River City Labs First Friday Bytes!

Last Friday, I got out of the house again! I attended Group Mentoring with Llew Jury (which I wrote about in more detail in a different post) and the newly revamped River City Labs Pitches, which are now called River City Labs First Friday Bytes.

The big change was that the first talk of the afternoon was a from an entrepreneur who had “made it”. Last Friday the found was Bradley Rasmussen of Sizztech. He shared some tips and tricks he learnt along his journey. He explained that his current business grew out of his first business. He also explained that Sizztech was self-funded. I think a lot of people miss opportunities when they become too focused on their current business. Also, too many get caught up in raising capital, when they can create a perfectly viable business by bootstrapping. So it was great that River City Labs highlighted a business that opted not to raise money.

Finally, we went onto the pitches for the night, and AI was over-represented. We first AI pitch from a founder who has created a sleeve that is looking help people with upper limb loss to have fine motor control of their robotic prosthetics. It’s interesting, and I am keen to see how the startup grows and evolves.

The second AI pitch was from Red Realities whose pitch is that they want to free creatives from doing low-value artwork. So one way of putting it is that “AI is now after artists jobs!”

The AI heavy pitches prompted a man with a gorgeous beard to go up and pitch his business Blue Life AI. He offered those in attended a free trial of his training program. During the questions, he mentioned that he has already taught millions of people online and mentioned his main business is called SUPER DATA SCIENCE!

It was then that the penny dropped and I realised the speaker was Kirill Eremenko, or as he is known to my brother and I “the R guy”. I clearly blanked out when they announced his name. So yes, I got to meet that man whose online course my brother and I took to learn R. It was like meeting a minor celebrity. It was fun; I took a selfie. 10/10 would go to another First Friday Bytes!

Happy New Year!

I am sure I am committing a faux pas by waiting until January 7th before making a New Year post, but 2019 did not end well for me and this is the first chance I have had to sit down and post an update.

Let’s start with what happened last year. My grandparents passed away. First, my grandfather passed away on Monday, March 18th. Then my grandmother on Monday, November 18th. On the same day as my grandmother, I also lost one of my aunts. My late father had five sisters. Three are now gone. Finally, my great aunt passed away on December 11th. I left for Bangladesh after learning about my grandmother’s death. But I was distracted from early November when it became clear grandma wasn’t doing well. I was away for most of December and came back to meet up with my first cousin once removed, who is the granddaughter of my great aunt who passed. So I ended the year and decade hosting my cousin. But she’s returned home, and my immediate family are all now back in Brisbane. So it’s time to get back to work.

I start 2020 still the CTO of Josari, Birnam Wood, Abide and Kyco. Although at the moment, only Josari needs my active attention. I have also taken on collaborations with Sharka Bosakova, and that’s one of my active projects in January. Finally, I am also doing a project with a cloud backup company. So a lot of things to keep me busy. Especially since I also have plans to undertake some sales and marketing for Start with Tinni. To that end, I commissioned some new logos for the Start with Tinni. I mean, it’s been a year. So it is time to move away from the Squarespace stock logos. So check out my new logos and watch this space for updates relating to all my ventures and my continued journey with Start with Tinni!

September In Review: A bit slow but got better!

September was a slow month for me as I was very sick! I had to go to the hospital for an iron infusion as my blood haemoglobin had dropped to dangerous levels. But I did do a few things. Given how this month has gone, I decided to make a list of everything that I did as a general life update!

The first thing I managed to this month was on the 16th. That was to attend another talk organised by the Connect Collaborative. I met a few more people, but it wasn’t a good night. I was still suffering from the after-effects of Gastro. But I am glad I went. I haven't completely decided what to do with “the Hub”. But I understand the importance of networks. So I am likely to visit again. Hopefully, I won’t have Gastro the next time I make it to the Hub!

Later that week was my birthday, on the 19th. I started celebrating on the 18th, going out to dinner with my family. But I continued to celebrate on the 19th with cake while relishing the ability to eat without throwing up.

