I need it until Monday.

"Do or do not, there is no try." - is the quote sporting Francois Bennahmias ' office door. And do, we did.

This is a (not so) short story of what it takes to be fast as a startup.

Day 1.1 - Tuesday, 27.9.2022 - Morning

Last day of Bits & Pretzels . Captain's tables in Schottenhammel, where founders get to meet important people. Our captain is Peter Bosch . Also at the table: Julian Mandel one of the founders of memperience GmbH . He also brought his product: A book. A book? Yes, but one with a twist: some pages have screens embedded.

Now, what's the most important things to show about robodies? That they move. Looking for a physical, transportable way of presenting our work, I knew the second he showed it, that I need to have one, when I'll meet the CEO of Audemars Piguet, Francois Bennahmias, the following Monday, 7h30 am.

Me: "I need it by Monday, can we get it done?", Julian: "I need to check with my co-founder but in principle, yes?", Me: "I can get you the content by tomorrow, it's not a problem, let's do this". His co-founder drops by, they quickly discuss, we got a deal. So we got started, agreed on a timeline. Print needed to happen on Thursday. Less than 48h to go to create a book with 16 pages, layout it & proof read it.

Day 1.2 - Tuesday, 27.9.2022 - Afternoon

Quote & order confirmation done (Ordnung muss sein), Julian sent me an InDesign template to get started. Only problem: All my recent content is in PowerPoint. And while I'm quite fast in PowerPoint, I've not used InDesign in a while ... but ... PowerPoint for print design, a sacrilege. Nobody needs to know ... So instead of moving the content to InDesign, I've moved the template to PowerPoint. Now I could be fast and draw from my existing pitch decks.

19h36 and I had a few random slides, but no coherent story. F*ck. So I reached out to my co-founder 🇺🇦 Alona Kharchenko for support.

Sometimes knowing someone has your back, is all it takes to get unstuck. 2 hours later, I had a the first 8 pages laid out. (Mostly content reassembled from various decks). Then I went to bed early, felt a bit under the weather ... Wiesengrippe, I presume (Covidtest stayed negative).

Day 2 - Wednesday, 28.9.2022

Throughout the day, not much gets done. It's quite full with other meetings already. But as the evening draws near, pressure is mounting ... around 16h40 I manage to get back at it. At 19h13 I send the first draft to Alona - I thoroughly lack an idea what to do with the last 4 pages. A quick nap. 22h32, Alona sends a long post with feedback. Also, I had promised content by Wednesday night ... I'm sitting in my bed instead of at my desk, on my phone runs some movie series. I reluctantly fill the last double page with content from the deck, idling, waiting for inspiration, around 23h30 it finally kicks in. Pieces start to fall into place. The day before, I had met Matthias Winkler who was the second table captain, and he said this beautiful sentence: "Every tradition, started as an innovation". Around it the two pages with the second video formed. Around 1 am it's done, "just" cleaning left - at 2h40 am I sending it out to Julian and a few friends to collect feedback.

Day 3 - Thursday, 29.9.2022

10h11, Julian calls. "This does not fit the template". Oh, sh*t ... did I fuck up? I had recreated their template by hand, but had left out the crop marks. If I would have to rescale everything that would be a massive pain. I check again, import the PDF as full pages into their InDesign template, doesn't fit. Argh. Checked the PDF page sizes - they're correct. InDesign imported the pages smaller than they were. Why? No f*ing idea. While my curious self really wants to explore and figure out what's going on, my somewhat stressed other self says: Whatever, take a different approach. Julian had also sent a PDF with their cut marks, position of the screens etc., so I'm exporting these pages to SVGs and overlay them in PowerPoint. They fit. Good. Sent to Julian, we have a quick call on Zoom. Adjust a few positions. Discuss deadlines for the videos (Friday by lunchtime). And that's it. It goes to print (*phew*) and I to a meeting with Johannes Waldinger that I was stalling to get this fixed.

Now, all that was missing was 2 movies. 2 short movies in less than 12 hours ... the first one was clear: I wanted to slowly flip through all the visualisations I had. Did you know PowerPoint can export presentations as videos? So, PowerPoint it is again. My renderings are all vertical, the screen in the book is landscape. Meh. PowerPoint's AI Designer feature suggests a nice split, where I could do a portrait closeup and then have the full robody vertical on the side. Looks good. Amazing. Adding transitions. Setting slide timing. Playing it: so nice! The slide transition flowing from right to left beautifully works with the template structure, first unveiling the next full robody and then a close up. That will work!

I'm tired, uninspired for the last video, still feeling a bit under the weather. Off to bed early. I hope I'll dream of an inspiration.

