So I’m in Cannes now. Its quite beautiful here:
According to the current issue of the Red Herring, there are 7 Swiss companies among the Red Herring 100:
Asset4
High Power Lithium
Intelligent Medical Implants
Innovative Silicon
Plazes
SpinX Technologies
Zattoo
Contratulations to you guys!
(on the left: Qype & Plazes, on the right: Where are you now? [pretty cool company I have never heard of])
I’ll keep you posted…
Swiss top-networker and top-entrepreneur/investor Nicolas Berg started his first blog two days ago (as he mentioned at his BlogCamp speech). It was quite hard to find out his url, but here it is: http://nicoberg.wordpress.com
Welcome to the blogosphere, Nicolas!
Announcement at BlogCamp Switzerland: Another member of the Swiss Federal Council, Christoph Blogger, started blogging today! Moritz must be mad…
The BlogCamp Switzerland is now sold out. We have 200 participating bloggers. Wow!
Remember:
#1: Please delete your registration if you’re not going to make it.
#2: We’re expecting that 10-30% of the registered bloggers will not show up, so there’s a good chance we will let you in, even if you’re not among the first 200 registrants.
#3: Please subscribe to our BlogCamp-Newsletter if you want us to keep you posted.
And if Moritz doesn’t show up, we now know why :-)
( © Chappatte in "NZZ am Sonntag", 18.3.2007)
With HOMEPAQ there is a new player in the media trading market which competes with Exsila, Hitflip et al. The media trading service is part of a software and web-service bundle called HOMEPAQ. The goal of HOMEPAQ is to help people organize stuff at home, such as recipes, books or dvds.
The value of HOMEPAQ is not straightforward. There are a gazillion of features and it’s very hard to get an overview of the value proposition. I needed a 30 min personal pitch of Paul Ryatt to "get it" all. There is definitely a lot of potential to make the whole thing easier to understand. The most interesting thing about HOMEPAQ is the integration of local software and internal and external web-services. Example: You use the local software to organize your book inventory at home (the software uses Amazon API, so you won’t have to put in all data manually). You find 10 books that you don’t want to keep anymore. So you export those books to the media trading service and get new ones (or dvds or cds) in return. The new items are automatically added to your local inventory, so you always have a complete overview.
The main question I asked myself is why to use local software at all (because I hate the unflexibility). My reasoning was: "We’re living in the web-service era, so local software doesn’t make sense anymore". And I’m still not 100% convinced that local software is the way to go for HOMEPAQ. What made change my mind a little was the issue of security and privacy. What if I could organize my financial data with HOMEPAQ? Would I want to do that through a web-service? I don’t know. What I know is that with services like Wesabe people are apparently doing so already.
On Sunday, we had our last personal staff meeting. There are some good news:
#1: Hurray, we don’t have to pay any money out of our own pockets. Thanks to namics, XING and the Hasler Stiftung we will reach break even regarding our fix costs (rooms & food/drinks).
#2: There are 187 participants right now. If you want to get one of the 13 last slots, hurry up
#3: If you’re on the list and you already know you will not be able to make it, please delete your registration
#4: Already 18 participating bloggers will talk. Therefore I deleted my placeholding slot. Not the organizers should talk – YOU should! But remember to come early. You’re self-responsible for your presentation-slot (the offline pinboard is all that matters). The rule is: First come, first served.
#5: We try to get Moritz on board. We thing some peer pressure would help: So please send him your personal invitation through email (address on the bottom of the page)
I’m looking forward to Saturday! It will be fun! And if Moritz shows up, it will be a legendary event :-).
I am very happy that I was invited to the Red Herring Venture Market Europe 100 Event in Cannes. I’ll be blogging about cool startups and I hope to meet a lot of you guys.
Did I mention that I love EasyJet and EasyJetHotels? Thanks to these services these 3 beautiful days in Cannes will cost me less than 150 EUR (including flight & 3 nights). I hate it to throw money out of the window on airplanes and hotels.
Hope to see you in Cannes!
I fell in love with Kiva. Actually I think its one of the sexiest projects on the Web right now, along with Wikipedia et al.
Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.
http://www.kiva.org/about
I first heard about Kiva over at Stefan some while ago. And a few weeks ago I granted my first two $25 loans to two Mexican entrepreneurs.
Cool things about Kiva:
- The repayment rate is 95%, i.e. the lended money can be used over and over again
- Absolute transparency with fotos and journals
- Already over $3 Mio lended
More Links:
- Interview with Kiva’s President Premal Shah
- Stefan about his first investments
- Documentary about Kiva
- Article about Social Entrepreneurship of Adrian Locher
Yesterday, a member of the Swiss Federal Council, Moritz Leuenberger, started blogging.
According to his second posting of today he seems to enjoy it. He refers to the so far 404 comments of yesterday (e.g. he is not offended by those that tried to teach him a blogging lesson and addressed him on first-name terms). He also inserted some funny anecdotes with train passengers.
The only thing I don’t understand is why he uses blueblog.ch and didn’t include the blog on his personal website.
Anyway: Good luck with your blog and congrats to the jump start, Moritz :-).
Caleido AG is offering an interesting internship concerning their Kangoo project.
Wolltest du schon immer die chaotische Atmosphäre eines Start-ups hautnah miterleben und an einem innovativen Projekt arbeiten? Wir suchen gute Praktikanten, die uns bei der Entwicklung unseres verteilten Datenspeichers Kangoo helfen wollen. Die möglichen Einsatzbereiche sind divers und reichen von der Programmierung der P2P Client Software in Java über die Entwicklung und Verbesserung einer Suchmaschine, der Programmierung und Skalierung von Servern bis hin zum User Interface, Webentwicklung und der Anpassung des Clients für Mac und Linux.
Interessiert? Weitere Infos findest du unter www.caleido.com/kangoo
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