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Do you want to work with me on International Business Development at Facebook?  Check out the job description and apply here.

Joining Facebook

I am very excited to announce that I have joined Facebook as Director of International Business Development! I truly believe that Facebook is creating a paradigm shift in social communication and beyond, and I am really psyched to be part of this fantastic team and opportunity. This means that me and my family will be moving into Facebook town (a.k.a Palo Alto) before the end of this year. Before we make the big move, I will be dividing my time between Israel and Palo Alto, with an emphasis on Palo Alto. For those of you that want to share any advise with me regarding relocating to Palo Alto - or real Palo Alto life-hacks - please feel free to join my personal advisory board on Facebook.

Storyboards As A Business Plan

Since I have been sitting in on quite a few start-up pitches as well as continuously being pitched myself by all kind of ventures, I was thinking if it is not on time to change the current format for business plans. Let's face it most VC's don't even read them, not even the executive summary for that matter. Power point is more and more taking over although we are all sick and tired of them too - especially if they have more than five slides.

Since most businesses are like a developing story - wouldn't it be easier to use the storyboard as an example of visualizing you business plan? We all love stories, wether they are fiction or not , on TV or not, true or false. As a matter of fact, most good businesses have a good story to tell. Why not try to tell that story as you see it develop over time on a storyboard?

Using the storyboard as a format for describing a business forces you to reduce the crucial steps into single frames and let go of those long never ending paragraphs that nobody reads anyway. I personally use a lot of visual tools in my day to day businesses. My favorite so far is Mind Mapping wether on paper or as for the past four years, a software called MindManager. As a matter of fact, I went through all my University studies using mind maps, which some of them I still have left.

I think that story-boarding is very close to mind mapping, but helps you perhaps better to tell or develop a story. Going forward, I will start using storyboards for some ideas I am developing in parallel with mind mapping.

What then are my favorite tools? Well, except for paper and pen:

• MindManager
• Pages - comes with Mac's iLife (use the creative templates )
• MacJournal - not a visualization tool, but fantastic for note taking - especially the full-screen author with enable me to write with green letters against a totally black  background - putting all the distractions behind.

Finally there is Montage, which is a very interesting screenwriting software aimed at pro's - but an interesting option if you really would like to tell your story in a screenwriting format. What are your favorite tools?

Technorati Tags: businessplans, macjournal, mindjet, mindmapping, montage, startups, storyboard, storytelling, vc

Loic's & my Run & PoolCast From Spain

 

Loic's and my first RunCast together finishing of with a PoolCast filmed at a secret location in north Spain.

Technorati Tags: leweb3, loiclemeur, netaneljacobsson

Virtual Goods Summit 2007 Videos Up

Here's two video's from the Virtual Goods Summit in Stanford last month. The first: Virtual Items - mainstream or not? Featuring: Jia Shen, James Hong, Robert Scoble, J.T. Stephens and John Vars.

The second video: "Making Virtual Economies Work" focused on what it takes to build, launch, and maintain a successful virtual economy. Featuring: Mark, Joshua, Brock, Raph, and John.

Technorati Tags: vgsummit, vgsummit2007

Create Your Own Subtitles To Any Video with SubPly

The guys at Plymedia just launched SubPLY. SubPLY allows anyone to create and add subtitles to any video from any site enabled by PLYmedia and post it anywhere they wish.  Disclaimer: I site on Plymedia's Advisory Board.

Technorati Tags: Plymedia, Subply, Video, Subtitles, YouTube, Metacafe,

Two great weeks in California & Phoenix

After two full weeks on the road it's finally time to head home to Israel again. It has been two great weeks starting out in San Francisco and the Web 2.0 Expo, followed by five days in Palo Alto and finally the CRV Leadership summit at Royal Palms Resort & Spa in Phoenix.

