How to start your own business without investors | Nicholas Hänny
Nicholas Hänny is the co-founder and CEO of NIKIN, a sustainable clothing brand from Switzerland that plants one tree for each product sold. NIKIN has been in the top 3 of the Swiss Economic Award 2019 and won the “Swiss Brand of the Year” Award for best cost-benefit ratio in the Swiss clothing industry. With NIKIN, Nicholas is responsible for already 500’000 trees planted. He has also been elected “Aargauer of the Year 2019”.
The theme of his talk is "How to start your own business without investors?". Nicholas answers the question by giving tips based on his personal experience. Nicholas Hänny is the co-founder and CEO of NIKIN, a sustainable clothing brand from Switzerland that plants one tree for each product sold. NIKIN has been in the top 3 of the Swiss Economic Award 2019 and won the “Swiss Brand of the Year” Award for best cost-benefit ratio in the Swiss clothing industry. With NIKIN, Nicholas is responsible for already 500’000 trees planted. He has also been elected “Aargauer of the Year 2019”.
Positive startup Story ,Positive Learning of Nicholas Hänny
hello everybody i'm nicholas heny
i'm the ceo and co-founder of a startup
a young sustainable clothing brand
that plants one tree for each product
that we sell but i'm not here today to
talk about sustainability or tree
planting
i'm here to talk about how to build a
business without investors
i'm talking about that because i built
my business with only 5 000 francs and
we don't have any investors
up to this point so two things i want to
tell you
before i start talking about my tips
the first thing is we never had a
business plan and never needed one
so that's one thing i want to tell you
just start without the business plan
and the second thing is that the five
tips i'm going to give you now
are actually pretty basic and simple and
might seem obvious to most of you
but i'm trying to go and putting it into
context that you see some examples of
how we dealt with that
so the first tip is actually pretty
simple
it is it's not about the idea it's about
the implementation
what i mean with that is that a lot of
times people come to me telling me
hey i want to start my own business but
i don't have the idea i don't know what
to do
but the thing that i'm telling them then
is that you don't need a great idea
it's not about the idea that you're
successful it's about the implementation
so you don't need a great idea to start
and neither to be successful
i want to give you know three examples
of companies that exactly did that
the first example is actually pretty
famous one it's of
actually the biggest social network in
the world it's facebook
facebook when it started it was a
terrible idea in my opinion
they wanted to build a social media
social network
which at that point was already pretty a
bad idea because
myspace was huge myspace dominated it
facebook also only started with harvard
students but after time they started to
implement it better had better ideas
improved it
and now they're one of the biggest
companies in the world
the second tip might be a little bit
less for example might be a little bit
less famous
it's lyft lyft is basically the same as
uber uber started in the states
and actually everybody knows what uber
is now so lyft took the same idea
and usually it's a bad idea just to copy
someone but
they did it better they implemented the
stuff better in the process did certain
things better
and now in certain cities they're
actually bigger than uber
then the third example is maybe the most
famous one
it's google google was not the first
search engine
it was not the great idea to just do
another search engine when they started
but as you know they improved their
algorithm better their search engine is
better and now they're the biggest one
in the world
so all of them actually just started
with not a very great idea
but implemented it much better so
just do something it's not about idea
it's about the implementation
now let me go over to the second tip the
second tip
is to not strive for perfection
so what i mean with that is when you
start the business you usually don't
really have a lot of money
you cannot afford the people that are
the experts to either work for you or
pay them that they consult you and help
you
so it means you have to do everything
yourself and
that's not always that easy so let me
give you actually four
personal examples of how we did that
so the first one the first example is of
our first
t-shirt that we had the first t-shirts
were from asia
and only then we shifted it to europe
but we didn't know that the sciences
from asia are totally different from
european sizes so our excel was actually
more like an m
and customers are not that happy about
it however we sold the product we got
feedback
we learned about it and by that we got
better and better and better
and it was much better just do it and
sell it and by that have a faster
learning phase
so that was already very important now
the second example
is of our first photo shooting in
switzerland
where we started to take product
pictures for ourselves we didn't have
money to pay a photographer
we were thinking of it but it was just
way too expensive so our setup that you
can see
is only like 30 dollars the lamp was
from a local construction site the
camera was borrowed from a friend
the thing i have in my hand in the
picture is styrofoam and
the thing in the background this is
actually the only thing that cost us 30
dollars
the pictures were not great but they
were good enough to start and by that we
got again
feedback we learned and we were faster
than like others who
waited for perfect pictures so now the
third thing is
