When do I Invest? – Video Interview [German]

Recently I had the nice experience of being interviewed by the blogger / founder of http://www.easn.de or Everything A Startup Needs. He asked me to relate:

- how dw capital grew out of denkwerk

- what makes our positioning unique

- what are my criteria for investment

- and how much idealism a Founder can sustain

Of course, an [edited] video interview cannot convey all the things and remarkable people that shaped the rich history of 10 years of denkwerk, but maybe the interview gives anyone interested an impression of the philosophy behind our seed venture unit, dw capital. So, here goes:

Video Interview of Axel Schmiegelow

For the record, and because I also have an agency background:

I do believe in Branding, but I don’t believe Branding should be an excuse for bad conversion of a media campaign.

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Tags: bubble, Business Model, bust, denkwerk, dw capital, Entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, innovation, investment, oneview, samwer, sevenload, startup, user value, value proposition, values, video, Web 2.0

About me

As a Founder of denkwerk Group, I have been involved in marketing, media, the internet, and start-ups for the past 15 years. I have seen the New Economy come and go (and come back again). At denkwerk, we founded the world's first bookmarking and tagging startup, oneview, in 1998, and rolled it out in 16 countries and 10 languages. denkwerk has always endeavoured to make innovation happen and attract some of the brightest talents (and start-ups) in our industry.

As a seed investor, I am an active Board Member of the company shaping the future of travel commerce, itravel, and a Board member of the exciting local search and rating company, Qype. As an investor in armedangels and an Advisor to betterplace, I support endeavours to make the world a better place.

In December 2005, I met Ibrahim "Ibo" Evsan and Tom Bachem. They had just developed a ground-breaking technology for an online Video Player. With seed funding from denkwerk we incorporated in April 2006, and in Summer 2006 I became CEO of sevenload!. In 2007 Andreas Heyden, the RTL in-house Founder of our main competitor, clipfish, left RTL group to join us as COO, and Andreas and I developed a licensing and business model that will help shape the future of TV and internet media, while Ibo and Tom turned their technology sights to Social Gaming when they left sevenload step by step between late 2008 and Summer 2009. Today sevenload is headed by a brilliant management team which I find exciting and rewarding to work with and learn from.