Day 4 - Friday, 30.9.2022

Off to a very early start. While I have Adobe Premiere Pro installed, I don't think I've ever used it ... so iMovie to the rescue. iMovie is weird, but when you make a new project, it has teaser templates, you only need to fill with videos! Sounds perfect. As there's no sound, I choose the one with the best fitting transitions and got to work. I collect all content from the last few weeks and throw them in. A bit about robodies from events, a bit about care. Looks good, I export it, cut away the parts from the template that I didn't want (but could not remove in iMovie). Off I send it to Alona for feedback.

"Interesting choice of bg music 👀 why this?" is her first reaction. I didn't bother to remove it, I had never heard it at that point, I chose the template with sound off, so I won't be influenced by it. "there's no sound, this was automatic", I reply. Watching the video with sound ... ok that's hilariously off: Music like the prelude to an epic battle in Middle Earth with uplifting footage from a cute robody at fairs and elderlies interacting with it.

All the while, she sends me a few more shot from an event we were with Roboy the day before. She got this amazing recording of a women flirting with her significant other through robody, had to go in! You can really see how they connect ♥️. She sends it to me, and some more great shots of robody cruising through the event in purple light. Perfect. I replace a few bad shots, export, and send it to Julian. I also briefly mention that the sound doesn't fit, but as there's no sound, so whatever.

A few hours later, I get a call from Cedric Mandel : "Hey just checking in on the videos, they work, but uhm, you know the book has a speaker right?".

No? I didn't even consider it might - should've asked. Given the timing, we decide it's probably best if he just removes the sound altogether. It's Friday evening and my deed is done. Now all I had to do is pick it up.

Day 5 - Satuday, 1.10.2022

Some shopping, I'm meeting a ultimate luxury brand CEO, so I probably should be dressed accordingly. New shoes & some nice beige pants later, I return home.

Day 6 - Sunday, 2.10.2022

I wake at 6h30. As there's no bus that early, I plan to take the bike to the train station, it's 30 minutes. (Note to self: Check earliest public transport connections when moving the next time) The heavy rain however, begged to differ. I call my girlfriend Anna, currently at a conference, due to return that night. "Iiiii have to take the car, it's raining like crazy". Half awake, she wasn't happy. She had a direct lift from the airport to home, having the car 30' away while arriving late at night didn't sound optimal. Grudgingly, she adapted.

An uneventful 6 hours later (aside from me almost missing a 40' connection in cologne) I arrive in Karlsruhe. With Tier to memperience's office. They show me the book. It's amazing. They've thought of many nice details, including how to charge it. We create a short unboxing video, that I send to Peter. We exchange some experience on German bureaucracy and joke about all the many registers. I learn that there's one for products with embedded batteries (They have clearly done their homework). In return, they learn about Künstlersozialkasse. (Came up in my first Sozialversicherungsprüfung.).

I journey on. Karlsruhe, Basel, Biel, Yverdon-les-Bains, Crossonay-Penthalaz and finally Le Brassus. 4 switches, as I realise that all of them are 6 minutes or less, I get really stressed out, the last month of traveling with Deutsche Bahn clearly has taken it's toll. But this is Switzerland living up to it's reputation, like a clock-work each train arrives on time and I conveniently switch from one to the next. 20h21 I arrive in Le Brassus. Walk to one of the two only hotels in there. Check-in. Some last preparation, bed, done.

Day 7 - Monday, 3.10.2022

The night before I realised that AP actually has 2 locations in Le Brassus, so I arrive 10' early - enough to walk to the other location, in case I'm wrong. It's 7h20 in the morning. In my best-effort-french I let the security guard at the entrance know that I'm here to meet Francois Bennahmias. He corrects my pronunciation. Excellent, now I know. A few minutes later, I get invited in. I meet Francois. I use the book to tell our story. It does not fail to impress. A great start into the day. This was so worth it. There is no try.

As I leave, I ask for a selfie with the book and send it to Julian.

Upon returning to the hotel, I decide to visit my parents on the way to Munich, as I hadn't seen them in 3 months and give them a call, they're home.

And here's the Result

Learnings

• Startup-Startup collaboration are rarely successful. This is my first true exception. This time it worked, because their product was ready enough, and I was a normal - albeit very quickly moving and early - customer to them.
• Speed is lost in communication. When everyone takes full ownership in their role and moves with similar assumptions, things can get done very fast. It also really helps to have an idea of what the process of the other side looks like.
• When speed is of essence, use tools you're familiar with. PowerPoint can be a print design program and movie editing program.
• Automated design features such as in PowerPoint or in iMovie are really helpful, if one is ready to make some concessions towards the final design.
• These sprints are most fun type of stress. It's all about the output, owning every win & mistake.