1000 Times 1000

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We just decided to reschedule Feest.je to Thursday 30th od August (next Thursday) due to conflicting party schedules. We already rsvp-ed ourselves to go to a party in Rotterdam on Friday the 31st…

You’re still invited and if you already rsvp-ed you’ll receive an email from Dorothee to confirm the date swap. If you couldn’t attend in the first lace, this is your chance. So as Johan Cruyff would say: “every disadvantage has its advantage”.

Fleck and heather harde

Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

We signed up for TechCrunch20 in Silicon Valley in September. 20 Startups will be picked to launch their new service. We’re working hard to finish the new version of fleck. I expect it to be ready at the beginning of September. We are preparing some major changes, based upon all feedback we’ve had over the last 9 months, and our own vision.

TechCrunch20 received 600!! submissions! They are interviewing 100 companies (semi-finalists).
Last Friday we had a conference call / interview with Heather Harde (CEO TechCrunch) about Fleck, about our new features and about if we could finish things on time. The interview was a little bit chaotic (I made a minor mistake in calculating the time difference between San Francisco and Amsterdam -it’s -9 hrs, I did +9 :) ), but I think in the end she understand what we’re up to. They are planning a new round of interviews somewhere this week…

I’m up for it!

We are throwing a party on the 30st of August. The reason… Well to come up with one or two… or ten.
1. We’ll introduce a new version of Fleck around that time
2. we love our new office view and like to share that
3. The Next Web was a successful international conference
4. Wakoopa is doing good
5. Twones is coming up with some good stuff
6. Because Robert is finally leaving us alone (He’s going to Japan)
7. We love to share good times and their is always time for a nice party
8. Because we registered a great domain name for it :)
9. Because we’re working with some new people at the office you should meet
10. Because We love you

The leaflet is inspired by a real invitation for a party in 1876 (that explains the horse care fee).

See you there! Sign up at Feest.je

Tonight we are working late at Fleck HQ and had pizza’s with champagne at 12 (terrace on top of our building). During dinner we came up with the idea to work this weekend from Boris‘ house (he doesn’t know it yet).
Boris is going on a holiday and I’m watching his house.
How can we start off better than work on Fleck in his house.

We’ll bring in some good food, nice drinks and bad movies, we’ll have a barbecue at Arjens place on saturday and work.
It might not sound like an ideal way to spend your weekend, but I’m looking forward to it and I know we’ll have a good time.
If you feel like working on Saturday or Sunday and don’t have a place to do it… consider the weekend condo of Fleck.

Today I did an interview with Clive Fernandes of loscreador.com about the web, about Fleck (and its future) and some personal stuff.
It is an interesting interview (if I may say so) with some nice quotes.

I don’t see myself as hugely successful, I’m having a great time and do cool stuff, but I haven’t sold a company yet. If I have to say what I think the key is to success, I would say: be open, be easily approachable, be honest, have fun, think in solutions and opportunities, grow your network and keep in mind to stay personal. I believe that the way we do business within the Internet scene will become a model for a lot of other sectors (if not all!)

about my first experience with a computer:

…..by accident my mom kept on typing at the end of the ‘screen’, the cursor automatically jumped to the next line! WOW! Right then we saw it. This is big!

On the future of search:

In 4 years we will probably laugh at the way we search now.

It is worthwhile reading

Fleckers at Arringtons mansion

Originally uploaded by Patrick de Laive.

This morning the Wired did a post on Michael Arringtons blogging empire. It is a very interesting 4 page article. The article starts with this alinea:

One Tuesday morning in early May, Michael Arrington was sound asleep in his bedroom in Atherton, California, when three men burst in. Naturally, he was startled. His first reaction, he recalls, was to tell them to “get the fuck out.” But he quickly realized they meant no harm. Clad in white business suits and speaking English with a Dutch accent, the apologetic men looked more like dandies on their way to a garden party than criminals. They were, it turns out, overeager entrepreneurs from Amsterdam making the rounds of Silicon Valley big shots. All they wanted — desperately — was to tell Arrington about their startup.

The wired just wrote about Boris, Arjen and me (the Fleckers) waking up Michael Arrington in white suits!!!!

The real story is somewhat different though…. On Monday night we had a dinner appointment with Scott Rafer, Matt Mullenweg and Michael Arrington in San Francisco city. It turned out that Michael had a double appointment in his agenda (something went wrong) and couldn’t make it to the dinner. We ended up having a great night with Scott and Matt.

The next morning we had an OpenCoffee meetup in Palo Alto where we met Keith Teare (CEO of Edgeio), as he is a close friend of Michael and shares the same assistant (dear Amy), he knew about Michaels no show the night before and said: “Michael lives around the corner, why don’t you guys wake him up with a café latte, that would be awesome! If he kills you, blame it all on me.”

We went to his house and were trespassing in his yard, bouncing on all windows and doors accompanied by the words “Michael, wake up, we got you some breakfast”. Except for a barking dog, there was no response at all!

