a Digital Marketing campaign that uses A/B testing to measure customer engagement. The process is small and easy to understand containing the following steps:
1. Add a test
2. Run tests – note success/failure of the test 3. Make adjustments
4. Run tests again 5. Refactor
3.6. Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM Agile Project Framework 2014; Voigt et
al. 2004)
DSDM is an agile project delivery framework, iterative and incremental that also includes customer involvement. Compared to the previous methodologies it is a more generic framework for project management and solution delivery and is the longest established full-project agile approach. DSDM terms include MoSCoW, Timeboxing, Prototyping, Testing, Configuration Management.
DSDM Principles:
1. Focus on customer needs 2. Involve active users
Figure 5: Process - Test Driven Development
3. Focus on frequent releases rather than maximizing quality 4. Correct solutions, if needed, through iterative development 5. Test throughout the project
6. Involve and communicate with stakeholders
DSDM Steps:
1. Study Feasibility
2. Model Functional Iteration 3. Design and Build Iteration 4. Implement
3.7. KANBAN
This method was developed in the late 1940s when Toyota found a better engineering process from and unlikely source; a supermarket. The key was that store clerks restocked grocery items based on the store’s inventory and not on vendor’s supply. Toyota noticed that only when a product was near sellout did the clerks order more. This ‘just-in-time’ delivery process was the spark to rethink engineering methods and pioneer this new approach.
Kanban is a method for managing knowledge work that bestows emphasis on timely delivery and avoidance of team member overload. Visualization that allows better understanding of work and workflow is essential for Kanban. The core mechanism of the method revolves around a work-in-progress axis which facilitates the location of problems in the system and stimulates collaboration for its continuous improvement. The Kanban method, does not prescribe roles or process steps but
starts with existing roles and processes changing the whole system in a continuous and incremental manner. This is the reason that Kanban can be used as a tool to manage change.
Kanban Principles:
1. Visualize Work – Create a visual model of work and workflow to easily observe the flow of work moving through the system
2. Limit Work in Process – Less unfinished work in process translates to less time for an item to travel through the system
3. Focus on Flow – Use work-in-process limits and team driven policies to improve smooth flow of work and collect metrics to analyze the flow
4. Continuous
Improvement – Measure effectiveness by tracking flow, quality, lead times and more.
Adjust the system accordingly
3.8. Methodologies Comparison
After explaining the fundamentals of some of the most popular Agile Methodologies table 1 is used to concentrate the different characteristics each of them has and constitute the basis for the interviews with startups. The interviews are used for the formation of case studies on every startup respectively, ultimately aiming to the comparison and depiction of Agile Methodologies that tech startups tend to follow.
Methodologies/
Characteristics Approach Iteration Team Size Project Size
Team Communication SCRUM Iterative and Incremental 2 – 4 weeks 5 – 9 members All Project Sizes Informal XP Iterative and Incremental 1 – 6 weeks Max 20 members Small Projects Informal FDD Iterative and Incremental Less than 2 weeks
More than One Team Complex Projects Follows Documentation TDD Iterative Time based on Product Built Few Basic Actors in the Beginning – More Added Later Accordingly Small Projects Open Communication between Managers- Developers DSDM Iterative and Incremental 2 – 3 days Independent Teams – Any Size All Project Sizes Follows Documentation KANBAN Incremental Time from the Beginning of Work until at least MVP is Live Different Size Cross-functional Teams Small Projects Informal
4. Research Design
This study is based on qualitative research. More specifically it is a multiple case study that follows the inductive approach and in terms the exploratory studies approach. The reason for this approach is the nature of the research that involves: the discovery of new theoretical insights about a topic without satisfying volume of literature to define it and variables that are difficult to identify. The unit of analysis is a set of business practices that shows how startups deal with their projects, customers, product.
The selection of the cases/respondents is inextricably related with the objectivity projected by the author, thus constituting one of the most important decisions when conducting research (Flyvbjerg 2006). Consequently, after research on startups and association with some, both in a casual manner and in working environment the following realization was used for the selection of the participants:
In order to enhance the generalizability of the research, the respective tech startups represent different industries and products dependent to software, hardware or their combination. Moreover, all of the respondents have completed the first phase of the product development having at least a minimum viable product and achieving repeated sales with it.