I think I summed up my views on Web 2.0 Expo before so I won't comment on that here. It is always so great to be in California, I get so much stuff done and have time to meet and hang-out with interesting entrepreneurs, venture capitalist and other great people. Although I try to spend a week a month in California, I must say that this time has been the best so far.

One of the highlights was hanging out with the Plymedia gang on Shabbath (for whom I am an Advisor) and especially hiking at Tiburun with Ben Enosh. It was a great day and I felt that I really made a new great friend. I also had time to meet new interesting entrepreneurs like Nik from Omnidrive, Yahya from Freewebs and others.

The best event was however the Charles River Ventures Leadership Summit at the Royal Palms Spa & Resorts in Phoenix, Arizona. What a great place! I wish I had brought my wife..This was the first time in five years that CRV had invited all their CEO's and founders from their portfolio companies and top speakers from various industries.

Against the backdrop of the Camelback mountains the event was very well planned and with a great lineup. I am really glad I decided to stay another week just to participate here. Besides all the portfolio companies people like Chris Sacca (Google), Evan Williams (Twitter), Andrew Baron (Rocketboom), Scoble, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Ted Leonsis, Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures & frmr Microsoft CTO), Prof. Yared Diamond (Pulitzer winner and author of "Collapse"), Larry Summers (frmr US Treasury Secretary), Matt Jacobson (Facebook), David Eckoff (VP Turner) and many more.

I particularly enjoyed chatting with Evan Williams (Twitter rocks!), Chris Sacca, Om Malik, Matt Jacobson, David Eckoff, Andrew Baron and David Sachs (Geni). Man! Geni is so good. Its going to become so big. David is a fantastic entrepreneur.

The event was really top quality in terms of speakers and participants but best of all - intimate enough for having quality time with each other. There was also time for desert hiking (see photo above with me & Bill Tai making the "m" Maxthon sign) lots of cactuses and a feeling of being beamed to Indian and cowboy land. Will post a separate CactusCast that I shot on the hike later.

I definitely learned a lot, met new friends and was inspired. Lot's of stuff on my mind now, new potential partnerships and new business ideas. Time to head home to wife and kids - I really miss them!

Technorati Tags: CRV, Freewebs, Geni, Larry Summers, Maxthon, Nathan Myhrvold, Plymedia, Rockeboom, Royal Palms Spa & Resort, Ted Leonsis, Twitter, Web2expo, Yared Diamond

Maxthon Fans: Frederik Hermann from Jajah

Today I met with Frederik Hermann, responsible for marketing at the cool VoiP company Jajah outside the University Cafe in Palo Alto. Frederik is originally from Germany and is a passionate Maxthon user. He contacted me via Linkedin after I had thrown out the question: What should be Maxthon's EU/US distribution strategy. It's always great to meet new Maxthon user's and hear why they started to use Maxthon and what they think we can improve. Jajah is going to develop a plugin for Maxthon so keep you eyes open. Check out Jajah out!

Twitter For Maxthon!

Faster than a Twitt, Maxthon super plugin developer Neo101, created this cool Twitter toolbar for Maxthon 2.0 The toolbar enables you to post to Twitter straight from Maxthon. Add me as your friend.


Technorati Tags: Twitter, Maxthon, Maxthon 2.0

How LinkedIn Led To Maxthon

I often get the question of how I got involved with Maxthon. I mean how does a Swedish/Israeli guy becomes a partner in a Chinese company? The answer is, thorough LinkedIn. Belive it or not. Not directly, but in-directly. Here's the story:

It all started when I was working at ICQ (an AOL subsidary) and was trying to track down Nicklas Zennstrom from Skype for an idea I wanted to explore. I then found that the missing link between be and Niklas Zennstrom was a Danish fellow called Morten Lund (early Skype investor). To get to Morten I had to go through a contact I had at MTV in London, another Danish guy called Henrik Werdelin - now VP at Joost.

