A quick write-up of my notes from the Wednesday keynotes at Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin. I've already covered Suw Charman-Anderson's keynote about e-mail on The Social Enterprise.
Saul Kline, Index Ventures
Saul Kiline gave us a quick, harsh dose of reality. "The weather looks pretty terrible," he suggested. "The Valley is downbeat."
Startups are "fighting an imaginary war, with a product but no money or customers".
Good companies can be started in hard times. Microsoft and Apple started in the 75/76 depression. Even now, the Dow Jones is four times higher than when Apple and Microsoft were started. Most of the great tech companies started in downturns.
However, there is a market out there. The time we spend online has changed radically in the last few years. Social sites have more minutes per visitor then the big three, even if the Microsoft/Yahoo/Google trio are slightly ahead in total numbers.
And there's help: there are lots of free resources to help startups
BUT we are facing a recession. Capital will not be backing people with good PowerPoints, but people who know what they are doing. Angels will retreat and there will be a focus on professional investing.
Key advice:
- Don't panic
- Bootstrap like crazy
- Make products people want
- Cut your costs.
- Get to break even as soon as you can.
Leisa Reichelt - Drupal.org redesign
How do you design for a large Open Source Community? That was the problem Leisa Reichelt faced when commissioned to do the redesign of the Drupal.org site. "You can't do it behind closed doors," she said, "and you need to give the community a say in what they consider their home."
They
built a form in Google Apps, to solicit community members who would
give feedback during the design process. Wireframes were crowd-sourced
on Flickr. They monitor Twitter for the "drupal" keyword.
In the end, they have something like 12,000 opinions, but Leisa suggested that you don't need to respond to them all.
"You look at the themes," she said "and you give feedback generally, to show that they are being listened to. "
Rafi Haladjian of Violet
Violet is the company behind the Nabaztag - the infamous internet connected rabbit. The comapny has a two-stage plan:
- Step 1: Connect rabbits
- Step 2: Connect everything else.
They believe that currently we keep data in a "fishbowl", concentrated in a single space in our homes, usually the PC. The remaining stuff is dumb and unconnected.
They're going to push forwards with connected objects by launching the mir:ror - an RFID-reading mirror that can talk to your computer. For example, waving your Oyster card overit will make your commputer immediatly show you travel conditions. You'll be able to buy RFID tags and add them to your own objects and choose what they do.
He wasn't very good at giving compelling examples of why things should be connected to the internet - but boy, he believes they should be.
