Nicolai Wadstrom on Entrepreneurship

I always try to think about opportunities when the going gets though. So in the economic crisis time 2008 and 2009 have turned out to be, what are you todo?

I think when things are though, and problems are real and hard, is when the entrepreneurs get to work. And create brilliant business, solve it.

The credit crunch combined with the though regulatory framework here in the US, has really halted the Silicon Valley IPO’s. The other week OpenTable went public, and was off to a good start (59% up in the first day), but this was really the first Silicon Valley IPO in about 1,5 year.

But the exit-path for angel investors and VC’s is still very though, and this also means it’s tough, to use stock-option programs to keep the talent in the startups here in the valley.

This has created a number of new exit paths, and liquidity platforms for the startups, one of which is Tim Draper’s Xchange, Inc. To be traded here on the XPO (XChange Private Offering), you need to have at least $ 20 M in revenues, and there is a large number of potential companies that are interested.The XPO uses a Dutch auction system to set the prices (a very interesting touch IMHO). Companies with less than € 20 M in revenues are restriced to the XIQ (XChange InQuest) , which is less of an trading platform, and more of a buyer/seller matching platform, simply put somewhat like an classified ad board for shares (the difference in effect is small, except the dutch auction style pricing, but I guess the regulatory issues might be quite different between these two).

It will be interesting to follow this development, and I think there is much room for more players in this segment, all from very small cap companies to more large cap companies on different trading platforms, with companies in different stages of risk. Much as we have seen in Sweden’s many small cap trading lists, with both some really good results (with mobile tech companies such as MobiSpine (on AktieTorget) and some examples that have had some controversy to it.

Here in the US (and Silicon Valley) I think it all depends on how SEC and the new administration will see these things. As something that spark glow into healthy parts of the economy eco-system, or as something that needs to be heavy regulated.

UPDATED: Some feedback Tim Draper (the company name is actually XChange not Exchanged, my mistake), and I elaborated a bit on the difference between XPO and XIQ offered by XChange, Inc.

I have had a break in the blog posts, due to getting over to the US and getting settled, but also because being so busy over here.

So I am now in the Valley, that is Silicon Valley. I am slowing getting settled with everything, and getting some traction behind my different projects with-in BootstrapLabs (such as Prezi). It’s Friday afternoon, and pretty tired, I have had a very productive week with some very good meeting with everything from CTO’s in some top companies to Entrepreneurs and founders of some of the most well-known Internet startups in the valley.

I see great progress for the first initial companies that BootstrapLabs is bringing over to the valley from Europe

BootstrapLabs has got it’s office now in Redwood City, and I am working with some people here in the valley to build a very interesting incubator model with associated business development activities.

I think we will be able to offer an very attractive model for companies to get established in the valley and get successful.

All and all, a great few weeks, I hit the ground running and is still trying to get some orientation of everything that is happening. I am having great fun, and the wheather have been terrific (28-35 C during the days), besides the amazing people and business climate.

Just because the game isn’t played at traditional software, does not mean that IT still has a disruptive power, the Social web is very disruptive and eminating from the Valley. I think Siebel isn’t wrong in that the IT he was part in creating won’t be as important, it’s just that there something else brewing right now, and it is much more powerful than the CRM systems and Oracle databases that changed the Enterprise in it’s ability to change society.

Mostly because it is happening outside of those large enterprises. The social web is getting to every corner of the globe quickly, and it is connecting people with each other, allowing them to work together, share knowledge information in an unprecedented pace and scale. And Siebel I think you kind of missed, most of this happens in the valley still (Yes some of it is happening elsewhere, but all databases and CRM systems were not created in the valley either!)

I think that one of the reasons, the .COM-boom didn’t work out was the lack of competition, or rather eco-systems.

When Google got some real traction and started utilizing the power of the Internet to it’s advantage, they also opened up for an enormous eco-system around them.

A lot of services could not find it’s customers online before Google, and a lot of revenue could not be realized even though the buyers and sellers were all in-place, with all their payment systems and what-ever else needed. Google connected the missing link, and created a lot new opportunities for to connect in a large eco-system.

I think this serves as a good example of how a lonely place is not a good place for business. Now that I am setting up BootstrapLabs in Silicon Valley, some people (outside of the Entrepreneurial sphere) ask me, isn’t the competition fierce there? Why not go to the emering markets, such as Asia? Well it’s about criticial mass and eco-systems.

Being all alone, with-out competition, partners, or being the first one in a market is not only less fun, it’s extremely hard, capital intensive, and is the opposite of capitalism actually - capitalism drives everyone to be better and specialize, something that is only possible when you can be part of an eco-system (where others specialize in the things you don’t).

