Congrats to Dominik for the great road show in the Valley. Here are some of the amazing results:
* Techcrunch coverage
* A presentation at Google
* GigaOm coverage
* A facebook group with 200 members (and growing)
This is awesome and this makes Wuala to probably one of the hottest Swiss Startups of the moment!
Congrats and keep pushing!
Tonight is my last night in San Francisco and I want to sum up my first trip to the Valley with a few selected pictures.
Yeah Baby ;-) – (if you want to read the text without having an idiot in front of it, click here)
Yeah Baby ;-) #2
Stanford – The most beautiful campus I have ever seen (this picture shows the "main quad" which was designed by the same landscape architect who designed Central Park in NY)
Have a good look at the Stanford logo – it says "Die Luft der Freiheit weht" ;-)
Very weird shoes which seem to be the latest trend in the Valley (even Reid Hoffman wears em, check the end of this video)
PS: For more details visit my Twitter page, I’ve been twittering every day :-)
PPS: All of these pictures were taken in Palo Alto – the clear highlight of my trip
An interesting panel with young web community founders moderated by Guy Kawasaki:
[flash]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3962105514239495106[/flash]
Panel participants:
Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls
Akash Garg of hi5
Drew Curtis of Fark
Markus Frind of PlentyofFish
Max Levchin of Slide
James Hong of HotorNot
Learnings:
#1: Do what you’re passionate about and have fun!
#2: Never surrender! But don’t forget to face reality.
#3: Forget MBA schools and all the case studies. Just get going and go for it!
#4: The team is important. Hire the right people. Hire evangelists. Hire customers!
#5: Drew Curtis (Fark) is a funny guy and definitely a good choice for a panel :-)
#6: Do intelligent marketing. Don’t throw money out the window for ineffective things! But don’t base your future on luck and coincidence. I’m convinced that marketing is still very important for every company.
#7: None of the participants have raised venture capital. Remember: The venture model is not the only model in the world!
Die Zürich-Expansion von Google ist ja mittlerweile ein alter Hut (wer schon immer mal bei Google arbeiten wollte, hat wohl jetzt seine grosse Chance).
Was mich aber viel mehr interessiert, ob das Hürlimann-Areal bzw. Zürich im allgemeinen nun zu einem Hightech-Hub – einem Schweizer Silicon Valley sozusagen – aufsteigt. Das Hürlimann-Areal, der Technopark und die ETH sind ja schon mal gute Voraussetzungen dafür. Wenn es jetzt noch mehr Technoparks in Zürich gäbe, würde ich die Initiative "Wir ziehen ins Schweizer Silicon Valley um" starten (auch wenn ich die Hoffnung noch nicht ganz aufgegeben habe, eines Tages in Basel den Grundstein für das Schweizer Silicon Valley zu legen :-).
Wie dem auch sei:
Hightech-Unternehmen aller Kantone, vereinigt Euch!
