mg // 05.01.2009

Scott Rafer – Lookery = High volume, low cost @ LeWeb08

Scott Rafer, U.S. serial entrepreneur since 1992, founded Lookery.com in July 2007 after his former company MyBlogLog.com has been sold to Yahoo. Lookery.com started off as a Facebook advertising network right after the Facebook platform was launched. According to Scott „Facebook was great for start-ups at the beginning. Then, after a year it was a great place for big companies and not so good for start-ups.“ Having understood that, Scott took Lookery out of the Facebook platform. He now finds it important to use Facebook Connect and its free distribution and to have an extra strategy, since he expects Facebook Connect to be dead next fall. Lookery.com sells user targeting data - mostly small, privacy-friendly profiles including age, gender and a keyword - to the top 20-30 big advertising networks in the world. Scott says: „We’re the high volume/low cost people. There is no one in the business who sells a huge number of profiles really cheap.“ Scott believes in simple business models: „Anything complex is terrible. The older I get and the more experienced I am, the less I attempt. I try not to get any venture capital – business angels are the only people I deal with if I have to take any investment at all.“ Scott’s advice for starting a company is to „do the simplest thing you can, take small amounts of money and get profitable very quickly!“
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
» more

mg // 02.01.2009

Ibrahim Evsan und Thomas Bachem: Neues von Sevenload (German) @ LeWeb

Ibrahim Evsan und Thomas Bachem gründeten 2006 Sevenload.com, Deutschlands führende Social Media Plattform für Fotos, Videos, interaktives WebTV und User Generated Content. Inzwischen sind T-Online Venture Fund, Burda Cross Media, Media Ventures GmbH und dw capital GmbH an der sevenload GmbH beteiligt. Auf seiner Plattform zeigt sevenload über 600 interaktive Sendungen in thematisch sortierten Kanälen: „Das ist ein Kraftakt, auf den wir ziemlich stolz sind und der eine unglaubliche Herausforderung bedeutet“, meint sevenload-Geschäftsführer Ibrahim Evsan, kurz „Ibo“. Als Europas grösster WebTV-Anbieter will sevenload im nächsten Jahr mit WebTV-Shows möglichst bald die 1000er Grenze erreicht haben. „Unser Ziel ist, dass Leute mit WebTV-Wissen ohne Ahnung von Technik sich bei sevenload eine Präsenz aufbauen können. Wir sind vor allem ein Dienstleister und wollen den Leuten einfach die Instrumente an die Hand geben, um sich selber zu vermarkten.“ „Sevenload will erwachsen werden, mit aller Macht und Kraft“. Deswegen hat Ibo im Rahmen der Unternehmensvergrösserung seinen CEO-Posten an den sevenload-Seed Investor Axel Schmiegelow weitergegeben. Chief Operating Officer ist seit Oktober 2007 Andreas Heyden. Angesprochen auf die Finanzkrise betont Ibo, dass „der Markt Druck macht. Sevenload hält dennoch an seinem Geschäftsmodell fest“. Thomas Bachem rät jungen Startups: „Nicht aufgeben!“ Einig sind sich die beiden sevenload-Repräsentanten auch darüber: „Die schönsten Momente sind immer die, wenn die Mitarbeiter sich freuen – egal worüber.“
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
» more

vt // 23.12.2008

Peter Vesterbacka: Tough times generate great opportunities @ LeWeb

Peter Vesterbacka is a serial entrepreneur from Finland who left HP two years ago with the intent to build further start-ups. Peter had already founded MobileMonday in 2000, a grass roots community for people in the mobile business that has grown into the world’s leading mobile community present in 70 cities around the globe. Peter is also the founder of ConnectedDay, a community site aimed at enriching the dialogue between professional daycare centres, parents and children. Furthermore, Peter co-founded Star Wreck Studios, that has been hugely successful with its first feature film production „Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning“, a film in Finish language with 8 million downloads. Peter has now created WreckAMovie.Com, a new service around fim production. Another new service is Zipiko – described by Peter as „a cool business model all around intention“. Zipiko works well on high-end mobiles and lets your friends know what you would like or are planning to do. Peter started working with Zipiko a while ago and finds „they have a great team and are definitely going to go places. If you know people’s intent, it’s hugely valuable for marketing purposes.“ Although there’s a lot of doom and gloom out there, Peter is positive that „this is the best time to start a company. It’s cheap and people will have lots of time to participate“. As an advice for start-ups, Peter points out: „I’m a big believer in ecosystem. Stand up, look around the ecosystem, ask yourself who your competitors are and with who you could partner with. That’s the best way to understand the big picture.“