We called Keith, Amy and everyone we could thing of that could know where he was and they all came up with the same conclusion, he was still asleep. Then a young guy (Nick of omnidrive) opened up the door asking us in a polite way who the … we were. He let us in the “Mansion” and we went straight to Michaels door to wake him up (despite Nicks advice that if we still wanted to live we better not wake him up).

After 5 minutes Michael opened the door, it was good to see him and have a talk with him, and after some practical jokes, we left the house on to our next appointment.

The men in white went on. A week after our trip we were featured in the San Hose Chronicle and now almost two months later… Wired!

Later on this day we will put up some videos of the wake up call.

Update: mySQL, Yahoo and Mashable have already offered office space. Thanks!
Next week (3 to 10 May) Boris, Arjen and I will visit San Francisco for a week. We’re going to meet up with some friends, pitching and showing Fleck and make some video content for The Next Web Conference.
Next to pitching and filming we have to work as well (life goes on). Our trip to London Open Coffee Meetup gave us an idea. After the Open Coffee meetup we had an appointment at Index Ventures’ office. Once that was done we were allowed to stay all day and use their office and wifi to work.

So, for our trip to San Francisco we’re looking for startups who have office space for us (a table, 3 chairs and a wifi connection will do) for one day. This is a nice way to meet new people and work at the same time. We will blog about the office on the Fleck blog, bomega, The Next Web and here

So, who’s up for Open Office? I’ve checked some potential startup offices that are in the neighborhood were we like to crash… uuh work.
Sixapart, Technorati, Furl, Rojo, Rollyo, Eurekster, Browster, Wists, Dogster, Twitter, Flickr, Upcoming, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo

Last night Fleck was mentioned on TechCrunch. The article was called Five ways to mark-up the web. Unfortunately, Nick Gonzales didn’t notice our new Firefox plugin release, which makes the service a lot more interesting.

Last night I travelled to Rotterdam (my previous home town) to give a speech on Web2.0 (and Fleck) at an i-local meeting. Obviously web2.0 was something people would love to hear more about so 45 people showed up (the room was to small).
Keith from Lunatech invited me to tell something about the subject. Before me there were 2 speakers (of Lunatech and Cyso).
When Steven of Cyso gave his presentation he used a presentation style inspired by Hans Appel (CTO Sun Microsystems), the funny thing was that Appel was inspired by Dick Hardt ☺
I used the Hardt approach as well, but I had 59 minutes (that is the time the train takes to go from Amsterdam to Rotterdam) to make a presentation of 84 slides which I did in 15 minutes (after some startup problems with the beamer)!
After my presentation there were a lot of questions (of which I say to myself is a sign of a good or at least a controversial presentation).
It was my second presentation on web2.0 this month (I did a presentation for Eggink van Manen, a PR firm earlier this month) and I got compliments on my performance (probably because no one says in your face that you suck ☺ ).
Fleck blowed minds away! It is interesting to see that people look at a service and think “ok, this is it, so how do you make money” and that they miss the big picture, the vision. After some visionary talks about the web and fleck, a guy told me: “I never looked at it this way, but what you guys are doing is unDutch, you should relocate to Silicon Valley!”
He had a point….

This morning I left Amsterdam to go to the DLD conference in Munich. I booked a flight with Virgin-express (the cheapest of the cheapest) from Brussels to Munich. When I say that I have a habit to forget stuff it’s an understatement. Boris always makes fun of me when a re-enter the room (like the detective colombo and Steve Jobs) and say: oh One More Thing… I forgot my keys, money, jacket, computer, iPod, helmet, etc.

I was a little bit late and before me there was an American (John) buying a ticket to brussels and wanted to pay with credit card, which wasn’t possible (off course! Hey we’re talking about the Dutch Railroads here. The least innovative company in the world!), so I decided to pay for his first class ticket and for his wife; in total 214 euros (otherwise I would mis my train!) I gave him my card with my bank account number on it, so he could transfer the money back to me. So that was my good deed for the day. In the end I was just in time for my train that would drop me at Brussels Airport one and a half hours before departure. Once I was at the airport a strange feeling came up in me, I knew I forgot something, but this time it was different. It felt like a REALLY forgot something, but I didn’t had a clue what…. And then it came! I saw the hostess of Virgin-Express and immediately I could feel my hart in my throat, I knew it!!!

SHIT I FORGOT MY PASSPORT!

Bye bye Munich, there was no way to get in the plane without the original papers. My roomie faxed me my drivers license and my passport (thanks), but it didn’t matter. The plane took of without me. I felt like a big time loser! I wanted to get back in the train to Amsterdam (3 hours) lock myself up in my room and stay there for at least a week without a phone or my computer.

So what should I do…? I re-manned (that’s not an english word I believe) myself and got into the train. The destination: Munich!

Apart from the fact that a train is 3 times more expensive than the plane, it is not a bad option, it has a bar and you can charge your computer, phone and iPod under your seat! I worked the whole way :)

I’ll arrive at 2 o’clock at night in my 13 euro a night hotel. I hope to get some sleep and then tomorrow…. finally DLD :)

I feel a lot better already (although I’m traveling without a passport, cannot go back by plane, I can get caught for not having any ID on me :) )