Internet users surpass 1 billion 24 januari 2009

ComScore reports that the global internet users surpass a billion. Pretty amazing. China is #1.

I took the numbers and multiplied the global share by GNP per capita:

Indicates you what countries are the most interesting if you want to capitalize on your users. I realize that internet users may be in the higher percentile of earners in their respective country, but never the less.

My morning tears of joy 19 december 2008

This is for those of you who doesn't follow my twitter feed.

Not much bring me to tears, but passionate cheerful happiness does. Always. Every time. It's like a curse.

This morning I got a link from Anders Fredriksson. It's a shameless spoof from "Where the hell is Matt." Never the less, it's beautiful. It's a video of some of the worlds best startups dancing in sheer joy.

Only this and "Extreme Home Makeover" can bring me to tears. I know. I'm a sucker.

Why do we still think locally?

Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK gave an excellent speech at LeWeb '08 covering the european startup spirit. He says about the europe startup scene:

...  in Rome I found Angel/Entrepreneurs like Gianluca Dettori of dpixel trying their damndest to get a startup scene going, resorting to throwing their own conference (TechGarage). In Istanbul I found blogger Arda Kutsal or Webrazzi writing about the Web 2.0 scene in Turkey - and there are more Turkish connections inside Silicon Valley than you might think.

Why does this surprise anyone? The Internet is as local as it is global (the world is where you are). Of course there are going to be amazing startups all over the globe. Everywhere there is an internet connection there is a person thinking: "What if I could have this?", or "What if we could do that?". These people will build amazing stuff. 

So why is it that the common opinion is that it's going to be built in Silicon Valley? Great companies are not built by white educated men in their thirties. They're built by people. Creative, talented, smart, engaged and hard working people.

Right now we've got a generation of people are growing up who never lived without the Internet. They'll have a whole new perception of what the world is like, how small it is.

So lets stop talking about this amazing UK startup or that great Italian startup. Lets start thinking about this great company built by all these talented people who really understand what I need and what I want.

I'm bored with the locality of the world.

VC money still necessary to stand out 05 december 2008

Paul Graham has (as usual) a very interesting read about why VC's may soon not matter.

The current generation of founders want to raise money from VCs, and Sequoia specifically, because Larry and Sergey took money from VCs, and Sequoia specifically. Imagine what it would do to the VC business if the next hot company didn't take VC at all.

VCs think they're playing a zero sum game. In fact, it's not even that. If you lose a deal to Benchmark, you lose that deal, but VC as an industry still wins. If you lose a deal to None, all VCs lose.

This recession may be different from the one after the Internet Bubble. This time founders may keep starting startups. And if they do, VCs will have to keep writing checks, or they could become irrelevant.

His point is very, very good. But what about performance? Or startup competition? It's not as easy as "Ok, our curves are sky rocketing, and we're ramen profitable - we don't need no stinkin' VC money!"

It's about optimal performance. Can you reach optimal performance without the VC money? If there are more startups there is also more competition. You have to be noticed in the noise.

Consider this chart:

Cash burn over time. 

Optimal Performance is about growing as fast as your market and customers allow you. If you burn too fast you waste money. If you don't have enough money you can't reach your optimal performance. Huh?

Well, we're in the disruptive Internet business right? That is: We're changing and adapting customer behaviour. But customers adapt slowly. Back in the bubble I used to work for Red Message.  $20M investment by Goldman Sachs in 2000. The went bankrupt, but there are businesses today thriving on the very same idea. Many of the companies back in the bubble burnt through their cash faster than their customers adapter their behaviour. They were all Over Spending. Other examples include Boo.com and Letsbuyit.

Hardware, software, marketing and distribution are all ten to hundred times cheaper now than back in the bubble. But customers are still slow to adapt.

So what am I saying? Well... Sure, with ramen profitability and curves that make any VC open their fat wallet you may not need them. But are you performing at your optimal curve? I doubt it. You're likely Under Performing, even though you may not know it. Even if the tools available for marketing and CRM are cheaper, if you want to reach a global audience chances are you'll use traditional (old) media. Newpapers. Journalists. Catching their attention them takes time and money. Maybe less than before, but still.

Optimal performance is very hard. It's about spending your money where it impacts the changein behaviour and faster adaptation of your customer. And that is very, very hard. No cheap hardware-, software-, marketing-, CRM-, distribution-, whatever-model in the world will help you there. You may just want to watch your curves, listen to and understand your customer better etc. etc. It's all soft, ad-hoc, and less measurable. And finding your optimal curve takes monkey. At least more than ramen money.

So while many things are cheaper, taking VC money to perform at the optimal curve is still necessary in order to stand out in the noise, and outcompete the competition.

What do you think? If my logic is fuzzy, it's because it's friday and I need beer.

Where is the new TechCrunch? 22 maj 2008

I was amazed today when I noticed TechCrunch has 947 000 daily RSS subscribers. When I started reading TC it had less than 100K daily subscribers through RSS. ( < 78K if I remember correctly).

But it also got me thinking. Way back TC was the subculture club for tech geeks and entrepreneurs (wannabees?).

Has TechCrunch gone mainstream? I'm not sure, but a million readers would suggest so.

So where is the buzz now? Within million readers is a large number of sub niches that alone could create greats blog themselves. Is TechCrunch getting too wide/broad?

As usual I suspect I'm a little ahead of the game. However, I'm sure there are changes coming.

... and... Any tips for niche tech-blogs I should read?

Spansk ekipering gör mig glad 26 november 2007

Jag är så urbota snål! Usch usch. Det går stick i stäv med min vilja att vara snyggt klädd. Helt kass. Det är därför jag gillar att handla på rea.

I min shoppingvända ingår: Velour, Stuk, Stuk Herr, Holmens, NK Trend, NK Man, Viktoria, m.fl. Ni ser. Inte direkt B&W-stilen.

Men nu är jag så jäkla nöjd! Ett företag har kommit till stan och de vänder upp och ned på hela landskapet. Ni som har läst titeln vet jag vad talar om - Zara, i Arkaden.

Jag gillar dem för att de kombinerar bra mode med bra priser. Mycket av det de har är minst lika snyggt som det snyggaste på NK - ibland snyggare. Dessutom är de heltäckande, från top till tå. Slutligen har de ännu inte upptäckts av kreti och pleti, vilket gör att man fortfarande har en chans att hitta saker vars modevärde urvattnas är Bosse Bilmeck hittat samma grej.

Jag tror att Stefan och H&M får se upp. Om Zara fortsätter leverera på samma nivå som nu blir det tufft.