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
» more

vt // 22.12.2008

Generating most effective online ads - Mathys van Abbe @ LeWeb

Serial entrepreneur Mathys van Abbe now introduces his fourth start-up Toading.com , the company that funds his hobby projects  like startpix, mobypicture and Spot2be. Toading is an advertising technology tool for organizations in the e-Commerce or e-Recruitment business helping them to save time and money. It enables those companies to link their website offers to online advertising campaigns, i.e. for Google and Yahoo. Toading generates ads for every specific product and service including important features like the exact price and the availability. According to Mathys van Abbe, Toading is quick to implement and reduces ad spending with 25% while increasing conversion rates of online advertising campaigns with up to 300%. 
While Toadings technology development is based in Budapest, Hungary, most of Toadings clients are currently in the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Spain and Germany. With one or two competitors in the field, van Abbe is still very optimistic since there are lots of clients out there.

Mathys also presented his other startups to Tiburon-TV, check them at http://www.tiburon-tv.com/tag/mathys-van-abbe/.

BTW, the guy jumping through the video promoting Toading is Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com.

» more

vt // 19.12.2008

Simplify your money management with SCRED: Kristoffer Lawson @ LeWeb

The Finish start-up Scred.com, founded by Kristoffer Lawson, focusses on banking for the 2.0 generation. Its version 1 has been successfully launched with around 1000 users already using this basic version. Version 2 with more exciting content will come out before christmas. Lawson tries to revolutionize the banking system by offering easy and fun-to-use tools to handle money. As the creative director of Alternative party - an art event in Helsinki he finds that money has always been a real headache. Users of Scred.com can simplify their money management among friends or on a trip by using Screds calculation, currency conversion and distribution tools and services. They can track debts between people and use Scred on their mobile even without connection!
Lawson, who already designed computer programs at age 7, just loves technology. He wants to make Scred extremely big and has no interest in focussing on the Finish market even if 50% of Screds users are from Finland right now. With regard to the financial crisis Lawson finds that time has worked in our favor since money is becoming more important. He adds: If you fail, its a stupid excuse, that its because of the recession.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
» more

vt // 18.12.2008

Perfect match with Sense2love: Anju Rupal @ LeWeb

Sense2Love.com is a social networking platform of bringing people together for love purposes. Launched in August 2008 by London-born Indian Anju Rupal, Sense2Love sets up a new paradigm of matchmaking by combining ancient traditions of matchmaking with new trends in social networking: Statistically, 57% of your partners are found through your network, while 10% are found online makes Sense2Loves success rate of up to 67%.
Using an invitation only network, Sense2Love helps you not only to find the partner that really matches you but to build sustainable relationships by using Sense2Loves communication styles. In workshops and roadshows Sense2Love teaches on how to keep heartaches low and the so called cup of love full. Sense2Love thereby takes a concept online that has already been proven in the U.S.
Sense2Love has an interesting way of making money: Before going on a blind date, you have the option to buy a present perfectly matched to the interest of the person youre about to meet, i.e. chocolate, a massage or even a week-end in a spa. Furthermore, they charge for the dinners they arrange.
Rupal and her co-founder and Business Angel Bill Liao, who is also co-founder of xing.com, are themselves looking for business partners to take Sense2Love global. Rupal, who co-founded her first business Finaxis AG seven years ago, believes its all about execution. You really have to believe in what you do, be passionate about it and then go for it, full power especially in the economic climate we have right now.

