Ship it and Sip it

This week we had an interview with Nihal Hassan, Founder of Menaflow.

He shared:  

👉The main idea and mission of Menaflow

👉His impression of the Paralect Accelerator

👉Customer feedback on the product

👉Key issues that Menaflow solves

👉Plans for fundraising  



And much more insights 🔥

"In the last couple years, we've been in an unbelievably long upwards spiral in the venture market which was mainly driven by cheap capital. I wouldn't go so far as calling it a venture crisis or venture winter, more-so a market correction back towards normality." – Konstantin Lotter from Trustventure.

This week we sat down with Konstantin and Konstantin Kariapin to talk about:

- startup fundraising and the challenges of current market conditions

- hows and whys of startup financial modelling + investor relationship management

- how to position early-stage startups for successful fundraising.

With base in Berlin and Cologne, Konstantin and the Trustventure team are in the thick of the European startup scene.

"Your main task is to actually portray your business model in a quantitative form — the beauty of that is that you can uncover your most important value levers for your business model."

Want to know how to raise funding faster and maintain healthy investor relations right now? Have a listen 👀

It's a turbulent time for startups, fundraising and investments.

Was there too much hype into certain sectors?

Are VCs making smart choices?

And how can founders navigate the scene in Europe to raise the funds they need from the right partners for their stage and industry?

I had all these questions and more for our latest guest Lukas Rieder from Greca.

Lukas and his team have been matchmaking between startups and VCs for years — so who better to shed some light on the current situation 🔦

Let's dive in!

Raising in Europe soon? Catch up with Lukas and the Greca team at these upcoming events:

The Tech BBQ in Copenhagen, Sept. 14-15th

Bits & Pretzels in Munich, Sept. 25-27th

Slush in Helsinki, Nov. 17-18th

Science is amazing — but scientific discourse is broken 🫤  So let's fix it.  



"We're calling it a social medium for science, but it's really so much more. We're thinking more broadly about the social functions of science and all the things that scientists do — and trying to bring them into one place." – Alex Washburne, co-founder of Agora  



Right now our Accelerator team is working with Alex and the Agora team to design and build version 1 of this vision.   

Watch and find out:

• when Alex realised that scientists like himself needed a better platform

• what's wrong (and right) with current social media  

• where he finds inspiration for Agora's solution

• how the team has narrowed the 'big vision' down to a specific feature set for the MVP  



"We have this huge vision. I think we can revolutionize science for the 21st century, but that's step 100. And so the real challenge is finding which exact steps are 1 through 10, those will get us to 10-50 and 50-100. What really helped us was talking with people who had experience doing this before." – Alex  



Stay tuned to follow Agora's journey to making science better for all of us 🚀  



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"Let's say you relocate, or go to Portugal on a business trip. We wanna build the app for people who are traveling a lot and change places a lot — you don't know people there but you want to somehow have a quality time." – Kate Novoselova

This week's show explores a bunch of fun topics with our teammate Kate. Mostly they revolve around the theme of community and its many forms, including:

• How her perspective on our relationship with founders has evolved


• Finding and developing connections with early-stage investors


• Working as a team in Portugal and meeting digital nomads there


• Throwing events that bring the startup community together

And how she's bringing her experience of helping founders into her own founder journey together with Victoriya Antonovich.

"For us, it's our problem — so we are solving our problem first and we do understand so we will use this app. We discovered when we did this offline event in Lisbon — for people it's very difficult to make connections, to make new friends. Our idea is to make it give the feeling of the vibe of the person."

If you're in Portugal, keep an eye out for new events from Kate and Vika and enjoy the show 🍻



Check out their app — Altos here: altos-app.com

"Creativity nowadays is the best team-building. I think that creativity and activity of our teammates can build a bridge between locations, departments and the whole ecosystem of the company" – Alina Nikon, Head of Human Capital.

This week on Ship it and Sip it 🍻 John and Alina dug into Paralect's unique culture and how the Human Capital team supports it.

• Who creates the positive and thriving atmosphere and helps all the teammates feel part of the community, no matter where they live?


• What is the best way for the teammates to stay united?


• How does #BuidInPublic Strategy help forge trustworthy relationship with our partners and teammates?


• What was Alina's first impression of the interview and when did she realize  she wanted to be part of the team?

Watch the whole interview to find out answers for all these questions and much more 👀

BTW, if you want to join our team, just visit join.paralect.com and apply!



Visit our website to learn more about🔗:  

Paralect https://www.paralect.com/  

Paralect Accelerator https://accelerator.paralect.com/



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"The most essential part is to ask your users the right questions — think twice or three or four times about the questions you're gonna ask." – Lyubov Dementyuk

This week's guest has been a co-founder at a few startups, helps lead us as Managing Director at Paralect and most recently joined Founder Institute Bali as a mentor!

That's a lot! So we tried to get through the highlights and most valuable experiences along her path so far, including:

⚖️ How to prioritize features for new products

📞 Talking to users and making the most of these interviews

🌏 Life as a digital nomad in Bali + the startup scene there

🚀 Her vision of the future of Paralect Global

"When you think from the perspective of partnership — that you are working with the company, not in the company. I always pay attention to the idea. What do people do here, why — do they believe in this? Are they ambitious? And I pay attention to the team. And for me these two things matched perfectly at Paralect."

When you watch a video, do you usually think about how much work was done to get us to see it?



📹 A beautiful setting, high-quality sound, a catchy plot — the combination of these elements is the result of the work of a passionate team.



John McTavish interviewed Paralect's videographers to find out how our video content is created and what goes on behind the scenes.



Vlad Nazarenko & Ilya Kravchuk shared:



- why they changed from freelancing to creating with us

- how the issues and responsibilities are distributed within the team

- how they planned and filmed the video series for the accelerator

- what were the most memorable and most challenging moments about filming in the last few months



Interesting to learn more about our video team's workflow? Watch the full interview on YouTube and enjoy!

Today startup founders need to go beyond just data-driven. That means collecting, analyzing and using data on a day-to-day basis to understand and inform product growth.  



This workshop focuses on designing a data strategy that fits early-stage startups to meet these goals:

1. Launch the MVP and follow data towards Product-Market Fit

2. Select metrics and insights that appeal to Accelerators, Angels and Investors

3. Collect user experience data to inform product decisions

4. Leading and iterating the data strategy through product and team growth  



"It is paramount to map out a plan (i.e. data strategy) that is in line with your customers, product and business model to organise the data in a way that makes sense to you and your team." – Rosi Bremec, Data Strategist and Paralect Accelerator Advisor  



Listen in and learn how to launch and grow products powered by data 🚀



Visit our website to learn more about🔗:  

Paralect https://www.paralect.com/  

Paralect Accelerator https://accelerator.paralect.com/

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"Once you tell people 'I already have someone invested in us', your status changes. You've become part of that pool of founders who are 100% committed to their products — so they know you will do whatever it takes to succeed." – Julie Landeroin, Founder of Nudge

Julie's journey since finishing the Paralect Accelerator hasn't always been easy.

But she's learned a ton as a founder and shares it with us this week on Ship it and Sip it 🙏

We discuss:

• How to analyze pitch responses to continuously improve both sales and investor pitching.


• What 'real life' is like for a first-time founder


• The market analysis she did to validate the problem Nudge solves.

And as a bonus, Julie shared her ideas on how Batch '22 can be even better for the founders 💡

Learn more about this year's program at accelerator.paralect.com