Transcript

Create your own dream job | Panagiotis Tsaggas | TEDxUPatras

[music] [music] Good evening and thank you for the invitation. First of all, I am Panagiotis Tsagas. I am a computer engineer , a young entrepreneur in the technology field, and a startup enthusiast. Initially, when Ariardni, the speaker coordinator, called me and asked me to speak at the event, I was a little nervous. I wondered if I was suitable to speak at such an event. Of course, learning about the topic Beyond the Known, I believed a little more. Beyond the known. So, what are the known, what is the established, customary practice that people follow? It usually looks something like this. After they finish school, they enter university at a certain school and as soon as they graduate or after taking a few courses for their degree, they start thinking the next day about what it entails. writing a resume and cover letter, searching for work through advertisements with the ultimate goal of ultimately being hired by a multinational company, preferably. What most people don't know, however, is the following. 90% of people when they wake up in the morning have no desire to go to work. Oh, tell me why I'm telling you all this now. I thought I knew them when I was a student. All I cared about at the time, having also left some courses unpaid, was getting out of school, getting my degree, and like a good kid, getting a job as a programmer at an IT company. Of course, the path was a little different, but let me tell you a story, my own story. July 2011. I still owe tuition as a student, but my three best friends have just sworn in. Very happy that they have finally gotten their degree, but at the same time quite nervous and stressed, since they had to enter the job market, to find a job. So what did they do, what did they know, the usual practice. They wrote a cover letter, created a resume, started looking for job ads, resulting in an interview and the ultimate goal of finally finding a job. What they didn't know was how difficult, how difficult and how painful this process is. 6 months later, at the end of 2011, none of the three of them had managed to find a job. Result zero. What was it that they didn't know? How far away from the university there is to the job market, how competitive the landscape is to find a classic job, and why they weren't being hired? So what did they think? Disappointed by the crisis in the job market and at the same time feeling the need to do something of their own, they came up with the following crazy idea: to open a business, an IT business that would aim to provide end customers with websites and mobile apps. What's even crazier is that they suggested that I participate as a conscious and co-founder of the company, and in the end, surprisingly, I accepted. So we had to start somewhere. How does one start a company, an idea rather that one wants to turn into a company? What he does starts with a business plan. And why is that? For two main reasons. The first is that you manage to capture the thoughts you have verbally on paper. You record in detail the profits and risks, losses and benefits of the business and, most importantly, you have the big picture of what you can do in, say, 5 years. and how will you manage to make it a vision, a strategy, a mission, and for a second reason, because if you manage to write a remarkable business plan, you have a good chance of getting funding, either from private investors or through competitions with European Union funds. Somewhere here, of course, there was a small problem, since none of us had any idea how to create a business plan. Being engineers by background, all four of us and having graduated from a technical college, we had absolutely no idea how to create a business plan. So what did we do? We had to create this business plan. We used whatever resources we had. We read relevant books, we looked at sources on the internet. We talked to friends who had a financial background, since they had graduated from a financial school. With much effort, we finally managed to prepare a business plan, which was a good start for us to have an idea of ​​ what we want to do and how we will manage to achieve it. What was the next plan after we managed to prepare the business plan, submit it, and manage to receive government funding, which helped us cover our initial expenses and establish the business. At the same time, we started entering some competitions, some smaller, some larger. We even managed to stand out in some of them, which boosted our self-confidence. But the most important thing was that we had the appetite and passion to work and learn new things. Everything we did was a new experience, a new challenge. At the same time, of course, we had a very deep ignorance about how you can run a real business. What are the problems, what bureaucracy you will encounter along the way , what tangles you have to deal with accountants and lawyers, tax offices and chambers, how do you approach clients and how do you manage them afterwards? As we said, through hard work and suffering we managed to establish the foundation, found an office and started working from there. But it was a very strange feeling. Especially at the beginning, there was no hierarchical structure. We didn't have a boss above us to guide us on how we should work. We went to the office and searched, experimented, searched, and talked to each other, trying to find a solution. The strangest thing was that even though we did n't have a specific work goal, we stayed in the office until late at night and the reason was because it made us feel better. We thought that was what we had to do. That is, we managed to find our first customers and at the same time enter the startup sector. It was already starting to become a fashion, but we had the feeling that it was more than just a fashion. It was something that would change. not just the world of technology, but the world and the way we work and communicate in general. And again, of course, we had fundamental flaws. We didn't know exactly what a startup meant, nor how it started, nor exactly how to properly run it. How do you solve this? Initially, when reading, we started reading from whatever resources we could find, but at some point it reached a dead end. We needed to talk to people in person. We can try to get help and feedback. So we came up with the following idea. We knew that Open Coffee events were held on a monthly basis in Athens . What is Open Coffee, although Aris said some things earlier. Open Coffee is therefore a global community of new ideas and startups with an emphasis on innovation and financing methods.   