Schools for entrepreneurs
When I became an entrepeneur, you had to do it all by yourself. There were no mentors nor schools. You could learns some theory from the Government and that was it. But things have changed. Now you can go to entrepreneurs’ school and the good news is that the teachers are successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs and investors with a real experience.
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Oscar 2.0
“Some people compare the Crunchies to the Oscars of Tech”, says TechCrunch today. It really looks like that: many Internet stars, hollywood-style party, US-centered with an international section… There is one big difference, though: people could vote. Will we ever have an Oscar 2.0 edition in which movie-lovers will be able to vote?
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Startup 2.0: video of the 2008 edition
We just uploaded to Youtube the final video of last Startup 2.0 edition, which took place in Barcelona. It’s a nice video if you want to have a general impression of the event and the people who took part in it in just 4 minutes. I hope you like it. People quoted come from the UK, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, Belgium, France, Spain and Germany and their projects are: Zilok, UnLtdWorld, AllRise, Bubok, Talicious, Learnit and Wolpy.
23 and me, the project did not convince me
One of the main dishes of the DLD conference was to see Anne Wojcicki, wife of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, presenting her new startup: 23 and me. Summarizing, this project is about giving you accesss to your DNA information in order to prevent you from any sicknesses which you have a higher probability of suffering. Besides, they are capable of telling you how similar you are to your grandparents or to your children.
Is the stock crisis going to affect the Internet economy?
This was the main question of the VC panel. I especially liked Martin Varsavsky‘s and Morten Lund‘s remarks. Both think that big projects which are backed by debt will be in trouble, while small ones financed with equity will not suffer. The only but is that valuations will be affected, so it could not be the best moment to sell your startup.
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Felix Petersen’s beers and Dopplr’s ecological will
The social networking panel during Picnic was just great. I specially liked Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter. He’s got such a clear mind! I also enjoyed it very much when Felix Petersen (Plazes) had to explain his picture taking beers in Reboot while he had to be in Amsterdam. At the end the 5 guys started throwing darts to each other, which was so fun!
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Pierre Chappaz leaves Netvibes
If the captain (in this case, co-captain) leaves the boat, is there something wrong? It could be, but I doubt it. I am writing this because Pierre Chappaz, the founder of Kelkoo, has announced that he is leaving Netvibes, where he used to be co-CEO, together with Tariq Krim.
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LeWeb3: Finally somebody mentioned Digg
I was afraid nobody would speak about Digg. It was David Weinberger (the author of The Cluetrain Manifiesto) who just did it in one of the best conferences I have seen so far, if not the best. He opposed the directors’ committee of a newspaper, as the New York Times, to the peoples’ committee of Digg. I am afraid he is right. Things are slowly going towards a scenario in which social media as Digg or the Spanish Meneame become the preferred information sources for people. “We will read what people recommend us to read”, he added.
LeWeb3: Did you know that the alarm is the most used feature in mobiles?
Well, I didn’t. Marko Ahtisaari, from Blyk, just said it. Another interesting reality: many people check their e-mail before even dressing, after they get up in the morning. He also gave some examples of future functionalities for mobiles: photostream (like Flickr), signaling (as in Jaiku) and real identity (as in Linkedin). They are all social, by the way. Another thing that is coming: new advertising formats, which don’t exactly mean that you will be interrupted in your communications.
LeWeb3: The death of TV?
Two discussions in a row about the future of TV. The death of TV, somebody called them. What is clear is that entrepeneurs working on this area, as Rodrigo Sepúlveda, from VPodTV, are far away from the majority of the Internet users. “I watch some TV programs, but only on my computer or on my iPod”, he said. I don’t believe so many people do so.
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