Did you ever wish to watch again one of those classic movies – not at home but in your favorite cinema? You might have something in common with Marius Mueller-Minde, who’s a passionate movie fan and developed a business based on his passion - German startup Moviac.com. „Moviac questions the current market of the cinema industry in Germany, maybe globally...“ says Marius, „the movie industry has been the same for the last 90 years. As ‚digital natives’ we try to create a new channel for the cinema owners as well as for the distributors of movies. Most importantly, we try to understand what kind of movies their customers want to see.“
Marius explains: „We talk to distributors who provide their content on our platform for free and market it there. Cinema owners can post screenings on our platform. We sell those tickets and get a fee for it.“ Moviac has just launched but keeps his eyes open for new inspiration: „We are always interested in how other people think they can make money in the future“ says Marius, „maybe there are ideas that can be transferred into our own business model – that’s also why we attend events like the Start Up Camp Cologne...“ So far, Moviac’s revenue stream is pretty clear: They get a fee for the tickets and do some merchandising around the movies.
Please visit our website @ www.tiburon-tv.com to find all videos from the Start Up Camp Cologne.
Xchar.com, a social community network for online gamers, has been bought by its former Technical Officer in May 2008: Jens Sauer, who is now Xchar’s CEO, recounts „I thought it to be a great idea only that the founders weren’t that good...“ Jens needed a CFO and successfully pitched Lutz Nathusius who previously had been working in the old economy: „Jens didn’t have to do a lot of convincing, since the product itself was convincing enough. There’s a huge potential with 132 million online gamers worldwide.“
Xchar is making revenues both through advertisement and special services for users. According to Lutz, they are „on the route to profitability“. Lutz points out: „We have generated about 100.000 users in the last nine months and currently have about 6 million PIs on the website, so we’re quite happy...But the best thing about it is that people come back and register.“
In 2009, the company’s management team wants to have 250.000 users and reach profitability. Although Jens points out that „they are already very close to it“, Xchar is still looking for investment with regard to marketing purposes. So one of the reasons they attended the Start Up Camp Cologne is to share ideas and last but not least to talk to investors...
Please visit our website www.tiburon-tv.com to find all our interviews from Start Up Camp Cologne.
Bochum-based DJTUNES.com is one of the leading download platforms for electronic music worldwide and is addressing the club culture of the future. CFO Achim Illner: „We sell music content rather classical, like iTunes or Musicload and deliver high quality with 320 kbit/s DRM free. We have contracts with over 400 independent labels and about 20 aggregators for our music stock.“
Achim points out that „the vinyl market is going down at an annual rate of 20-50%, while worldwide music consumption and the digital music sector are growing every year. The leading DJs are using more and more MP3 formats.“ DJTUNES offers digital music based on a revenue share model, selling content of its label partners. With regard to the company's download model, Achim says: "It's a very solid business model. You give content and get money for it. DJs get a track in the highest quality on a legal basis.“
According to Achim, DJTUNES has lots of traffic on its website with around 70% European visitors. They will now push country sites, i.e. in Japanese language, in order to reach a broader audience. If you want to go international, Achim advises to „see where your customers are and what their demands are. When it comes to payment methods, you have to have partners who also work internationally and are able to deliver solutions for every country.“
DJTUNES just closed its second financing round and wants to grow further in 2009: „We’re in a pretty comfortable situation compared to others in this climate of crisis“ says Achim „we are watching the market and our opportunities carefully. I am convinced that there are lots of chances. “
More interviews from Start Up Camp Cologne can be found @ www.tiburon-tv.com
„In the end of the 90s, every good startup had Sun servers, but throughout the years Sun lost touch with startups and was said to be proprietary, slow and expensive“, says Christian Mueller, Community Manager Startups of the Sun Startup Essentials Program. In order to get back in contact with startups, relearn their needs and target the market better, Sun Microsystems set up the Startup Essentials Program: „The program started in the US about two years ago and has now been rolled out in 26 countries worldwide“, explains Christian, who attracted 140 members in Germany in 2008. The Start Up Camp Cologne, co-organized by Sun Microsystems, boosted the program's membership in Germany up to 230. Christian is positive that they’ll have around 400 German members by the end of 2009.
Members of the Sun Startup Essential Program get free IT consulting - not only with regard to Sun technology ;) On top of that, Sun offers funding for marketing activities, good hardware discount as well as flexible hosting partners with good service. The program is for free, but you have to meet some conditions: Your company has to be younger than six years with less than 150 employees. You also need to have a real address or a website for „a short sanity check“. For more details, visit Sun’s website at http://de.sun.com/startupessentials/ there’s even a twitter account with additional information http://twitter.com/Sun4Startups Free members sweater are offered for the next 100 registrations, so go for it!