Internet is free and open and business is very much a social thing, it’s about interactions between people, and Google bridged a gap to help people connect with other people, information, knowledge and services on the Internet. Google actually made the Internet a less lonely place.

From the social internet that is emerging right now, I think new business eco-systems are also emerging, they are all in their infancy still, but it is happening. And they are really starting to change not only the Internet, and business online, but the very foundation of our societies.

We are indeed living in exciting times, and I would have to say that agree with my friend Christian, “I love the Internet!”.

Besides me still waiting for my E-2 treaty investor visa to be finalized, I have been working hard at signing new clients here in Europe for my new venture BootstrapLabs, and new the deals are starting to fall into place, and I am now ready to disclose the first one, which is Prezi.

So we have now signed an agreement with Prezi to help them establish a US presence.  It is part of an agreement between Prezi, BootstrapLabs and CrossConnect, to provide Prezi with advisory and strategic planning and help Prezi establish a senior advisory board, secure an initial round of funding from business angels, and to reach cash flow positive with-in 12 months, and prepare for a US market entry and scale-up.

Prezi is a leading provider of a new zooming presentation technology. It allows presenters to move beyond the slide-by-slide approach and to simply create amazing non-linear presentations. Prezi launched it’s product 5th of April 2009 after a year of a closed beta period.
This week Prezi also won the award “Most likely to succeed” by the Swedish angel investor network Connect Sweden (East), which gives the company access to a a large number of business angel investors.

I am very exciting about working with Prezi, and believe this is a very disruptive product.

Read more here…

I have argued that microblogging is in it’s infancy, and destined to become something bigger.

I also argued Micro-blogging is the “next search”, seems Google might agree with me. Interesting to see how this plays out the next few weeks!

I have been using Prezi a lot for the past two weeks, and it is an amazingly simple but effective tool.

Prezi is a presentation tool that provides an non-linear way of presenting information, in contrast to the slide-by-slide PowerPoints that we are used to.

Think about it, PowerPoint is really just the old slide projector in digital form (and some bells and whistles that allows adding sounds and video). But almost all PowerPoint presentations that I have seen could just as easily have been done on the old printed transparent slides.

With Prezi you have a blank canvas, that can be as big as you want, and you can Zoom in on the details, go back to the overview and then into another details. The presentation don’t have to go step-by-step.

However, Prezi provides an step-by-step mode, which is useful for sending presentations to people and give then an idea of your intended order of digesting the information/presentation.

This is achieved using Paths through the canvas, that get users an intended flow. Users can always pan or zoom into areas of particular interest. There is not limit how deep in or out you can zoom.

It takes a bit getting used too, but now I am starting to use Prezi for everything from presentations to documenting workshops and brainstorming sessions.

The Zoomable canvas and very simple editing makes it quite quick to work with, and especially effective when trying to capture an unstructured flow of ideas and information.

Try it out, and tell me what you think of Prezi!

With this week’s announcements from Sun, and recent development in the Cloud computing area, I think one thing is becoming more apparent to me;

The cloud computing is a lot more disruptive than I thought.

And I thought cloud computing was very disruptive and the slow decline of local software and associated license models.

What I am now realising is that cloud computing is also disrupting a IT service industry segments that have so far have been harder to *-source somewhere else. Part of this is in cost-reductions of doing things in larger scale datacenters as well.

Now almost any company can host the majority of the compute power needed remotely. And once they do that, why would they employ local services for assistence when everything is done remotely anyway (on the Internet it’s just as far to Bangalore), but most importantly things are becoming clearly defined and packaged in it’s offerings. This will drive another way of *-sourcing, not only to lower-wage countries, but it will disrupt many service companies in the IT sector.

Some of the online media covered this recently, IDG (Swedish).

Mobispine released MMS for iPhone last week, and it is already on the top ten on Apple’s AppStore!

I hear people crying for limiting capitalism, due to greed and corrupt behavior in big corporations in these times of global financial crisis.

I think people are making a big mistaking in not realizing that capitalism is not corruption (in fact corruption really flourishes in non-capitalist systems, because there are no legal way to directly act to better your life, so corrupt economic systems emerge),  any power can be abused no-matter which political system you live in.

The AIG management is not behaving like capitalists, they are just trying to abuse the power they have had in their position, and get as much cash out and and get out before the house comes down. If they and the company were true capitalists they would have a part in the up-side of the company making money, and share in those profits (and handsomely at that), and perhaps even fund the company in these times.

And if they were true capitalists, they would not take government financial aid in the first place…

I agree with those saying that we can not have capitalism on the up-side of and socialism on the down-side, the current period is a cleansing of many bad companies and bad business practises (and sadly some good business go with it). But the US government (and other western governments) have had a big part in making the current financial crisis a happen, and they too need to step in be part of solving it (as they do, I am not sure they are making the right choices for the long run though).