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Launching – even now!

Munich Venture Summit 2009

The Munich Venture Summit is a conference about start-ups and will take place in Munich on March 14, 2009. The motto this year is “Launching – even now!”

Goal of the event is the exchange of information and the networking between interested students, investors and experienced founders. The speeches and panels of founders and investors should motivate the participants to start an entrepreneurial career rather than a sometimes boring career as a consultant or a career in the middle management of a big corporation.

Beyond the normal networking the participants will get the chance to discuss their ideas and business case with potential partners and investors.

I will share some opinions and experiences about the question “Is a crises the right or even the best time to start a company?”

The speakers are the following:

  • Ute Berger
  • Ehssan Dariani
  • Lukasz Gadowski
  • Felix Haas
  • Stefan Holtel
  • Olaf Jacobi
  • Moritz Keller
  • David Kuczek
  • Christoph Lienke
  • Harald Ostermann
  • Oliver Samwer
  • Peter Schüpbach
  • Gerd Seelinger
  • Wolfgang Seibold
  • Christoph Zinser

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away…

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.

You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.

The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.

The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows.
No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.

You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called ‘Cowkimon’ and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the **** out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of Democracy….

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.

Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

By the way – do you understand how the financial crise was generated? Who was/is involved in it? Which motivation was/is the key driver of it?

Easy to understand – hard to believe…


Didn’t we know it? Didn’t we learn in the late nighties? Startups and business cases which are based on hype and me-too effects are often not the best investment opportunities.
As a matter of fact during the web 2.0 hype people asked me why we don’t invest in such business cases.

Our answers were based on some simple questions:

  • What’s the business model?
  • How can a startup earn money?
  • How defensible is the case (technology, service, positioning)?

During the last weeks I spoke with a lot of investors (business angels and VCs) about their investment stragegy and the sectors which might be interesting in the future.
Long story short: nobody mentioned web 2.0, ad-funded cases, mobile commumities and other similar cases.

A major discussion is which solution could be the right one for today’s crisis. Should the governmet increase its spending or should it just lower the taxes?

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute does an excellent job explaining why Keynesian fiscal strategies do not work in this video.

After watching the video I would agree to his arguments. But… the video does not address the central question of whether “Keynesianism” can be used during crisis periods, such as we have now in 2009. According to the video, government spending is always a negative influence.

Another solution would be the Monetarism which has more or less one proposal only – lowering taxes. Why would/could that work? It would put money in the hands of people (usually, that’s good!). But during a crisis, they could be afraid to spend, and nothing happens.

That’s why direct spending by the government could be a potential solution. Spending on roads, schools, research, which involves employing people, keeping factories open, and building what will be useful to free enterprise in the future.

Time will tell…

G1 – first try

Yesterday I had the chance to check the G1 from a pure user perspective.

G1

If you want to read something about the features and the specs you will find a lot – just search for “G1 vs. iPhone”. I am not going to talk about features and specs. tbh – I don’t care that much that the G1 weights 158g and the iPhone weights 133g. Important for me is the first impression and the first user experience. Do I immediately feel comfortable to use is? Am I curious to explore more functions of the device?

Long story short: the G1 didn’t strike me that much. For sure – it is a nice device if I compare it with all the other smart phones and palms. But it is by far not as intuitive and user friendly compared with the iPhone.

iphone

To all the iPhone users:

  • Do you still remember the impression and experience when you used the iPhone the first time?
  • Are you still amazed about the ease of use?
  • Are you still enthused when you use the iPhone?

For the G1 this will be a tough job to outplay.

Some posts and articls

The Forbes Chirp Index

When will this recession end? No question – it will end ;-)

Forbes announced its Chirp Index which includes a lot of early indicators. Right now it’s singing a possible economic rebound in August 2009.

Wether Forbes is right or not. We’ll know in 12 months. But I like the fact that someone tells us that there is hope. Enjoy the video….

After receiving hundreds of newsletters with articles about the new wordpress app for the iphone I’ll give it a trial.

Maybe I’ll post more often If the app is really good.

I arrived back in Munich after three days in Vallendar. It’s time to reconsider all the information and impressions of the Idea-Lab. The conference was perfectly organized – the WHU students have done a great job.

Beside all the speeches and workshops it was enough time to meet young entrepreneurs and to discuss their ideas and cases.

The conference was mainly about Internet start-ups, ideas and the young German entrepreneurial scene – which is growing! It was impressing for me to see and feel the strong willingness of all the students to become an entrepreneur and to start a company.

Retrospectively I got the feeling that web start-ups have been focused a bit too much during the sessions. All the speakers were talking about communities, web 2.0, ecommerce, social shopping, etc. Is this industry really that sexy in Germany? How many big Internet companies have we seen in Germany? What about IT, media, semiconductors, telecommunications, alternative energies, environmental technologies, and micro- and nano-technologie?

Honestly, there are more business cases beyond Internet cases. I strongly believe that if students from business schools (WHU, EBS, etc.) would frequently meet with students from technical universities in order to exchange ideas, inventions, concepts and business cases we would see some very interesting and promising businesses.

Nevertheless, the strong message at the Idea-Lab was more than positive – lets get started and grow your own business.

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