Events You Don't Want To Miss
On the face of it startup events might look like bunch of geeks listening to talks that provide little or no value over what can be obtained with an Internet connection and an ability to read.
Wrong! It's not what happens on-stage but off-stage that matters. This is where grown men talk tech, drink imported beer and meet the most important people of their startup lives. This is where you get to know the people. And its the people you know that will make the difference between a success and a failure.
Yes, your product's traction may play a role, but a few emails to the right people do wonders when you are running out of money, haven't slept for days and are fighting windmills to close the one deal that means the difference between life and death. This is while at the same time Facebook is busy stealing your CTO right when your servers can't cope with the increased traffic. That's when knowing the right people come handy.
The Next Web Brings The European Startup Scene To Amsterdam
The Next Web 2009, the fourth edition of the conference that began in 2006, will be held again in the beautiful city of Amsterdam on the 15th to 17th April.
The great guys at The Next Web gave us 10 passes with 20% discount to give out to our readers, you guys. First come first served, so be quick. You can buy a discount ticket here.
TheNextWeb also announced the 19 startup competition finalists. Among other we're happy to see Prezi on the list. Congrats to all the finalist!
The conference has traditionally had a solid line up of speakers and this year is no exception. You can see the whole list of speakers here and the agenda for the three days here.
I will be in Amsterdam for the three days, so if you're coming join ArcticStartup Dopplr group and drop me an email if you want to meet up. See you in the windmill country!
Photo by earcos (CC)
MicroFundr - Not Just Yet
Yesterday we announced news that a joint group of European blogs, including us, The Next Web, TechCrunch Europe and TechCrunch France were setting up an investment fund MicroFundr™ to invest up to €14,000 Euros (USD $18,500) in Micro blogging start-ups and uses Twitter for funding process.
Some of you called us out on it, and some bought the story right up. Truth to be told it was the mother of all April Fools scams, but the point remains: The VC industry could do with some innovative new models. Even if having a smaller fund means smaller management fees.
Not only that, we also love to co-operate with the great people at The Next Web and at TechCrunch.
Back to the scam. We orchestrated the scam with Boris and the rest of The Next Web, without whom could not have done it. David from The Next Web opened up an Twitter account, whipped up graphics and the ball was rolling. Altogether we got 121 Twitter follower and numerous retweets. The full gory story is at The Next Web.
We apologize to those startups for raising false hopes, but at the same time hope that Angels and early stage funds will take note and look at Twitter not only as a bygone investment opportunity, but also a useful for tool for their trade.
MicroFundr, First Pan-European VC Fund, Will Use Twitter For Funding Process
Small Change Venture Capital is launching MicroFundr which will invest up to €14,000 Euros (USD $18,500) in Micro blogging start-ups and uses Twitter for funding process.
The Invest Fund raised just under €14 million (USD $18m) from a group of small banks and informal investors. A joint group of European blogs, including ArcticStartup(that's us!), The Next Web, TechCrunch Europe and TechCrunch France are happy to announce the launch of the MicroFundr investment fund aimed at European small, mini and micro start-ups. We are honored to be part of such a high quality group of European blogs.
We are also excited about the new innovative way a startup can submit its application - via Twitter! As this was presented ot us it only made sense, since the best startups can communicate all they need to only in a few slides anyway, so why not to use something that helps the startups to be consice. We reiterate what Dick Vogels, VP for Small Change Venture Capital, based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, says:
Are Web Conferences A Waste Of Time?
There has been lively discussions of whether the many web conferences are really the most effective use of time for a startup. Similarly many people see the value in these conferences very differently, for example people from the United States tend to spend most if not all their time networking in the lobbies and hallways, at least more so than the Europeans are used to. We, the Europeans, on the other hand, tend to pay equal attention to the speakers at the stage.
At ArcticStartup we believe that meeting friends and strangers, as many as possible, is the best way to spend your time in these conferences. But that's just us. Thus, we wanted to know what other startups think and decided to ask a group of Finnish startups, who travelled to the LeWeb with us, what they think. Here are some perspectives:
Finnish Jaiku Community Fights Back. Hard!
I recently wrote about the Finnish Jaiku community moving to Twitter en mass. This got the community on barricades ready to defend their service teeth and nail against my claim. What is interesting here is the intensity with which the community defended its service against my argument and choice of words. They even came after me on ArcticStartup's journalistic standards. I got the same treatment as TheNextWeb contributing editor Zee M Kane, even if for different reasons. After the points have been made it is up to each and every individual to make their own judgement regarding the issue. The comment tread is here and a Jaiku thread here (In Finnish).
Regardless whether the wording was misleading or not, and I'm ready to pull my weight and stand behind the argument I made, what is true is that even if users are leaving Jaiku the service is not dead by no means given the resistance and passion ArcticStartup just witnessed. The users send a loud and clear message that, the ones that are staying with the service are really sticking up for their tight-knit community despite Twitter's or anyone else's international dominance.
This makes me very proud to be a fellow Finn as it probably does make the Jaiku founders Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen. They have all the reason to be proud with a community like this. I have never witnessed the power of online community this close, even though some examples across the Atlantic like Facebook Beacon come to mind. Now we only have to make Sergei Brin and Larry Page to understand what kind of dynamic community they are letting to fade. The only wish that the Jaiku community has is to know what is about to happen to their service. @jyri, do you hear us?
Image by Tambako the Jaguar (CC: by-nd)
An Outsider's Take On Finnish Startups
We invited Peter Robinett of Bubble Foundry to come and attend Slush on behalf of TheNextWeb blog, an Amsterdam based weblog that reports on everything that influences the future of the Web, in any way. Peter himself is a developer now living in Amsterdam and very active in the local startup scene. Peter for example organizes Lunch 2.0 and Mobile Dev Camp in Amsterdam. Here's Peter's take on the Finnish startup scene.
I had a great time attending Slush on Monday and Ville asked me to share my thoughts of the Helsinki startup scene. While more directed at ArcticStartup's Finnish readers, I hope these comments proven interesting to all ArcticStartup readers. My experience with startups is mainly through working with Dutch ones and organizing various events in the Netherlands, though having grown up in Silicon Valley I hope I have a somewhat accurate sense of how things work there too.
List of Finnish Startups
Timo Paloheimo has listed a good bunch of Finnish web startups in The Next Web using various sources, including his own blog Startupbin and ArcticStartup. He's also categorized them quite extensively under different subgroups, including e.g. social networking, e-commerce, business tools, and mobile. The list is likely nowhere complete, though, and there have been some additions already in the comments section in Startupbin.
We at ArcticStartup recognize there isn't any good way of easily getting comprehensive information about the startups in Finland, or in other Nordic and Baltic countries for that matter, at the moment. That's why we have been working on Nordic and Baltic wide ‘CrunchBase’, which should come out very soon. Our hope is that a common startup directory will benefit everybody in the industry. Stay tuned, we'll reveal more soon!
Finns in the Nextweb Conference
Due to lack of time, I was unable to write about this earlier, but the Next Web 2008 was organised during the end of last week. There were a lot of companies there from Finland as well. I'm counting at least XIHA Life, Scred and Floobs were present.
Timo Paloheimo from Startupbin.com was also there and has some coverage of the two days of activity as well as some photos.
Juhani Polkko from XIHA Life, sent us an e-mail that they released a new language-based search feature in Amsterdam during the conference.
Update: TripSay was present as well, so quite a good presentation from the Finnish startup scene, I must say.
