Posted in March 2007 …

Mar 31 2007
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Entrepreneurship, Videos

Felix Petersen presents Plazes.com

Felix Petersen is a founder of Plazes, a Zurich/Berlin based company which provides geo-location services. Felix agreed that I record his presentation at Red Herring 100 in Cannes:

Link: sevenload.com

Plazes has raised €2.7 mio early this year and is growing very fast. A cool thing about Plazes is that they want to digitize walk-in customers in offline settings and create what Felix calls the "PageRank of the real world". E.g. you can see how many people went to a certain restaurant or checked-in in a certain hotel. This opens cool opportunities for behaviorial targeting or related stuff.

More links:
Techcrunch coverage
Alarm Clock coverage
Peter Schüpbach’s coverage (he’s an investor)

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Mar 31 2007
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Entrepreneurship, Videos

Sugih Jamin presents Zattoo.com

Prof. Dr. Sugih Jamin is co-founder and CTO of the Swiss/American startup Zattoo, which offers free live-television via Internet. He agreed that I record his Red Herring 100 presentation in Cannes:

Link: sevenload.com

I had lunch with Sugih and learned several things:
- Zattoo launched in Switzerland because of the cheap licencing costs and the good coverage of the major Swiss TV-stations
- Zattoo has over 250’000 users only in Switzerland
- Zattoo started as a students-project of one of Jamin’s students
- Development is based in the US; business/marketing is based in Zurich
- The synchronization issues should be fixed soon (the cause of the problem was that Zattoo stopped using QuickTime for synchronization due to realiability issues)
- Zattoo will generate revenue with advertising that is displayed when a new channel is buffering (that takes about 5 seconds)

More Links:
Alarm Clock Euro June 2006
Alarm Clock Euro March 2007

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Mar 28 2007
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Entrepreneurship, Videos

Rodrigo Sepulveda presents Vpod.tv

http://vpod.tv/loiclemeur/153854/flash/nVideoPlayer

(via Loïc Le Meur)

More to come… (I’ve shot some, too)

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Mar 28 2007
5 Comments
Entrepreneurship, Switzerland

Please don’t close Red Herring offices in Zurich!

Yesterday evening I heard rumors that Red Herring International wants to close down the European offices at Technopark in Zurich.

Alex, please don’t do that!

Some Reasons:
#1: Farley Duvall is doing a great job there
#2: There were 7 Swiss companies among this years Red Herring 100.
#3: There is a good reason why Google is investing a lot of resources in Zurich
#4: Switzerland is a good test market for expanding Red Herring 100 companies
#5: Entrepreneurship is getting rapidly more popular in Switzerland because of initiatives like venturelab (a great partner for Red Herring)
#6: We’re going to organize a regular Red Herring roundtable for Swiss entrepreneurs in Zurich (some Swiss entrepreneurs, Farley and Elizabeth had the idea yesterday evening)

I’m sure there are another GOOD reasons to not close down this office!

Alex, please think about it!

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Mar 28 2007
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Entrepreneurship

Impressions from Cannes


(Sleeping concierge at the hotel late last night. I hope he won’t get fired because of this posting ;-) [PS: It WASN'T at the Carlton Hotel, of course]


(What a wonderful morning –> Remo is really happy :-)


(This beach is AWESOME, and its RIGHT in the city!)

Good thing I have another 6 hours so spend at the beach before I leave to cold Switzerland.

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Mar 26 2007
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Entrepreneurship

Tips from Giles McNamee for raising money

At lunch I sat next to Giles McNamee, co-founder of McNamee Lawrence & Co, an investment banking firm based in Boston, London and San Francisco.

His tips included:
#1: Only work with people you like and trust. NEVER do a deal with people you don’t like or don’t trust.
#2: When you doing a VC-round, be prepared to give up 20-40% of the company. Given that, maximize the money you get. It’s always better to get $10 mio for 30% of your company than $1 mio.
#3: Hire a good lawyer for the paper work. Make sure the lawyer has done this before.
#4: There are at least 10 parameters to consider. The amount of money is only one parameter. Make sure you also think about all the other parameters. Be prepared for a complex negotiation.
#5: Angel/friends/fools money is a lot easier to raise than VC-money. If you need money quickly, do an angel round.
#6: Do your due diligence on your investors. Call the CEOs of their portfolio companies, call other references, find out how they work.

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Mar 26 2007
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Entrepreneurship

Exsila introduces book-trading

Quick news:
Exsila has just introduced book-trading

The recently launched music category has now over 9000 different cds (whereas there are 9500 films).

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Mar 26 2007
2 Comments
Entrepreneurship

Red Herring 100: Babelgum – Competing with Joost

Very interesting company with a very cool name. I like the bubblegum thing :-).

My notes:
- Silvio Scaglia invested $13 Mio of his own money
- The burn rate is 30-40 Mio EUR per year
- Silvio Scaglia wants to generate 100 Mio EUR in revenues within maybe 3 years
- Silvio Scaglia says he is NOT competing with Joost right now: "You first have to build the pie before you can cut it. Right now we are building the pie. We build a whole new industry. So we’re rather working together with Joost than competing right now."
- Babelgum guarantees a CPM of 5 EUR for content owners.
- Babelgum has 40 employees now
- Babelgum will focus on professional content (no user generated content)

The service is in closed beta now.

Links:
Babelgum blog
Babelgum-Posting of Peter Schüpbach

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Mar 26 2007
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Entrepreneurship

Red Herring 100: Blyk – Free Mobile Phone Calls

Pekka Ala-Pietilä is now talking about his company Blyk:

Blyk is a pan-European free mobile operator for young people, funded by advertising. We’re launching first in the UK market in mid-2007, with other markets to follow.

Blyk wants to be profitable within 24 months. More information in the Blyk Blog.

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Mar 26 2007
4 Comments
Entrepreneurship

Red Herring 100: Am I the only “official” Blogger?

It’s kinda cool to be an official (and only) "Technology Blogger" on the attendee list :-)

But I’m definitely not the only blogger here:
Paul is a (live-)blogging VC
ink Communications is blogging
Lars Trieloff
Peter Schüpbach announced to live-blog, too

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