Moving to Twitter

I'm publishing most of my thoughts and interesting links on twitter.com

The Value of Social Networks

At the START Summit 2009, I took part in a workshop on business models for Web 2.0 companies. The most important "finding" was that some social network operators do a good job at charging their members for some services that they are actually willing to pay for while others miserably fail. While most of the information and discussions didn't really excite me, one question remains. Why am I using social network applications? What value do these platforms offer me?

In short, social networks offer condensed and contextualized information, they help us to reduce the number of things we're missing every day. All the profile data my friends fill in and all the actions they take are condensed into interesting packages, such as events (facebook), albums or company pages (linkedin). The activity feed is then pointing my attention to the available information, it is the social network cockpit.

Now how could this value be increased?

1. There must a better solution than so called "real time activity feeds". The answer is hidden somewhere in the IT labs of this world, who are dealing with recommendation systems.


2. Some information, such as job-related info is not really heavily used today. Social networks really only offer market places for jobs. Referrals, constant search for candidates or opportunities, etc. haven't really been very well incorporated into the social network's offerings.


3. Inclusion of further sources of information. So far, social networks only take the "member generated content" rather than the full content of the internet into account. Why not add suggestions on related articles, events, pictures, etc.


4. Extraction of geographical data. ASmallWorld has a geolocator feature, that is filled with information on the member's future trips. Such information is usually also added into status messages, etc. by most members. So why not automatically extract it and mash it up into a geolocator map for my friends instead of using additional tools, such as Plazes or TripIt.

Do you have other suggestions for improvements?

Companies in Switzerland and Singapore

I found useful comparison tables for the most important types of companies that exist in Switzerland and Singapore. I'm generally interested in limited liability companies / partnerships.

St. Gallen Symposium Photo Wall

I didn't know how easy it is to create a CoolIris Wall and I'm completely amazed. It took me 30 seconds to create this wall, wherefrom 10 seconds were used to find out the correct Flickr username.

• More information about the CoolIris Wall


• More information about the St. Gallen Symposium

Economic freedom index 2009

This index is quite important to all entrepreneurs. It is no wonder that the most relevant countries in the entrepreneurial scene are all on this top 10 list of the countries which grant the highest level of economic freedom. Economic freedom brings entrepreneurship because it tiers down barriers to start, grow, re-structure, etc.
Read more..

Top 30 Earning Websites

Flavio referred the list of Top 30 Earning websites on his blog. I absolutely agree with his comments but I still think the list is useful as an idicator.

It seems this list is US focused [...].
I’m also missing Monster, which made 1.3 billion in 2008, so the list doesn’t seem to be 100% accurate, but it’s still a good reference on what generates sales online.

The list supports my belief that solving an actual business problem is the best way to become successful. I will certainly look at earnings for all of the companies, too.

Get your own blist widget

START Summit 2009

I'm happy to see that many people are announcing the START Summit 2009. It's to be interpreted as a reward for the hard work, the START St. Gallen team has dedicated to the event. The team has done a great job with putting together an interesting program with great speakers, such as Henri B. Meier, Christoph Blocher, Nick Beglinger, Nicolas Berg, etc. A new achievement is the first time START Innovation & Sustainability Award, which will be given to a startup that is pre-selected by Synetgies (Camille, Renato, Tiziano and me) and that manages to convince the top tier jury with members from various fields. The award is hosted by Ernst & Young and startups.ch.

Registration for the START Summit is now open.

Global Startup Funding: Status quo

Global Startups has just released an interesting newsletter containing nothing but a table that I'd like to share with you.

View the full table (click here)


Any observations?

How to create powerful presentations

I do believe that as simple as the following presentation is, it makes some valid points:

Ideas on how to create powerful presentations

View more presentations from Ciprian Rusen. (tags: tricks tips)

Among the most important points in this presentation is the emphasis on story design. I feel that many presentators don't really think about what their main point as in the one thing they surely want their audience to remember could be. Furthermore many people do not lean back and try to read their presentation without comments and from the point of view of their spectators.

I have received a lot of good feedback for my own presentations in the past and I believe that is was mostly due to my simple and comprehensible structure as well as very target-conscious story design. It just has to be the right mix of meaningful information and laid back story telling.

What do you think? Do you have any experience with designing effective and entertaining presentations?

How many things are we missing?

I came over one blog post again, and I felt it had so much to say that I'm writing about it here. In this post the sandbox crew tells the story of a world famous musician who performs in the streets. Nobody really cares and most people simply walk by. Many of them would probably have been amazed to see this guy if only they had known who he was.

