don’t innovate like a Start-up!

simply because David cannot compete against Goliath… ah no, maybe he can 🤔

Heideglüen is one of many underground spot to hit if you want to chill as a true Berlinese: beer garden during the day, “adult entertainment service” at night, just above Westhafenkanal. nearby there are also a couple of spots on the canal where you can barbecue without the concern to keep the music low.

you’ve got two ways to get there: (i) boat (correct, generation Z don’t own car anymore, but still owns inflatable boats in Berlin 🤷‍♂️), (ii) emmy (← it’s the hidden protagonist of the whole story)

do you get what I mean when I say Berlinese are pretty laid back?

sharing is one of the four main trends now disrupting people mobility. I find not owning a car so convenient that I became ambassador #1 of all sharing e-scooters — as soon as I moved to Seoul, eCooltra sent me a coupon of 100€ because they saw I had stopped logging on the app.

while touring around with Yanick, I found out that Berlin has been the battlefield of one of the most entertaining business war between e-scooter start-ups. Wait, who is Yanick? Aged startupper both on business and software terrains, he’s been my covid-mate for the last 3 months, which made us versed Fortnite-duos partners!

you know a couple is stable when without asking one cooks and the other cleans… alright now let’s move on

the business war I was mentioning saw Coup, corporate-backed startup, founded by consulting veterans, with modern vehicles and polished app VS emmy, founded by the college-kids, with a genuinely ugly red scooter (which remotely remind a fat Vespa) and messy service. the latter was clearly the underdog-David with few chances to beat the Goliath-Coup, loaded with Bosh’s cash.

long-story short: David won 🤙

I kind of find “moped” redundant

how is it possible? because to win in the start-up game it takes more then a lot of cash and goodwill. you need:

1. consuming obsession for your mission: entrepreneurs are willing to put everything in building and iterating on their mistakes for the next 10+ years — this is also a key selection criteria of Y Combinator (one of the most successful Silicon Valley incubator)
2. tremendous focus on what matters: successful start-ups focus on the true fundamentals that drives 80% of the results — no plan is perfect, but the difference between slow and fast executions is the survival of a venture
3. go-getter and scrappy mentality: on the journey of new ventures there are no easy wins, every milestones is only achieved with a consistent intense team effort that very few people have

Coup failed because it relied on the support of corporates that did not understand that the hardest part is not to start something new but is to consistently grow at rocket speed.

this is it! remember: get the right toolkit before tapping into the start-up game 🤸‍♂️

(disclaimer: eCooltra coupon real amount might have been edited to better convey the message)