April 11th, 2012 § § permalink
this story reminds me of MyBlogLog – acquired for $10M after 9 months in 2007, only 4 years later and 2 zero-s added:
On October 5th, 2010, Instagram launched My first instagram photo We’re really excited to launch our first version of Instagram today, free in the App Store. Instagram makes mobile photos fast, simple, & beautiful.
via: swizec.com
Instagram (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
when I saw this news on TV, and sitting trough the whole story, it felt like they were announcing a war or a new terrorist attack. it was not good news for anyone but those three founders.
these valuations have only market-sense, but no connection to the real world. Lot’s of friends have been talking about new bubble for over a year now, and I couldn’t agree with them. I believed that this time it’s different, that everyone is building real companies, with real value, and that exits happen only after they prove it or run out of resources.
not anymore apparently. instagrams valuation makes sense only in relation to facebook’s valuation, not in relation to the world or the users.
i am not saying that they are useless, like some bubble 1.0 ideas were – not at all. instagram figured out how to make pictures of urban reality, full of smog and with poor natural light, beautiful again. it gives a chance for new kids to live in a visually nice world again. like bauhaus did a century ago.
but that on it’s own is not worth 1/30th of world hunger.
April 4th, 2012 § § permalink
I’m reading Guttenberg the Geek, fantastic essay / biography by Jeff Jarvis, focusing on entrepreneurial aspects of famous inventor.
Several topics here are super interesting, like similarities between inventors, geeks, entrepreneurs, and what it means for the future of mankind.
Guttenberg Bible (Photo credit: Joe Shlabotnik)
However, one is not so obvious, but it might be inspiring for new generations of entrepreneurs around the web – Guttenberg spent a lot of time, energy and risk in building out the typeset and printing the first book.
The situation was much harder than anything today – he could not know if he will even survive the project, but let’s still compare this risk and emotional investment with today’s entrepreneurs – geeks between 20 and 30, who choose the uncertain but shiny path of building their business.
The project you are working on, should compensate for the conditions of extreme uncertainty. Compensate by reward and/or importance for yourself, human kind, the planet.
The product you will be judged upon should encapsulate the shiny core of the promise, of the better world. That’s why Guttenberg wouldn’t stop until he fulfilled his mission and printed the Bible – there were several smaller projects before it, to perfect the technique, but nobody really talks about them these days.
He was able to change the world because he endured on his journey until he could crown the disruptive technology, with a really memorable crown. Respect.
April 1st, 2012 § Comments Off on SeedTable – finally a decent overview of startups § permalink
I love projects that make large datasets usable. This one took way to long to be done, but finally – now we can stop wasting clicks and get an executive summary of our city’s startups. 🙂
Also, I will take this opportunity to invite you all for a sneak peek at East Start Map – please let me know what we’re missing.
I have a love/hate relationship with CrunchBase. On the one hand it has great information about startup tech companies. On the other hand, it relies on a wiki-like structure which means it is sometime not updated as frequently or as accurately as old-style databases which used to employ people go over the data regularly.
via: techcrunch.com
March 26th, 2012 § Comments Off on if startups are rock bands, who’s the producer? § permalink
The Strokes live at Stubb's March 14th night before SXSW. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
let’s start with a quote from a friend Shane Snow:
I think being an entrepreneur is all about executing creative ideas — being the guy (or girl) who actually starts a band rather than sitting around with friends and talking about how cool it would be, or being the one who actually sits down and builds a prototype rather than just talking about it for years until someone else builds it.
from: read write web
there’s also a nice infrographic comparison of the rock band and the startup team, listing several similarities, like hard work, lot’s of persistence and luck, and ability to listen to the audience.
all of this is very true, and i find it more inspiring than a remark that another friend did once – “guys used to go to the army, now they go to startups.”
, an American music producer, composer and entrepreneur. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
however, there is a role in entertainment business that is being under-estimated by everyone who never had to work in it – the producer.
In film and music industry, the producer is the one running the show, making decisions, including the decision on who will be ‘the boss’. producers know their ‘markets’, the mediums (film, music) and their ‘teams’ better than anyone. they are the one crucial component to the success, because they keep a neutral position and try to emphasize the best the team has to offer.
this is what an experienced CEO does, and something that an inexperienced first-time entrepreneur cannot do. at least not good or efficiently.
so where are the producers then? their role is being played by accelerators, business books, mentors/advisors/elders, but is it enough?