Moreover, the six cases examined are characterized by their dependence on technology, low or high. According to Amit & Zott (2012), a business model can be seen as an activity system with the purpose of satisfying the perceived needs of the market, specifying which activities are conducted and by which party and lastly, how these activities are connected. In other words, it is a system of interconnected and interdependent activities that aims at value creation for the company. Based on those, tech startups are defined as following for this research;
a significant level, hence the operation of the venture would not be viable without the use of such technology, it can be considered tech startup.
5. Research Instruments
The aim of this research is the examination of the methods that entrepreneurs use in new ventures in order to be lean; respond in a rapid and disciplined manner to market demand, instead of trying to predict it. Moreover, the causes and forces that led to the implementation of these methods are of high significance. Consequently, the most suitable way to collect the data needed is the semi-structured interviews technique in an attempt to create a regular conversation flow with the interviewee that will provide insights not only for the methods and tools that startups use but also the motives behind their choices. In order to achieve representative results, the interviews are concerned with three different development stages or phases:
I. Idea conception to MVP: Includes the implemented practices of the venture from the
moment that a conceived idea starts developing until when a minimum viable product is complete. The definition of this stage is important as it reveals the motives behind the practices that entrepreneurs find most suitable for the realization of their ideas
II. Operation of the startup and achievement of repeated sales without significant alterations in its business model: This stage includes the operation of the startup based on
the developed minimum viable product and the commencement of its establishment and growth. The significance of this stage is reflected on the differences that appear in the operation of a venture once the product is ready and the goal is not only its iterative advancement but also the generation of sales and awareness towards it
regardless if the venture is currently scaling or planning towards it. The significance of this phase lies in the difficulty of ventures to maintain flexibility that accommodates this potential expansion – internal or in market share.
The interview questions revolve around the agile methodologies, the agile values as specified in the Agile Manifesto (2001) and the agility emphasis points that differentiate those practices from traditional ones (Serrador & Pinto 2015). Moreover, the topics to be covered are mostly linked to the combination of practices the ventures implement. Last but not least, voice recordings of all the interviews are used for recurrent analysis and further precision.
6. Results
6.1. Mini Case Studies
This part of the research consists of mini case studies of startups that were picked, among others, for their innovative practices; table 2 provides the basic information of the six respective respondents. The cases formed through interviews with the startups, their respective web domains, and several web sources serve for the better understanding of the background of each venture as well as for the analysis of agility deployment in their practices. The incorporation of agility is separated in three distinct phases and presented in tables following each case. The most significant discrepancies among the agile practices of the startups occur in the transition of the ventures from one phase to another. Consequently, after the case studies, a concentrated table is created. Table 9 includes all six startups and, separately, presents the agile implementation features in those ventures across the three phases, so that the comparison between them is more clear.
Startup Headquarters Interviewee
Travis the Translator Rotterdam, NL Brend Kouwehoven, CTO-Co-founder The Main Ingredient Amsterdam, NL Sander Nieuwenhuizen, Co-Founder
ThirdSkin Birmingham, UK Simon Austen, CEO – Founder
BrainsFirst Amsterdam, NL Marieke Dresme, Business Manager-Founding partner ParkFlyRent Amsterdam, NL Niels de Greef, CEO-Founder
Seedrs London, UK Thierry Zois, Business Development – BENELUX area
Table 2: Examined Cases
6.2. Travis the Translator
The fading of world barriers is observable more than ever in our era with the wide diffusion of ICT making collaboration between people living in distant places more common than ever and the scaling of its effect imminent. No matter what, not everyone has access to the same quality of education and in a globalized world where talent and cooperation is highly appreciated language is still a major impediment to reaching our full potential as a global society. However, this has been an ever existing problem.
Following a famous biblical story, the high ambitions that have always been characterizing the human race sparked the undertaking of a construction tall enough to reach heaven. God, watching their tower punished this hubris by confounding their speech so that they could no longer understand each other. The Tower of Babel was never completed and humanity was scattered around the world (Wikipedia). Despite it being a fictional story, from time to time people have wondered what the collective potential of human race could be. Fortunately for us, pioneers have always existed throughout history to make us believe that ‘sky’s the limit’. One modern example
Travis.
Travis is a Dutch-born startup from Rotterdam that bases its operation on three pillars; Hardware, Software and Artificial Intelligence. With these in mind the team behind Travis is about to bring on the market a translator with the ability to translate up to 80 languages from speech – 20 of them offline. To the eye of a beholder this might not seem like radical innovation, but Travis is not yet another Google Translate – its secret lies on the backend of its implementation. This translator runs on a machine learning algorithm, such that will be able to make it better in translations the more people use it. In simple words, similar to a kid, Travis will possess language understanding from the beginning and will become more adept as it listens and talks with people hopefully reaching the level of understanding actual humans.
