Geekness - closer to the world » scs10 http://cocaman.ch/wp Geeky at the Lake of Zurich Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:11:07 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Communicating with US Blogs http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/communicating-with-us-blogs/ http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/communicating-with-us-blogs/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:19:37 +0000 CoCaman http://cocaman.ch/wp/?p=2472 The following presentation was just a small idea in my head on a train ride from Zurich to Basel a few days ago. But I think and after talking to a few friends, colleagues and partners I decided to go for it. The following presentation should give every startup a basic idea on how they can contact an American blog like TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, CenterNetworks or any other blog and pitch them your idea or business. If you follow these tips, your chances are much higher than if you just sent a mass email to all of the blogs.
The slides should be self-explanatory. But if you do not understand something or want to discuss about it, please feel free to send me an email or add your input to the comments below.

Communicating With US Blogs

You can also view the presentation on my SlideShare account.

And if you have any more tips or ideas, please feel free to share them with us. Maybe we can create a better resource and get more Swiss startups covered on US blogs.

Creative Commons License
“Communicating with US blogs“ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Switzerland License.

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]]> http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/communicating-with-us-blogs/feed/ 3 Startups at the StartupCamp2010 #scs10 http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/startups-at-the-startupcamp2010-scs10/ http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/startups-at-the-startupcamp2010-scs10/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:14:26 +0000 CoCaman http://cocaman.ch/wp/?p=2464
Close to 150 people showed up at the StartupCamp 2010 edition in Basel on February 2010. And most of these people actually are working or running a startup. My question is, what startups where actually on site to talk about their product or company? I tried to compile a list of the startups that came to mind. If I forget yours, please leave a comment and I will add you.

Amazee
Amiando
memonic
Procedural
mySwissChocolate
wuala
Doodle
SoBees
GetYourGuide
SuperText
Rahel’s Sweet Temptations
cyon
PolitNetz.ch
FashionFriends
Romazini
Offerten24.ch
razuna
openfactory
GRYPS Offertenportal
Your startup is missing? Please post a comment with name and URL.

The list is in no particular order.

StartupCamp 2010

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]]> http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/startups-at-the-startupcamp2010-scs10/feed/ 3 21 Tips On How To Build A Cheap Startup http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/21-tips-on-how-to-build-a-cheap-startup/ http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/21-tips-on-how-to-build-a-cheap-startup/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:20:05 +0000 CoCaman http://cocaman.ch/wp/?p=2437
At the second Swiss StartupCamp (see my coverage here and here), Dorian Selz and Toni Birrer held a presentation with the title “21 Tips On How To Build A Cheap Startup”. And if you know or have ever heard of Toni and Dorian you know, these guys have something to tell and you better listen. The same was true this time again. No wonder the room was fully packed with current startupers, coming startup founders and some general interested people. Their 21 rules are actually quiet simple, but also a good resource to take care if you launch your own startup.
StartupCamp 2010

I will outline the most important points in my opinion (and as a developer, not primarily as a business guy).

Rule 3 Get a business person into the team. This rule goes with Rule 4 “Get a professional bookkeeper”. If you are a techie, you don’t really want to worry about to much business or finance. Dorian also mentioned, that a bookkeeper is really, really important. The bad tax guy can always wait around to corner and have a few surprises for you. And also your investors want to see numbers and crunch them. At the end, your business is sold based on numbers, less on lines of code or design patterns.

Rule 7 Atlassian Starter License, this should make your techie happy. Even if it sounds stupid to have to track all bugs, requests and so forth, this is a really important issue. And of course this is not only valid for startups but also for bigger corporations.

Rule 12 Do online backups! First of all, do backups and backup everything.

Rule 13 Use free stuff. Don’t run your own email server (use Google Apps), don’t run your own webserver (use Metanet). Don’t spend time and money on such things. And the others do this well and it is their core business, not yours.

Rule 20 80% of success is showing up! Attend free events (eg. WebTuesday, WebMonday, BarCamp, StartupCamp …). Present your idea, product, team. Host an event at your offices. If you do not talk about your product, others won’t either!

Of course there are many other rules and points to take care off. Toni has collected all relevant links in a collection on memonic. As soon as the presentation is available online, I will link to it.