More interviews from Start Up Camp Cologne will follow in the days to come
@ www.tiburon-tv.com
Sonntagmorgen.com, founded by the two passionate coffee drinkers Till Achinger and Tamer El-Hawari, is all about mass customized coffee: „We take the magic out of making coffee blends by providing our customers with the possibility of creating their own blend. They can mix Single Origins from all over the world“, explains Till and adds „it’s not such a big secret as the marketing of the big roasteries are trying to tell you. If you mix up two or three Single Origins you get a nice blend that perfectly matches your taste.“
Sonntagmorgen coffee is four times more expensive than the coffee you buy at the supermarket. „You have to consider the high quality we provide. We ensure the highest quality of green coffee beans with a traditional longsome roasting process“, says Till. The biggest challenge for Sonntagmorgen is to get people to taste their coffee: „We cooperate with DHL to deliver test packages. Every new customer of DHL’s automated post office ‚packstation’ gets a welcome package with Sonntagmorgen coffee so that they can convince themselves of our quality. Our experience it that once you tried Sonntagmorgen you will stick to it.“
With some thousands of users so far, Sonntagmorgen wants to go beyond mass customizing in 2009. Till finds mass customizing to be „a nice marketing joke“, but „way too complicated for everyday use“. He explains that they „take the data collected from mass customizing to figure out our customers’ favorite blends. We will then offer those blends as a standard product at a reasonable price.“ There are different coffee tastes in different nations, so internationalization is a problem in the coffee market according to Till: „With regard to roasting there are pretty different tastes i.e. in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. We still want to go international but there are some challenges to overcome...“ Since coffee is said to accelerate the thought process, maybe over a cup of it those challenges can be tackled more easily...
More interviews from Start Up Camp Cologne can be found
@ www.tiburon-tv.com
CaptchaAd.com - co-founded by Alexander Kraft - is the „Champ of the Camp“, the winner of the Start Up Camp’s startup competition. Alexander explains: „CaptchaAd is the first provider of captchas combined with online advertising. Our product substitutes captchas on websites with captcha ads, i.e. in certain processes like commenting articles in blogs or registrations where captchas are often used.“ He adds: „Everyone who uses captchas could be our customer, but blogs are one of our main target groups.“
Three founders of CaptchaAd are ex-students from the University of Applied Sciences Cologne, the fourth founder is an IT expert. The company is based in Bonn, and online only since last week. According to Alexander, they are self-financed but looking for investors. So the goals for 2009 are obvious: „Gain money, users and websites.“
More interviews from Start Up Camp Cologne can be found on our website www.tiburon-tv.com
YIID stands for "your internet id"and it's an identity hub combined with social search, realised through Marco Ripanti. More specifically it is an aggregator for identities and social activities. YIID seems to be a combination of friendfeed and 123people. You can set up your own profile page, displaying all your different web-identities and the content you produce at typical web2.0-sites. Marco believes in the open web, supporting open standards like openID. That way you can bring in all your content, but also take them out again.
Marco is looking for partners who generate any kind of user generated content, pushing it in a new dimension and through that generating more attention and user.
YIID emerged out of the former project communipedia, which was supposed to be some sort of meta-community or community search engine. Behind YIID stands Marcos company ekaabo, which develops special interest communities.
The interview was taken at the SUN Ctartup Camp in Cologne, more interviews of that event you can find here.
In his interview with Viktoria, Joerg Binnenbruecker – managing director @ DuMont Venture – shares precious insights from the venture capital industry: „You have to be both committed, passionate and authentic. And you have to be able to explain your idea within five minutes so that someone like me who’s not into the details can understand it. If I go for an investment, it’s like a marriage for five years and I want to know who I am going to marry...Of course, there are also the typical things like huge market size and growth.“ Although Joerg admits that these are „tough times“, he says that „there’s money in the market and we are looking for things that will survive, i.e. we are investing in digital media and are looking for the game niches.“
Joerg - who started his career as a lawyer at Seyfarth, Fairweather & Geraldson in Chicago – first got in touch with venture capitalism as a strategic consultant when of his clients was a VC: „I found that really cool, since I like innovative entrepreneurs.“ Before joining DuMont Venture, he worked as Senior-Investment Manager at High Tech Gründerfonds.
Although he admits that he doesn’t answer all his e-mails, you can still write him to joerg.binnenbruecker@dumontventure.de and your e-mail will be forwarded to his secretary or to one of his four „brilliant investment managers“: „We’ll then put it in a dealflow access database and talk about it in a dealflow meeting“, promises Joerg. Still, if you want him to remember your face, it’s best to contact him at events or conferences. Only make sure to be really passionate ;)
More interviews from Start Up Camp Cologne will follow in the days to come
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