interview with thomas r. koll about his photostre.am project

photostre.am is a portfolio service for photographers using flickr. recently i had the opportunity to interview the creator of photostre.am, thomas r. koll.

every photographer wanting to present her photo work without using technical skills while remaining on flickr at the same time is in the target audience. no double uploading necessary.

photostre.am is jumping right into a crowded market. competing with hosting one´s own website, using widely available templates, specialised services for photographers or with services form fluidr, viewbook, pullfolio, deviantart or alternative approaches like flickroom, using adobe air.

at the barcamp 2010 in vienna, i had the opportunity to sit together with thomas for a founders interview about his motivations behind the project. (photo by thomas r. koll, view his photostre.am here)

start.up: thomas, what´s motivating you to work on photostre.am?
thomas: to learn, that´s my top motivation. and the pleasure to interact with users of photostre.am.

start.up: what are the most difficult things working on photostre.am?
thomas: photostre.am is taking a lot of time and therefore competing with the "bread" jobs i have to do in order to make a living. being a one-man show, it is furthermore tricky to cover areas like interface design, which is an art by itself. finally to prioritize features is always a challenge.

start.up: how will you make money with your service?
thomas: through pro accounts and a white label b2b service. pro accounts will cost between 10 to 300 euros, depending on the features. compared with creating one´s own portfolio websites, that is rather valuable.

start.up: what would you recommend new startups, considering that you are already work on this project for around one and a half year?
thomas: first, make your to-do lists and prioritize in order to focus. secondly, choose your "bread" jobs - which finance your startup project - based on how much money you can earn on them.

start.up: finally, what´s the technical background, behind photostre.am?
thomas: i am using rails3, mongo db - which has nice horizontal scaling, two virtual servers - one for the app, one for the database and rackspace cloud.

start.up: thomas, thank you for the interview.

private vs. comany live and more, interview with flimmit, part 2

this is part 2 of the interview with the austrian film search and download portal flimmit. if you missed part 1, it´s worth checking out. read on how setting up a company affects the private life of founders and what the flimmit founders karin, walter and ulrich would recommend to founders of new startups.

how to handle private life vs. work? 

work is private life and private life is work for a start. there is no real private life when realising your dream. the business is with you at all times, after the office, in the evening, at night, during sport, when seeing the family – always. our secret is not to see it as a burden but as a thing one loves to do.

see an animation from the beginning of flimmit:



what does pitching mean for your company?

pitching is a chance to move on. it is the thing to get the message across. karin haager: “i hated it in the beginning, but i really love doing it now. it demands constant practice, practice, practice - the more the better. the most difficult for me was to do a pitch for training reasons in front of my own company colleagues, but it’s one of the best ways to get settled for the real thing.”

you have already left some tracks in your personal careers, e.g. karin and ulrich, you have been film producers for six years, working on 20 projects. walter is a helicopter pilot. now you are start.up founders. what`s next?


we have a bucket list of things we still want to realise in our lives. however, now it’s all about movies! and we are aiming to keep it that way for a while.

how do you handle working with those „big“ film industry guys which try to stay in business by suing their customers?


no fear from the “big guys”. if you got something good, take a chance. and flimmit’s offer is a good alternative and a chance even for the “big guys”. plus we don’t criminalise our customers.



what are the three most important things to gain visitors on your site?

billy wilder once said: “a good movie needs three things: a good book, a good book and a good book.” the thing flimmit needs is permanent seo, seo and seo (editors note: search engine optimization). on top of that strategic cooperations with websites and word of mouth and our site gets rolling.



anything else you would like to talk recommend new start.ups for the beginning?

gang on in there and believe in your dreams. find good friends that you can work with. and always keep your eyes and ears open and take other people’s advice. finally react quickly (editors note to market and costomer feedback) and just do it! 


interview with flimmit - the austrian film search and download startup

legal film downloads in europe are a mess. therefore film search is broken too. the austrian startup flimmit is out to fix that. not having one legal framework like in the u.s., the european "rights" marked for film is hyperfragmented. first steps for a common legal framework are only in their beginnings. therefore just to google a film one wants to watch is nearly pointless. because finding the film of choice on a u.k. video download portal will lead to nowhere, as they will not have the distribution rights for austria.

