“Solutions from Down Under”
Have you ever felt that you knew a better way to do something? Perhaps you even showed it to some of your friends, maybe it can be helpful to people all around the world. On the other hand are you having difficulty finding a solution to your problems and do not know where to look? Kim Heras has the answer for you in the form of his venture “OneEyeDeer” which brings together problem solvers and solution seekers from across the world.Yourstory spoke to Kim the entrepreneur from down under to know more about how entrepreneurship has been for him and OneEyeDeer.
Could you elaborate on what your company does?
OneEyeDeer is about making stuff better.
OneEyeDeer connects you with people from all over the world who want to come up with solutions to problems, not just complain about them.
We get people to submit issues that don’t have any satisfactory solutions, then the community works together on coming up with new/ interesting/crazy/clever solutions
You can check out this video to see how it works: - http://vimeo.com/10173469
What makes OneEyeDeer stand out from the rest?
OneEyeDeer is all about user-led innovation. It’s similar to idea generation sites like Get Satisfaction and user Voice. The difference with OneEyeDeer is that instead of having companies control the process, we let the people control it. If companies want to participate that’s great, but if they do, they need to do so as peers, not leaders.On top of that, we have some neat ways to try and get as many diverse people as possible involved in coming up with solutions. Our goal isn’t just about bringing people with similar interests together – it’s about bringing people with different backgrounds/skills and experience together to solve issues – research tells us that when this happens, great things can be achieved.
What is your strategy for growing in business?
Start integrating much more social media into the site. At the moment we’re working out the basic functionality. Soon we’ll be ready to scale.
Grow more, find more use cases, make OED more useful and some other very, very cool stuff that we’re already working on ;) We’re also looking for good developers all the time, so if anyone out there has good skills (front end – CSS/HTML etc.) or back end (LAMP) feel free to drop us a line. Also, we’d love to hear from people with NLP/AI skills too. That’s a direction we’re going to be moving in very soon.
What do you think is the key challenge for an (Indian) entrepreneur?
Not sure about Indians, but the key challenge for any entrepreneur is to stay focused and to always remember that value creation should be your goal. If you make something that has value, the rest will (hopefully) fall in line
What according to you makes an entrepreneur?
I think either you have the entrepreneurial spirit or you don’t. If you do, you don’t really “decide” to be an entrepreneur – you just do what you love and this happens to be it.
What has been the most difficult factor for you to overcome?
Time. It’s hard to keep working on a startup when you have other obligations in life that take up your time. The solution is to get organized and to work hard. Sure it’s a little difficult now, but the reward of each little win you have is worth it.
Which achievements of your organization get you excited?
Getting trial use happening in some of Australia’s largest Universities. Having uni student work together to try and come up with solutions has been fantastic. To see the way that these students have worked collaboratively and creatively on solutions has been amazing.
Have you won any accolades for your efforts?
We were semi finalists in last year’s TechCrunch 50. More importantly though, are the emails and messages we receive from users of the site who love it
What is so worthwhile about entrepreneurship for you?
A sense of feeling compelled to make stuff better. We believe in collaborative innovation and the web as an enabler of change, so even when times get tough, there’s always that passion to keep us going
What pointers should emerging entrepreneurs follow?
Do what you love, work on projects that you know, solve your own problems and even if you never make it big you’ll get some value out of what you do
Yourstory wishes Kim luck and success with his entrepreneurial aspirations. We thank him for answering our queries and hope to hear more on OneEyeDeer.