My iron transfusion took place on the 23rd, which was just-in-time for me to be more myself during the Breakfast with the Angels. It wasn’t a great start as my Uber driver did not know the city area. So blindly followed the Wave navigation app to turn what should have been a 15-minute ride into a 45-minute ordeal! But I got there eventually, had smashed Avacado with feta with Brisbane Angel’s Gianni. Inndox’s Andrew, and Energy Lab’s Camille. The conversation was good. I loved hearing about Andrew’s journey with Inndox. I picked up a few tips from Gianni. I had a good morning. My Elevate+ cohort mate Andrew Chow of Shenovi was also there, but I didn’t get a chance to speak with him.

After breakfast, I walked to QUT Foundry and officially joined a team taking on the Alexa Skills Challenge: In-Skill Purchasing. I don’t have a picture of my team yet. But I’ll make a point of snapping one as we undertake the challenge. 43 days to go!

I met my team again on the last day of September at the Precinct. We are all members of the Brisbane Internet of Things (IoT) Meetup. So after our meeting, we head down to Avestix Lab, which yet another innovation hub and co-working space for a pizza and a talk on industrial IoT. Not a bad way to end a slow September.

Insights on Social Enterprise from Canada: An Impact-Led Breakfast Forum

On Monday morning, I had scrambled eggs for the first time in a long time! Why was I having special food? Because I accepted the invitation from Social Traders, QSEC and Impact Boom spend time in conversation with David LePage!

David LePage is a serial social entrepreneur. He’s currently the co-founder, Director and Managing Partner of Buy Social Canada. But he is also the designer, and was the initial Executive Director of Community Impact Real Estate (CIRE). He is a founding partner of the Social Enterprise Institute (SEI). David is also a Principal with Accelerating Social Impact (ASI), one of Canada’s first ever hybrid social enterprise corporations. So he has a wealth of experience on which he can draw to share some great insights.

The key insight from David’s key note were the six things he believed social enterprise needs to thrive. These are:

1. Business acumen

2. Social value finance

3. Access to markets

4. Measurement of impact

5. Networks of social entrepreneurs and supporters

6. Supportive public policy

I think he is spot on with his assessment because the world is about systems. You need to put the right systems in place for social enterprise to thrive. The panel that followed the keynote echoed the sentiment.

In addition to David LePage, the panel consisted of Social Traders’s David Brookes, Food Connect and QSEC’s Emma-Kate Rose, and English Family Foundation’s Belinda Morrissey. The conversation was moderated by Impact Boom’s very own Tom Allen.

The presence of Tom should be a clue that I was not the only person from Impact Boom Cohort of 2019 at the breakfast. So we had a bit of a reunion!

Careers & Mental Health Conversations Podcast: Anthony Kuhlmann

Anthony Kuhlmann is well known in the Brisbane ecosystem as an expert in sales. I talked about him before, when I attended his lunchtime workshop. So I was keen to hear what he had to say in the podcast. It was an interesting listen with some great takeaways! The ones that stayed with me after 24 hours were,

1. Don’t try to be everything to everybody: which is a lesson that was also hammered home during the MIT Bootcamp. But I think a lot of people misunderstand what the lesson is because the idea isn’t to niche yourself so that you can’t grow beyond a certain market segment. But to conquer one market at a time while slowly but surely developing an identity and reputation. People forget that Amazon started with just books and CDs.

2. Don’t try to attend everything/be everywhere: I think this is very important. Because even in Brisbane, you can easily fill your calendar with events. Not only is there something on almost every night but often multiple competing events. If you try to attend everything and be everywhere, you’ll burn out and achieve little. So I think it is good advice to be a bit more strategic with your time and networking energy.

3. Also, find a tribe of people who can support you: was a very good take away from the podcast!

So yes, I encourage people interested in business in-general to have a listen to the podcast!