1000 Times 1000

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About a week ago, Saul Klein (Index ventures) and Reshma Sohoni (3i) started a new pan European initiative for startups and talented entrepreneurs (read my previous post on Seedcamp).

At The Next Web 2008 edition we will host Showcases of successful/promising European companies, just like we did on the 2006 and 2007 edition. Netvibes, Hyves, esnips, Widsets, Respectance, Zyb, Mobiya, eBuddy and others presented their companies on main stage for the highly tech savvy crowd. We decided that we will give two of the winning Seedcamp teams the opportunity to Showcase their service on The Next Web ‘08.

Teams can sign up for Seedcamp and win 50k Euros (and a Showcase) and have a great experience to be working with Europe’s leading internet entrepreneurs and investors.

A lot of good stuff is happening in Europe (Open Coffee clubs everywhere) and seedcamp is one of those great initiatives that helps Europe become competitive and on the edge. Well done Saul and Reshma, we’re excited to be working with you guys.

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

Souki.com just went live. It a new type of search engine that personalizes your search result using something called a “twinmatch” principle. That’s all I know, now I’m going to test it!

Congrats to Ernst Jan (Open Coffee member), who worked hard to realize his search dream.

This morning we had the fourth Open Coffee Meetup. We started off slowly with 6 people, so we did a round of short introductions, but while the introductions moved on, more and more people were joining us. We ended up with 15 people and a lot of new faces. After four weeks I still love the concept and I have the feeling that we are building something constructive here to help each other grow.
Again looking forward to next weeks’ meeting.

Gert Jan of DCIF, thanks for sponsoring the coffee (the four guys that already left and already paid 5 EUR; pity, next time stay as long as someone says I’ll pay : ) )

Three weeks ago we started Open Coffee in Amsterdam. At the moment 60 members have signed up. That is great! For all Open Coffee members a social network is created with ning at opencoffeeclub.org. Open Coffees are popping up all over the world, it seems that it can work as a entrepreneurs, developers and VC network. Cool stuff!

This morning about twenty people gathered in the KoffieSalon for Open Coffee.

I think it was a better meeting than last week as people were really talking about ones businesses (and less, the oh what a nice idea to gather stuff). I met some interesting people and I’m looking forward to further meetings. I hope we can establish a group of around 60 people who will show up whenever they can to talk, have a coffee, show their new apps, etc.

One problem though is that de Koffiesalon seems to get more popular every week (not strange if they have the best coffee in town). We’ll see how things will work out there.

Thanks for coming and hope to Meetup next week. New members are welcome

This morning I had coffee in De KoffieSalon and it tasted great (as ever). I’m really looking forward to the first Open Coffee next Thursday. Already 27 people signed up for the meetup (the more the better)

So what is it all about? what can I expect?
Open Coffee is about bringing people in the web scene together on an informal way, it is about showing what you’re working on, sharing new ideas, making contacts, have a nice coffee. No nametags, sorry.
It will start at 09:00 hrs and end at 10:00 on the first floor of de koffiesalon (Utrechtsestraat 130)

If you know more web savvies (developers, entrepreneurs, VCs, tech bloggers and press), invite them to join us on Thursday.

I’m looking forward to meet everybody.

Last year Boris, Arjen and I had an idea to bring web entrepreneurs together in an informal way. Just to meet up with like minded people, share some thoughts, drink a beer, have a chat on what’s going on in the scene, etc.
But as we have more ideas in one week, this idea just didn’t make it.

Last week Saul Klein of Index Ventures wrote a very inspiring blogpost about ” Y Europe can seed growth of its new stars“. In short it said; hey, Silicon valley may be great, but Europe has also talent, ideas, capital, mass and infrastructure to build some very cool companies that can compete with Bay area companies.
This post triggered a wave of enthusiasm around European tech entrepreneurs.
Saul came up with the idea to organize a weekly get together in a Starbucks in Regent street. he calls it OpenCoffee. A meetup where entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, bloggers, and other web savvies meet up with one another. Every Thursday of the week. Last week, the first OpenCoffee was held in London, 75 web savvies attended (you could say that that is a major success).

I believe in getting together with interesting and like minded people. It can be inspiring, you might learn something, but at least you’ll have fun and get connected with people in the industry. Also I believe that Amsterdam has a lot of talented people with brilliant ideas. It is time to show of what Europe and Amsterdam has. This is why I like to initiate an OpenCoffee Meetup in Amsterdam. I chatted with Saul for three seconds and he was very enthusiastic about the idea.

So, the first OpenCoffee will be on Thursday 15 March in de KoffieSalon on the Utrechtsestraat 130. Boris, Arjen and I start our day about once a week in this KoffieSalon and why not join us?

I put the following dutch description on the meetup page:
koffie, wifi, entrepreneurs, web2.0, programmeurs, startups, investeerders, openid, ajax, silicon city, amsterdam, hyves, thenextweb, solid ventures, ebuddy, fleck, wakoopa, lowland capital, zooof, visitopia, ilse, marketingfacts, marktplaats, DCIF, 2ehands, sellaband, schwag, yelloyello, bloggers, blueace, geenstijl, nu, meganova, fok, souki, tweakers, twones, bright, prime technology ventures,….

Elke donderdag kan je de dag beginnen met een aantal interessante mensen om je heen. De ene keer ben je met 20 man, de andere keer moet je het alleen met je koffie, je krantje en je laptop doen (het is wel de aller lekkerste koffie van Amsterdam!).
Laten we ervoor zorgen dat Amsterdam met recht de naam silicon city mag dragen! Het talent is er, de ideeen liggen op tafel, geld… (hmmm kan beter).

Elke week 1 vaste dag, 1 uur, 5 euro (voor je koffie).

If you like to join an Open Coffee meeting, please sign up at Meetup.

Get your agenda and mark: Every Thursday 09:00 -10:00 hrs, de KoffieSalon, Utrechtsestraat 130, Amsterdam.

Hope to see you there!

Oh almost forgot to say, if you have a startup and you have Schwag… bring it.

BTW Ben Metcalfe wrote an interesting post about the needed sparks and fuel for the European startup scene