Fleck.com Blog

Fleck Pizza Session

2006-10-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

The deadline for Fleck is quickly approaching and we are working hard to make it.

This time ;-)

Tonight we planned a Pizza Session at the office and invited some friends too. Patrick bought 26 beers which amounts to 6 beers a person.

We just ordered 6 pizzas which should give us enough energy to go on for a while...

Sign-up for beta closed

2006-10-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

We closed the beta program yesterday and will launch the beta with the people who have signed up so far. Those people will receive a message somewhere next week with instructions on where to download the Fleck extension. We will first test that and once we are sure that the Firefox Extension, Droplet and other software works fine we will start testing the server side of Fleck.

Fleck Explorer Version Needed

2006-10-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

It would be very nice if we could launch Fleck with an Extension for Explorer too. Who can help me with that? All it has to do (for now) is get the current URL and post it to another URL.

Shouldn't be hard if you have build something for Explorer before.

Fleck User Interface Icon Design

2006-10-24T03:42:00.000-07:00

These are the icons for Fleck I'm working on right now:

Extension progress

2006-10-23T00:52:00.000-07:00

The extension seems to be getting ready. I'm working on the finishing touches right now. As you can see in the image the extension installs a Fleck button in the menubar. When you click it it adds a Fleck to the page you are currently visiting. I a few days, or as soon as I'm done, I'm going to ask some of you to install the extension. It will not offer all of the functionality yet and will just show a nearly empty page when you click it but it will enable us to test if it installs correctly and might help finding the first bugs. So, if you are interested in helping with that just let me know here in the comments or send me a message by mail.

Fleck Short Update

2006-10-13T04:32:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since we last updated the blog. There were a few reasons for that. One of the reasons was that we were having trouble with Fleck. A few things went wrong during the summer. First of all we chose a certain direction for the software which looking back wasn't very smart. The software was slow and buggy and we didn't get the feeling that that would improve. Around the same time it became clear that the deal we had been negotiating with a VC wasn't going to work out. And then the summer started... So there we were. Summertime, nobody home. No deal so no money. Buggy technology and not a clear path on how to fix that. Energylevels dropped, expectations started to fade and we felt terrible. Then in early September everything started to move again. New investors contacted us. We started feeling better about our prospects and we were making plans on how to fix our software. Then one night I couldn't sleep. As I lay awake I was thinking about our software problems and wondered what I would do if I could just throw everything away and start all over. I figured out one little problem we were having and, half asleep, came up with a solution for everything. Just before I fell asleep I made some notes so I wouldn't forget. Even in my sleep I thought it would probably be nothing. You know how these great ideas at night seem very stupid in the morning when you are awake. So the next day I sketched some things on our whiteboard for Patrick and after about 30 minutes Patrick said "You are not telling me it can be THAT simple?!" to which I replied "I'm not sure, but lets try it!". So right now we are working on Fleck again with two developers and it is going very well. I won't promise a launch date until the day before because I would hate to miss another deadline. But there is one more thing I want to discuss. Looking back I guess we overbluffed a bit. The introduction text on Fleck.com "Fleck is: patent pending, world changing, paradigm shifting and user experience enhancing technology. Tagging, search, blog and social networking, every WEB2.0 hype is covered." got us a lot of attention and we didn't mind that at all. But when things went wrong we started to regret having hyped ourselves like this. When we started working on Fleck again in September I bought a new domain: Searcle.com I figured we could build something on Searcle.com without getting the attention we got on Fleck.com and launch without having to live up to the high expectations we have on Fleck.com. But last week we decided to use Fleck.com after all. Fleck is just prettier than Searcle. All we have to do is get those high expectations back to a more realistic level. I'll try to do that by explaining a bit more about Fleck in my next post. I might even throw in a screenshot...

David Fleck and the Fleck Hand Signal (with photo!)

2006-09-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had a funny meeting with David Fleck. He is the Vice President of Marketing at Linden Labs which created Second Life. He told us a funny story about how the Fleck handshake was driving him crazy! It seems that people regularly flash him with our signal, even during board meetings. The photo shows David demonstrating the Fleck Signal. Patrick on the left, David on the right... (see also Patrick's Blog)

Domino Model of success Causation

2006-07-29T04:52:00.000-07:00

Success and failure are quite similar. Just as there is only a fine line between genius and madness there are a few striking similarities between failure and success. In general people think that success is a matter of having a good idea and working hard. In reality there are 5 components of any success and failure story. Heinrich’s Domino Model of Accident Causation is a theory that is being used in Risk Management. It explains that any accident can be broken down in 5 components that follow each other as falling dominos that lead to an accident. Here are those components: Social Environment: Those conditions which make us take or accept risks. Undesirable Human Traits: Anger, carelessness, tiredness, lack of understanding, inattention. Unsafe Acts or Conditions: Poor planning, unsafe equipment, hazardous environment. The Accident: The accident occurs when the above events conspire to cause something to go wrong. The Injury: Injury occurs when the person sustains damage. Social Environment, Undesirable Human Traits, Unsafe Acts or Conditions, The Accident, The Injury. If you want to examine an accident (from Plain crash to Dropped Ice-cream) you can start with looking at the different factors that caused the accident and use the Domino Theory to find out what actually happened. My theory is that you can also apply Heinrich’s Domino Model of Accident Causation to success. So here is my Domino Model of Success Causation: Social Environment: Those conditions which make us try a new service and accept change. Desirable Human Traits: Frustration, readiness, understanding, attention, the desire to try something new. The right Acts or Conditions: Good planning, good equipment, adaptable environment. The Success: The success occurs when the above events cause something to go right and grow virally. The Exit: The exit occurs when the entrepreneur sustains wealth through a liquidity event. If you want to know if a certain (your?) new internet company is going to be successful or if you want to know why a company failed it might be helpful to look at these 5 factors. An example: In 1996 I downloaded a software package that would enable me to make free Voice over IP telephone calls to other people using the same software with my Mac and an internet connection. In fact, VOIP has been around since the Network Voice Protocol was first described in 1973 and there have been dozens of companies that did what Skype does. So why was Skype a success and why did all the other similar products fail? The other companies were first to market, had similar technology and their elevator pitch must have been indistinguishable from Skype. It wasn't just the timing was it? Or maybe it was the team? The answer is that Skype scored well on all the 5 factors. Just as with any accident it was a collection of factors and components that led to the eventual success. In Skypes case the social environment was ready for change. We were all increasingly frustrated with the telephone companies and ready to adopt something new. They planned the process extremely well and were able to keep innovating as they grew. There was a critical mass of people with broadband access and the interface of the product was just easy enough. And the final factor that makes this a success: they had their liquidity event. You can have millions of users, be famous and very innovative but your company is not a true success until there is some kind of liquidity event. So based on this knowledge you could conclude that all you have to do is make sure you score well on each factor to build a successful company. This is true but also impossible to predict in advance. You can only hope that your timing is right, that the market is ready, that people are willing to try something new. In Risk Management if you understand the components of an accident you might be able to prevent one in the future. Hopefully, now that you understand the components of a success you might be able to predict one better. Just remember to apply the Domino Model of Success Causation.

