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Nicolas Michaelsen

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23
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2015-04-30
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2015-04-30
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  1. “We're moving into a space where we want to be able to help you whenever anything goes wrong on your air travels. And so it's becoming more of a platform where we based on the data we have, we can be able to help you the second something goes wrong. So that's really where we're headed. The air travel industry has just for so many years been a race to the bottom. So airlines have been neglecting their passengers and we see that we've come up with a model where the airlines can have happier customers and customers can actually get help when something goes wrong.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “The hardest part again it comes a bit back to this thing about like having these weekly goals that you need to accomplish and it's not like they're gonna say well you know you missed this week and we flunk you it's it's you know it's it's sort of this very very positive social pressure to be able to show those numbers and you want to you know achieve something every week”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, exactly. It's a very strong community. And the way it works, essentially, if you have anything, you have a challenge, then you can send it out into the community saying, can you help me with this? Can you give an intro to this or this guy? And then people from the YC community will then respond and say, hey, do this and this and this. These are our experiences, so on and so forth. So it is really, really invaluable. It's really one of the biggest kind of takeaways from YC, I would say.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I would say it's two things. One is the short-term goals. That was really, really a big eye-opener for me. And then two is definitely the alumni and the network that we got out of Y Com”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Massive. While we were going through, there was a number that was floating around, like it's like two to three X of the standard valuation. So it definitely has a huge impact on your valuation because also everybody has been pre-vetted so rigorously. So investors know that if you've been accepted into a Y combinator, then you know what the hell you're doing.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “So YC is structured in a way where it's very much like the input you get is also the output you're going to get. So they're not going to say, well, we need to meet with you five times a week and you need to come in. It's very much up to you yourself to structure it. And also again, coming back to the fact that it's not a co-working space. You get to build your own culture. But again, having this space where you can come in and show your progress and talk to other like-minded people about your ideas.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “That was amazing. At that time we were building our email scanner and that was built on Gmail. So we wanted to say if you had had a flight in the last two years, we would be able to capture that and say, okay, this is actually an eligible flight. And being able to build that with the guidance of the guy that built Gmail.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So, in our group, we had Kevin Hale from Wufu. Paul Buchheitz, who built Gmail. We had Tara, who is the CFO of Y combinator. And every group has their own set of tutors that will follow you through the whole process of the three months.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, I see this all the time where some entrepreneur says I want to grow this into a billion dollar company. And then my question is, what's your number going to be next week? Because that's really what you can affect. And it's really, really these small, gradual steps that take you along the way and that will eventually give you that up and to the right hockey stick exponential growth.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, so that's the whole batch coming together. So you start off the day with having office hours with your batch. So you have different groups in each batch where you have, I think it was like five, six companies. And then you sit sort of a round table and you present your numbers and then you get feedback from the partners that are your tutors for the duration of YC. And I think one of the biggest takeouts I really got from YC is having, of course, the bigger strategic vision in place, but really, really trying to go into week-by-week growth rates. So every week you would present your numbers and you would say, well, these are my KPIs. And then you would go in and then you would say, well, you know, this week we accomplished so-and-so and so. These are growth rates. These are the things that are.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, so they will give you a small set of money that you can live for essentially while you're going through YC. But you have to find your own accommodation. It's not structured as many of the other accelerators where you have like a co-working space. The only time you are at YC is essentially for the Tuesday night dinners. And then if you have office hours with one of the partners. And”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Oh, yeah, yeah. And it gives you a seal of approval that will affect you for many years to come. We jokingly refer to it as better than a Stanford MBA.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “That was huge. It's like again, especially being a European entrepreneur and being accepted into Silicon Valley in that way was the world's biggest tax.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “So they have this. So, you have two sets of boating, right? You have one, which is the partners that are in the room. And then you also have the alumni that can refer you, basically. So as an alumni, you can say this company should, you know, I expect them to be in the top 10 or give them an interview because they're a really, really good team and whatever. So it's a combination of different things. But at the end of the day, it's up to the partners that interview you because they are the ones that will get that very deep understanding or a deeper understanding of who you are and what you're building.