Update 15th February: Toni and Dorian put the slides as PDF and the talk as a MP3 file online. Thanks guys!

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]]> http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/21-tips-on-how-to-build-a-cheap-startup/feed/ 3 StartupCamp2010 #scs10 http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/startupcamp2010-review/ http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/startupcamp2010-review/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 10:53:02 +0000 CoCaman http://cocaman.ch/wp/?p=2443
My first reaction at 5pm yesterday was like “wow, this was the best startup event I have ever been”. Everything just feels right. Looking back at the second Swiss StartupCamp I thinks this is definitely something we can and should repeat. Lots of people discussing, interacting and sharing ideas.

StartupCamp 2010

Things I liked much more than last year

  • No keynote speaker: The audience did show little to no interest in the keynote speaker.
  • Less rooms: Only four rooms so people either participated in a discussion in a room which very often where full or in smaller groups at the food and drinks corner
  • Handmade Swiss Chocolate: mySwissChocolate.ch are very nice and smart guys. Love their idea and product.
  • No Poken: Sorry, but that hype is so not hot any more…
  • … and finally, I took the right tram and train home :-)

StartupCamp 2010

StartupCamp 2010 StartupCamp 2010

StartupCamp 2010

You can find the rest of my coverage on StartupCamp2010 under this link.

A big compliment goes to Dania, Patrick, Ansgar, Daniel, MatthiasS and the rest of the organizational team. Also a big thank you to Oona, Carola, Soojung, Fredy, MathiasM, Michael and all the other volunteers! And I promise to help more in the preparations next time. But they all did a great job! And of course a big thank you to all the sponsors: i-net Basel, FHNW Basel, acceleris, Oracle, CTI Invest, De Vigier Foundation, amiando, amazee.

Photos of the event can be found on Flickr, tweets should be tagged with #scs10 and blog posts can be found on Google’s Blogsearch.

Thanks for coming and giving us a little of your time and sharing your ideas and thoughts! It was great!

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]]> http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/02/startupcamp2010-review/feed/ 2 Register for StartupCamp 2010 Switzerland in Basel! http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/01/register-for-startupcamp-2010-switzerland-in-basel/ http://cocaman.ch/wp/2010/01/register-for-startupcamp-2010-switzerland-in-basel/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:07:49 +0000 CoCaman http://cocaman.ch/wp/?p=2392

The first StartupCamp in Switzerland took place in January 2009 and brought together young and future entrepreneurs in Switzerland in the process of building or planning a business in the high-tech, Web or life-science industry. The StartupCamp 2009 was such a success that the organization team clearly decided to organize another camp in 2010!

The StartupCamp aims to transfer knowledge and know how in the relaxed atmosphere of a Barcamp and to demonstrate the various possibilities to get help on your way to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Tracks can include writing a business plan, fundraising, building the right team, startup support agencies in Switzerland, web technologies, marketing & PR and much more. The attendees learn from each other and expand their network with new interesting contacts. Thanks to all sponsors this event is free for all attendees.
The sponsors are Acceleris, FHNW Basel, i-net BASEL, CTI Invest, Oracle, SUN Microsystems, DeVigier Stiftung, Amiando and Amazee.

Date & venue

The StartupCamp Switzerland 2010 will take place in Basel on Saturday, 13 February 2010 from 10am to 5pm at the same place as last year: University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz FHNW), right at the main train station, Peter-Merian-Strasse 86, 4002 Basel. The registration opens at 9am and an after-party is planned for the evening, so reserve the whole day and evening!

Registration is now open

Registration for the StartupCamp Switzerland 2010 is now open at http://www.amazee.com/startupcamp-switzerland-0
For registering you just need to click „I’m attending“ on the front page of the project magazine.
If you RSVP “I’m attending” and later decide that you will not attend the StartupCamp, please remove your name from the list as soon as possible as space is limited.

Spread the word!

Please give others the chance to find out about this event by talking and writing about it. Help us spread the word and make the StartupCamp 2010 a great event!

The StartupCamp Switzerland Team
Ansgar Wollnik, Dania Gerhardt, Patrick Liechti, Matthias Sala, Carola Ettenreich, Daniel Ebneter

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