Morten was quick to respond, but said that Nicklas was just too busy those days (I doubt it has changed ) so why don't I come by Copenhagen and he would give me a bunch of more interesting deals... I accepted his invitation, went to Copenhagen and then spend a day with Morten discussing Bullguard (his main baby then) and a number of other ventures for ICQ.

Nothing really came out of this meeting, more due to the lack of action from ICQ and less from Morten. However, it was the beginnning of a friendship that led to countless hours of IM chats for over a year. Morten kept pitching me on behalf of all kinds of ventures he was involved in or was planning to get involved in. At that time, I was really fed up with the total incompetence and lack of understanding of what was going on on the Internet at ICQ (and AOL too for that matter) and had started to look around for the next challenge.

Of all the ventures Morten and I discussed, nothing really seemed attractive to me at that time. Partly because I didnt want to relocate from Israel and partly becasue it just didn't make me excited. But things changed.

One early morning in late November 2005 Morten Skyped me from the Arab Emirates and asked me to have a look at a new browser he had stumbled upon. He was quite excited. 20 Million download in a year! And it was created by a Chinese developer living in Hong Kong!

Since I just had downloaded and converted to Firefox, my inital reaction was" Who needs another browser" ? But Morten just said: "Just download it and you will see.." Said and done, I did. I was converted - again! Maxthon was so cool, and they story behind so fantastic that I agreed to take on the challenge.

Morten wanted me to become a business partner and take the company to the next level. How could I refuse? After I made up my mind I spend the 4 months in endless IM conversations with BloodChen - Mr. Maxthon himself a.k.a. Jeff Chen. It was my first experience in Chinese psychology and negotiations. It taught me a lot of patience..

Jeff and I finally reached an agreement and signed it off - without ever having met...Talking about an original start of a new venture. Two years has passed since I joined and I haven't regretted it for a second. Maxthon is an amazing piece of software, but more than that, Maxthon is more like a movement of passionate fans and co-developers all over the world. We have actually become the only Chinese Internet/Software company with a true global footprint. And we keep on growing like crazy.

That was my little LinkedIn story. Hope you liked it. What is yours?


Technorati Tags: Maxthon, China, LinkedIn, Morten Lund, Skype , China, Joost, icq

An Inside Look At Google China

Here is a very interesting video about Google in China. Kai-Fu Lee, Greater China President (the man Google took from Microsoft that made Steve Ballmer throw a chair across his office in anger ;) taken last week. Kai-Fu spoke about the current development of Google's offices in China and about the challenges and opportunities facing Google China as well as collaboration between the US and China offices. I met Kai-Fu Lee in October last year in Beijing at Google China's Headquarters and guess what...He loves Maxthon!

Open Source Developers at Google Speaker Series: Camino

                 

Here is a very interesting video from the Google Tech Talks series where Mike Pinkerton discussed the past, present and future of Camino development (Mac browser) together with lessons learned from Mozilla and the open source community.

Joined Plymedia's Advisory Board

I am very delighted to announce that I just joined Plymedia's Advisory Board. Plymedia is a great Israeli start-up and behind the super cool site BubblePly , that let's you add bubbles, callouts', sub-titles, links,  - you name it, to any video you like and share it with the world.

The viral power of BubblyPly is staggering. People are uploading their videos, or adding bubble's, comments and links to other people videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Naturally most people like to turn videos more into more funny and entertaining by adding all kinds of comments. But it has also become very popular for people to translate videos and create sub-titles to foreign language movies as well.

Another interesting usage of the Ply's (that is what the bubbles or video layers are called) is for educational purposes. Personally I love the concept and can easily see how this will become very popular. As with all user-generated stuff, the users will show us best the way for how BubblePly should be used.

Plymedia was founded by Ben Enosh (serial entrepreneur, and amongst other things, co-founded Cyota Inc - an Internet security company that was sold last year to RSA for $145 million) Yuval Klein, David Markowitz, Yoni Silberberg and Miki Dotan. I was first introduced to them by Gil Dibner from Genesis Partners and was really impressed by their product, great team and vision.