The goal of Open Coffee is to bring together new ideas, programmers, graphic designers, marketers, students, anyone who has an idea and is interested in turning it into a business, on a monthly basis in cities around the world. So we decided to implement it in Patras and it went very well, much better than we expected. We started in March 2013 and soon it was starting to have a significant impact on the technology and information technology community in the city. We knew that through such a process we would gain ourselves, first of all we would receive help, but we and all the other attendees could also help everyone else who would be in a similar position to us. The most important thing is that the speakers were successful businessmen from Athens and beyond, who not only came for free but also put money out of their own pockets to come here to the city and were also willing to give advice, to answer even the dumbest questions you can imagine with all their hearts without any direct benefit. So through this whole process we learned, we didn't realize at first how much we could do, but it was much more. Many nights after the events ended, we would sit together as a group and discuss all the information we had gathered and how we could use it. We are now in July 2013. We have completed one year as an existing company. Now that we have gathered information and valuable feedback, we are thinking about the following. To implement an idea we had in the works, Domin Style, a social fashion application through which we wanted to connect fashion designers, bloggers and users through photos. Designers created a profile on the app and users and fans uploaded photos tagging the designers. Well, we started working since the summer and in October 2013 we launched the application at a fashion bazaar in Athens. In the meantime, we received significant press coverage, and we even started winning some awards. This event once again boosted our self-confidence, but we had a vision to change the way fashion worked through technology. What we didn't know for the umpteenth time was how we could do this. How could we sign up bloggers en masse, how could we manage to montage our product. We saw that we had reached a dead end. We thought we needed help. So, the Cosmot Startup program was announced just in time . a Cosmote action for clueless people like us who had an appetite and ideas and who could be helped through an intensive four-month program to turn a rough idea into a real sustainable business. We expected that through the program we would receive help from both the courses and the mentors. people in the field with a lot of knowledge who would give us feedback on what we were thinking. On the other hand, we also had some doubts about whether all these assumptions we made were actually valid. We could get help from these people and on top of that we had another issue. The fact that the program was taking place in Athens meant that we would have to move from Patras to Athens at a corresponding cost and at the same time rejecting a quite tempting offer in Patras. We finally applied and were accepted. Fortunately, the program went very well. It went much better than we expected. It helped us immensely in maturing. What we couldn't do on our own in 1.5 years, we achieved many times over in three or four months. The idea matured quite a bit. Essentially, it changed and a new product emerged. The Susurus. a platform that gives brands the ability to advertise on blogs worldwide and advertise their products and services, while also having the ability to measure the results of this advertising. [applause] So the idea started and all of this happened on one basic axis. Based on the previous idea, we had determined that the most important users of our application were bloggers. They were the ones who uploaded the highest quality content and the largest reach, and this would be a huge help as an advertising medium for designers and brands. So we started the idea, we implemented it. Very soon, bloggers and brands began to approach us on their own . Very soon we found our first customers and they started registering and using our service and blocks from abroad. Now it was time for the next step. We are currently thinking about expanding abroad, but the problem is that once again we have no idea how you can set up a global business. We will need to learn this too . What I've told you so far is essentially this has been the path of me and my team over the last 2.5-three years. Well, the title of the talk is Create Your Own Dream Job. For some it may be, for some it may not. The bottom line is that we had a great time through all of this. We learned to be creative, to enjoy every moment and, most importantly, to face new challenges every day. Beyond the everyday. I started with a circle. For most, this cycle includes university. Then writing a resume and looking for a job at a classic company and finally a job through a company. For us, it was a little different. From university we created something on our own . We found ourselves in startups and have now reached a point where we want to expand abroad. There is no right or wrong path. The point is, whatever you do, it should be something you like. I want to close with two pieces of advice. One is this one. Whatever you do, always make sure to learn new things, and especially when you're in a room and you feel like you're the smartest, it's time to leave it and go to the next one. or as Sam Altman says, whatever you do, build things and be around smart people. And finally, whatever you do, make sure you 're in the 10% of people who wake up in the morning feeling like going to work. Thank you very much. [clap]