find another search example in the demo video from flimmit:




flimmit searches and finds, lets mention "legal" again, content. so does it work? searching for "lord of the rings" there is a full-size feedback. download and buying possibilities, best prices, reviews, trailers and more. same goes for more recent productions, like avatar. just the recommendations leave room for improvement.

what drives the three founders of flimmit, karin haager (cfo), walter huber (cto) and ulrich müller-uri (ceo) to fix the broken film search and download business? (founders photos © flimmit 2009, photographs by lisi navajas)

i tried to find that out in a recent interview with them. as with the interviews with andraz tori from zemanta or christoper clay from soup, it is split up in two parts. read on the find out more on the startup in this part 1, on how to gain traffic and more in the upcoming part 2. so lets jump right into the interview:

tell me about the (three) most exiting things about starting up your company?

starting a new business is all about making your own ideas come to life. an innovation that first pops up in your head and then materialises into ones own company is a great for oneself and the self esteem. to inspire people with your idea and see the results when finally the thing gets going is important as well. 
 


what about the (three) most unfortunate things about starting up?
 

constant worries about financing and a possible lack of money are tough on the way to success. that leads to sleepless nights. what really got us up in sheer shock was the up and then arising fear that the innovation we have brought to the market is not unique anymore – that someone else has just done the same thing.


what are your lessons learned until now about tech/people/market/sales (choose what you prefer)?


people: it takes ages to find the right people to work with and it is a tough task to have them stay with you, above all due to lack of funds in the start up phase.
market: we have learned that customers / users never do anything because of good will. they want a benefit when using your product or service.
sales: the most important lesson learned for us: never trust sales forecasts!


when you hear the words "exit" and "shut down", what comes to your mind?


the term “exit” mostly appears in a conversation with possible financers. we do not yet think about an “exit” so far but we can talk about that in a few years time.
shut down means disaster, a sheer horror scenario. on the other hand when founding your own business you always have to calculate with a possible shut down. but isn’t that the essence of a start up: to always have the motivation to go that one step further?

to find out how the founders handle private vs. company life and more, read on in the upcoming part 2 of the interview.

interview with christoper clay of soup.io, part 2

Image via CrunchBase

this the 2nd part of the interview with christopher clay.f ounder of soup.io. where christopher sees the need for new start.ups and if austria is a good location to start are in the center of part 2. if you missed the 1st part of the interview, look here.

christopher, which areas do you find most in need for new start.ups?
translations services are in need. translation is annoying us right now, the work flow of translating takes a lot of time. that´s a problem of all european [internet] start.ups. it is an opportunity for a start.up if you can double your market with being available on more markets, it is worth money for them. however, i do not want to say too much right now on that.
actually good opportunities are found by doing your first start.up. you itch on a certain problem, you feel the pain and then you can go after it.

you have successfully won yeurope and seedcamp and those investors are now holding 43.3% of the company. what can start.ups expect from such incubators, what not?
their main idea is that they give you just enough money to work on your product for three month without having to worry about living expenses. it makes a difference if can do a project in your spare time or just focus on it.
with seedcamp it was more about introductions. at seedcamp week we got to talk so many people. industry icons like the founders of bebo, photolog, last.fm, mysql and skype. venture capitalists like holtzbrinck or accel ventures of which you normally you would not even get a meeting with. seedcamp was putting you in front of all this people with initial credibility. seedcamp funds project further along then yeurope. it is like a compressed version of silicon valley in one week.

also there is the network of relations you build up. although you meet 100 people in one week and you can not remember all of them, you clearly can get in touch with them afterwards. if i would have a new idea, i could call to get some feedback.

what you do not get is solutions and answers. you get contacts, inspiration, what worked for others and feedback. but nobody will tell you what will work for you, no one will tell you how to get rich. it does not work like this. no one knows your product like you do.

soup.io is working in a crowded space. which three things did you do, to position yourself to become a seedcamp finalist?
at soup we want to give average people their space online. other then sites likes friendfeed, it is the user which is in front, not friendfeed. it is the one place you can put on your business card.