Although the Online video space is getting really crowded, I believe that PlyMedia has a very good chance turn this into something very exciting.

Business model? Advertising my friends - advertising! I can definitely see how advertisers could flock to this..

And by the way, Plymedia is raising financing, so if you are a interested - feel free to get in touch with me to learn more.

Tags: Plymedia, BubblePly, YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Video, Genesis Partners, VC, Venture Capital ,  Israel , Start-ups

Chinas Joost Gets Funded

Kaiser reports that the "Chinese Joost" UUSee, just received $23.5 in VC funding from DFJ's Growth Fund, Highland Capital Partners and Steamboat Ventures. P2P is really flourishing in China with such players as Google invested Xunlei - a Maxthon partner, PPLive and PPStream. I agree with Kaiser's prediction that it is only a matter of 3G time until we will see mobile P2P services popping up all over China

Update: Talking about the future of video & P2P, there is an interersting article on Technology Review by Hui Zhang called "Peering into Video's Future".

Technorati Tags: China, Joost, Maxthon, p2p, PPLive, PPStream, UUSee, VC, Venture Capital, Xunlei

A Visit to HiPiHi - Chinas Second Life

After a very good board meeting with Maxthon, I paid a visit to HiPiHi - Chinas answer to Second Life. This came about after I had written a short post on them earlier and got an invitation to swing by their office. Kaiser Kuo (Ogilvy) and Xinhua Liu (early investor in HipiHi & Technology Director at Burson-Marsteller).. also joined me.

Armed with camcorders, cameras and curious minds, we invaded HiPiHi physically and virtually. I must say that I was really impressed. I always felt like Second Life was too geeky and to inaccessible, and therefore had only signed in a couple of times and flied around out of boredom.

Not so at HiPiHi. They have been smart enough to realize that most of us deadly are not geeks and need a more user-friendly user-interface to motivate us enough to play around in this virtual world. Although they are just in private alpha, they have come along way with a team of just 60. The user is offered a bunch of pre-fabricated avatars, buildings, hills, rocks, objects and event water to furnish their own worlds. Should they feel for it later, the user can always customize or create any object from scratch as they see fit.

It is clear that HiPiHi has given much thought into making the virtual world more user-friendly. HiPiHi's CEO Hui Xu (beside me on the picture above) explained to us that the service will be launched in four stages based on traditional Chinese creational mythology (read Kaisers summary for an expansion on this).

Revenues will come from virtual property sales and advertising. And I can definitely see how advertisers will love this. Especially since HiPiHi is targeting the young and cool rather than a bunch of geeks in pajamas or "social media stars".

I shot a couple of short clips of a walk-through in HipiHi-land with a simple digital camera. Comments are both in Chinese & English. More clips here.

I have a very good feeling about HiPiHi and am waiting eagerly for the public launch.

(Image above: Sunset in HiPiHi-land).

Piper Jaffray Conference Day 2

Today I spend the day with knowledge hungry investment bankers, then participated in "Emerging Internet Companies" on behalf on Maxthon before running off to Maxthon's Headquarters for a sneak peak of a very new cool service and some upcoming product features. Looks great!

I also ran into a cool newly launched streetwear fashion clothes company just kicking-off here in China. Nice to meet with non-Internet related business people for a change ;). The name of the company is Eno , and the conversation with them certainly triggered some interesting ideas I want to explore...

Tomorrow, I have a breakfast meeting with a leading advertising agency am then off for a board meeting. Time is certainly running fast here and it's great to see so much activity in the Internet space. Before I head home I am going to pay a visit to HipiHi - the Chinese answer to Second Life. I got an invitation from them after I wrote a short post on them. Will certainly be a lot of fun. Bill Tail & Kaiser Kuo has promised to come along as well. Hopefully I will have time to shoot a short video from the visit - we'll see.