Travis is a technology startup founded by Lennart van der Ziel and Nick Yap in April 2016. Commencing with the mindset of a hardware company, the startup focused on building a plastic mockup of what the device would look like as soon as possible and figured how the software would be embedded in it. Showing a first product and how things can be done very soon, the team committed to really finalize the it and managed to do so within a relatively small period, presenting their first complete prototype in February 2017. A month later Travis’ crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo went live realizing incredible popularity and reaching its first crowdfunding goal of 80.000 USD as quickly as three days later. As of May 26th 2017 Travis is still attracting users eager to be part of this community reaching an extraordinary 784% of its initial funding aspiration and planning to deliver to its crowdfunding backers by July.
Looking at a huge crowdfunding success and anticipating Travis’ first learning days seems easy to get carried away. However, this is not the case for the people who work with the vision of eliminating linguistic barriers worldwide. According to the CFO Brend Kouwenhoven, the startup
operates with flexibility that strictly revolves around its 4 core values.
- Mission over task: Working at Travis means sharing the vision of the venture and understanding that part of its mission is your responsibility
- Better sorry than safe: The culture of the startup includes encouraging people to try – failure is part of life
- Self-starter mentality: Extending ‘mission over task’ Travis’ team must excel in starting things independently
- Humility: The Travis team is like a family, admitting one’s faults and be open to discussion is considered crucial for the successful confrontation of impediments
Consequently, it is not difficult to understand how the Travis team has remained down-to-earth and devoted to its ultimate goal.
Having sold more than 5.000 translators already the goal for the first year of operation for Travis is reaching 50.000 users creating a community that will work as a school for the artificially intelligent translator, a goal that does not seem difficult to achieve looking at its huge pre-retail audience. Following that, the startup has already explored its opportunities regarding further distribution, legal affairs, business establishment procedures and even exit strategies but refuses to decide just yet. Instead it chooses to be indifferent and open in any kind of options, at least until the 50k community becomes reality. Additionally, in the operational perspective, Travis aimed at being revenue driven from its very beginning always trying to maintain a positive cash flow so that it also maintains a certain degree of independency showing great signs of management competency that other early ventures can look up to.
Agility within Travis
possess. The reposition of equal significance to the three basic pillars of Travis – Hardware, Software and Artificial Intelligence – inevitably leads to differentiation of practices in the development stages of the venture. More specifically, the team of Travis is led by professionals, adept in project management and certain methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban and Lean. This gives them the ability to foresee the necessity for versatility and thus choose to be agile in their agility deployment adopting an accumulation and adaptation approach to their practices. During phase one the approach of Travis was both incremental and iterative as it involved the building of the physical product that hosts the innovative software.
Concluding, Travis may not be a common startup, one that the average aspired entrepreneur can identify with. It is however a startup that demonstrates great performance and drive to succeed in the digital era as well as enviable social entrepreneurship aspirations. Ventures like this exist to remind us the beneficial side of new technologies that can help society evolve and that new ideas never seize to exist. Sometimes, we just need to take a step back from the tree and try not to miss the forest.
Methodologies/ Characteristics
Approach Iteration Team
Project Size Team Communication PHASE 1 Aspect Mix, Accumulation –Adaptation Incremental –Iterative Time Based on Product Built Few Basic Actors in the Beginning – More Added Later Accordingly All Project Sizes Informal PHASE 2 Aspect Mix, Accumulation –Adaptation Iterative
Time from the Beginning of Work until at least MVP is Live Independent Teams – Any Size Small Projects Informal – Formal PHASE 3 Aspect Mix, Accumulation –Adaptation Iterative Time Based on Product/Feature Built Independent Teams – Any Size Small Projects Informal – Formal
6.3. The Main Ingredient
One of the main human characteristics that differentiate us from other animals is versatility, a characteristic that not everyone possesses in the same degree but, undoubtedly can cultivate. We have the ability to adjust in our environment, put our habits in oblivion and innovate to evolve and survive. Through the course of history countless innovators have walked the earth. Not every one of them was a disruptor or a pioneer but they have all influenced the face of our society today. The technology we possess nowadays along with the vast diffusion of ICT facilitate creative destruction that goes together with innovation and for the first time allow small numbers of people disrupt whole industries. As startups proliferate globally, their increase in number is accompanied by a 90% failure rate, failure that most of the times can be traced back to poor management skills (CB Insights 2014). This is the reason this case examines the ingredient that can make a startup more versatile helping it, in this way, adjust and survive in a business world that changes now, more swiftly than ever.
