Past articles

HTW Tour at Timisoara’s GeekMeet: Hidden businesses and lots of enthusiasm

We’ve started out HTW Tour at Timisoara, with Radu Ticiu, the manager of the Timisoara Software Business Incubator, and Andrei Firoiu, a local web entrepreneur and long-time friend.

First step was meeting local business owners and entrepreneurs for getting a taste of what Timisoara’s tech scene looks like. Had a lot of talks and meet a lot of people, but one story was trully special and I want to share it with you.

Who heard of Mindomo ? Not too many, right ? Well, this project seemed to me the perfect example of what looked like an Eastern European startup in the pre-Seedcamp era.

Mindomo was started in 2007, helping people to use mindmaps for organising their ideeas or knowledge. Since 2007, Mindomo bootstraped without getting any financing money at all. They’ve got two mentions on TechCrunch, when announcing that MindMeister bought MindMaker (“If you’re interested in checking out more mind mapping tools, you might want to take a closer look at Mindomo and MindJet, too.”) and when MindMeister released it’s iPhone App (“And on the web we have bubbl.us and mindomo.”). And that’s it.

With no budget for marketing and PR, Mindomo reached an outstanding number of 200.000 registered users during these 3 years. They’ve sold hundreds of licenses in South-East Asia, especially to schools and public insitutions. But nobody knows of them. I challenge you to think about the path this company would have had in a fully-developed entrepreneurial ecosystem.

On Sunday I’ve went to the local GeekMeet, had a lovely capuccino and had a talk about how to get from a Geek to an Entrepreneur in 7 simple steps. Met a lot of people and had a great time, hope I’ll see them again soon ;)

September 29, 2010 by 1 comment

Eastern Europe’s got web talent, but does it have business potential ?

When we started to organize How to Web 2010, a lot of people asked me: is Romania or Eastern Europe ready for this ? Is the local and regional industry developed enough so it can be interested in a big and expensive international event ?

Everybody knew that, during last years, more and more web businesses have arised from Eastern Europe. You can see that just by looking at the winners from the major startup competitions across Europe. Also, we’ve got Adobe Labs in Bucharest and Amazon developing cloud technologies in Iasi, and that’s a big leap forward from the traditional support centers we’ve got all around Eastern Europe.

Well, my answer (and my bet) is that we are at the begining of a new development stage for the Eastern European tech scene. Up until now we’ve only got the technical talent, along with a major lack of venture funds, international exposure and entrepreneurial skills. However, the startup scene is getting more global than ever, and talent starts attracting the money and the attention it deserves. All we need to do is ask.

And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last 8 months: we’ve been asking major web players and personalities to switch their focus to Easten Europe too, and we managed to get their attention. First part of the problem was solved.

Now moving to the next one: do the local business people understand their potential and want to move forward ?

Well, that’s one thing we’ve still got to find out in the same direct manner. Since last week, we’ve started to meet with local communities for small and focused presentations and direct chats. But that’s not enough, as we’ve found out some amazing things. More to come !

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The Seedcamp secret: it’s the network that matters

Everytime I thought of Seedcamp I’ve consider it a competition event. Well, that’s not the case anymore.

When entering the Seedcamp Week venue, I’ve could do nothing but dazzle looking at all the great entrepreneurs and investors gathered there.

When starting a startup or just moving your web business or project to the next level, you need a lot of things: market information, PR exposure, probably some investment, but also a lot of knowledge about how to handle your innovation. Most of the times, you have non or little of all of that.

And here comes the amazing part: Seedcamp puts you in the same room with people having knowledge on all of that. All you have to do is grab the opportunity and have your 1 minute pitch as many times as possible. You’ll get some knowledge, but mostly direct access to people who can help you during a longer period.

Beyond the actual competiton, Seedcamp is a great networking event. And the most important part is that it really helps all the participants, winners or not.

Networking is one important thing we’ve been focusing on at How to Web 2010, and for sure the ones that want to enlarge their network will be able to do it big time.

September 21, 2010 by no comments

Seedcamp winners: what’s the trend ?

While on my way to Seedcamp Week, the main question I had on my mind was what are the criterias used for selecting the winners. That’s a tricky question, and let me tell you why.

When any VC decides to finance a startup, the criterias are quite general: great team, some experience, big market opportunity and/or powerfull innovation. But everybody has different priorities.

During the first two editions, Seedcamp selected as winners mainly disruptive innovation startups, focused on developing technology and engaging in new markets. That’s a risky bet, because the market addressed might prove to be too small for the VC’s to make a great exit out of that. Also, geting further investments for a technology-disruptive startup is more difficult in Europe, and the startup might run just half the way to the exit. But that might be also a rewarding strategy, and probably the only chance to build world-wide champions.

However, in 2009, Seedcamp selected mosty businesses that already had a finished product, and also had a client base and revenue, but were liniar businesses in terms of innovation. And that’s a different game. For sure most of them are great businesses, but do they have the potential to disrupt the market in such a way that it might get the investors to a great exit ? Don’t forget European internet market is just a tiny part of the global market, after all.

Before choosing the 2010 winners, the question was: will Seedcamp move further from it’s original seed investment focus, or will it go back to it’s roots ? It is not a matter of personal taste, but rather a more mathematical calculation, because Seedcamp, as a pre-VC investment fund, needs to be sure as much as possible that their winners get the next VC investment for moving on.

Most of us were betting on the first option. However, we were wrong.

Between the 11 winners, many are technology innovation businesses, and that’s a big deal. It means Seedcamp managed to gather a bunch of Internet-focused VC’s, with enough market knowledge to push technology inovation in Europe. Personally, I think this trend encourages Eastern European startups to apply, mainly because their skills are more technical-focused then market-focused.

Seedcamp 2010 is a wrap, but there are many things to be told. We’ll also be back soon with a interviews of some of the teams and some of the How to Web 2010 speakers, hope you’ll enjoy them too.

September 19, 2010 by 1 comment

Blogging from Seedcamp Week

Four years ago, Seedcamp was a brand new name in the minds of European entrepreneurs. A great iniative of a bunch of UK business angels and venture capital funds, Seedcamp put it’s bet on the European entrepreneurs talent for starting and developing great web companies.

Years have passed and now Seedcamp Week reached it’s 4th edition. Bigger than ever, with 29 companies from 16 countries and almost 400 mentors helping them to improve their businesses, Seedcamp seems to stretch it’s limits year after year.

One thing is certain for sure: at Seedcamp Week you feel like a kid in a candy shop. You’ve got in the same room Dave McClure (does he need a presentation ?), Reshma Sohoni from Seedcamp, Iain Dodsworth from TweetDeck, Alex Hoye from Latitude, Fred Destin from Atlas Ventures, Ryan Carson from Carsonified, and so many other great entrepreneurs trying to change the world and also make a buck out of it.

But the quest is not over yet, as years pass by and questions start to arrise: how positive is the impact Seedcamp has on the companies they invest in ? Can Seedcamp do more for the European entrepreneurship ?

Because of the partnership between How to Web and Seedcamp, we’ve got the great opportunity of having a few talks with entrepreneurs and investors about the Seedcamp path, the opportunities of the global web and  how to develop great web apps and businesses. If you’re interested in that, get connected to the How to Web Blog and follow us during the next days. Also, if interested, send us some questions and we’ll try to get the answers for you.

September 15, 2010 by 2 comments