March 23rd, 2012 § Comments Off on rough winds § permalink
Deutsch: Stolperstein, Gertrud Pincus, Windscheidstraße 8, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Deutschland English: "Stolperstein" (stumbling block), Gertrud Pincus, Windscheidstraße 8, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany Koordinate: 52°30′31″N 13°17′54″E / °S °W / ; latd>90 (dms format) in latd latm lats longm longs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
strange news in my feeds today, two fellow startups are struggling – Profitably and Seesmic.
profitably situation is breathtaking, as venturebeat just broke this story about misunderstandings between founders, employees and investors. well worth reading, and key takeaway should be – in a startup, you have nothing to build on but trust. if you loose trust, you’re gone.
luckily none of them are loosing hope and closing doors yet, as loic puts it in the interview about seesmic layoffs:
“I don’t give up, that’s how I am. I always have faith in my team, and I keep going. Success is going from failure to failure until you reach success. There are many examples; one of them is Mark Pincus, who couldn’t raise money for Zynga… I think he’s probably laughing right now when he thinks about that.”
… he is exactly right, persistence is the key to success, if nothing else because most people are less dedicated than the true entrepreneurs, who simply don’t take no for an answer, but rather make the world change.
March 20th, 2012 § § permalink
Image via Wikipedia
this is incredibly important – how to keep two parts of remote organization connected:
Some companies are almost entirely virtual, like blog host Automattic. Others grow through acquisitions, like what Groupon is doing in the Bay Area – piecing together a tech team thousands of miles from its Chicago headquarters. Another strategy is to build strategic outposts, like Facebook’s new engineering office in New York.
via: allthingsd.com
we are doing many things in a similar way over at Zemanta.
Since our Ljubljana office is much larger than NY one, we only have a big screen in Ljubljana, but as soon as we set that up, everybody started using it for cross-ocean meeting. I’m actually thinking we will need a second one soon. we’ve learned that sound quality is much more important than anything though.
ever since our NY office was just one person, I insisted on making weekly check-in meetings with everyone. it has grown to be a well-self-moderated debrief from both sides. it turned out that on every meeting several people are dialing in, because they are traveling, sick, or just work remotely. point being: don’t make it an excuse for not having a meeting, embrace the remoteness.
and travel – we realized that US and EU cultures are so much different, that it’s essential for everyone to get to know the other. so we do 1 or 2 all-company weeks per year, where everyone from US comes to work from Ljubljana (and more than just work of course). at the same time, there is almost always someone of the developers working from NY office, just for the kicks of it.
and despite all these efforts, quite often a mediation is required, because people assume the other person is thinking about something else.
you might recall the Sunscreen verse: “Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle” – well, it’s true for the people you work with, not just friends.
March 1st, 2012 § Comments Off on Business Advice: Your Next Board Member Should Be A Woman § permalink
Image via Wikipedia
Even after 50 years of intensive fights, this gender inequality persists, almost everywhere in the World.
I believe it still exists for two reasons:
- the current, male-dominated, business environment is ‘good enough’ to provide society with whatever it needs. so the amount of energy going into changing it is limited.
- there is a qualitative difference in how man interact with other man vs. women, specially at the age in which most startup founders are these days.
because of these two ‘facts’, some would say, is it really a ‘problem’. i’d say it’s evidently out-of-balance, but to figure out what exactly is broken here, we have to dig deeper.
Good questions have been asked lately of tech companies without gender diversity on their boards of directors.
[…]
If you’re not aware, studies also show companies with gender diversity at the top drive better financial performance on multiple measures – for example, 36% better stock price growth and 46% better return on equity. And, studies show the more women, the better the results.