Three questions arise:
1.) If we miss such obvious blockbusters, what else are we missing?
2.) What influence does a large marketing machinery have on the perceived competence of artists?
3.) How many talents do we meet every day without recognizing their potential?

Since question 2 cannot be simply answered, I'd like to focus on question 1 and 3.

If we miss such obvious blockbusters, what else are we missing?
I personally think we are missing so many blockbusters in so many fields that we just have to cope with it. We will never be able to take notice of everything special going on in the world but IT will eventually become really useful in helping us to sort this information. A lot of work in the area of the internet of things and in the area of recommendation systems will have to be done, because today's technology is by far not advanced enough. Current communication standards simply do not allow for the recognition of such happenings. Standards for information sharing will have to be implemented (will that ever happen?) and recommendation systems will have to understand human behaviour to some extent (a tough challenge too, regarding the many misunderstandings between peers with strong social ties). What are ways to take notice of important and interesting events? How can we filter them?

How many talents do we meet every day without recognizing their potential?
The answer becomes obvious on such occasions as the frequent sandbox dinners and other networking events (like START Summit, StartupCamp and Synetgies sessions). You just go there, talk to some random stranger and realize his/her intelligence, wealth of ideas and drive to live up to these ideas. There is so much talent out there that we will need some "filter" for it, too. Some companies are making good progress in the area of matchmaking for job searches, but talents are needed in so many other, more dynamic fields than specific jobs. I don't have a clue how to scan my extended network for such hidden talent yet but I will continue thinking about it. Do you have ideas or best practices?

StartupCamp Switzerland in Basel

Yesterday I attended the first StartupCamp Switzerland in Basel. Since it was my first Barcamp-Style conference, I was not only looking forward to catch up with many interesting people, I was also curious what the world-famous Barcamp experience would be like.

First of all, I really liked the location (I knew it from past activities) and the excellent food. I also liked how smooth the registration worked for those who were a little bit late :) Furthermore I liked the mix of people that was brought together and I think the StartupCamp Switzerland has laid the best foundations to become a great success in the future. Another plus was Poken's attendance. They made it easier for people to break the ice and connect.

Despite the excellent organization I was disappointed by the contents. My look backwards indicates that I very much prefer well-prepared substantial speeches over spontaneous, general shoot-outs like they were performed in Basel yesterday. It can make sense to spontaneously add one speaker or two to a panel or to hold spontaneous brainstorming sessions with good moderators. Spontaneous speeches seem not to be good for the transportion of a valuable core message or valuable insights. Although I might have made the wrong choice of sessions due to the lack of Barcamp-experience, my conclusion for the first Barcamp attendance is that I might just not be the Barcamp person.

Thanks to the good organization and the great bunch of people, I'm glad I went to Basel yesterday and I'll certainly give Barcamps another chance to see if the overall-experience is better if I attend more interactive sessions.

P.S.: Pictures and presentations are accesible at http://www.wuala.com/StartupCamp

Bus2Alps is rockin' the travel industry

During a recent startup weekend where some entrepreneurs from around Switzerland were brought together for discussions about business models and other challenges, I got to know Bus2Alps. At first sight the company doesn't seem to offer anything special, but at second sight they are operating in an extremely interesting market: bus tours for students. Actually, they are not just operating in this market - they are doing a great job and they love what they do.

I can recommend to every adventurous student out there to have a look at their concept, especially since their Florence-Sorrento tour has just been voted the No. 2 tour worldwide by more than 800'000 hostelworld.com users. They are largely expanding their offer in 2009, making their tours more accessible from other European destinations than Florence and Interlaken.

(via zimtblog)

Things I'm working on

The question some of you asked me very recently and that I want to answer in this second blog post is: What the hell should andipreneurship mean?

Andipreneurship summarizes my professional life. It means to be busy with a variety of things that are all targeted towards to ultimate goal (maybe I'll get back to that in a later post). I'm currently officially busy with my work at Wuala. Then there are also some private, yet somehow business-related projects running besides that at nights and during weekends.

The extracurricular-non-hobby-part of my activities mainly consists of organizing events here and there and meeting people. Some events are summarized under the Synetgies brand. Besides that, I like to occasionally blog about the Swiss Startup scene. Unfortunately I haven't met my goals in terms of substance of my written contributions to the social web yet.

Just to point that out: Andipreneurship will cover professional and less professional topics but I enjoy and I highly value my private life, which is not supposed to become part of this blog.

Hello World

Of course, every blog has to have one completely useless "Hello World" posting. So here's my fourth or so hello world posting. This time, I believe, it's going to be the last for a longer while because the Blog's name describes a period of my life that I hope to last.