The idea of The Main Ingredient was conceived in 2014 by Paul Reijnierse and Sander Nieuwenhuizen fueled by their passion for creating new and innovative online products. The startup was officially founded in 2015. What makes TMI particularly interesting for this study is its business model. Operating similarly to what a startup accelerator – incubator mix would look like, The Main Ingredient invites entrepreneurs to seek their services and assists them to transform their idea into working business within a twelve week span, tackling an array of projects; from design to coding, to marketing and business development. Following that phase, TMI maintains a partnership with startups for a longer period (around a year) helping them reach full potential. Additionally, TMI offers its expertise in design, product development and agile to bigger
companies who attempt transformation diverging from traditional management structures or seek new ways to innovate through digital.
Agility is the pillar on which TMI is built and considering the service that the startup offers it needs to be agile in both its own practices focusing on how to tackle the undertaken projects, and at the same time make sure that its respective clients develop their ventures in an agile manner. While this may seem to complicate the operation of TMI, the company manages to maintain a certain standard on which it chooses and implements projects while being as flexible as possible in the consultation of its clients. This reflects on the fact that, in contradiction to the beliefs of many traditional corporations, The Main Ingredient is proud of doing things differently and thinking out of the box, and its results are inspiring. From its commencement in 2015 TMI has collaborated with several established companies such as Bacardi, Albert Heijn, Heinken, ING and Abn-Amro and has partnered with startups assisting them to go live by innovating through digital and creating new exciting products. Those collaborations have brought to life, among others, ideas like Tikkie; the app that allows users to send payment requests to friends and family seamlessly through WhatsApp currently available for every Dutch bank, and Ligo; a platform that takes advantage of technology to offer entrepreneurs legal services for a fraction of the time, cost and complexity of the traditional system. These and other ventures constitute a great representation of the the way The Main Ingredient chooses its projects. The startup offers its services to any kind of business from seed level startups to big corporations as long as digital innovation is involved and there is some financing on board.
“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”
Based on excellent understanding of the digital business world, the ambiguity that surrounds new ventures, the problems they face, and the tools to confront them The Main Ingredient plays the role of an agile coach teaching its clients how to be flexible in a rapidly changing business environment. Within the period of collaboration with the ventures, the ultimate goal of TMI is to help them embrace the agile principles and embody them in their cultures to implement them on their own and continue to grow. The Main Ingredient is an agent of change hoping to contribute in the transformation of modern business towards entities that:
- Prioritize communication between individuals over plain adoption of framework/practices - Focus on creating at least a minimum viable product instead on expending their powers
planning for it
- Understand that customer feedback is essential in the development of a successful product - Accept the fact that every plan always changes and adapt instead of making big plans
Agility within The Main Ingredient
Following an interesting talk with Sander Nieuwenhuizen, a picture of the startup’s practices became more clear. The Main Ingredient deals every case in accordance with its respective needs and capabilities combining aspects of certain methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean to create a tailored solution for everyone of them. The approach it follows can be characterized iterative as firstly, TMI aims at bringing its clients live within a projected timeframe and following that it stays active for up to a year reworking with them and helping them improve. The Main Ingredient is an example of versatility showing that entrepreneurship cannot be constrained in frameworks but must be based on visualization, communication and adaptation; features that the startup tries to integrate in the culture of its cases.