Finally, if you are looking for some new interesting investment oppertunity in China that are not related to the Internet. Digg deeper into alternative energy...it's getting very hot..

Technorati Tags: Altertnative engergy, Beijing, China, Eno, Fashion, Hipihi, China Investments, Second Life

A Conversation With Chinese Users

The Focus group panel, a permanent panel at any Piper Jaffray conference was especially interesting since this time the discussion was with young Chinese users as opposed to US teens.

Key Points:

• Favorite activities seems to be to download movies and mp3's
• Baidu is the favorite search engine mainly because of mp3's
• Google is considered "better" in terms of quality
• Prefer to download movies that are either Asian or European (French!) not Hollywood movies..
• Cannot consider to pay for any content. Especially not for music or movies
• But, are very willing to pay for ringtones, virtual items, avatars etc - One girl even paid to get a doctor to heal her sick QQ pet...
• All users bought online
• All used Alipay to pay for goods online - some cash on delivery

What I found most interesting was they all freely and openly spoke about that as soon as they wanted content forbidden by the government - they went Online to get it. Nobody seemed to be the least concerned with saying that openly. This is what I have been saying over and over: young people in China are not concerned or worried about saying what they want - no one is being arrested for a statement like the above... Censorship is something being practised by all governments, organizations, corporations and even Editors of the "free press" all over the world. It just comes in different colors and shapes..

Technorati Tags: Avatars, Baidu, China, Consumers, Download, Google, Movies, Mp3, Chinese Users, Users

China: The Portal Challengers (Video)

The first day of Piper Jaffrays's Annual Growth Conference is just over here in cold but sunny Beijing. The panel called "The portal Challengers" dealing with mainly video sites as a new and alternative destination sites as opposed to the big portals, was really interesting. CEOs of Tudou, Yoqoo.com and Mop (Oak Pacific Interactive) shared their view of the challenges and experiences of Chinas 150+ YouTube's.

Here are the main points:

• Running a video site is a very expensive business
• Nobody is really thinking of making any real revenues in the near future
• Local regulations makes running a similar business in the US look like a dream
• Main thing is to focus on users, build traffic and distinguish your self from all the other 150 sites..
• Download speed key factor
• Chinese users are opposed to YouTube uses are not really sharing videos with each other
• It is still very early days for video sharing sites in China - far away from being a major activity on the net
• Content is mainly of Asian character - not driven by user generated videos like in the US
• Most popular content is of "copyright challenging character"

In short still a long way to go before any of them are making any serious revenues from video content.

Technorati Tags: Piper Jaffray, YouTube, puppy, Tudou, Video, Yoqoo, YouTube

Joost Great!

I have seen the end of the Television as we know it - and it is called Joost! Henrik just send me a beta invite (thanks!). Looks amazing on my MacBookPro.

Technorati Tags: Joost, TV, puppy

Off to China & Piper Jaffray Conference

I'm off to China on Sunday for the Fourth Annual Piper Jaffray China Growth Conference, March 6-8 in Beijng. I will be a panelist on "Emerging Internet Companies" talking about Maxthon. Piper Jaffray is known for organizing top events (invitation only) and judging from past events - this one looks very promising indeed with a great line up.

It will be a great opportunity for networking and potential Maxthon deals. Top executives from Chinas major Internet , Wireless, Game and Technology companies will be there. I am in particular interested in the Chinese focus group conversation, since I many times wonder what makes Chinese Internet users tick'.

Following the conference I am meeting with Maxthon Fan & supporter No 1: Kaiser Kuo, rockstar & Group Director at Ogilvy Interactive in China, followed by a Maxthon boardmeeting. It will be great to meet Bill Tai (CRV), David Zhang, Yuzhu (WI Harper), Jeff and Carol (Maxthon) again - just hope it will not be as cold as the last time..

