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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ready to compete? seedcamp laibach application deadline 27th of april

there is a mini seedcamp coming up in laibach(slovinea). while the actual competition takes place on thursday the 14th of may 09, the application deadline is approaching fast: midnight on the 27th of april. apply right here.

although there is an expressed regional focus on southern europe, this is a rather nearby place for austrian start.ups to compete and certainly an opportunity not to be missed.

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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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how to turn-off investors and what business plans & sausages have in common: best of web2.0 expo belin 2008

the second incarnation of o‘ reillys web2.0 conference took place at the bcc - well placed at the center of berlin, next to alexanderplatz.

the new location was a welcomed change to last years 60ies-bunker style berliner messe facilites like a „community lounge“ promoted interaction between attendees and with last year‘s food problems solved people were happy to focus on the topics at hand.

besides the „big pictures“ keynotes for tim o‘ reilly, john lily (mozilla), martin varsavsky (fon) et al., the show brought a wide range of in depth topics , ranging from business to marketing and design to development.

the collective presentations of the show can be found on slideshare, respectively on the conference website . going through the (until now) uploaded 42 presentations on slideshare is too much noise, so let‘s setup up best of the show. start with the five best events of the show:

1) pitch camp
pitch camp was a driving event. 12 companies were selected to pitch for two minutes each, in front of a 200+ crowd and a grand jury (ranging from techcrunch and venturebeart to accel and index ventures, see here).

the short intro giving on the art of pitching can be reduced to 3 points:
1) clear view of business
this is necessary to be able to communicate the start.up (business objectives, market segments, problems solved)
2) understand your audience and what they care about
who are they, what do they want, why would they care about you.
3) build 3 month, 9-12 mont and long term business objective

there were book recommendations as well, crossing the chasm (again!) & blue ocean strategy, chan kim, renee mauborgne, understand the problems of your market.

also interesting to note were comments by the jury what turns them OFF, when the listen to pitches.

investors

• lack of ambition displayed
• lack of character and leadership
• homework not done (not knowing the background of people start.ups pitch to, not done the business metrics, not having market figures, competitor ignorance, lack of execution plan, ...)
• lack of understanding potential customers, investors, partners

media

• old stories
• no potential to bring journalist on techmeme/digg for x weeks
• clones of anything
• no magic sauce begin

potential partners

• telling the potential partner how cool the start.up is
• not telling or not being able to tell what the partner will exactly (=cash) gain from partnership, when and how.
• unfulfillable expectations from partners (like: just put my link on the google landing page...“)

how to get in contact?

• through references
• email (keep it short, send a compelling 2 sentence pitching email)

not just also judging on the start.ups at pitch camp but also discussing on stage was:

2) keynote speaker yossi vardi

being a serial entrepreneur himself and a rather successful venture capitalists, yossi vardi gave some interesting statements at the discussion with tim o‘ reilly.
that at the end of the days successful vc just have luck, is quite a open statement.
also that it is very important to check the vc a start.up is interested in. is he friendly? do entrepreneurs work repeatedly with him?
and that business plans and sausages have one thing in common: only people who do not know how they are made eat them.

this made the 2nd of the best web2.0expo berlin events. read more about moo, user interfaces and user action through design in the 2nd part of the upcoming web2.0expo roundup.

and the seedcamp winner is: SOUP.IO!

congratulations to the soup.io team!

they are one of the seven winners of the recent seedcamp 2008 round. seeing the recent develpments of former seedcamp finalist zemanta, this can be a worthy boost of soup.io's development.
just to give an idea how, look at zemanta. they just secured another investmet from union square ventures, also involved in twitter, del.icio.us, feedburner, and the like.
this supports the thesis, that pitching can help progressing a start.up a lot, as already discussed here.
Update: And even if not all agree, winners are winners!

leweb´08 startUp registration opened

too late for the ongoing seedcamp competition this time? the next possiblity to pitch on an european level is coming up.

leweb´08 startUp competition is now open for application. the competition is organzided by seedcamp. leweb was added as a link in the blogroll.

for all those who need some more presentation preparation and which went through all the demo videos already, there just starting ignite/web2.0expo new york will film the presentations, so keep watching for them.

new blobroll category: incubators/competitions

staying up to date with all the business competitions around the world can be tricky.

those which have their own rss feeds can now be found in the blogroll of this blog under the category incubators/competitions. so it is simple to follow them for everyone interested. those which are still without rss feeds can be found in the start.up financing mindmap. anyone is invited to post infos about additional ones existing which are not on the map yet.

seedcamp application opened

uk based seedcamp has started another round of their challenges. the online application is open until the 10th of august. apply here.
looking at the progress of the former seedcamp finalist zemata, this can be a worthy investment of time.

get ready to challange your ideas, encore!

the seedcamp competition 2008 is coming up again. applications will be up around the mai/june timeframe on their website. expect to hand in the applications during july/august. more details @ their website. and there will be opportunities to meet the seedcamp staff at paris, zagreb, berlin and @ various other locations, more details found here.

besides the already numerous opportunities to pitch one´s start.up idea, another one opened: start.up 2.0. the start.up mindmap got updated accordingly. registration ends today (30.4.08)!

challenge your start.up idea before pitching investors

venture and business angels money for web start.ups is scare around vienna. thus, when approaching them, there is just this "one" first chance to leave a good impression. meeting other entrepreneurs and discussing your start.up idea before can be crucial therefore. there are three different approaches to that. work up from step three to one.

one, compete and challenge on an international or european level.
participipate at seedcamp, pitch at library house or apply for the upcoming demo in munich (if you can afford so). find more on those competitions on the start.up mindmap. this international exposure gives a good indicator on the competitiveness of the start.up sector.
there are plenty of good ideas, smart brains and enthusiastic people out there, all fighting for investments, staff, customers and media attention. fearing to compete against them is no different then to hide one´s head in the sand. like last years bootcamp finalist, zemanta, funding can get a lot easier.

two, go out an present at the national level. look out for the barcamps around. there are plenty around. spending 30 minutes to present and discuss your start.up in from of a smart bunch can not only be challenging, but as well inspiring. do not mind to present more then once, showing your progress every time. there you can expect to get feedback from hardcore tech topics, user interface desing to grafical ideas, depending on the crowd present. barcamps are no one way story though. just trying to "get" something will not work. share your insights, give opinions and trying to help out others with what you already learned is an imperative.

three, again one scale smaller, visit even more casual community events. visit webmontag or open coffe club. for the webmontag @ werkzeugH or metalab in vienna, be prepared for a five minute pitch, no more. open coffe club is more casual. just sit down and talk with people. at the 6th open coffe club vienna for example, there were around 20 people. star.ups in every stage, bloggers, people which just came back from international engagements or just moved from london to vienna. willingness to share information is required, such that events like these work.

this three steps require little in funds but a lot in willingess to take feedback and give it back tho the community. they can substantially increase the likelyness to succeed.

start.up weekend & seedcamp

the mindmap "start.up finanzierung"/start.up financing has been updated with: startup weekend.

a recent presentation of seedcamp from the web2.0expo berlin, slides can be found @ slideshare.

seedcamp

die anzahl der initiativen für europäische high tech start.ups wächst weiter.
seedcamp bietet eine neue platform an: 3 monate london boot camp, 10% der anteile, 50k€.
die mindmap wurde upgedatet.