1000 Times 1000

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

The guys from Wakoopa (still in stealth mode) started a new cool blog; Schwag The Dog.
Every startup has his own schwag, be it buttons, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, or sugerbags. Schwag the Dog writes about the schwag of the startups. it is a nice way to get attention for your startup.

Startups can send their schwag via snail mail to Wakoopa (Oosterdokskade 3-5, suite 804, 1011 AD Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and they will blog about it.

So what are you waiting for….!!

I’m gonna make new Fleck Schwag! hmmm Fleck slippers, Fleck chewing gum… have to think about it.

The word just got out…
Jason Calacanis is giving a keynote speech at The Next Web Conference! Jason is a successful Serial Internet Entrepreneur and an extraordinary human being. Read more about him at Wikipedia or in this Wired Article.

Check his blog also.

The Jason Calacanis Weblog

And look what happens!!! RSS is more popular then everybody thought it was!

Check out the following sites!

Techcrunch

Fleck Blog

Boris’ blog

Check out your own stats and you’ll see the difference!

I’m always looking for some cool opportunities to show Fleck to an audience. I believe Startups face two major problems:

1. Get funding (at least in Europe you have to do a lot more than just snap your fingers)
2. Get published (create a hype)

So as of now I’ll start a series called: “Cool opportunities for startups”. If I see an opportunity I’ll share it here. This is the first one. And why not start with The Next Web Conference. This conference is attended by web influentials only, and a lot of cool stuff is happening out there for startups.

Startup Arena, Showcases on main stage and Speedpitching sessions. That sound s cool right? Check it out.

TheNextWeb.org - Amsterdam, June 1, 2007 » Startup Arena

OUr dear friends at eSnips created a web2.0 traffic tracker based on Alexa Webtracking data. It is pretty cool and worth a visit.

Movers 2.0 - Follow the Web 2.0 traffic trends

I tried to meet all of them for some years already, but for one reason or the other they are never where I am, not even in my favorite coffee bar!
But, my luck might be changing!! I got an invitation for the DLD conference (Digital Life Design) in Munich this weekend. And guess who will be there as well…..?

Good guess!

Unfortunately I’ll miss the performance of Nicolas Negroponte because the cheapest airline I could find only goes once a day at 16:20 hrs.

I have some ideas for some cool podcasts live from the conference, so it is time to get myself an audio recording device. The problem is that my birthday is just after the conference (the 24th) and I can’t afford one at the moment…
So the question is… Who is willing to lend me (or even better buy me) an audio recording device this weekend?
How about this… if you can lend/buy me the device I’ll make each one of them say your (company) name :)

I’m pretty exited to go and I’m looking forward to meet up with Tariq.

It’s official!

The Next Web Conference will be held on the first of June in Amsterdam.

The Next Web is for technology entrepreneurs, VC’s, industry journalists, influential bloggers, Top Notch developers, forward thinking CEO’s and though leaders only.

At the beginning of February we will open up registration.

Yesterday we reloaded Macrumors 895 times within the hour to stay up to date on the announcements of Steve Jobs during the MacWorld Keynote 2007. It was a great experience, although there was no live stream we we’re very happy with our page every five seconds strategy to get up to the second information on what Steve was saying.

Steve rose in my top ten heroes with ease to the second place (after Johan Cruyff). Wow what is he good at that stuff!

Next to the five second reload strategy we opened up a real time connection with Yahoo finance to check the stock quotes of Apple, RIMM (creator of blackberry), and Palm. It was amazing to see how fast the information was incorporated in the stock prices of Apple and Rimm (Palm followed a little later).
Check out the three graphs for the different stocks. (first is Apple, second RIMM, third Palm)



The Keynote begun 15 minutes late at 12:45 pm Just before the start people were dropping Apple stock, probably because they were afraid that Steve couldn’t live up to the high expectations. RIMM investors were already having a hard time, because rumors of a blackberry killer spread throughout the internet. So the tendens of RIMM was downwards as of the opening.

12:45pm Jobs opens the Keynote stating that: “Today we’re going to make history together”
Apple jumps 2.5% immediately | RIMM falls 3 dollars in a split second (about 2.5%) to 135 dollar | PALM investors are still sleeping.

12:47 - 01:10pm Jobs introduced Apple TV. Nothing to be really exited about.
Apple stays around $88 | RIMM feww… its only TV nothing to be worried about. stays at $135 | PALM “huh, is Steve Jobs doing a Keynote?” no movement there.

01:11pm Jobs announced 3 new revolutionary products:

“The first is a Widescreen iPod with touch controls! (big applause)! The second is a revolutionary Mobile Phone (Crowd get wild!!!) The third is a Breakthrough Internet Communications device (small applause)! An iPod, a phone, and a internet communicator… An iPod, a phone, are you getting it? These are NOT 3 different devices this is ONE device and we are calling it iPhone (Standing Ovation)! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”

Apple ‘no stocks for sale, it’s a buyers market’ Boom up two dollars! | RIMM with the word Mobile phone there was no more support at 135, the trend was down. Down boy down | PALM ‘oh my god JObs just blown us away, we can pack our bags’ SEEELLLLLL!

01:38pm Finally Jobs gives us the prices! $499 for 4GB and $599 for an 8GB iPhone in combination with a two year subscription with Cingular!
Apple: KABOOM this will really boost revenues! up 8.3%! | RIMM and PALM keep on sinking to the bottom (respectively minus 7.8 and minus 5.7 percent off their market cap.)

02:00pm No more news, the show is over. Investors calming down and settling the prices.

At the end of the day Apple gained over 6.1 Billion in market cap. RIMM lost 2 billion and Palm only lost 800 million of their total market cap of 1.42 billion!

So it would have been a nice strategy to go long in Apple and short in RIMM and PALM, right?

See also:
Tracking 2007 Macworld Keynote and stock price AAPL
Engadget

OK lets start with a short story:
It started in Paris, during LeWeb3 conference.
During the Conference some politicians came by to tell absolutely nothing and attendees (a lot were -influential- bloggers) were obviously irritated (check also these posts) Then the second wave of posts emerged, feeded by a post from Sam Sethi (TechCrunch UK) who was a partner of the conference. It became really interesting when Loic LeMeur himself got into the conversation by calling Sam an “asshole” (His comment is deleted).
The whole blogosphere seemed to fall over each other posting stuff about Loic LeMeurs comment and then last night Sam was fired from the Techcrunch network. Mike Arrington explained why. The last word hasn’t been said about this (see here, here, here)

Fortunately, you can buy your Bumpersticker and T-shirts that wraps this whole story up :)