Methodologies/
Characteristics Approach Iteration Team
Project Size Team Communication PHASE 1 Aspect Mix (Scrum, Knaban) Iterative Up to twelve weeks Few Basic Actors in the Beginning – More Added Later Accordingly All Project Sizes Informal PHASE 2 Aspects of Different methodologies Iterative Up to twelve weeks Max 20 members All Project Sizes Informal PHASE 3 Aspects of Different methodologies Iterative Up to twelve weeks Independent Cross-functional Teams All Project Sizes Informal
6.4. Third Skin
Modern technology undoubtedly facilitates many aspects of our every day lives. Calling forth the huge array of applications available for smartphones, one can become more efficient in personal and professional organization. Communication and collaboration even between very distant places becomes seamless and swift. To top those, many different apps exist allowing individuals to tackle issues previously impossible to, from keeping track of dietary patterns and workout sessions for better outcomes to even knowing which route to follow to avoid traffic conjunction and save valuable time. Although, what seems to become more and more evident nowadays is the digital distraction that accompanies all those facilitators. Older generations blame digital natives for being obsessed with their smartphones, dependent on social media and incapable of ignoring a notification alert from their beloved devices. While similar obsession can be observed in every generation’s trends two major distinctions exist:
- Because of the vast ICT diffusion, nowadays such behaviors and dependencies appear in a much bigger scale
- We have the potential to make this technology more efficient by assuring it becomes less intrusive for its users
Third Skin is a startup based in Birmingham, UK that tries to do exactly that. It was founded by Simon Austen in the middle of 2015 and revolves around the idea that; ‘As our clothing should be comfortable like a second skin, the technology we wear should be no different – a third skin. The first product of the startup; HY, the concealed earbuds is live on Indiegogo – planned to ship in May 2018 – and has already reached 185% of its crowdfunding goal (as of June 1st 2017) and going. HY constitutes a completely different pair of wireless headphones that integrate music, calls and information in such a natural manner that as Simon says: ‘its users will hardly notice it is
there’. More specifically, not affecting its users natural hearing this pair of earbuds does not need to be taken off when it is not in use. Adding to that the battery power of HY is a much as 5 times that of common BT headphones and allows its users to control it through voice commands and gestures. The technology behind HY combines high quality speakers and vibrating elements for rich deep bass; leading to excellent sound that augments natural hearing when it is on and make it almost unnoticeable when it is off. At the moment HY supports ‘all day wear’ by giving its users the ability to execute a variety of tasks such as checking the weather, monitoring their well being, set reminders, search the web using voice commands and listen to music or enjoy conversations without the need to take their phones out of their pocket. At the same time, more features are being developed that will allow users to record and share audio experiences seamlessly or listen together wirelessly; hoping that HY will change the way people think about personal audio.
Agility within Third Skin
Interviewing Simon Austen provided valuable insights regarding how such an entity operates and the impediments it faces in the different phases of the product development. Third Skin presents another case where the entrepreneur bestows more value in individuals and interactions over processes and tools. In those terms all 3 phases entail an aspect mix from different agile methods with the certain particularities appearing in the first phase – developing the physical product – making incremental approach the most suitable one. The iterations show differences in the first phase as well being based on the product build and subsequently becoming 3 months long, on average, in the next phases. Last but not least, it is important to note that through its course of existence the startup is constituted by a few main actors – starting with only the founder – and chooses to outsource certain projects such as the hardware development adding members gradually and accordingly.
To conclude, Third Skin’s mission is to create technology that is intuitive, invisible and constant, to enrich and support lives through technology, and remove dependency to obstructive smartphones and crude peripherals and on its journey to that its goal is to remain as flexible as possible, question everything, welcome and exploit change.
Table 5: Agility - ThirdSkin
Methodologies/ Characteristics
Approach Iteration Team
Project Size Team Communication PHASE 1 Scrumban Incremental Time Based on Product Built Founder – Outsourcing Tasks Accordingly Big Project Informal PHASE 2 Scrumban – Adaptation Iterative and Incremental 3 month Chunks Few Basic Actors in the – Outsourcing Tasks Accordingly All Project Sizes Informal PHASE 3 Aspect Mix, Accumulation – Adaptation Iterative and Incremental 3 month Chunks Different Size Cross-functional Teams Small Projects Informal – Follows Documentation
6.5. BrainsFirst
If one looks at the growth of sciences and technology through the past centuries one will notice an exponential advancement accompanied with a lot of differences in our everyday lives, the way work, we travel, we communicate. The characteristic curiosity and restless spirit of the human race have always pushed aspiring individuals to challenge and disrupt the status quo. Those who manage to do so usually create innovations that change our whole perception about something; e.g. the first iPhone introduced by Apple completely changed the way we thought of mobile phones and constituted a driver for the wide diffusion and adoption of this technology – making it difficult to imagine today’s world without it – resulting to the commencement of the digital and mobile era. A period during which the ICT help us be more efficient under different circumstances and in a vast array of tasks. Yet the basic concepts and techniques regarding the recruitment of suitable talent to continue the generation of innovative ideas remains pretty much the same. This is more or less what a University of Amsterdam spin-off is trying to change, with the distinction that BrainsFirst’s NeurOlympics games can be used for the assessment of a wide spectrum of talent; from scientists, to business strategists, to professional athletes.
