Patrick de Laive, The Next Web Amsterdam conference and blog initiator, has first come to Romania last November at the How To Web 2010 conference. He was one of the main speakers at the event and he was also part of the jury we had at the Startup Challenge competition so he managed to meet a few of the Romanian web developers and startup founders here. As he liked the local web startup scene and felt like there is a lot of talent here that could turn into a real success he came back to Bucharest in February at the invitation of Bucharest Hubb and spoke to Romanian web entrepreneurs about The Next Web and invited them to join the 6th  edition of the conference in Amsterdam.

We took the opportunity and had a small chat with Patrick about The Next Web 2011, the Romanian web startup scene and the way TNW 2011 could benefit internet entrepreneurs everywhere.

Raluca Georgescu: So, Patrick, last time we met you told me a very funny story about how and why you started The Next Web conference…

Patrick de Laive: Yeah, so back in 2005 I had my own startup called Fleck.com. We were on the verge of launching the company but then we didn’t know how to attract users. So we called a US startup and they said “well what you should do is you should go to a conference and you learn a lot, you get to know VCs and also you get feedback on your product”. Sounded like a good idea so then we asked how much this was. And the answer we got was that, well, you have to fly there, you have to sponsor the conference, you have to get some marketing materials and you have to pay for the hotel which altogether is like 30,000 USD. We were like wow, that’s a lot of money. We didn’t have any. So then we said “OK, thank you very much, man”, we hung up the phone and then I looked at my business partner and we said “well, if we had 30,000 dollars why not organise our own conference?!”.

That was on the one hand a good idea, but on the other hand it was a very bad idea because I’ve never been to a conference before, I organised my first at The Next Web so I had no idea what it took to organise something like that. And before I knew it we spent 100,000 EUR on all kinds of stuff and we sold 1 ticket for the conference and that was a month before the first conference. But then at the end of the last month it began to become better because we contracted one of our idols to speak at the next web, he was very expensive – Kevin Kelly. Because we took that risk people thought like “OK, these guys are really doing it,  we thought it was a joke” and it the end we still lost some money but 208 people joined the first conference and that was it.

We never launched our own company at the conference in the end. It was not finished in time because we needed to organise the conference. And yeah, that’s how it started and Fleck was finally launched about a year and a half later. But the conference, that was something we were very fond of and we started to grow the conference and the conference turned into a blog. That was 5-6 years ago.

Raluca Georgescu: What’s the big surprise you are preparing for this year’s edition?

Patrick de Laive: Well, I’m not honestly sure if I like surprises but I think every year we try to do something new and grow the conference. So we started off as a 1 day conference and right now it’s a 3 day conference. And we also have a hackaton for developers which is one day overlap with the conference. So basically it’s a 4 day event in total for us to organise so we have on Tuesday and Wednesday a hackaton which can be attended for free if you have the right credentials so if either you’re a web developer or a mobile developer. Then, on Wednesday the conference starts and lasts until Friday and people from the hackaton get invited by APIs and SDKs to the conference and they get a free ticket for the conference.

So the hackaton is new, we added an extra day which is new and we’re also adding a second track which allows to go deeper into certain topics so could be like mobile gaming (special session). we’re doing an extra session on successful European startups, we’re doing an extra session on SEO… So it goes a little bit deeper into the different subjects in the second track. You can actually choose where you want to go. Either you wanna go to the keynotes and startups or you go to the second track with more in depth information.

Raluca Georgescu: Is the Startup Rally competition also taking place this year?

Patrick de Laive: Yes, so in total 80 startups launched at TNW so far. Each year we do a startup rally, this year again. 200-300 signups each year for joining Startup Rally and we select 20 of them after multiple rounds of jury to join us in Amsterdam and they get 5 minutes on the main stage to present what you’re launching. And after that there’s a lot of press and investors in the audience. So if you want to raise money or you want to get attention from bloggers and other press it’s also a good place to be.

We see that each year the level of startups goes up and the quality gets a lot better and we have had a lot of interesting companies that after launching at TNW raised money or sold their company.

Raluca Georgescu: Could you give us some examples of companies?

Patrick de Laive: There are many, many examples I could give you. So, last year we had a company  Fashiolista – they launched at The Next Web and they raised500,000 EUR about a couple of months after from an investor they met at TNW. We had a company called Yunoo, they raised 1 million EUR and a company called E that raised 800,000 EUR. There was also Netvibes. And there’re probably more examples out there.

Raluca Georgescu: You were also in November in Romania at the HTW conference and you met a few startups here. I wanted to ask you how do you feel about the Romanian online environment and about the entrepreneurs here?

Patrick de Laive: So, I think one of the reasons why I’m back here in Bucharest is because I liked HTW, I liked the Romanian startup scene, I think there’s a lot of talent here, very good developers which is an asset you can be proud of and I hope that we’ll soon see one cool  startup coming out from Romania and having international scale success. So, I think there are some examples. Brainient is one of them and actually last year they were also presenting at TNW Startup Rally last year.

I think there is still something missing both on the business side and also on the product side. There are very good developers but they might now know exactly what to build so there  is some catching up to do but I think that with conferences like HTW and places like Bucharest Hubb there is something than can definitely grow from there. So that’s why it is very important to have places like Bucharest Hubb and to have events like HTW and to be able to get local coverage for the startups so that they can get more attention and maybe can raise more money. So I think there’s a lot to be done but you’re definitely on the right track.

Raluca Georgescu: So how will TNW conference benefit Romanian startups? Do you think it would help them on developing their product strategy and defining their business model?

Patrick de Laive: Yeah so one of the reasons why TNW exists is that people need to do business and if you do international business you either go fly abroad to all the  different cities where you need to do business or you go to an international conference like TNW where all your business partners are in one place and you can make many appointments in a couple of days. So I think also for the Romanian startup they can first learn a lot and secondly they can do business there.

So that’s the other reason why I’m here and why How To Web and Bucharest Hubb are organising a trip to The Next Web Amsterdam this year. So I’m really happy to see that we can work together with these 2 parties and I hope it will give something back to Romanian tech scene.