Over the last few months I had not much time for The Silicon Road. Firstly, I was completely absorbed with work end of 2009. Afterwards, I had a great opportunity to travel several countries until I arrived at my destination, the South-East Asian city state Singapore. During the last four months, I again learned a lot at our company, I met entrepreneurs and great people along my travel, and surely I am starting to explore the start-up cluster here in Singapore. Let’s take one thing at a time.
Time did not stand still
After a hard time in the first half of 2009, we experienced that the economy and corporate investments in software picked up again after summer. Sales cycles seemed to become shorter and old ‘pre-crisis’ leads could be re-activated. This trend continued towards end of 2009 and we were happy to see several large companies going live. Hence, we had a great, busy start into 2010.
No need to say that time did not stand still for other start-ups either. I was happy to see several ventures raising funds, launching products or simply being successful and taking off. I hope this will continue in 2010 along with global economic growth.
Amazing Travel
The year 2010 began personally with an amazing travel experience. The highlight of my trip was definitely my trip to Iran. There were so many breath-taking moments, which I surely will not forget: I met liberal, conservative, and religious people. I spend hours looking at the beautiful cultural heritage in Persepolis, Isfahan and Shiraz. Travelling to Teheran, I passed the internationally discussed nuclear power plants (not taking pictures). I had inspiring talks with young and elder Iranians about their history and their future. Have a look at my blog posts here (in German).
Singaporean Entrepreneurs
I arrived here a month ago. So far, I have met several promising ventures (also thanks to Sandbox). I will keep an eye on the Singaporean start-up cluster for sure and keep you posted with interesting insights.
I hope, my offline time is over as far as this blog is concerned. If you have any suggestions for posts, please send me an email.
Today morning I visited Wuala for coffee. The company, which is well-known for its online storage service and which was acquired by LaCie early this year, has reason to celebrate. The first reason (and presumably the more important one) is the fact that more than 100 million files are now stored with Wuala technology in the “cloud”. In addition to that, they relocated to new offices downtown Zurich.
Congratulations, Wuala, on 100 million files and on a new office!
We also moved offices this week. Luckily, we only moved one floor downstairs (this is our incubator). Still, it is always a disruptive moment for the team – packing, throwing things away and seeing the place you’ve spent so many hours totally empty; at the same time it is exciting to move in at the new place, with more or less a clean desk. Besides this and the view from your window not much changes for a web start-up. Your computer is still the same. Everything should be running the same way. Moving offices is a good moment to move on and to implement new processes, new structures and new habits. This is just psychology, this is how we act.
Wuala is doing really good, as far as I can assess. It was a nice coffee break this morning. Thanks for having me and I hope you enjoyed the Grittibänz. Have fun working in this spacious, great office. We’re staying tuned what interesting products you’ve got in your pipeline!
Yesterday’s Sunday press summarized latest statistics about the mobile and web market in Switzerland. I thought this is quite good information and worth to be translated in English. If you need in depth information about statistics from Switzerland check out these source:
The Europas are the TechCrunch Europe Awards for technology companies. TechCrunch is one of the most famous tech and start-up blogs and therefore a great platform to present your own company. Being nominated for the Europas is even a bigger achievement.
The Awards Night will be held on July 9th in London. 400 start-ups from Europe and EMEA were voted on by users and 19 experts. Among the 400 entrants, there were several Swiss startups, namely Amazee, Doodle, NewsCred, RouteRank, Poken, Wuala, Zattoo and Kooaba as well as the Swiss Venture Fund Index Ventures and three start-ups with Swiss co-founders, precisely Amiando, Busuu, Kyte.
I was very happy to see now some many of these companies still in the running after the vote. They are represented in 6 out of 14 categories. Being among the top five and therefore nominated for the Europas is a fantastic accomplishment. Congratulations!
This was the Keynote speech at Lift France 09 by Gunter Pauli. The title of his speech was “Changing the Planet”. He’s some inspiring thoughts about entrepreneurship, sustainability, and market insufficiencies. Read full story »
Does someone know the following people personally? This my personal wish list of people, who I would like to meet once in my lifetime. I know, I know, I am dreaming. Since these meetings are unlikely to happen, I also present you some questions, I would like to ask them. Read full story »
His speech is over. He’s proud. What a great chance to pitch his new start-up in front of all these people. His elevator pitch was the last one of this session. All guests leave the sticky room quickly. Outside, selected drinks are offered. Food is set on several smaller tables throughout the room. Business angels, journalists, and businessmen wander about the area; drink in one hand, trying out delectable nibbles with the other. He gets a glass of white wine and approaches a group of gray-haired men. As he joins the group and politely greets them, the man standing opposite to him says: “Ah, you did the last presentation, right? Good speech! Your company name sounds funny… hyzloo. So, tell me, what do you do again? ” Read full story »
Starting a venture is like having a baby: it gets very frightening as soon as you realize that you’ve taken over responsibility for something you’ve never had before. Will I be a good father? What if the baby gets sick? How do I know that it’s sick? How do you do this? Do that? Am I gonna kill it like the hamster I had? … omg, will I be a good father?
If you’re asking these questions as a father-to-be, I suppose it’s too late to pull back. As an entrepreneur-to-be your live is still a bit more maneuverable. Last Friday, I had the pleasure to speak in front of a group of exchange students about entrepreneurship and our company Cassiber. Nextech Venture, a venture fund in early-stage healthcare, and Télésonique, a Swiss telecommunication operator, presented as well. During the Q&A sessions and the subsequent panel discussion, the students’ questions remembered me of the time when we started.
I’ve put together a list of useful links and advices you might find interesting.
What is your business idea? What was your reaction to it, when you had your idea? Was it “Heureka! Halleluia! Wow, why has nobody else thought of this before?” Or was it “I think if we do it this way, it might add additional benefit to our potential customers.” The more you force yourself to find a business idea, the higher the chance you will fail. What is a good business idea? A new business model? A new way of doing something cheaper than competitors? A new rocket-science technology to search the internet? I guess they all might be… or might not. Read full story »
We’ve had this discussion several times at different occasions. GigaOM recently asked the same question in one of his blog posts. Instead of asking, which city in Europe could possibly become as important as San Francisco for technology and entrepreneurship, I think the question is more IF it’s possible at all (in Europe). You’ll find a lot of start-ups in Berlin, London, Paris, Zurich, Tallinn, et cetera. However, no market is big enough to allow such a concentration of entrepreneurs as there is in SF. Each country will have its small start-up clusters. The bigger the country the bigger its cluster will be. But is there a potential for a handful of large specialized clusters in Europe? Read full story »
