6 minutes to tell your story: demo08

again, demo2008, a launchpad for new high tech start.ups in the u.s. is running.
the idea of demo is, that around 70 start.ups unveil their companies in front of broad a venture and press audience. everyone gets around 6 minutes on the stage to tell their message.
besides all the press-fuzz, attending demo does not at all guarantee you bringing home plenty of vc money and it´s pricy.

however, there is a great thing about demo for every start.up.
all the pitches can be followed live (no firefox on windows though) or offline. that gives plenty of examples, how others present their company. something you normally would not get a chance to, because that happens in the closed offices of VCs.
there are good and bad examples, sure. but what a resource to learn to focus. to bring across the message in 6 minutes, how to present and make anyone want know more about you and your start.up.

for anyone who likes to search the archives, system one, an outstanding austrian high tech start.up, was there in 2006.

social entrepreneurship

enjoy the barcamp vienna january 2008 presentation on "social entrepreneurship".
please note that thanks to valerie there are now even more interesting books in the link list.

| View | Upload your own

barcamp vienna 01/2008 1st round up

barcamp vienna was a great experience again. werkzeugH was full of people, there were three parallel tracks running all through the day. meaning you always were missing at least on interesting session.

fatfogoo, recently successfully funded austrian start.up, showed how they use up to date "web 2.0" marketing to reach out with their idea of an traiding platform for virtual (game) items.

max kossatz´ hack for a better blog search gave the audience quite a bit to think. and his statement that to make a search engine like google is nothing special after all was brought forward with strong confidence.

the track about "social entrepreneurs" enjoyed quite an audience. thanks to the quite controversial standpoints of valerie hackl an me, there was a vibrant discussion going on.

the track "gläserner mensch dank social media" (transparent humans thanks to social media), of jana herwig, revealed the potential burden of everyones´s internet history and the need for a thoughtful use of social media. this stands for those who publish as well as for those which use data from the internet to "judge" about someone.

the discussion with paul böhm on "startup financing" was drawing a not too optimistic picture of funding possibilities for web start.ups in austria. thanks to fatfoogoo, interesting insights of a recently venture funded start.up were shared among the audience.

that one of the founding members of netvibes cames from austria, namely "capitan" alexander kirk came as interesting news to me. making the audience some appetite for the upcoming release ginger of netvibes, without handing out invites for the beta though. they are running their service on just around 40 servers. that´s a challenge.

thatmuch the brief roundup of the sessions i could attend full-time. interesting discussions all along the way were the "salt" in the already tasty "soup de barcamp vienna".

a big "thanks" to the sponsors and the organizers for their efforts and support!

"social entrepreneurs" session linklist: barcamp vienna 01/08

this is the linklist for the barcamp track "social entrepreneurs" of valerie hackl and hannes a. schwetz.
the presentation will be online soon.

General
Wikipedia-Social entrepreneurship
The next step for microcredit, Interview with Muhammad Yununs

Podcasts
Inbusiness-BBC-Peter Day, Not just for profit
Social Enterprise Coalition

Examples
Kiva-Small change, Big Payoff
Social money lending service Techcrunch Artikle
Mondragon Cooperative: Wikipedia, Brandeins

Income distribution
Longterm Trends Income Distribution in Austria - Update - Wifo

Blogs
Social return on investment
Social Entrepreneur
Guy Kawasaki
Private Sector Development Blog
Social Edge Blog

Social Entrepreneurship Platforms

Schwab Foundation
Ashoka
Ashoka Germany
Social Edge (von Skoll Foundation)
Skoll Foundation

Conferences
Skoll World Forum
"Doing good doing well" by IESE Business School Barcelona
Social Enterprise Conference by Harvard Business School
Annual General Assembly and Conference by European Foundation Centre (EFC) on 29-31 May

Social Venture Funds
Bonventure

Books
"Finanzierung von Sozialunternehmen" von Ann-Kristin Achleitner, Reinhard Pöllath, und Erwin Stahl von Schäffer-Poeschel
"Ökonomie für den Menschen" von Amartya Sen
"Globalization and Its Discontents" von Joseph E. Stiglitz
[UPDATE 29.01.2008]
"Die Welt verändern" von David Bornstein
" Social Entrepreneurship" von Johanna Mair et al.
" Social Entrepreneurship" von Alex Nicholls

barcamp vienna 26.01.08 coming

i am looking forward to the upcoming barcamp vienna 01/08. together with valerie hackl i will propose to discuss "social entrepreneurship". located again at the wergzeugH i do expect a creative open atmosphere.

ray ozzie´s two start.ups documents

jessica livingstones´ interview of ray ozzie shows how two documents can be essential for start.ups.

the complete interview with ray ozzie is part of the book "founders at work". this highly recommended reading shows what for more or less successful founders worked and what did not.
ray ozzie got famous for his lotus notes history. he had numerous moderately successful start.ups with groove being the last one. after groove got acquired by microsoft he became microsoft´ chief software architect.

so how does ray ozzi starts his companies? he sits down an writes two documents:

founding document 1: outside view
describe the challenges/problems solved for the end user.

founding document 2: inside view
describe on a technical basis how to solve scenarios described in document 1

this approach gives founders a structured way to organize their thoughts. without being afraid of having to write an "executive summary" or even a "business plan".
having done that, he collects the core team of people he already worked together. to do that, the above docs show their first payback. future team members get the main start.up idea and can decide fast, if they are interested to join in or not.
he get’s a big open office and a whiteboard. together with the team he works out the technical details on how to solve the challenges, the toolchain, languages used, architecture. then the coding starts.

p.s.: looks like the business guys are left out for quite a while.