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Next up Sime'06

I arrived @ schiphol on monday morning just in time to kiss the kids and go back to the airport. We went to Sime one of the best internet events in Europe. We had the luck bumping into Guido van Nispen, the acclaimed dutch web2.0 photographer and member of the board of the Dutch crossmediaweek foundation.

I use to be an strategy consultant for a Dutch board room consultancy firm And its allways good to hear that McKinsey gets the same comments. "This qoute costed our firm 2 milj."

On the last day we were interviewed by the Swedisch radio about Souki and how behavior based search gives better search results then google (link will follow). And last but not least we had a change to give our vision about web2.0 during the main event.

Some New York Pictures

Last two weeks where fast indeed. Spend some time in New York where I had the pleasure to discuse bizdev2.0 with some very smart people. Next to me is Ken from civil netizen

One of the fun things of New York is that you can travel without anyone seeing you, or taking an intrest in you.

Of course one of the highlights was the techcrunch party. Great meeting all you briljant people. I also had a change to watch the Fleck launch from start to finish by dropping by the fleck team.


And last but not least, allways fun to see something Dutch.

Post Techcrunch

Yesterday I had a nice chat with Aaron Brazell and you can find his recap here

Later more, for now thanks to all the great people I talked to, even Micheal ;-)

NextNY

Last night I attended NextNY Its an informal gathering of New York (Internet) entrepreneurs. Every one is invited to share their opinion and to facilitate this the speakers are spread randomly across the room. Speakers last night included:

Fred Wilson, VC - Union Square Ventures
Catherine Levene, SVP Product Strategy and GM Content Network, TheFind.com, Former VP, Product, Business Development and Strategy, NYT Digital
Chris Fralic, First Round Capital
Niki Scevak, CEO, Homethinking
Tina Sharkey, SVP Instant Messaging & Social Media, AOL
Zia Daniell Wigder, VP and Research Director, JupiterResearch & Founder and Director, 12 Hours of Dialogue
Robin Chan, Associate Director, Entertainment Programming, Verizon Wireless

And one guy who just heard that he was nominated by Time magazine as one of the top 25 entrepreneurs under 25. He specialises in Ingame advertising. If someone knows his name, let me know.

It was great to see all these people discussing different subjects and due to the impressive speakers list, they where viewed from all angles.

Below you find an excerpt of my notes.

Succes in social media is all about Ego and Echo. Ego are the systems where you can get an expert status, personal diggs, top stories, expert status ect. And echo. Echo is all about reach.

AOL number one reason to buy companies is not feature but the teams. These small teams can often solve problems quicker then AOL themselves. The biggest problems for AOL are scalability and stability. Second reason are features that are complementary to the current AOL platform. Third reason is sold out reach in the AOL portefeuillio or high value. Meaning they will buy sites that have the same reach as AOL when the advertising stock for the current network is out of stock. By high value they mean the quality of reach. If you are reaching a lot of high profile people that’s high value reach. Funny enough Michael Arrington's Techcrunch was mentioned at least 15 times. It seems to me that they think Michael it too commercial.

On the subject of open api's: The conclusion, although not supported by me, it that open api and better mash ups are the next big thing. On a personal note, I think this is bull shit, because it will bring down the value of information to zero. It will be in GUI or how you can manipulate the date that will give any value. But that’s me.

On the subject of the next bubble. Yes but a different kind of bubble "the people bubble" Meaning that you need less people and capital for a start-up. And the supply of people is bigger then the need, hence the wages ect will go down and only the strong will survive. Key drivers are: developers supply, open platforms, and the eastern country's. A funny example is: pubsub.com. There is no one working there any more for a few weeks but they leave the service humming

Social networks are the next evolution in the pillars of internet. The others are: browsers, mail, seach.

On a funny note. A call out was made to settle the calender discussion once and for all. SO PLEASE PICK ONE CALLENDER AP. and get over it.

NextNY

Last night I attended NextNY Its an informal gathering of New York (Internet) entrepreneurs. Every one is invited to share their opinion and to facilitate this the speakers are spread randomly across the room. Speakers last night included:

Fred Wilson, VC - Union Square Ventures
Catherine Levene, SVP Product Strategy and GM Content Network, TheFind.com, Former VP, Product, Business Development and Strategy, NYT Digital
Chris Fralic, First Round Capital
Niki Scevak, CEO, Homethinking
Tina Sharkey, SVP Instant Messaging & Social Media, AOL
Zia Daniell Wigder, VP and Research Director, JupiterResearch & Founder and Director, 12 Hours of Dialogue
Robin Chan, Associate Director, Entertainment Programming, Verizon Wireless

And one guy who just heard that he was nominated by Time magazine as one of the top 25 entrepreneurs under 25. He specialises in Ingame advertising. If someone knows his name, let me know.

