event

First I have to be a bit apologetic about blogging too much about my own speaking gigs and such shameless self-promotion. Writing something with more substance has had to take a back seat in the busy dealings of the startup world. However that might change quite soon as I now have more time on my hands to concentrate on writing something with more substance. So, perhaps you'll see a few blog entries like "ye olden days" here again soon, stay tuned.

Meanwhile; I'll be having a chat in a seminar organized by Deasign Finland at Teatteri on May the 5th. The event is open for signups and you have around 5 days of time to go and sign up though their site:

http://www.deasign.com/su

(all in Finnish, as is the presentation itself).

The target audience is marketing executives etc of companies in both; the b-2-b and b-2-c space. Feel free to tip your contacts (and encourage them to sign up) ; this is a good chance to come and have some brunch, and a few good takeaways if we are lucky.

About a week from now I will also be talking in an event organized by the VCs in Finland (their own internal event). About what's going on in the social media space and how they should value and evaluate social media companies.

What would you say to them about that? What do you think is the most essential criteria or quality or quantity in a social media company that they should look at? Revenue? Visitors? Team? Ideas? Potential? all of those?

Let your voice be heard and I promise you this; if you come up with a good one, I'll use that and mention from whom I got it from ;-)

I'm having a chat (as a member of 2-person panel) in Bolder Academy event, on wednesday 8th of April. This is the 4th and final of a series of events organized by the Aalto innovation university and www.bolder.fi

The venue is the same space where I have spent hours listening to professors giving lectures.. If you happen to be around Ruoholahti on wednesday evening come say hi. It starts at 18:00. Here's a link to their Facebook group that they also use for signups.

I'm at SIME here in Stockholm. Day 1 over and done with. One of the best takeaways from the first day was seeing Morten Lund speak about angel investing, serial entrepreneurship and startups.

Pic: SIME poster in the movie theatre wall, taken with my iPhone.
Lovin' the title "Archangel Investor" there ;-)

You can probably get the presentation from someplace in the web later. However here's some of the stuff that he said:

- "I mostly f*ckup all the time"
- "you have to be prepared to f*ckup"
- "nobody wanted to invest in me" (said in an interview afterwards)
- You can't do this if you plan to do money, you do it because you have to do it, your nature drives you to do it. (can't remember the exact quote here")
- "5 guys can set up a global business nowdays"
- "It's crazy that you don't even have to be smart; you just have to DARE and that's enough to succeed"
- he has 10.000 readers in his blog (no idea about the timespan here?)
- he has invested in about 90 companies, founded many of them
- he just lost 40 million EUR (or something like it) in a media venture gone bad, about 2 months ago. Quote: "I was crying, self-pity"
- One of the key messages: "We don't have a f*cking clue" (repeated several times on where all of these ideas are coming from etc)
- Most important thing in succeeding as an entrepreneur: "gut feeling"
- Top 3 bullshit list: "it's all bullshit"
- and from about a year ago: What's really important? : "I think sex is really important".

Here's an interview of him, good stuff:

Morten Lund from SIME on Vimeo.

Now there's a whole lot in there that the VCs could learn from. How can a really successful investor talk 30+ minutes about investing without ever mentioning any of the same things that the VCs mention? It looked pretty easy - it's like Morten Lund is living in another world when compared to the VCs. I would argue that he IS doing just that, and succeeding because of it.

Altgate recently had an excellent post on why Venture Capital is broken, go check it out and think about it in comparison to what Morten is saying there:

http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/11/venture-capital-is-broken.html

What else is going on in SIME then? Well this for example:

PIc: SIME poster about Fruugo in the movie theatre wall, taken with my iPhone.

Fruugo is going to be there on stage tomorrow. Perhaps not "telling all" but certainly telling more than they have up until now. I'll be there to cheer and clap them on!