Local worksop found

In reply to my invitation to discussion, posted on “the.co.ils Zone” forum I got reply from Erez Eden, about local community – “3 day startup - Israel”.



Being surprised I like to thank you Erez for provided information. Looks like I miss it searching myself, Google not perfect ... or my efforts were not energetic enough.

Sharing with my blog readers about “3 Day Startup - Israel”, I have to make delayed announce about they success - newborn startup, Tribiu!

This website is a product born from an intense weekend of 56 passionate professionals who spent 56 consecutive hours of their free time creating a unique contribution to the community…

My congratulation to all “56 passionate professionals”! Hope I will have an opportunity to participate in next coming “3 Day Startup - Israel” event.

See you there...
:-)

Startup entrepreneurship or What did you do last weekend?

How intimately it is - startup entrepreneurship, if at all?
It is about “marriage bonds” or “marriage of convenience”?

How about slogan:

100 people. Three days. One new company.

The participants ranged from students and corporate employees who wanted to learn the skills involved in creating a start-up to entrepreneurial veterans who wanted to get back in the game. It included men and women from all over the region, and integrated programmers, designers, marketing executives, financial planners and management personnel.

(From article "While You Were Mowing Your Lawn, We Created an Internet Startup" by Dan O'Keeffe)

Is “lifeSpoke.com” competitive enough price for three days workshop participating?


May it be realized in our small country? Taking in account specific character of local "market", looks like a formula have to be changed to: "50 people. Three days. One new startup". Are we ready join three days workshop having an own pet idea and finally to choose one another (better or best) of someone else? What will be your decision - to bury own “baby” (for while/forever) or to continue cherish it till right moment will come or right people will be found?

I invite to discussion all of you: first-time start-uppers and veterans, entrepreneurs, IT experts, angels, VC fund board members, managers, creative and art directors, anyone who may be interesting in such kind of initial event.

Looking forward, I allow for wrong vision or some “local market rules” misunderstanding. Not all models that work there, in USA succeed here in Israel. I see also languid situation on local web-sites and forums related to startups.

But I also know, that each month we read in news about more and more new Israeli startups. Angels still hunting for seed stage companies, that means – potential is huge. So, in my humble opinion, we have to change in our minds relationship rules to enrich our self by many more opportunities.

Look around you, what happens on the network – it is actually social revolution. People shares almost everything, - from being society of encapsulated association (sorry for pun), we came to “whole sharing” society. So, why it takes to long time to understand that “sharing is power” and why it takes so long time to evaluate how this power may be used?

How well do you know Israel?

Small country, - big opportunities ...
I have mention it, I have to share it with you, - interesting facts about Israel (posted on Nigel’s Blog):

… In proportion to its population, Israel has the
largest number of startup companies in the world. In
absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of
startup companies than any other country in the world,
except the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).
With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups,
Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech
companies in the world apart from the Silicon Valley,
US. …

You can find more there...
I agree that in proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world, but in contrast - dramatic fact is:

… All the above while engaged in regular
wars with an implacable enemy that seeks its
destruction and an economy continuously under strain
by having to spend more per capita on its own
protection than any other country on earth!

P.S.
Off topic: It is big pain for Israeli citizen live in country where all “neighborhoods” (external) and “cousins” (internal) are hates you… “They” kill you folk… children, women, oldsters…
I hate wars, I hate politic, and I hate politics makes wars on our small planet, …

In continue to yesterday post...

My “news radar” catches out of there one more article by angel investor & entrepreneur, Marc Hustvedt – “5 Web 2.0 Services I'd Like to See (and I'd actually pay for)”.

Here are all five Marc interesting in:

• Human Blog Translation Network
• "Big Red Button" - disaster planning and action
• Painless Photo Management
• Open Platform for our Data Breadcrumbs
• SocialMeme

To the best of my knowledge these don't exist, or at least haven't launched in any real way yet. If you know of a team working on them, please let me know.

... says Marc - so, please help him to solve the problem.

In case you find yourself in situation that nothing left from yesterday 30 ideas list of Y Combinator, move quick and take some from today’s “menu”.