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “So it's more about, again, it's 10 minutes. Of course, they will drill down into some of the more technical aspects, but it's more stuff like, so what are you working on? Why should users try you? Why are you better than everybody else? What's the most impressive thing you've done in the past? So they want to understand why you as a team will be able to succeed where others might not.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “So they're structured that you have three to four of the partners that sit with you in a room. And then you have about 10 minutes where you talk about your idea and they ask questions. So they will literally bombard you with questions because they want to make sure that what you wrote in the application is actually also the truth. So they have the most fine-tuned bullshit detector out there to be honest. So, you know, I think again, it's just important that you are yourself. And if you have an idea of what you're building and why, then it shouldn't be a hard thing. It should actually be more of a good conversation where they give you feedback as well. And like whether or not you get in, just use that interview as the best source of feedback you can get from some really, really smart people that can give you an idea on how to do things.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Keep it simple, keep it concise. You don't have to go into this very, very muddy detail about how it is structured and everything like that. Even though it is, of course, very tech-based in nature, it's more important that you are able to communicate what it is that you're doing and why. And then also why you are the ones who are going to be able to succeed with this. That's probably the best advice I can give.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So, I think the most important thing is just that you're very clear and very concise on what you're doing. You should be the expert on whatever you're building. So you should be able to, in a very, very simple way, explain what it is that you're doing. So as an example, AirHelp, we help you get money back from airlines when they screw up your flight. That's something that's really simple. It's something everybody can understand. And I think every year when there's applications to YC, I get a lot of applicants asking me to give feedback on their applications. And what I see most of the time is that it's just one big document of industry lingo and abbreviations. And the first thing I say don't assume that they know what your industry is. You need to make it so that your grandmother Would be able to understand what it is that you're doing.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So, I think, to be honest, you know, why Combinator in the last decade or so has just been such a big massive force in the tech industry. And if you start a startup, you've obviously heard of a white combinator. So for us, it was definitely the holy grail. We were entrepreneurs from Denmark and thought, you know, to be honest, that it was kind of a long shot. But we said to ourselves, well, at least it's going to be a good experience for us just like writing up this application. And then if not, then we could check it off the bucket list. And we applied and they ended up inviting us for an interview. And so we flew to Mountain View to interview with Paul Graham and Jessica. That was a couple of weeks after we had submitted the application. So it went really fast.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “To be honest, so this was beginning of 2013. So this was before any product hunts and all of that. So we just put it up and then we got into a consumer rights show in Denmark. And that meant that overnight we had 3,000 people come to our site asking whether or not we could help them. And then we actually started building the product on the back of that. So we spent too much just calling all the airlines, figuring out the processes, figuring out what the pain points for these consumers were. And then we got our CTO Greg on board and built the system and the product on the back of that.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Oh, yes. So, this was a process that would take a couple of weeks and maybe months just to even get that rejection. So we thought to ourselves, we can maybe automate this if we were to get data on all flights in the world so we can streamline this whole process and make it easy for people to assert their legal right, essentially. And that was the background for the idea. We then launched a very simple landing page. We have kind of sketched up how we wanted to build the back end of it, but we wanted to build it on data instead of assumptions. So we built this very simple landing page, threw that up.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “So we tried claiming this money ourselves and we just found that the process was completely horrible. Some airlines only accepted facts on Fridays between two and four. You had to go through links and links and links and sometimes you would just end up on a dead link. So you couldn't even submit a claim. And then, you know, when you actually had submitted a claim, then you had to follow up. So you had to call them, you had to write them. And then there was a high likelihood that they would just reject you saying that it was an act of God or something else or not even give you an answer.”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, sure. So my background is within the marketing space. I have started marketing agencies in the past and also tech startups. So I've had my share of losing money and gaining experience. Essentially the way that AirHelp got started was because myself and my co-founder Henrik were traveling quite a lot and we were like any other traveler always experiencing delayed and canceled flights and we got to the point where we were thinking or we were thinking you know there must be something that protects us as consumers so we did some research and we found that there were these laws that obligate the airline to pay you up to 600 euro if your flight is delayed canceled or overbooked”

    2015-04-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 032: Inside Y Combinator with Nicolas Michaelsen, Founder @ AirHelp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source