Past articles

123contactform – what changed after the first angel investment?

123contactform is a Romanian start-up which offers the possibility to create personalized online forms. The start-up has managed to attract angel-investor Adrian Gheara‘s attention after last year’s How to Web conference.

We thought we’d do a follow-up with them and see how things are going after almost a year since the pair up. So we had a chat with Florin Cornianu, one of the founders of 123contactform.

HTW: What makes 123contactform successful? How does it attract clients?
Florin Cornianu: It’s simple. That’s our philosophy.  It doesn’t matter if you need a simple contact form or a complicated order form with payment integration that is linked to SalesForce. Read on →

August 9, 2011 by no comments

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AWS Start-up Challenge 2011

You’re a start-up and you’re using Amazon Web Services? Here’s something that might be of interest to you!

Amazon has recently launched this year’s AWS Start-up Challenge. The 2011 competition expects participants from all around the word, granting a regional initial selection. Start-ups will be competing for a prize of $50k cash and $50k worth of AWS credits.

Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing platform that offers IT infrastructure services to businesses. AWS is a solution used worldwide by websites and client-based applications. All provided services are payed with a “pay for what you use” policy. Read on →

August 8, 2011 by no comments

ignite100 – “locked in a room with Jon Bradford and Paul Smith for 13 weeks”

As you may have a heard, a new accelerator has come to life recently in the North-East of England. ignite100 is a mentorship-led programme with a £1m fund and over 50 mentors from a wide variety of backgrounds.

Here’s how it works: After being accepted into the program, each team receives an initial funding of £5k (up tp £15k). Then, the founders will move to Newcastle and be part of a 13 week programme where they will receive intense mentoring and business support. At the end of the programme, if the teams achieve pre-agreed milestones, they will receive the rest of the £100k in the form of convertible loan.

We took some time to talk to Jon Bradford, ignite100′s Executive Director, the man who also launched The Difference Engine and Springboard. Here’s how it went: Read on →

July 13, 2011 by 1 comment

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Tips for distributing equity amongst startup co-founders

“There is no delight in owning anything unshared.” – Seneca

This is always one of the first questions you will need to ask when co-founding a startup: who gets how much equity and when? Everyone hates the negotiation, everyone is trying to avoid but nevertheless each one of you has a number on his mind and a few arguments for it.

We talked about sweat equity some time ago and the way to determine its value. However, the tips in that article don’t really help you in distributing equity amongst startup co-founders. So I thought I’ll just give you a hand. Here are some tips on equity sharing between startup founders and on how to solve the problem between founders who come up with money and founders who bring their own time and sweat into the business.

Read on →

March 3, 2011 by no comments

Le Web 2010 liveblogging: Dave McClure, 500 startups and global web trends

Dave McClure, who describes himself as Startup Investor and Troublemaker is the founder of 500startups.com – an internet startup and seed fund and incubator program in Mountain View, CA. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, and has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O’Reilly Media, Intel, & Microsoft.

Dave talks about global trends on the web. Accoring to him there are more and more old people and young people online nowadays. There is also more bandwidth and more video online and a growth of Global languages (there are more than 1 billion Mandarin and English speakers and more than 500 million speakers of Spanish, Hindi, Arabic and Portuguese). This means that you can build projects for your local market in one of these languages that appeal to all the world.

Another obvious trend accoring to Dave is the smart device proliferation – phone, tablet, TV, console, etc – as well as the acceleration of global payment and e-commerce. On the other hand product development and customer acquisition have more and more reduced costs.

Dave’s advice is to dominate your local/native market first or to move so that your local market is bigger (China, US).

Dave recommends a few books – “Spent: Sex, evolution and human behavior” by Geoffrey Miller, “Influence: the psychology of persuasion” by Robert Cialdini and “Understanding comics: the invisible art” by Scott McCloud.

Dave’s opinion is that you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley, but Silicon Valley needs to be in you wherever you are in the world.

The main conclusion of Dave’s presentation was: Start local, hustle global.

December 9, 2010 by no comments