If you want to meet up in Beijing please let me know, schedule is quite tight - but long is the night..;)

Who knows, maybe I even will have time to shoot some cool Beijing street scenes?

Technorati Tags: Beijing, China, Maxthon, Ogilvy

HipiHi - The Chinese Second Life

My good friend Kaiser Kuo, made me aware of a Chinese Second Life wanna be called HiPiHi. It is still in private beta, but there is a demo video on the site that you can download. What I find interesting here is that as Kaiser points out, there is a female element here which seems to indicate that the site is going after female gamers: female narrator and avatar, emphasis on the outfits, the landscaping and the houses.

I agree with Kaiser that it would be interesting to see if they will give HiPiHi a more Chinese touch. I personally would find it much more compelling wandering around in a Chinese environment with a Chinese architecture, marble lions guarding my house entrance etc. And here is my personal advice: Why not offering foreigners like me wandering around in HiPiHi to learn Chinese? I could not think of any better way to learn and practice a new language in a virtual world. Just imagine, taking a taxi from the airport, telling the driver where you want to go., going shopping at the market, or join a Chi Gong class? The reverse could also be a great way for Chinese locals to learn English. I would definately be the first to sign up for such an opportunity.

Finally, Kaiser asks if we are going to see advertisers lining up, companies building themselves a presence there just like in SL? I definatley think that can become very big. Just considering the Olympics 2--8 around the corner. Creating a virtual olympic inside HiPHi could be great fun, enabling you to run with the stars. Then, arrange competitions live that could be broadcasted live as well with prices... The site should obviously implement a full mobile payment mechanism so you can by avatars, apparel and real-estate on the fly. Oh, and HiPiHi should definately provide a mobile version as well.

China is such a huge country with so many opportunities, so why should a virtual China world be a success?

Technorati Tags: Avatars, China, Second Life, Virtual Worlds

Bunchball & Toyota Scion xB

The guys at Bunchball have just launched this really cool project with Toyota. Its a fully immersive world around Toyotas Scion xB. Bunchball customized all their games and integrated them into a flash world.
I must say this is really cool and the idea of integrating their games into a immersive world rocks! It's quite addictive too which is probably very good for brand association and should work well for Toyota.

I met Rajat Paharia Bunchball's CEO and founder and was very impressed of how fast he managed to launch Bunchball and the quality of the games. When we met a year ago, the business model wasn't very clear, but with customized games like this, it seems that Bunchball is on the right track.

Check out the game here!

Technorati Tags: Branded games, Bunchball, Games, Gamevertising, puppy, Rajat Paharia, Toyota

BitTorrent Opening Media Store

BitTorrent, is opening up a media store tomorrow, Monday. The download site will distribute more than 5,000 titles from digital movies, TV shows, games and other media. After long having been the bad kid on the block, BitTorrent has finally managed to sooth Hollywood. 

When opening the store on Monday it will offer: Superman Returns, Mission: Impossible III and An Inconvenient Truth. Among the available TV shows are 24 and Chappelle's Show.

The good thing about it is that people will finally be able to download movies without the fear of viruses and bad copies. The question is, will the crowd that has long relied upon BiTorrent for free goodies stay or turn elsewere?

Navigation based blogging, Second life & mobile

What does navigation-based blogging, Secondlife-like gaming and mobile phones in common? Well, this is the platform run by Japan based mobile marketing firm Naviblog now looking to enter the Chinese mobile space.

China Business Cast has an interesting interview with Naviblog CEO Mandali Khalesi on saying that mobile marketing will drive the adoption of the mobile Web in China.

Google Apps Launched - Office War Just Begun

I promised never to cover Google here anymore unless it has anything to do with Maxthon or Mashup Media. However, since it has, I cannot help to mention it. The Bloggers are buzzing around the Web now for the release of Google Apps. See stories here, here , here and here for more in-depht info.