[…]
Mike Maroone, AutoNation’s President and COO explained, “We looked at our board [and realized] it’s male dominated, while women make over 50% of the purchasing decisions in our business. And, the travel, music and news industries have been transformed by digital. We’re trying to transform the auto business and connect with the thinking of the digital generation, and we need this level of insight at the board level.â€
via: techcrunch.com
Image via Wikipedia
What might significantly change the way businessman look at gender inequality, and possibly classify it as a problem worth solving, is exactly this kind of research – pragmatic, practical, common sense even. if we are not employing women, we are by definition missing opportunities.
if you are in the business of making money, you are potentially vulnerable to competitors who understand the other half of the market better.
if you are in the business of changing the world, you have no chance to actually do so on your own.
now, my wife did an observation, that given how male-dominant the business is, any woman to actually make it to the top had to be 100x better than any man, so it’s no surprise that those companies are doing better.
wouldn’t it be great if the fate of the economy didn’t rely entirely on statistical luck?
February 22nd, 2012 § § permalink
Image via Wikipedia
this is really amazing document. at first i meant to quote bits and pieces, but there’s just too many. so i will rather summarize high level takeaways without specific connections to each other:
- to paraphrase my great teacher: “learn enough strategy to be able to lead like this” – specially first time founders/ceos face great challenges trying to figure out what ‘leading’ and ‘strategy’ really mean, and separating the operational hat from the insightful one. in this letter, we can see just how much is possible to infere from a handfull of data – internet was 3 years old at that point, and Bill was able to predict accurately next 15. Strive to become a business thinker like him.
- reading this letter feels like we have not entirely left the era it describes. IP telephony still doesn’t work as good as landlines, streaming media is slowly becoming standardized, 3d is hoping to have a comeback, cross-web collaboration is still painful. i’d say we are in the final years of the first version of the internet.
- mobile and social currently seem to be in the same explosive growth stage as internet was back then. if they actually prove to be as transformative for the society as the web was, i’m not very optimistic. as Bill noted in this memo, internet was built heavily on open values. the mobile is being built based on values of telcos and apple, and social networking is taking us back to the primeval societies, where everyone knows everything about everyone else. next era might bring de-urbanization of our minds.
- i love this site – Letters of note – absolutely best way to learn is by observing great people doing / explaining what they’ve learned.
February 21st, 2012 § Comments Off on when cultural differences hit you – smile! § permalink
Silicon Valley Rocks 2011 (Photo credit: thekenyeung)
Lots of people move to US to start their business and are surprised by the obstacles they face in the beginning. I like this advice because it’s straightforward and actionable:
Israelis Tap In to Silicon Valley – WSJ.com
A group of visiting Israeli technology entrepreneurs recently got some blunt advice on how to do business in Silicon Valley. Be positive, smile a lot and don’t bad-mouth a competitor, venture capitalist Itamar Novick told them. When meeting with potential investors, think of it as a wedding proposal, not a transaction.
online.wsj.com
I recently noticed with myself, that I started using exclamation marks in almost every email I send out. the change happened after year 2 of living in US.
it might read as a cliché, when in reality, it merely lowers various expectations. you don’t really have to do much else in the valley than play the game. you need to be determined that this is the game you want to be playing and have humility to accept that you’re a foreigner that has to go humbly trough a process of re-integration into the society.
there is nothing you can do to make this process more controlled, because it’s human nature. smile is a signal that you’re friendly, as people around you start to trust you they’ll share more opportunities with you, and in your second year you will be a different person in a different place.
if you’ll be pushy, they’ll just look away. you can try it the hard way and loose lot’s of energy in vain. smile and have fun is the first rule of this game. you might not like it, but startup entrepreneurship these days is a lifestyle business.
February 15th, 2012 § Comments Off on Calypso Cases § permalink
Didn’t get a chance to write about them earlier, but this Ljubljana-based company is truly amazing.
the little case you see on the picture bellow – it’s made of 17 different parts and materials. I was privileged to see the drawer with all the variations they’ve built for testing purposes – 3 feet long row of cases of all shapes and sizes, with one common denominator: they all fit the phone perfectly, and they are all without a sew.
I’ve been heavily testing (read: beating up) a new Calypso Case for more than a month and it’s easy to say simply put, I’m impressed. Based in Ljubljana, Slovenia the founders are hand making iPhone 4 cases which are simply perfect in fit, function and design. They’re made of conite, titanium, leather and specially designed microfabrics.
via: joshspear.com
great work guys!