an instagram post from us in the
beginning if you look at it it looks
pretty horrible in my opinion
but we posted more more than other
companies
we had a higher posting frequency we got
by that more engagement more comments
more likes more everything
and in the end we actually won by that
we also learned which posts work well
which not and it was just more important
to just do
it rather than waiting for the perfect
post
now the last example is actually my
favorite example because it's our first
towel that we had
our first towel though had a problem
when he went to the beach or to the
local swimming pool and you were lying
on the grass on the beach
and you took it up the towel you
basically ripped away all the leaves and
all the grass
so he took away almost the whole forest
that was horrible
customers hated it but some actually
liked it but nevertheless
we learned from diller more about
material the next one was much better
and again we sold it we got some more
customers and so on and that was super
important to not wait for the perfect
product to just do it
now the third tip third tip is also
pretty obvious and many people of you
know that probably
but it's ask for help a lot of times we
just ask people
be it people we know be complete
strangers if they could help us in
something and you'll be amazed
at how many people actually want to help
how much good there's out there
and also don't forget the worst thing
that can happen is when you ask
to just get a no so let me give you two
examples
of which the first one is more of a
personal one in the picture you can see
the parents of my co-founder
in the beginning we had a lot of demand
for our winter hats so we asked them if
it could help us actually manufacture
them
so you see them stitching the labels
onto the winter hats
they also packed until three in the
morning our orders
and also we asked friends if they could
help us and all of them helped us for
free
so you just have to ask but it's not
only about people you know
it's also about complete strangers so
the next example shows
a situation when we moved into new
office and we needed new furniture
we thought that it might be that it
would make more sense to actually use
used furniture so we asked if some
people have it in the seller because all
of you probably also have some furniture
they don't use in their seller
so 17 people commented 20 people direct
messaged me and in the end you had more
offers for good furniture than we
actually needed
so this actually shows that in the end
you just have to ask the worst thing you
can get is a no
and if you don't know how to ask the
right people go on linkedin
google it there's many many many places
where you can find out
who to ask in the end now the next tip
also a simple one but if you don't have
a lot of money and you're starting your
own business
super important it's be flexible and by
flexible i mean be really really really
flexible
it's again the same story you cannot
hire people that are doing the hard work
for you you cannot hire
people that do 24 7 customer service for
you you have to do most of the things
yourself in the beginning
so i'll also give you examples the first
example
is an example of our first meetings we
did not have
an office we did not have the money to
rent one so we had to do meetings in
bars or restaurants
we did that either before our regular
jobs or studies or
afterwards as you can see in the picture
it was of course afterwards now in this
situation
and we did that for around one and a
half years until we could actually
afford our first
real office now the next example is
if you look at the picture it's a toilet
and you must might ask yourself
why the hell is the toilet in the
picture so that was a place where i had
to work a lot it was super important for
me
it is because with the customer service
ourselves and when you got
a customer service request you had to
answer it pretty fast
so i use these five minutes doing
whatever people do on the toilet
to tell customers yes you can send back
the package and yes we're going to send
you another one
i did that all the time i had to as well
as using five minutes in the bus to
write an email
and these minutes and this flexibility
really really matters in the beginning
so now going to the last tip the last
tip
is that you should read the best book in
the world
a lot of times i get asked by people how
do i do marketing how do i find a
supplier
how do i do video editing how do this
that or this
and first of all if you go back to tip
number three
of course i help them in that moment but
at the same time i also tell them hey
read the best book in the world because
it's all in there and so the best book
in the world is
google as simple as it might sound but
all the things you want to know there on
google how to build sustainable business
google how to do facebook ads
how to have a sustainable clothing brand
and so on and it's almost all written in
there
of course if at some point you have a
list of 20 things and you know these
things you have to do
then it might help if you ask someone
with experience to tell you on what to
focus
but then go back to tip number three
again which is asking and they then i
might ask you or may tell you
what you have to do in the moment so
that's it these are my
five basic tips and just one more
message i would like to give you is
if you really want to do something you
don't need a great idea
just do it if you just go out there and
do it remember this that you're already
ahead of 99
of all potential entrepreneurs and so
it's basically just about doing it
and everything else comes in the process
and implementation so thank you very
much
for your attention
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