Why do I mention it here then? Well, one for that I already tried to sign-up putting all of Mashup Media on Google Apps, but failed since Israel did not appear in the countries listed when you register. Please fix it Google! I am eager to spend $50 + ..

Second, some voices has been raised that it is still lacking enough compelling features and products like Jotspot, CRM tool etc. However since I know the people behind these products I know that the fun has just begun..  I wonder what one could do with this in a browser?

Something on M comes to my mind..Oh enough said already - time for a falafel..

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Apps, Maxthon, Office, Mashup Media

World Premier: Live TV From the Mobile

Today the Swedish city of Malmo is in the news not only for because of a terrible snow storm (thank G-d I moved to Israel..), but also because today Bambuser goes live. Bambuser is the world first TV-program shot entirely from camera enabled mobile phones. Today they are kicking off with a 48 hour non-stop TV-show from Swedish TV-s Malmo studios, were anybody can drop in and do their own show.

Måns Adler, Alexander Fölsch and  Rebecca Kopelman, entrepreneurs and students at Kaospiloterna in Arhus, Denmark says that everybody has been thinking about how to send TV programs to the mobile phones, but nobody seems to have though about doing it the other way. True or not, this looks like a really cool project.

To be able to send TV directly from your mobile, you will need a special program developed by a company in Malmo that you will be able to download for free. At this stage the business model seems unclear, but I guess licensing in out to Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola and Samsung might be one way.

Good to see some promising entrepreneurship from my old country. For more mobile, movie and TV related stuff visit the Anyfilms blog I ran for Samsung Mobile last year.

See article in Sydsvenskan (sorry in Swedish..).

Technorati Tags: Entrepreneurs, Mobile phones, Bambuser, Sweden, Television, TV

aniBOOM - YouTube of Animation

News has it that Israeli start-up aniBoom just were funded by Evergreen. aniBOOM really rocks and looks very much like a YouTube for animated stuff.  Here is one nice little animation I liked:

Technorati Tags: aniboom, Animation, Israel, puppy, puppy

Tony's Lessons Learned during the First Bubble

Tony Perkins has put this confession about what he learned from the fist Internet Bubble Online. I can certainly agree with many of his points. Especially

the only way to create a real company is to have lots of real (that is, paying) customers. More often than not, Internet entrepreneurs design products they like, but forget that the rest of the world isn’t made up of geeks like them. Just because your web-based service is popular on Slashdot doesn’t mean it’s going to hit it big with regular folks.

Although the blogosphere is a great place to evangelize your product and your company - it is not where most of your potential costumers hang out. The fact that your company has received a positive or event great review in Techcrunch does not necessary equal new customers and success. Unless your target audience typically consists of Techcrunch readers.. Moreover, many well know or even less known companies occasionally receive (or constantly) bad reviews throughout the Blogosphere, but they still have millions of customers and are doing very well anyway.

I would add another advice to some start-ups. Don't waste your marketing budget on sponsoring on sponsoring web 2.0 events and conferences, unless (again) that is where the majority of your potential users/consumers hang out. To sponsor these type of event often comes with a very heavy price tag ,a budget that could be better used for actually acquiring and attracting new users - where they actually hang out...

Technorati Tags: AlwaysOn Media, AO, Consumers, Start-ups

IRA 2.0 - Zecco: World's first $0 Commission IRA

Zecco has done it again! Last year they shook up the traditional brokerages with the introduction of $0 commission trading last year. Now on Monday the 12th, the little David will take on Goliath again with the world's first $0 commission IRA.  According to Jeroen Veth co-founder and CEO (and former Merill Lynch Vice President who I met last week at Zecco's new corporate headquarters in Burlingame), investing in ETFs vs mutual funds with a Zecco $0 commission IRA will make an investor $1,000,000 richer over their investing lifetime, age 25-69.  Not bad.  IRA just met 2.0..