BrainsFirst is a startup that came out of the Innovation Exchange Amsterdam – an expert interface between Amsterdam-based academic institutions and parties interested in their research findings and knowledge – and bases its value proposition on brain and cognition sciences along with cutting edge machine learning techniques to identify relevant data patterns. Using the NeurOlympics assessment games, an interface created by the startup, it generates cognitive profiles to offer extra performance predictors and find the most suitable candidate for a specific job. The brain-based assessment game BrainsFirst has created is easy to use and designed to justify the complexity of the human brain. The cognitive profiles of people are created by measuring the performance
bandwidths of their core cognitive components, predicting, in turn, performance levels and leading to next-level talent identification. BrainsFirst is a startup that takes advantage of the existing knowledge about brain and cognition and combines it with the computational power of machine learning creating a product that is bias-free, scientifically valid and data-driven. Technology like this gives companies the ability to measure the important building blocks of today’s potential using the possibilities of tomorrow. For the first time corporations can hunt talent more efficiently, making better decisions and identifying hidden potential while at the same time benefit from the cost-saving effects of automation.
Despite its short existence, BrainsFirst has already gained the attention of established organizations. The past April PSV Eindhoven and AZ Alkmaar became the first sport institutions using the NeurOlympic games to investigate the brains of their talents showing willingness to try this novel recruitment process. Most importantly though, the consultancy giant, McKinsey & Company was one of the first ambassadors of the NeurOlympics games showing that the startup has what it takes to establish itself in the business world and stand tall among big corporations. The Amsterdam based strategic consultancy firm has selected to use BrainsFirst’s games to recruit the best top talent graduating in the Netherlands. Students can showcase their brainpower while doing neuroscientific tasks. The program matches “cognitive supply” indicated by the results with the cognitive demand set by McKinsey leading to much more optimized feedback than that from traditional recruitment tasks.
Agility within BrainsFirst
Marieke Dresme, Business Manager and founding partner provided useful insights regarding the ways that BrainsFirst chooses to manage its projects. According to her, the philosophy of the startup bestows a lot of emphasis on the job to be done and not the strict adoption of frameworks
and constitutes an essential ingredient important to stay as is even if the venture scales up. Similar to that, the startup’s approach to projects has been iterative from the beginning, affected mainly from the nature of its core activity which is based on the NeurOlympics games. The iterations of the projects indicate some differences in the three phases of the product development with the first phase iterations lasting from few weeks up to six months – that were needed for the creation of the games – and following that, the iteration duration in phase two and three is mainly based on the product built. Additionally, the communication within BrainsFirst was informal from the beginning and is intended to stay like this in all the product phases with the possibility of using documentation in phase three depending on the growth of the startup team. From the idea conception behind BrainsFirst, the startup operated with the as many as three members – the founders – and added a three more actors as the product and venture progressed. At the moment, BrainsFirst is operating with a cross-functional team of six planning to expand more in numbers while maintaining this ‘all-around’ character. Last but not least, the startup was tackling projects of all sizes during phase one of the product development – including marketing, business development and most importantly the development of the NeurOlympics games. Once the program was complete the challenges that the startup faced were constrained to smaller projects and looking forward to phase three and a potential scale up it is quite possible that the size of projects tackled will vary again from weeks to months.
To conclude, BrainsFirst’s attempt to facilitate the recruitment of best-fitting talent in several industries could not be realized without the most suitable practices for the startup. Combining an aspect mix from different agile methods, keeping the first principle of the agile manifesto in mind and adjusting to the respective needs of its core business activity is the recipe for success of this tech startup.
