Written on June 26, 2008 – 12:33 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After six months of happy blogging and welcoming you and 3499 other RSS readers, we think it’s about time to professionalize the design of The Next Web Blog. We can’t do that alone though, as we need your opinion. To be exact: we need you to inspire us, as you’re the ones we’re blogging for.
That’s why we came up with this challenge: we would like to ask you to use our logo to create something that will inspire us while designing the new lay-out. There are virtually no limits, as long as the file extension is .jpg, .png or .gif. It doesn’t even have to be static. It can be a drawing, wallpaper, or icon set.
The designer who manages to take our breath away - or something close to it - will receive the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard. Yes, you read that right. Adobe is a really generous company and we’re delighted that they wanted to sponsor this competition. So thanks to these guys, the winner will receive programs like InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat 9 Professional, and more.
Put your Next Web Blog creation on Flickr or another image hosting service and link to it in the comments of this post. Take your time, as the design competition is closing on August 1st 2008.
The jury consist of The Next Web Blog co-founder Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Adobe Marketing Project Manager Bert Hagendoorn, and undersigned. Our judgments will be based on originality - we want an out-of-the-box spirit - and the link with the actual subject of our blog: European start-up news and the future of the web.
We will send the winning design to our web designers, who will give it a prominent spot on their mood boards. So you can actually influence the new lay-out of your source for European tech news.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on May 24, 2008 – 3:30 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
The greatest threat to any successful startup is competition. The more successful you become, the more competition you will piss off, and each contender will bring with them a new strain of hassle.
I’m not talking simply about competitive products, no I’m actually referring to the many underhand tactics that will be employed by at least some of these so-called competition. So what are these threats and how to best deal with them?
The Murky World Of Business
The first port of call for underhand competitors will be to learn everything they can about you, looking for any weaknesses they can find. These typically involve ‘competitive intelligence’ techniques which is a fancy way of saying they employ private investigators who will even sniff through your garbage.
Competitive Intelligence
This typically takes many forms and practitioners are not afraid to stoop to low levels. Private investigators are generally extremely creative and efficient, not least cost effective, who have many contacts and techniques that they leverage to build a portrait around individuals within the company. They can get access (break in) to bank account details, tap phone lines, bug offices, cars, even homes, follow people, pose as reporters / employees (man on the inside) etc. to gain access to people and information that could be useful.
Utilization Of Competitive Intelligence
Depending upon the nature of the rewards, a campaign to ‘levy distress’ will be initiated with various arms but the same goal. The goal being to chop the legs off ‘metaphorically speaking of course’ the main targets.
Legal Assault
One of the most cherished methods is to create phony legal cases against the targets. They do not need to be serious, just a host of frivolous nonsense is sufficient. It is very cheap to send out threatening letters and tie targets up in court battles which can become exponentially destructive and costly to fend off. Typically they will be cases that are 99% twisted around so that the aggressors will be claiming the targets are actually distressing them.
Creating Havoc
Paying off disgruntled employees to cause hassle within the company, setting traps for the targets, reporting the targets (to officials and dependencies) for anything and everything they can. Disconnecting ties between targets and their networks (such as distributors, retailers, suppliers etc.) and any other psychological torture they can muster.
Intellectual Property Theft
There is nothing like learning from others mistakes, all services, products etc. will be reversed engineered to learn secrets from the targets, then the cream will be repackaged into similar offerings, where the ‘competition’ use the building blocks that have been successful along with their greater financial muster to encroach upon the targets market. Patents and copyright laws are of very little significance for young companies who have not the experience, nor resources to leverage the law to their favor. Further, the rogues will be carefully protected from legal assault themselves as they use ‘front’ (disposable) companies for their full on attacks.
David Vs Goliath
Typically the targets ‘upstarts’ that enjoyed early success will be naive to the murky world of ‘business’ where cannibals and dinosaurs await the fresh bloods arrival for their feasts. In order to survive, here are some practical tips:
- Remain focused on the ‘real problems’ within the business.
- Continue to innovate and move the market.
- Learn the tricks of Goliath’s trade, the more you know about him and his tactics the better.
- Be very careful who you trust, especially when it comes to these ‘pillars of society’.
- Learn how to bat!
Batting
If you do find yourself in the middle of a ‘war of terror’ then the quicker you learn how to fight, obviously the better. Understand that the world of business is much like nature, it is not personal and brutal. Speed, intelligence, posture, bravery and trickery are the necessary assets to be packed in your survival kits.
Good luck out there! You will need it…
Written on May 23, 2008 – 4:27 pm
Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web
Visibility is a major thing for start-ups, and one thing to be able to get that is to pitch your company in an event or for an award. Winning an award means media coverage, some times real money and access to investors. There are several competitions in which a start-up can submit its business. Strangely enough, there is no website which lists them all in an overview.., so I had to do some research on the web in order to come up with the following suggestions.
I want to create a complete list of awards here. So if you know of any other awards, please comment on this post so I can add it to the list.
Upcoming competitions
- Accenture Innovation Awards - Dutch companies in media, entertainment or communication that started in the last 3 years can participate.
- The Strands awards - competition for early stage international startups in the area of recommendation technologies with a very appealing price of $100.000.
- CNET Networks UK Business Technology - this competition has some 17 prestigious awards for UK business technology innovators. Final deadline to submit applications is May 31, 2008, but maybe it is enough to become the IT Community Hero of the Year.
- The Startup Awards major competition for UK start-ups in October 2008.
- Vodafone Mobile Clicks for mobile start-up companies to develop new, innovative, creative and technically viable mobile internet products and/or services. Date to be submitted June 25, 2008. Awards during Picnic in October 2008, Amsterdam. Awards of Euro 100,000.
- Google Android Competition, with total monies available of USD 10,000,000.
- Web Marketing Web Awards, in 96 categories, including best websites, to be submitted till June 15, 2008.
- Startup Awards in the UK, including the Online Startup of the Year, Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Innovative Business of the Year. Deadline entry 4 th July 2008.
- London Technology Fund Competition, for potentially high growth seed, start-up early stage technology companies, based in London. Price from 100,000 till 1M Pounds sterling. Deadline 30th June, 2008.
- DEMO GOD AWARDS and the DEMO People’s Choice awards.
Completed competitions
Make sure you set your agenda for next year awards.
- Blackberry Women in Technology awards - Female internet hero Professor Lizbeth Goodman of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute was named the BlackBerry outstanding woman in technology, while Beatriz Alonso Martinez of Avid Technology Europe Ltd was awarded the ‘Best use of technology within the multimedia industry by a woman’.
- The First Women Awards - UK competition created to acknowledge women who are pioneers in business. Female internet hero Fru Hazlitt, former Managing director, Yahoo UK and now CEO of GCap Media, was one of the price winners in the past.
- 2008 Fast Growth Business Awards - Margeret Manning, CEO of award winning digital communications agency, Reading Room won the Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008.
- Broos van Erp Price, A Dutch ICT competition with an award of euro 50.000.
- UK Internet Industry Awards
- The Webby Awards, recognizing outstanding Websites in 65+ categories!! Ans also a Webperson of the Year. The Oscars of the Internet.
- Startup Camp, arranged through Speed Geeking sessions during the Camps in SF, London, with an impressive attendee list.
- Plugg Start-up of the Year Award, with the European Focus on web 2.0
- Innovation and Technology awards for Swedish startups.
Tech conference competitions
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