Technorati Tags: IRA, Trading, Zecco

TWVP & Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup Today

Today I'm at Tech2007 organized by Tomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco to check out some companies presenting there together with Bill Tai and then off to Yahoo and finnishing the day off at the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup Group in Palo Alto tonight which will certainly be a lot of fun.

Tonight's Lineup will be:

* stickis.com - Create commentary, conversation and community everywhere you browse (Marc Meyer)
* SchoolParentNet - Building secure communities around our childer (Amit Nanda)
* thinkfree.com - The best online office on earth - it has google docs beat in functionality (Jonathan Crow)
* neighboroo.com - Learn a few new things about your 'hood (Travis Chow)

A Visit To Zecco

Yesterday I swinged by Zecco's new offices in Burlingame and had a chat with Michiel de Boer, Jeroen Veth, CEO and Gabriel Dalporto, CMO. If you haven't heard about them yet it's probably because you're not into trading. This cool company is disrupting a previously unchallenged industry, namely the trading industry. By offering free stock trading they made Charles Schwab & Co choke on their morning muffin and more or less forced Bank of America to offer free trade too (well not really you need to keep $25.000 with them in order to trade for free..)

I actually 'outed' Zecco last year, by posting this scoop on my blog. The story spread faster than fire and was soon picked up everywhere. Soon I had some heavy financial institutions checking out my blog with intensity...

Anway, Zecco move their folked up from LA to the Bay area and are soon rolling out more interesting services to upset the conservative finacial institutions. It's really like Jeroen Veht says, Zecco is like David against Goliath and it's a tuff challenge, but they are definately unto something and I'd definately put my bet on that these guys can make it, they just need to place the stone in sling right and aim for the weakest point ;)

So far the financial world is still very conservative and have been spared from disruption like the media industry. Zecco is well positioned to make a mark here and pave the way for other new web companies into the financial world.Hong Kong based Bullpoo  and Israeli based IncrediTrade funded by my buddie Ouriel (well LgiLab) are two other companies to watch out for in this space..

On Media NYC Wrap Up

I am sitting on the plane between JFK and San Francisco after having attended On Media NYC and am trying to summerize my thoughts about the conference. My overall impression is that its was a great event in terms of networking, speaker line ups and of course the reception. I had a chance to re-connect with old friends, business partners and make new contacts.

Having said that, I felt like in many other conferences: "heard it before, been there, said that and know that". Most of the panelist were all too predictive and didn't really contribute with anything new and refreshing. However, Tony Perkins and Bill Cleary and did a great job setting it all up and with the fantastic backdrop of Central Park and Colombia Circle ! Tony & Bill also showcased their home made videos that triggered many laughs.

A few speakers and panelist sticked out though:

• Peter Hirshberg, Technorati's Chairman did a great and entertaining presentation.

• Can Brands Get Away with "Buzz Marketing" in the Blogosphere? With Jeff Jarvis, David Weinberger, Rich Murray, Gordon Gould and  Barry Reicherter. Funny enough the only thing I can remember from this panel was Davids' attach on Pay Per Post, and the word "lubricant..".

• Workshop: Venture and Angel Financing for Private Companies with Sam Angus, partner Fenwick & West, Ron Conway, Angel Investors, Garry Kitchen, CEO Skyworks,  Howard Morgan Idealab (very funny guy) and Mark Stevens, partner, Fenwick & West. It was the first time I attended a workshop at a conference and really felt that I learned something new and useful. Compared to other lame workshops (especially the one on how to become a power blogger - most bloggers are better Online than Offline..). This workshop was well prepared, provided the audience with a great hands on advice, very helpful hand outs out and really offered some very valueable advice to start ups about raising angel/seed or venture capital and what a kind of template for how a well balanced deal should look like.. What I didn't understand is why Mark Steves several times ditched CRV's Quick  Start program. Do I sense some kind of fear of loosing fees...?

  Oh, and there were some great CEO Showcase presentations as well. Anyway, it was a great event in terms of networking I will definatly come next time too.

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