Lively Debate Twitter!
Written on May 26, 2008 – 10:45 am
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
I hope you like that post!
Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Loic Le Meur’s Seesmic raises 6 million
Written on February 13, 2008 – 11:08 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Loic Le Meur at the Seesmic Offices
Seesmic, the video conversation start-up by Loic Le Meur has just raised a cool 6 million dollars from an impressive list of investors. There are a lot of things I don’t understand about Seesmic but I am afraid to write about them because obviously I must be stupid. I mean, if Michael Arrington, Steve Case and Ron Conway all DO seem to get it, there can’t be any other explanation.
Can you imagine we will be chatting to each other in pre-recorded video messages? Do YOU use iChat video on a regular basis? Can you imagine using it in a Walkie Talkie kinda way where you talk first, then upload your message, then wait for someone to record their message which you then have to watch after which you can record a new message? Or maybe this whole video chatting this is just a cover for another business that we haven’t heard from yet?
No, it must be me. Or maybe these people just REALLY liked Loic and that is the reason why they invested 6 million. Either way, here is the press release:
Seesmic Raises $6 Million to Power the World’s Video Conversations
A-List investors are led by Niklas Zennström’s Atomico and include Steve Case, Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, and Reid Hoffman
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - February 14, 2008 - Seesmic (www.seesmic.com), the highly anticipated new start-up from Loic Le Meur, today announced that it has raised $6 million from internationally renowned investors. The investment is lead by Atomico - an investment group founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The complete list of investors is:
Politics: too serious a matter to be left to politicians?
Written on December 24, 2007 – 6:13 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
At last years Le Web conference in Paris a large part of the audience was not amused about the sudden appearance of first one, then two and finally three politicians on stage. Worse, they were French politicians. My main memory is one of them saying ‘Le Web est très importante’ which translates to ‘The Web is very important’. I remember thinking ‘I didn’t travel to Paris, and paid good money, to hear a politician telling ME that the web is important!’. And it seemed that more people felt this way judging from the hundreds of blogpost following that conference.
One big concern that was voiced was that these politicians were mainly interesting (if at all) to French people. For an organisation that aims to have a worldwide audience it is kind of strange to focus on local politics. Of-course the French consider France the center of the world so that explains that.
Now Techcrunch has moved into politics too. They want to ‘provide a voice for digital policy and technology issues’ which is a noble effort. They are obviously doing a very good job at it and have gained a lot of mainstream press too.
But just as at LeWeb in Paris, as an international citizen, I feel awkwardly left out. Sure, in the end, the US elections will influence my life too. But as a non US citizen I don’t don’t find it an interestingly enough subject for an international technology blog, or conference. In a way TechCrunch appears to say ‘We focus on American readers’ and this message is not very welcoming to people not from America.
It isn’t that I blame Techcrunch about their interest in the elections. They do have a large and influential following and can have an effect. And politics is a rich subject that can generate a lot of content fast. As Will Rogers said “There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you”. Exchange ‘humorist’ for ‘blogger’ and you get the point.
Coincidentally Techcrunch is getting mixed up in a whole different sort of politics: copyright politics. It seems that Micah L. Sifry is not amused by Techcrunch choice of words when they picked ‘Tech President Primaries’ as a subtitle for their primaries. Sifry is Executive Editor and co-Founder of Personal Democracy Forum, a website that writes about the changing democracy in America, and he claims they started the ‘TechPresident Primaries‘ before Techcrunch came up with the idea. In a (now published) letter to Michael Arrington he insists Techcrunch rename the ‘Techcrunch Tech President Primaries’ and ‘acknowledge techPresident.com and the work we’ve been doing to get the presidential campaigns to be more internet-savvy’.
Sounds like a serious issue?
Not really.
As often happens in politics Sifry retracted his words the next day and claimed he had no choice but to ‘make our concerns public’ and ‘meant the phrase as a metaphor, not a formal legal accusation’.
I wouldn’t mind if the old saying ‘In Polite Company People Never Talk about Religion, Politics, Sex, or Money’ could be aplied a bit more to technology blogs and conferences.
Except for the Money & Sex part.
No, forget the Sex part too because as Ronald Reagan said:
“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”
I’m sure that the day after Reagan said this he also said ‘ I just wanted to make our concerns public and meant the phrase as a metaphor’.
R.I.P.: Edgeio and TED
Written on December 7, 2007 – 7:20 pm
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck
Businesses come and go, we all know that. May they Rest In Peace.
In the US an entrepreneur isn’t considered an experienced entrepreneur when he or she didn’t fail at least one time. The more failures, the better (hmmm.. not sure if I totally agree with that). In Europe we are far more conservative when it comes to bankruptcies. I like (as with many things) the mix between the US and European culture.
” 5 million went up on parties, scotch, hookers, blow. you know, the usual”
You don’t have to be ashamed if your company failed, but you must aim at creating a profitable business and don’t start a business just so you can fail (if you know what I mean).
Although a lot of negative things happen when a company goes out of business, there is also a bright side. The entrepreneur just learned some big lessons and has time to start a new company!
R.I.P.: Edgeio (see also Techcrunch article)
Edgeio was founded by Michael Arrington (yep, the famous blogger) and Keith Teare. I have had the luck to meet both in San Francisco. Keith is a great guy (he was the one who tipped us to wake up Michael Arrington which was covered by Wired Magazine later on :) ). Edgeio shared offices (and secretaries -Amy-) with Techcrunch. What Edgeio did..? Not totally clear to me.
Edgeio got 5 million dollar funding in October 2006 Intel Capital and Transcosmos and “burned through that money according to plan” !!!! EXCUSE ME! Guess their excel sheet predictions were spot on on the expenditures side but was a little bit off with the predictions of the revenues :)
A TechCrunch reader commented: “what exactly did you spend 5 million dollars on?” Arringtons reply is hilarious “parties, scotch, hookers, blow. you know, the usual” :)
R.I.P.: TED (no not the conference)
Closer to home, Amsterdam based TED pulled the plug. TED published a free paper for kids and had an internet concept attached to it and with TED mobile, TED TV and 25 talented people working at their office it seemed a healthy and successful company. TED was founded by Friso Jiskoot (son of former CEO ABN AMRO) and backed by Marcel Boekhoorn (Serial entrepreneur, investor in several startups -zecco.com symbaloo.com-).
I wish Friso all the best and I’m sure we’ll hear from him again as he is a true entrepreneur.
Sorry to conclude that TED is DEAD. R.I.P.
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