Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Netlog still bigger than Bebo

They say Alexa never lies :)


With over 23m registered users and a new service just launched in Turkey, Netlog remains the great undiscovered secret of the Top 100 web.

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3 TAG companies in Guardian's Top 10

Nice to see three TAG companies making the list of Top 10 companies to watch.

Congrats to Moo, Mindcandy and Extate - nice photos :)

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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Big day for Seedcamp

from the Seedcamp blog:

We've been thrilled at the interest Seedcamp has generated in such a short time since we announced it a few weeks ago. In the spirit of the new web, we've had some great guest blogs , our forums are slowly getting more active and even our Facebook group is growing like crazy - we're just crossed 600 members :)

We want Seedcamp to really help stimulate a community and conversation around European startups - so please join in, online or physically at your local Opencoffee Club. So if you're an entrepreneur with an idea, a developer with a killer app - there's no excuse to feel alone anymore.

You have until midnight August 12th to submit your completed application, we've already had nearly 100 from all over Europe including France, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and the UK. We've also had applications from India, Israel, Russia, South Africa and Latin America - keep them coming.

Seedcamp is completely focussed on supporting the entrepreneur. So we're thrilled that we seemed to have tapped into something that seems relevant and valuable to you. In fact, one of the things which has excited me the most is that people are recognizing that although capital is key, Seedcamp is more about the contacts, coverage and connections successful applicants will receive both in the week of September 3-7 in London and in the 3 months afterwards.

With this in mind, I'm really excited today to announce the first wave of Seedcamp supporters, who are really stepping up to play a major role not just in Seedcamp 2007 but for the years ahead. These are all people and organizations who have played a critical role in putting European entrepreneurship on the map and I'm thrilled to have them on board.

The cast in order of appearance so far are: Index Ventures, Niklas Zennstrom and Mattias Ljungman's Atomico Investments , Atlas Venture, Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark Europe), TAG, Forsyth Group and Brown Rudnick. We are also thrilled to have FT.com and Techcrunch as media partners and the NextWeb Conference as an event partner.

We look forward to act two and announcing our new cast of characters in the coming weeks.

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Moo gets sticky

The team at Moo just can't help coming out with cool stuff. For what seems to be a simple printing company, they have one of the most fanatical followings on the web and a blog which is in the Top 1k on Technorati.

Today, they released their much anticipated third product - StickerBooks.

In true Moo fashion, the product is all about:
  • personal choice -- you can choose 90 different stickers on 15 tear-out sheets
  • quality -- stickers are high-quality gloss, scratchproof vinyl stickers
  • design -- your choice of 6 differently styled beautiful sticker books
Moo are also going to the next level in terms of excellent content with this release.

Now you can choose ReadyMade content some very cool designers and illustrators, in addition to being able to use your Flickr, Habbo, Bebo, Vox, Fotolog or Live Journal content for your MiniCards, NoteCards or StickerBooks.

Well done to the team, hope the party is awesome in London tonight - it certainly seems from Upcoming that there's much excitement.

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Why Design Matters....

There aren't enough great product designers - why?

They make or break today's businesses.

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

OpenCoffee London keeps growing

Tomorrow will be our 20th meeting - and our Meetup group in London is now up to 713. Its fantastic to see more people joining and new faces every week.

It's also amazing to me how online groups are becoming so useful and viral - in less than a week Seedcamp's group on Facebook has close to 500 members and the global Opencoffee group on Ning is close to 1,200 people.

What a great way to keep in touch and stay connected - the web gets better every day.

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Finding fellow travellers for your business

A shorter version of my post on the Seedcamp blog about finding partners...

This is some practical advice on what you can do if you have a great idea - for Seedcamp, or otherwise - and you want to go about finding a partner.

It's not easy, but in this age of networks, here are some suggestions which grease the wheels.

You can start easily online:
  • Check out Seedcamp on Facebook - as it opens up, Groups and associated Events are becoming more powerful as networking tools
  • Get engaged in Seedcamp Forums - contribute to and check out ours
  • Use Linkedin - if you know what you're looking for it can be a powerful tool for finding the right people
But there's no substitute for the real world, so:
  • Opencoffee Club - now in almost 60 cities around the world from Boston to Zagreb. You are likely to be close to one and if not, start one and see who turns up. You'll find you can meet in person co-founders, fellow entrepreneurs and folks to build your team
  • Barcamp - a really inspiring phenomenon, a place to meet great hackers and people passionate about building products
  • Meetup - pretty much in every city, you can find experts on most topics, take your pick
Good luck in finding your partners - it's worth it and your business will be better for it.

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Thursday, July 05, 2007

Openads releases 2.3 beta and appoints CEO


Openads is really on a roll at the moment.

Congratulations to the team who have just released the public release of their new 2.3 beta which is a major step forward in terms of performance, functionality and ease of use.

And congratulations to James Bilefied, my old colleague from Skype, who was announced yesterday as Openads CEO. James' experience at Yahoo! and Skype makes him a great hire for a business well positioned to disrupt the online advertising space with its free open source ad server.

Exciting times ahead.

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Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Launching Seedcamp

The covers are coming off - slowly this week, but with increased momentum going forward.

We talked about Seedcamp last week at Library House's conference and now we've soft-launched the web site.

We've been talking about the possibilities since earlier this year and now we're really excited to get the ball rolling.

We're looking for the brightest and the best young entrepreneurs across Europe, Middle East and Africa to blow us away with their ideas for game-changing businesses.

So if you are one of these game-changers, stop now - please apply.

If you'd like to join our network of mentors (entrepreneurs, investors, product designers, developers, lawyers, recruiters, marketing specialists etc) to help support one - let me know personally or in the comments below.

Or, if you're just interested in what we're doing, please check out the presentation below and visit the still in formation Seedcamp.com.

Whatever you do - please spread the word :)


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