Of course I have scan blog of Marc for more interesting posts. Result – his blog added to my Blog Roll. Thanks to Marc for informative source.

I am sure, one day I will contact him and offer to invest in my Web 2.0 early seed stage startup.

My best regards to all of you

Startups Y Combinator looking for

How often do you find a set of ideas from a seed-funding venture capitalist? For those of you who looking for some WEB 2.0 idea that may be accepted by investors I recommend article by Paul Graham about startup ideas they like to fund.

We don't like to sit on these ideas, though, because we really want people to work on them. So we're trying something new: we're going to list some of the ideas we've been waiting to see, but only describe them in general terms. It may be that recipes for ideas are the most useful form anyway, because imaginative people will take them in directions we didn't anticipate.

Some of them are obvious, but the interesting point is that almost all of them about same postulates: make non-comfortable comfortable, turn slow to quick, simplify complex things, attack existing well-known problems, provide some solutions by doing something different or just better.

Being a bit of an entrepreneur myself, my choice is No8:

... Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem.

Check yourself and choose from list of 30 hints some for you, before last will be disappear …
:-)

First Meetup Resume

First of all I like to thank Deloitte (Israel) for contributing the amazing place for our meeting. You can see on the first photo below Round Tower of Azrieli Center where they offices are located on the 42 floor, and two more photos with fantastic view from the room we have pleasure to meet.

Secondary, - my thanks to Gadi for meeting organization. Gadi, keep doing it and ask us for help in case you need some…

So, about meeting - special quests were two nice persons from M.Y.Firam business development consultancy: Amir Student and Dr. Menachem Student (actually father and son). They lecture was very informative, but short... Looks like “my hungry brain” was prepared for much more information... Today, analyzing this I understand that for dialog (like for Tango) needs two parts... Looks like we did not where ready to such kind of collaboration. Anyway, I am very thankful for useful information sharing. I have liked the resume – that most of non trivial problems each entrepreneur may solve himself. It inspires me personally and most of listeners.

In reason that it was my first meeting, I did not knew anybody personally and it took some time till I had feel comfortable and start to talk with people. Finally I made some contacts /conversations.

Photo reportage:


More photos and comments of other meeting members here.

Going out, to the road

I have subscribed to some Israeli Startup groups via LinkedIn social network. One of them "The Tel Aviv-Yafo Entrepreneur Meetup Group" has meeting tomorrow Thursday, July 17, at 09:00am in...


Oh, I can not say where – I have found in last moment before publishing this post that information about location of meeting open only for group members. Sorry, but I will post some resume about this meeting here.

How many will come? So, till now 56 members says "Yes" and 14 – "May Be". Let see tomorrow.

What for I am going to meeting? Hm, what for all people meets in thematic groups? Meet new mind-liked persons, collaborate, learn from them, to share with them, discuss, and etc... That in general, but to be more specific – in "Long run", I like to meet some people, to "encapsulate" them (to not forget myself) to crew core and "go out to the road".

See you there...

One more requiem…? Or manual - how reduce a risk to fail.

Developing in a vacuum never works.

Kind of Postmortem found posted by Jonathan Tang. Thanks to Jonathan, many "New Born" Startupers got a set of invaluable advices, manual - how reduce a risk to fail.

I am like to say to Jonathan first of all - many thanks for good job and sharing with all of us… Keep going, - only strongest will arrive to "Success Mount". See you soon under new "Idea Flag". I am sure that next steps will be much less tragic and much more painless.

Wrench No 25

It is deep night… But I have to publish it, - otherwise it will be forgotten… In continue to yesterday post "False hope and misguided thinking", I have found one more wrench and I like to label it by No 25:

"Everyone wants to give everything away for free. Thats the way the internet should work, right ? Wrong. Let me change the conventional wisdom a little bit with this - Free is only good if someone else is paying for it."

Found on “Blog Maverick” by Mark Cuban. Very pragmatic, life approved statement. But much more big surprise for me was to find out information about Mark Cuban in Wikipedia.