you spend a lot of time in uk and u.s./bay area. what´s your thoughts on start.ups in austria vs. europe vs. us?
austrians mainly did not understand what we did, which is probably why we did not find investment here. london was much more open to new ideas, and not just wanting to copy what was successful elsewhere [like germany].

in the u.s. it is just a hugely different scale. in silicon valley there are events where hundreds of people working on start.ups meet every day. so while the spirit is similar to london, the scale is still a difference.
people in the u.s. did not stop to believe in start.ups while in europe it got even worse. in the u.s. they see the cheap valuations of start.ups as opportunity.

what are your 3 recommendations for new upcoming founders?
first thing is to select your idea to found a start.up on a clear understanding on how to earn money. secondly apply to start.up competitions like seedcamp if you are in europe.
and finally, like already mentioned choose your location wisely.

stay tuned for more interviews with innovative start.ups, right here, on the start.upICT blog.

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interview with christopher clay, founder of "soup"

Image via CrunchBase

time was running fast, when talking with christoper clay of "soup". soup is a "tumblelog, a super-easy blog that can do more than just text: post links, quotes, videos, audio, files, reviews and events.". try it out here or just have a look what is going on at soup. winning seedcamp in 2008, working in vienna, london and san francisco, there was a lot to talk about the daily life of the young austrian start.up

this is the second interview in a series with creative new start.ups, after an interesting discussion with andraz tori, founder and cto of zemanta.

christoper, tell me about the (three) most exciting things about start.ing up your company?
first it is all about the places we have been. from berlin to cologne, living for three months in london and just coming back from working for three weeks in san francisco. talking to people, pitching to them all around the world, that‘s been great.

second exiting thing is all the feedback we got. we have 20.000 active users now from all over the world. just scrolling through our feedback tumbelog is simply amazing.

third exciting thing is being your own boss. that is hard. the most important decision is to focus on what to do next. it is fun to learn from your mistakes - and we learned a lot over the last year.

what about the (three) most unfortunate things about start.ing up?
first hard thing is personal. i started the company with two co-founders - none of them is working any more with me. i would not start a start.up again, without having worked intensively with potential co-founders before. so that was very stressful to go through. however, we are three in the team again.

second is the roller-coaster live. there are really bad phases. one day everything works right and you are convinced that soon you are going really big. the next day you are depressed and think that is never going to work and facebook is going to kill us. it is stressful but exciting. therefore you need a good team which motivates each other. i would not be able to do this alone.

starting up in vienna in the hindsight is the third unfortunate thing. the decision to start here was right at the time. but the chances to get investments in the united states would be much higher. unfortunately it is hard to move to the u.s. . for example getting working visa without having founded a viable company in the us is tricky.

what are your lessons learned until now about starting.up?
number one, carefully preselect your co-founders. e.g. by working on a three month non-profit project with them before founding a company together.
number two, not found in vienna again, but in berlin, london or san francisco. because funding is much more easier there.
product wise, number three, i would focus stronger on the build in viral aspects of soup.io. they should have them in place from the beginning, rather then relying on the initial users we got mainly from friends at metalab. then we would be already ten times as big as we are now.

and number four: never give up. for example seedcamp. we got rejected in the first round (when zemanta won), because the did not understand what we did. we still went to the next mini seedcamp in berlin, explained personally what we did to saul klein und reshma sohoni and they proposed us to try again. and well, we succeeded the second time.

when you hear the words "exit" and "shut down", what comes to your mind?
the good and the bad, the two outcomes. either we are in san francisco, have hundreds of thousands of users and funding or we are back in vienna, broke and start something new.
the possibility of failure is very real, statistically most start.ups fail. but we are giving our best and try to make an exit one day.
although losing soup.io would feel horrible. we can not let our users down, so even if it would not work out, we will keep it running.

final question of part 1: how do handle private life vs. work?
probably i have not learned this yet. for me, the start.up comes first. like moving to san francisco and leaving people behind is hard but i would do it. so i am rather unbalanced on this yet. i want to be sure i tried everything for it.
what i learned was to manage my own expectation. when i am too tired some times and therefore have a none productive day, i know now that´s ok. that takes pressure away from oneself.

this was the first part of the interview with christoper clay of soup. where he sees the need for new start.ups and more, read in the upcoming part two.

interview with Andraž Tori of zemanta: part 2/2

this is the second part of the interview with Andraž Tori of zemanta. the first part can be found here.

