I was listening to Helga Waage yesterday in the Startup Stories organized by Startup Reykjavik team. Helga is the co-founder of Mobilitus, a mobile platform development company. Helga is a veteran in the startup circles in Iceland and is a mentor to many startup entrepreneurs. The other co-founder of Mobilitus is Toti Stefansson, both Toti and Helga were part of the original Oz team which was/is the failed success story out of a startup from Iceland. Helga had a fantastic picture that showed the number of startups that have been created by the original members of the Oz team. It was a great talk, Helga is funny, sarcastic and fearless… I really enjoyed listening to her. The story of Mobilitus is very interesting and there is something that she said that kind of registered with me, I am not sure if agree with her. She said timing was everything, that being a provider of Mobile services 10 years back just did not pane out to be a successful business for Oz but now Mobilitus is having great success with high profile clients like Sprint and Ticketmaster. I agree that you need to provide the right service for the need of the market, but would Mobilitus be as successful if Helga and Toti had not spent the last decade in building things for the Mobile platform? I believe we need to prepare ourselves to be ready when the time is right… I like the analogy of a surfer, it is not about catching the right wave, it takes time to get the skills so you need to practice A LOT, then you need to be in the ocean all the time and when you are ready and you notice the right wave you jump on it. I believe that is what has happened to Mobilitus and Helga and Toti. I think they form a great team and they are in the right sector at this time to take advantage of the opportunity in the Mobile platforms. Change itself happens instantaneously, but preparing to change takes time, effort, skill and patience. Being an entrepreneur is about that building a discipline of being patient working on creating value and constantly improving, so when the right deal comes along you are ready to take advantage of the circumstances. Only the prepared can jump on the moving train, so the advice I took from Helga’s talk yesterday was you need to prepare, be on the market all the time, build strong networks and relationships. I learn a lot talking to both Helga and Toti, they have been very generous to my constant loitering into the Mobilitus office which is next to CLARA‘s office space.