To intrigue some of you (I am hear a snigger of Startups veterans) - I can resume his Wikipedia profile in one line: "From bartender to dot-com billionaire".

I have found several similar details between his and my modest biography:

• his family is Jewish
• arrived from Russia
• starts from barmen
• started own company
• deals like system integrator and software reseller
• was proponent of technologies such as Lotus Notes

Please stop to laugh me in face … no more similar details found … rest only differences:

• he is billionaire, - I am only going to be...
• he is entrepreneur, - I am trying to be...
• he live in USA, I am in Israel...
• ...and etc.

The sky is the limit, and please stay out of my way!
:-)

End of midnight overheat brain rambling.

Congratulations to Mozilla !

Mozilla received the official Guinness World Record certificate for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.” From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3!

What can I say? Just keep going!!! I do not like to make any advertising, but it is my default browser almost one year.

"False hope and misguided thinking"

I have read today excellent article "20 Wrenches In The Software Startup Machinery", published OnStartups.com by guest author - Jonathan Sapir (Silver Tree Systems).
Very recommend for reading, specially to "first time" Start-uppers.

IMHO most of 20 Wrenches are close to be true, but my famous I have found in comments made by Jonathan Sapir – No 24:

"You think that if you take on a partner, give him a share of the company, and pay him well, you will have someone who is loyal, hard-working and effective. But it could have the opposite effect. It could make them feel entitled, resentful when you stop feeding them with more goodies, and throw their weight around a lot more than they should."

I have negative experience based on wrench No24. History also knows situations, when small share holder turns to hell life and work of the rest crew members/share holders…

Idea is mandatory for any Startup, but it may die or other idea may replace the original one. Much more important and much more valuable is core crew, heart of the Startup -- like-minded human beings/friends/colleagues.


Tip of the day
Never argue with an idiot... He drag you down, to his level and then beat you with his experience.
(Got from Rene, colleague of mine)

Be practicable

You have read a lot of articles about “How to Start a Startup” or where to find an idea for startup. The main idea of most of them - to find something, that missing or can help you in your daily work (or pleasure) needs. In short – “Find pain you can reduce”…

So, here is my story. In year 2000 I have work in some outsourcing IT Company. I have work at home, company office and two customer’s offices, - totally on four computers while working week simultaneously. I had no laptop, in addition both clients term was using only they office computers.

The real pain for me was to update (send via PC to PC via e-mail) my set of thematic bookmarks stored in browsers I have used (MS IE and Netscape) and updated daily. The problem was very clear and painful, because once you forget to send updated bookmarks file to another computer, you have to synchronize two or more files. One time it is OK, second time it makes angry, and after all you have a several not synchronized bookmarks files.

I did research on Internet for some tool, which may help to store bookmarks on some global storage account and/or to allow synchronization with any computer, but without success.

How many people like me had similar problem in far 2000 …? I guess a lot … So, I came to conclusion that it may be very good idea for some startup or at least some project/tool.

I have discussed this idea with several colleagues … Some of them say “Hi, good idea! Go ahead …” But most of them says that it is very trivial problem/idea for startup…

I agree that discussion with opponents help to sharp (or to kill) an idea, but most important that entrepreneur must have a strong core to defense his baby.

Looks like my core in year 2000 was not so strong … Big mistake of entrepreneurs in far 2000 was about mission of startups and problem they have to solve. Only world-wide technologies, that can upside down the planet was fits to startups …

Time over… Old concept of startups was collapsed in 2000-2001… Today’s situation is different:

• Be creative
  
• Be small and dynamic
  
• Solve trivial problems for lot of peoples
• Make your product simple and usable
• Respect your customers/users
• Give some free products/services
• Be popular
  

All of this are components of quickest way to success…

But let’s back to my idea… After few years I have found that Google has implemented bookmarks functionality in they “Google Toolbar”.

I do not know, did they catch some startup or same idea was cooked in they kitchen. One thing is absolutely clear to me now, to make good and usable tools/services you do not have to be big like Gooooooooogle … You have to be practicable.

Tip of the day
When you're right, no one remembers. When you're wrong, no one forgets.
(Got from Rene, colleague of mine)