Francisco Costa is the entrepreneur behind tymr. He holds a Master in Innovation and Technological Entrepreneurship and a degree in Information Systems and Technologies. Passionate about technology and business models, converted Patrulha.TV (a low-cost tech podcast) into a TV show.
MIETE-BLOG: Francisco, with our renewed thanks for your availability to have this interview with us, we would like to go back some years. Can you disclose your motivation to join our Master Program?
Francisco Costa: Thanks for this opportunity to share our project.
The motivation to join MIETE started to grow in me, at a specific moment in my life, where I wasn’t fulfilled with my professional job and felt the need to embrace bigger and exciting challenges. At that time, and after searching a few months for something that could help me grow in a new adventure, MIETE was the most complete program, that covered a wider range of areas such as technological business, innovation management, financial & legal, creativity & marketing and also in the development of personal skills such as ethics, leadership and communication.
MIETE-BLOG: tymr.com was launched in January 2012. Can you let us know the story of how this idea emerged? Which market need do you want to address with your innovative social network?
Francisco Costa: The idea started to develop a few years before when I only knew about a tech event a few days before it happen. At the time I started to think that there should be a catalog that covered different types of events so people could know about them before they happen.
After lots of thinking and studying we came up with the idea of a social service that can help people discover, plan and promote their events.
In the development process, we made successive releases of the prototype website so that people could use and give us some feedback. This was a great approach that enabled the service fine tuning.
We’ve also integrated a marketplace to target professional events such as conferences or music festivals. We intend to offer a variety of solutions, to help professional organizers, efficiently manage their events. At the time, we are starting with an innovative ticketing service that facilitate the process of registrations, selling and check-in validation.
MIETE-BLOG: Which role did MIETE play in the whole process? Was MIETE dynamics and training providing the right background as you developed your work?
Francisco Costa: I attended MIETE with thirst for knowledge and a deep desire of opening a web business. Because MIETE is very flexible program, I believe that is a great opportunity for students to focus their training according to their needs, but also the teaching quality and the high standards evaluation, play important roles in all this process.
MIETE acted as a supportive and integrated backup in my later decision of building this business.
I like to think of it as the best warm up you can get, before running the real marathon. It trains your mental resilience and simulate lots of adversities that entrepreneurs find along the way.
MIETE-BLOG: What is your estimated growth rate and how is it progressing as you compare to you expectations? The network effect is critical in the launching of these social networks?
Francisco Costa: Managing expectations is a big deal when you are starting a company since you have a whole world of decisions, fears and uncertainties ahead of you. Everything depends on a numerous amount of unpredictable factors, and the more innovative or disruptive a solution is, the harder it gets to approach dynamic markets, so they can perceive your value proposition.
At the end of the day, having big expectations is what keeps you motivated, but you have to periodically evaluate some aspects so you can validate your learning or pivoting fast your business development. Build small prototypes, measuring the results and learning from them can be a great way to find your sweet spot.
Since we live in a world were people move fast, its critical to have a long term plan for meeting with relevant players in every areas of any business. Attending conferences or niche meetups do have a big influence in how things evolve. Its during these events you get to know your partners or allies and your possible future clients. I always like to remember these quotes: “It’s not what you know, but who you know” and “Eighty percent of success is showing up” (Woody Allen).
MIETE-BLOG: When people talk about Internet businesses and social networks, a typical question is, how do they pay their bills? Can you disclose your business model? If not, can you give us a hint of the expected sustainability of your business?
Francisco Costa: There are two main options here.
One is to develop software as a service (SaaS) were your solution kills some users pain and you charge them for it. It’s the ancient trading rule were people pay for something they need.
The other is to build platforms for interactions or transactions, within a specific business area. Its more difficult and time consuming to develop and may not be very attractive to investments on early stages, but since this efforts can produce comprehensive and aggregated results, they intend to be more valuable and sustainable in the long term, since you they are difficult to replicate and you keep away some competition.
At tymr we are always developing our business model and we are still in the process of validating it. We try to find a mix between the two options above: the first to generate revenue and the second to become influent. We also plan to evaluate the publicity market in a near future, since it plays a critical role in the events industry.
tymr links:
Site: http://tymr.com
Blog: http://tymr.com/blog
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