The past 2 Days I spent at Expand 06,

http://www.expand06.com

the conference hosted by my friend Ola Alvahrsson, former Founder of Boxman and Founder of Result

http://www.result.com

Here I meet Founders from the Netherlands, Sweden, even France and Spain, including bigger shots like Tradedoubler (300 Poeple, listed on Stockholm SE since november 2005, 117 Mil. € in Revenues.

The conference is ablaze with founding willingness, endeavour, and the smartness of founders intent on not spending it all. As with Lukasz Gadowksi of spreadhirt.net in Hamburg, the most exciting founder was one who founded with 0 € in VC money. Samy Liechtl is Founder of Blacksox.com

http://www.blacksox.com or http://www.blacksocks.com

He does really smart marketing, selling “sockscriptions” of socks, to relieve “sock sorrows” by selling only matching socks, so if you lose one it doesn’t matter. He also puts small sock-shaped jelly in to his mail-order deliveries - with cheese tase!

We discussed that the exciting part about web 2.0 and social networks, is not so much the direct features you get but the potential it has for enhancing existing Business Models into the decision taking sphere (an aspect of both long tail and social commerce). Exciting discussion. More Later.

PS: Sweden is cool, the Swedes very nice.

Last thursday saw a big event in Hamburg: 450 - 500 would-be netphiles converged on SinnerSchrader’s (one of the biggest new media agencies in Germany) to acclaim and discuss the virtues of web 2.0, mashups, social networks, long tail commerce, etc.

http://www.next10years.de/

20 or so nervous VCs were imitating Dilberts Vijay (the World most Desperate VC), but I liked the rather cynical We’ll-Fan-The-Hype-And-Take-The-Money-But-Do-It-Right-This-Time entrepeneurs. My Favorite was Lukas Gadowski, founder of spreadshirt.net, who founded his 120-poeple company with 0$ VC money. that’s right, 0$. Cool guy. He urged “all the consultants and bankers in the room” to “do it again and found a startup, because you’ll get VC money now…” Hilarious, I keep thinking about the old adage of B2C and B2B meaning “back to consulting” and “back to banking” after going bust…. I now it’s really bubble 1.0-ish, but hey, I’m a veteran.

On a more serious note, while valuations are going up, it is true that there are four major differences between then and now:

1) development costs on more mature and open source technologies are a 10% fraction of the cost of 5 years ago
2) (viral, search, performance, affiliate) marketing costs are a factor of 100 cheaper now
3) there are 5-6 times more users with a wide range of needs and much higher affinity to web and mobile (adding up to 13 Mil. in Germany alone)
4) founders, even inexperienced, aren’t half as naive (though some ar getting giddy with the valuation thing).

Cheers!

the social dynamics are overwhelming, but if all the web 2.0 startups are to succeed, they will need to come up with better refinancing than Google AdSense - and the community will have to bear that without decrying “treason of commercialisation”. Maybe the key will be to generate not only the content, but also the revenue on a user2user basis. Finally, the vision of the internet as a gigantic network of knowledge would become true, where not only the big media and publishing houses earn money, but also the average Jack or Joe who happens to know a lot about one specific thing - like the mating habits of Galapagos Turtles…

Check out http://www.oneview.de for a startup that is giving this a try…

Cheers

R0cketrabbit

Hi there!

R0cketrabbit is an Entrepreneur who’s seen the frist wave come and go, and is excited about the chance to do it all right this time.

In my 15 or so years of entrepreneurship, I’ve grown an organisation to 200 poeple, squandered millions of VC money, gotten my neck out of the sling without going bankrupt (but just quite), mourned the death of my friend and co-founder Felix Hildebrand, grown a startup, oneview, to 16 countries and 10 languages, scaled it back to 15 poeple, grown wise and then back to enthusiasm, and co-founded or -funded 12 companies.

This blog will try to give an honest, disrespectful, but positive account of my tribulations - I’ll be more than glad to share and discuss my findings - critics welcome!

Cheers

R0cketrabbit