The room was dark and the heat got to both the presenting startups as well as the audience. The setting was the Vodafone Mobile Clicks finals at the Picnic festival in Amsterdam. Up for grabs was 150.000 Euro’s. A big amount in anyone’s book, but for bootstrapping startups the three prices would mean a lot more. IT would mean a new window of opportunity and the possibility to take their company a step further. Finalists Audioboo, Layar, Woobius, My Name is E, Rummble and Mobypicture battled in front of a very critical jury, but never lost that comradery that comes from being a startups together. The emotions ran high with tears for both victorious startups and startups that missed the top three positions. To Audioboo, My Name is E and Rummble all I can say is, guys you’re all on my phone and I loved your presentations.
A great addition to the pack of startups was Woobius, the third place winner. As the only one aimed at an enterprise market, Woobius aims for an audience that is rarely represented at this kind of event. It was awesome to see the surprise of the group, who saw themselves as underdogs, when they heard they could come up to pick up their third price. Congratulations guys and lets stay in touch, I will have some leads for you.
Mobypicture hardly needs any introduction. Mathys has been a friend ever since I met him and I just love his service. During the finale Mobypicture launched no less than 6 new features. An awesome step and something to be proud of. Your second place was well deserved Mathys and I love your passion for shoot and share.
One of Layar’s demonstrations for their new 3D technology is a rocket taking off. It could not have been chosen more appropriately. Since its launch, Layar has swept the world of its feet with its augmented reality browser. The world has been at their feet ever since. Maarten did a presentation which harnessed so much passion that it was impossible to beat. And the rollercoaster continues. Taking first price, the Layar team has seen a great reward for following its dreams. And for Maarten, the last year has been the ride of his life.
Congratulations to you all and I will be seeing more of all of you, I am sure.
When I was in Berlin last month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tim O’Reilly in our pitchcar. I have to say that I enjoyed that time. After hearing his keynote on how the future will be for startups, it was only natural to see our conversation drift that way. And we agreed that the key element for anyone to become successful in the current market would be passion. A passion to work on something that you would work on anyway regardless of whether you would get funded. Regardless of the interest it gets from the media, regardless of whether it will be a quick way to earn lots of money. It comes down to the passion of the people behind it. Their enthusiasm for the question they want to answer and their joy when users benefit from using the service. This is something we both feel very strongly about.
For me personally passion is important in what I do. I have a passion for people. And my passion for people only naturally became a passion for social media, because that is full of them. And that is why I loved spending time with Tim O’Reilly. Because besides all that he has talked about and all that he has done in the past, in the end he is a man of passion. When talking to him, he will lean forward, he will use his gestures and his eyes will light up. He is passionate about what he does. And even though he has a pretty big organisation behind him, I believe that he would be doing exactly the same thing if he wouldn’t. A great demonstration that passion is the key to succes, if it is genuine and for no other reason than the subject you are working on.
Over the last week I have been pretty busy at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin. It all started with an invitation to the bloggers program, but it grew to become something all on its own. This post is a quick overview of all the people that got into the Ford S-Max to do a short interview on their startup or their view of the future.
We started on Monday morning at Upstream in Arnhem. On the way there and in Arnhem we used our qik livestream. You can still find it at http://qik.com/mobilecowboys. However, the quality was not what we had hoped for so we moved everything to youtube. There you can see the video’s of:
Theo Janssen of Camee-sportswear.nl (in Dutch)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TbXHUHR7hlU
Geert Veneklaas of Muziek voor Media (in Dutch)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PUuNpbBYFbg
Gerjanne Tiemens of Arnhem-direct.nl (in Dutch)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ufn_Zh5jWxs
Lucien Burm of Kimengi.com (in Dutch)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6IrD5gVbwfg
Dion Slijp and Bart Verheijen of Guruscan.nl (in Dutch)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9VIXmw3mhgM
Lori Bonsma of Sugarmama.eu (in Dutch)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EObcs-m1_34
Oscar Klein and Rogier Sterk of Kleinensterk.com (in Dutch)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=POW2AWv8Elc
Monique and Henk Jan Winkeldermaat of Punkmedia.nl (in Dutch)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1GGsuIzRFt0
Most of Tuesday was spent talking to new startups and uploading videos. No new recordings were made that day.
Wednesday was a busy day. We had a great time talking to:
Nicola Robinsonova on Learnitlists.com
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dm7JlQV8kZs
Sunny Paris on Yoolinkpro.com
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9qgpBZ27aPk
Alexander Ljung of Soundcloud.com
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=p2d8t-46m3o
Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Radar on the future for startups
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=or55faEy7js
Dania Gerhardt of Amazee
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OT1DEU9uHBI
Dominik Grolimond of Wuala
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vO5gmiFd8
Thursday was the last day of the Web 2.0 Expo. We talked to:
Christian Duncan of Playcharts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5mDSplcOqM
Jennifer Pahlka on Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin and San Francisco (http://www.oreilly.com)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlW4x6xi16I
Mike Robinson of Mloovi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZyuJLTGD6E
Mike Butcher of TechCrunch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HVuIBg4K1M
Janetti Chon of O’Reilly Media on community management
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7KXqycDb6Y
Mathijs van Abben of Mobypicture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMtlMu5cYcc
Dr. Michael Alger of Otello
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-AunM0R6k
David Lockie of LowCarbonEconomy.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHDWaqFH6zU
This is a complete list of all the interviews that I have done over the Web 2.0 Expo. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed watching them as well as showing you some great new insights and initiatives.
I also want to say thanks. Thanks to Ford for supplying the S-Max 2.5 turbo, which was an absolutely great car. Thanks to Nokia for supplying the N82 for live streaming and the N96 for the recordings we have put on youtube. And of course to Vodafone for supplying us with the roaming to work with live streaming.
A very personal thanks goes out to Erno Hannink for selflessly promoting the pitch stops at every single opportunity he could. And another very big thanks has to go to Janetti Chon. Thanks for arranging all we needed to pull this off. You have made this an awesome Web 2.0 Expo.