Methodologies/ Characteristics
Approach Iteration Team Project Size Team Communication PHASE 1 Aspect Mix – Focus on Process Iterative 3 months on Average Few Basic Actors in the Beginning – More Added Later Accordingly All Project Sizes Informal PHASE 2 Aspect Mix – Focus on Process Iterative Time Based on Product/Feature Built More Actors – Cross-functional Team Smaller Projects Informal PHASE 3 Aspect Mix – Focus on Process Iterative Time Based on Product/Feature Built More Actors – Cross-functional Team All Project Sizes Informal – Follows Documentation
6.6. ParkFlyRent
According to the World Economic Forum (2017) cars sit idle 96% of the time. The average owner uses his car roughly 29 hours every month. In return, valuable resources are spent annually to satisfy the worldwide automobile demand, whose scale is really easy to observe. Simply by taking a walk through a crowded urban area one will realize that apart from commuting cars, streets are filled with an extravagant amount of parked vehicles occupying space that could otherwise be exploited in more efficient ways. This situation reaches a whole new level in the case of airports and airport parking. Whether travelling for business or leisure, missing a flight is never pleasant and a risk nobody wants to take. Many studies on risk perception have been conducted through the years and a common pattern that seems to appear has to do with control over risk. According to Boholm (1998) people are more willing to take a bigger risk they have control over rather than a smaller one that they cannot control. This could be one of the reasons why such extensive areas are devoted to parking in big airports – people may not be able to shake off the feeling that something will go wrong, even in the most efficient public transportation networks. Nevertheless, this observation sparked the curiosity of Niels de Greef, founder of PFR, to investigate a potential entrepreneurial opportunity that could as well relieve this reckless expense of resources and energy. According to Niels, 22.000 cars are sitting idle, momently, in Schiphol Airport of Amsterdam and theirs owners pay money to have them getting dusty. Simultaneously, rental companies operate a fleet of 6.000 cars which they replace on yearly basis. Taking in account the number of airports worldwide these figures become staggering.
In an attempt to tackle this phenomenon ParkFlyRent invites drivers to engage with the sharing economy and help solve this problem in the most social way possible. Outbound travelers can use
ParkFlyRent to park their cars for free regardless of the duration of their trip and inbound travelers can rent out the parked cars for a fraction of the price that established rental companies offer. In that way, the need for big rental fleets decreases and both the renter and the parker save money creating a win-win situation for all the peers involved in this circular economy – which despite its obvious benefits still has its doubters. While the concept of sharing and circular economies has been widely embraced in the cases of Airbnb and Uber a certain reluctance is understandable in the case of car rental. An Airbnb host evaluating the risks of offering an apartment knows that in the worst case scenario enough evidence can be provided to claim satisfactory compensation for any damages. However, this is not the case with car sharing and this is why ParkFlyRent makes sure to insure all vehicles for every possible outcome and thoroughly check the background of every renter. This way, the startup ensures that every rented car is returned to its owner in the condition it was offered and of course fresh out of carwash.
Agility within ParkFlyRent
Niels de Greef conceived the idea of PFR in May 2013 when he and his girlfriend took a trip to Sardinia. Niels had chosen to park at the airport realizing that he had lost more on parking costs than he did for the plane ticket. Adding to that the car rental service he chose in Sardinia was far from satisfactory. With these in mind Niels decided to find a way to take advantage of the countless idle cars he saw parked at the airport.
Being an entrepreneur, Niels understood that before he could hire more people or get investors to join he needed an MVP which in that case would be the PFR platform. He worked alone, iteratively on the basis of the Lean Startup method building, measuring and learning for a period of six weeks. After validating that parkers – suppliers of the cars – would return to PFR he was ready to pitch to investors in an attempt to get the funds that would assure the regular operation of the startup.
Entering the second phase of the product development it made sense for PFR to start growing and was when more actors were added forming a cross-functional team parted by full-time employees and interns. PFR is still follows the principles of Lean Startup, works iteratively on improving the customer experience and automating as many processes possible. As Niels says; building a company from scratch one needs to have a plan to start with but from daily friction one understands that most of the times new challenges may come up as soon as existing ones are taken care of. In that sense PFR currently tackles projects of different sizes on a build-measure-learn fashion and tries to keep communication informal while at the same time bestow formality and follow documentation on certain situations. Following a successful crowdfunding (126% of the goal as of June 10th 2017) ParkFlyRent prepares to enter the third phase of its product development and scale. To achieve that, the startup currently focuses on automation of its service and preparing the organization so that more time can be dedicated on what matters when PFR goes abroad. From agility perspective this entails few distinctions that are mostly related with new locations and the size of the team. PFR intends to continue using the Lean Startup method which has been beneficial for it until now, staying however, open to adding aspects of different methods accordingly. The potential expansion to different airports and countries calls for internal growth, adding more specialized positions and new team members. With that in mind Niels and his team are already planning on how the startup’s structure should look like in such a scenario hoping to create independent ‘cells’ operating within the bounds of PFR infrastructure and grow themselves.
