barcamp innsbruck 2009 & 25 start.up competitions now on the start.upICT finance mindmap

barcamp innsbruck april 2009 is happening this weekend (25.-26. April 2009 ) in tyrol (AT) and i am glad to join. i propose to discuss the topic of start.up competitions. any inputs are welcome.

in preparation of the upcoming barcamp , the start.up finance mindmap has gained plenty of updates on the area of start.up competitions: there are 25 now on display.

furthermore the interviews with andraz tori and christoper clay as well as the series "six steps to venture capital" can now also be found in the ever growing topic map of the start.upICT blog.

the popular finance mindmap as well as the topic map can now be accessed directly through the top links on the right of the blog in the "START.UP FINDER" section.

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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