Andraž, what does seedcamp and pitching mean for your company?

pitching is a fabulous experience of explaining your idea and trying to inspire other people. pitching is one of the best things, when you have a start.up.

seedcamp was a great experience, because it gives start.ups a chance. that's very important for early stage start.ups. having the possibility to present your idea to somebody that matters can help you to move your idea forward.

seedcamp was a very fortunate event as the timing was exactly right for us. this is the part of the start.up life that you can not plan for. you need to work hard as hell, but at the end you also need to have a bit of luck.

you have already left some tracks in your personal career, informatics olympiad medal winner, co-founder, open source developer and now zemanta. what`s next?

well [laughing], i do like to do cool stuff that interests me, that helps people and has some impact on the world. that's what i am going to do for a long time. but first and foremost we have to make zemanta a big success.

bostjan spetic and your are the founders of zemanta. ales septic, the ceo of your company was not among the founders. how was it to have a non-founder becoming the ceo?
it is an interesting experience. we already worked with ales before and we rely on the good sides of everybody in the team. handing over control was not really a big topic, as we were always running the company very consensually. there is always disagreement about certain topics but it is important to find a proper consensus and then honour the decisions.

semantic technologies are hard to tackle. how do you trade between a very domain specific vs. a more generic approach for your product?
we started with a very generic approach from the beginning. it is just now that we start to add specific things that are required for special areas of application. that is not the usual thinking but that helped us.

anything else you would like to talk recommend new start.ups for the beginning?
be very clear from the beginning of what kind of value you provide and to whom.

the other thing is, just do it. it is not perfect in the first iteration ever. just put something out, see what others say and how they use it. learn on that and create a new thing. it is not a bad thing to be wrong sometimes. then go ahead and improve – you sometimes fail and you just improve again.
that is probably what we haven't still completely consumed from the silicon valley type of entrepreneurship [in Europe]. failing is just part of succeeding. failure is still a failure but it is not the end of the world. it is as good experience to learn and do it better next time.

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interview with Andraž Tori of zemanta: part 1/2

inspired by jessica livingston´s highly recommended book, founders at work, interviews with local start.ups will become part of the regular start.up blog entries. the interviews will be split up in two parts. while the first will focus on general start.up topics, the second will look deeper into the company in focus.

the first company in line is zemanta. founded by Andraž Tori and Boštjan Špetič, zemata provides an intelligent blog extension which automatically generates context sensitive proposals for pictures, links & tags. their firefox plug in can be downloaded here. a live demo can be tried here. winning seedcamp brought zemanta wide media attention as well as reputable vc funding. the interview took place at this year's web2.0expo berlin with Andraž Tori.

Andraž, tell me about the (three) most exciting things about start.ing up your company?
first it was really exciting to see that we had something not many people in the world were doing. the second great thing was winning seedcamp. this was a big achievement, since there are not many start.ups in slovenia.
finally it is great to do stuff that usually can only be done in silicon valley. to do something which is really for the whole world and to see that we here in europe are on the same level [as silicon valley]. that is exciting.

what about the most unfortunate things about start.ing up?
we did not have any big misfortunes. there were hard bits, like getting calls in the middle of the night, when the service [of zemanta] went down and not getting to sleep all the night fixing stuff.

on the business side there are long negotiations about funding. you are of course not happy with all the conditions you get.

there are times when it is hard and tiresome. it is exciting, but not just fun.

what are your lessons learned until now about technology?
prepare to re-do things. you will create solutions to problems, learn that you misjudged things and rebuild. and you have to listen to other people. the collective intelligence of people is always better then a single mind. one has to be persisted and stubborn, but just in the right amount.

when you hear the words "exit" and "shut down", what comes to your mind?
that's t the life of a start.up.

how do handle private life vs. work?
i put a lot of myself in zemanta, but i enjoy it. you have to observe and listen to yourself. when you are over-investing yourself just step back a little. sometimes you have to push to the maximum, but you can not always work in that mode.

this was the fist part of the interview with Andraž Tori. stay tuned for the 2nd part, where a closer look on zemanta will be taken.

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