It was great to see all these people discussing different subjects and due to the impressive speakers list, they where viewed from all angles.

Below you find an excerpt of my notes.

Succes in social media is all about Ego and Echo. Ego are the systems where you can get an expert status, personal diggs, top stories, expert status ect. And echo. Echo is all about reach.

AOL number one reason to buy companies is not feature but the teams. These small teams can often solve problems quicker then AOL themselves. The biggest problems for AOL are scalability and stability. Second reason are features that are complementary to the current AOL platform. Third reason is sold out reach in the AOL portefeuillio or high value. Meaning they will buy sites that have the same reach as AOL when the advertising stock for the current network is out of stock. By high value they mean the quality of reach. If you are reaching a lot of high profile people that’s high value reach. Funny enough Michael Arrington's Techcrunch was mentioned at least 15 times. It seems to me that they think Michael it too commercial.

On the subject of open api's: The conclusion, although not supported by me, it that open api and better mash ups are the next big thing. On a personal note, I think this is bull shit, because it will bring down the value of information to zero. It will be in GUI or how you can manipulate the date that will give any value. But that’s me.

On the subject of the next bubble. Yes but a different kind of bubble "the people bubble" Meaning that you need less people and capital for a start-up. And the supply of people is bigger then the need, hence the wages ect will go down and only the strong will survive. Key drivers are: developers supply, open platforms, and the eastern country's. A funny example is: pubsub.com. There is no one working there any more for a few weeks but they leave the service humming

Social networks are the next evolution in the pillars of internet. The others are: browsers, mail, seach.

On a funny note. A call out was made to settle the calender discussion once and for all. SO PLEASE PICK ONE CALLENDER AP. and get over it.

New York, New York

Due to Continental Inflight Entertainment system the flight was remarkebly short. I also had a back-up plan in the form of my laptop fully loaded with work and series. (Heroes, Lost 3th season, Six Degrees, Eureka & the nine). One of the things I plan doing is making a Hiroshi Style picture on times sqaure.

Not your average Sunday

Being in a start-up is fun!!! serious fun. Marieke surprised me by taking me a workshop @ “herberg onder de linden” this Sunday. Geerhard and Petra have cooked their way to fourth place in the Dutch restaurant scene.


“The history of "Herberg Onder de Linden"dates back to 1735. The foundation of the building originates from the ruins of an old monastery in Aduard. Herberg, which Dutch means a taverne and a lodging house, had a perfect location in Aduard. Situated between Groningen and Friesland, Aduard proved an excellent stopping place, providing food and lodging for travellers and stabling for horses. Deserted in 1987, the house became neglected. Thanks to Geerhard and Petra Slenema renovation work started in 1990 and the building was back to its full glory in 1991. The Slenemas transferred their 12 year long experience from their Groningen located "Le Merinos d"Or"restaurant to Aduard and renamed the restaurant "Herberg Onder de Linden". In 1992 "Herberg Onder de Linden"achieved a Michelin star similarly as did its predecessor "Le Merinos d`Or" in1985.”

And since a picture says more then a 1000 words, enjoy them.

Who are you?

With Souki we want to facilitate communication between people. This means that we allow people who do not know each other to chat via our webbased messenger client or mobile phone. Don't worry its designed in a way that allows you to use it with MSN, Yahoo, IAM, ICQ, Jabber, from one client that is ;-).

Finding people to chat with is simple. There are a couple of ways to find them. In you client you can see all the people that are in your neighborhood and people with similar intrests based on you Souki profile. We also show the location of people near objects that you have looked for. Since you want to get an idea about who's who, we let you create an avatar which is placed on a map for all to see. Big question is who are you? Which of the two styles do you like?, comments are welcome.

Hello World

Entrepreneurship, good deeds and rewards

A while ago I spoke with Boris and Patrick from Fleck about entrepreneurship. Small businesses are the driver of an economy. On one end of the spectrum you have got the masses who for some reason are hesitant to start one, and we have got the serial or even parallel entrepreneurs. (Boris, with http://www.jippie.com/, http://www.preople.com/, http://www.fleck.com/ and hubhop for one is a successful serial entrepreneur).

Although entrepreneurship is high on the agenda of premier Balkenende it is not a course in high or elementary school. Tim draper saw this too and started an initiative called bizzworld (Dutch link) Four weeks ago he was at the university of Eindhoven for an executive lunch, which thanks to SiemensVDO I could attend.

Tim passionately spoke about Bizzworld and entrepreneurship. He even wore wooden shoes for the occasion. After his speech we participated in an reverse auction and are proud to have ONE share in Bizzworld. (this also gave us the change to pitch Souki with Tim, and what do you know next week I’ll be in New York). If you too want to meet up, drop a line: Ernstjan@souki dot com