I am co-venturing StartupWeekend with Cem who came up with the stupid notion that we could make this happen together in Germany after an initial attempt at it was made in Boulder, Colorado. As I am a very unorthodox English Guy – I felt that we should definitely have to look into it. The idea seems so simple, compelling & satisfying that it was definitely worth spending time on evaluating – and at the same time it summed up all of what I have been doing in the past 10 years. Developing a “Start-Up Production Line for Consumer Driven Businesses”.
After just a few calls and discussions with some great minds and discussions with Cem, it became very clear to me that it could be done. Why do you think Cem asked me?, I guess because I started looking into “systematic methods to create a successful StartUp” in 2000/1 when I was director of iWorld Group Holding, a global incubator and business production line based in Malta that generated consumer driven mobile businesses. There, I was also iCEO for one of the offsprings – I love running the first 100 meters, i.e. operating until “point of revenue” or proof of concept.
Since then I have spend most of my time looking into the dynamics of “user generated businesses” with iGoBeyond and The Hamburg Connection in Xing as playgrounds which I use to validate hypotheses or refine business building blueprints. Before that, in 1998/99 I was co-initiator of Besonic.com – which is something like YouTube for music and was the biggest platform of its kind in Europe. The funny thing is that the name web2.0 was not invented back then. I won’t go into great details on my world before that, except to say that I have been involved in building businesses since I was 19 years – where I did my first one which I exited in 1989 where I worked out that after just 6 years over 2000 people were directly and indirectly dependant on the products were producing. In between then I have build and sold another 4 businesses.
Having said all that – it seems to me that Startup Weekend is a natural progression of what drives me – and I am very much looking forward to being a part of helping this baby crawl, walk and run.
Veröffentlicht in Autor, startupweekend, Über uns