» more

vt // 17.12.2008

Easy and fun language learning with BUSUU: Bernhard Niesner @ LeWeb

Busuu.com is a start-up, based in Madrid, which runs a free online community for learning languages. Launched in May 2008 by Austrian Bernhard Niesner and his university friend Adrian Hilti from Liechtenstein, busuu.com already has 50.000 users from 200 countries, some of them pretty remote. Niesner and Hilti decided to create a new concept of learning languages online and include also less known languages so that they do not extinct. The company name itself is a language spoken in Cameroon by only eight people!
Using an integrated video-chat application, students can connect with native speakers, i.e. an English language student from Sudan can directly practice his language skills with an American in New York City. With a high percentage of users in developing countries, busuu.com makes it easy and fun for everybody to learn a language and contributes to the diversity of languages all over the world. Busuu.com is also ideal to prepare a trip by making friends before visiting a country and thus make international friends. On busuu.com one can even learn the almost extinct whistling language Silbo Gomero, spoken by the people of the Spanish island La Gomera. 
Busuu.com can be used completely for free as a basis-member. To get access to additional learning tools and content, one has to pay a small amount per month. Therefore, Niesners christmas wish is not surprising:Unlimited google ad resources for one year.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
» more

vt // 16.12.2008

Revolutionizing the telecom sector: Jonas Birgersson @ LeWeb

Swedish IT-Entrepreneur Jonas Birgersson, a.k.a broadband Jesus, now talks about his start-up company ViaEuropa. ViaEuropa is about to revolutionize the telecom sector by putting a fiber cable beside the electrical cable and Via Europas ecosystem on top of it. The enduser can then choose any operator he wants. Birgersson, whose background is in Military Intelligence, points out that this is a fully neutral, open system where the enduser is the winner. The only thing we do is to put away the strange structure of the telecom sector and build a normal marketplace. Everybody is invited to compete on equal terms. This is how it works in all other businesses except the telecom sector.
ViaEuropas model is already fully proven in Scandinavia, but once it is proven outside of Scandinavia within the next one or two years, the telecoms will be in big trouble. So it is not astonishing that Jonas Birgersson is one of the most hated people in the Telecom sector since many years.  But according to Birgersson its about reinventing ideas - if you are loved, youre not an entrepreneur, youre not disruptive enough.
ViaEuropa is especially interested in the emerging markets both in Africa and South america. Birgersson cites a study that shows that in developing countries 1% increase in broadband penetration results in a 3% extra GDP growth.  
Jonas Birgersson is a serial entrepreneur, he founded Bredbandsbolaget, framfab and is also CEO of the Swedish broadband company Labs2, based in Lund. In order to make the world an even more interesting place, his advice is: If you have talent, use it to the maximum potential you have!

» more

vt // 15.12.2008

Create your own high quality clothes - Tristan de Montebello @ LeWeb

Trendy-Workshop.com, co-founded by Tristan de Montebello, is a French fashion portal that allows its users to create their own clothes, buy them afterwords and making money with them by sharing it with others on the web. Open since Dec. 8, 2008, users can choose every little fashion detail they want on their piece of clothes on-line and have it made for them by a stylist. Their creations will then be delivered to them within three weeks. Depending on how many people buy their creation, a commission is being paid and one can even reach the status of Junior Creator. Clothes designed at Trendy-Workshop are being produced in China with prices starting at 89 for a cashmere sweater. Different from customization platforms like Spreadshirt, Trendy-Workshop allows you to design the whole product and not only the printing. Soon they will also offer accessories and interiors.
Founder Tristan de Montebello started out as a computer ingenieur in love with the web. He points out that he wants to make a real difference in fashion with Trendy-Workshop.com: We would like to be a major trendsetter in fashion industry and break fashion in a good way. He believes it is crucial to think big and start small. His advice for other entrepreneurs is simple yet powerful: Get good people, be fast and very reactive.
Further information can also be found on Trendy-Workshops blog.
» more

vt // 11.12.2008

no need for a university degree - Ilkka Paanen @ Slush

Ilkka Paanen broke up his studies in order to start his own company for downloadable mobile games named Sumea. Founded in 2000, Sumea is based in Helsinki. Seeing the success of i-mode in Japan, Paanen expected this new massive technology coming to Europe and therefore wanted to exploit the opportunity of java-based games on mobile phones. In 2004, Sumea joined forces with the Californian company Digital Chocolate, and is now their internal game development studio. Also, Sumeas distribution network to the biggest cellphone operators is managed by Digital Chocolate. According to Paanen, Finland offers a highly conducive environment for starting a company because of its good infrastructure and education, governmental subsidies and lots of available office space. Furthermore, being located in Helsinki, is crucial for Sumeas success: If you go into mobile content, its a big advantage to be close to Nokia, explains Paanen. Above all, he points out that if you want to start your company, make sure you have a coherent team with complementary skills.
» more