The effect of amateur porn on modern business

2006-07-23T07:57:00.000-07:00

A few years I sold my small company to a big company. One of the first thing they wanted to do was 'professionalize' our processes. Improvement is always good so I happily complied. We started with the helpdesk and they asked me how this was organized. I answered 'When the phone rings the whole office races to it. The one who gets there first gets to answer it' It was kind of an office running gag to see who could get the phone first and people were often surprised to get someone (out of breath in some instances) before the phone rang twice. The big company guys smiled politely and pointed out that that wasn't very professional and wouldn't scale and that we would hire a professional helpdesk service. So we did. The result was terrible. It cost thousands of euros a month and the quality of the service was no where near what we offered in the past. The service would let people wait for minutes until someone would become available and then the person who answered didn't know anything about the problem or didn't seem interested. The other effect was that we didn't hear about problems directly from clients anymore. The helpdesk service acted like a Berlin wall between the customers and the company. After a few months I suggested to the bigger company to get rid of the helpdesk company and get back to answering the phone ourselves. They thought I was crazy and answered that this was now a professional company and that it was unthinkable and impractical to just have everybody answer the phone personally. I figured that everyone in the company would have phone duty once a month, answer between 10 and 30 phonecalls a day, still be able to work and feel a lot more responsible and connected to clients. But no matter what I said, it just wasn't professional in their opinion. I think every industry, product, service and technique goes through the same phases: - interesting - improved - perfected - boring - personalized - interesting again I'll give you an example: Art. At first humanity tried to reach perfection. The perfect painting, indistinct from reality. But when we reached that point we started experimenting with reality and suddenly reality seemed less interesting than the interpretation of the artist. That is how we got to cubism, pointilism and abstract art. Another example: Virtual reality. At first, we tried to mimic reality as much as we could. But not until we added lens flare and other small imperfections did we really achieve it. And now we want to go beyond reality and shape new worlds instead of recreating our current one. Perfection just doesn't cut it anymore. The last example: Amateur Porn. The first popular porn images (And I don't mean the ones found in Pompeii) were black and white photographs that people took of each other and distributed among friends. This became a popular industry which strived to perfection. They tried to improve the images by using more muscular actors who could do things most people can't and who had seemingly 'perfect' bodies. No hair where it shouldn't be, no celulite and oversized... ehm... tools. Until that became boring. It turned out people were fed up with looking at 'perfect' bodies having sex for hours in positions that required impossible flexibility. They wanted amateur porn that looked real. And they got it. So what is the point of this story? If you are starting a business you might think 'I need a typewriter so I can send professional letters'. Now imagine how your clients would feel if you would send them a handwritten letter on a simple but elegant piece of paper. My guess is you will impress the hell out of them. I think 'professional' is not always better than 'amateur'. And it is always better to be a well meaning amateur than an uninterested professional.

What the Fleck is going on with Fleck?

2006-07-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Yep, it has been very quiet at Fleck for the last few weeks. There are a few reasons for that but no excuses. The simple truth is that we have been too busy and occupied with other stuff. Such as developing the software, organizing The Next Web Conference and talking with investors. And we are STILL talking with investors. Just different ones than before. So, what is the roadmap for Fleck you wonder? Our goal is to finalize something within the next 2 months and get ready for a launch of the New New Fleck in september. The software is now in closed beta and will be until we launch. Until we launch I will continue to post about Fleck and throw in some thoughts about doing business on the web. My next post will be titled "The effect of amateur porn on modern business". I wonder what kind of traffic that will generate...

Hiatuses Increasing Aversion Effect

2006-07-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

Most blogs die after a few months. Its a fact of life. Some people think it is a matter of writers block - or Bloggers Block in this case - and you can find a lot of great articles on how to find inspiration for your blog and battle BlogBlock. My guess (and experience) isn't that people run out of inspiration or things to write about. I think the reason they stop blogging is because of the Hiatuses Increasing Aversion Effect. This is how it works; let assume you post 3 articles, every day. Then you miss a day or two. Instinctively you feel that your next post should make up for the lost posts and better be pretty interesting. This raises the bar for your next post so you decide to think about it for an extra day. The next day you want to post something again but this time you have an even greater responsibility to write a good post! And the longer you wait, the higher you feel the expectations will be. In other words: The Hiatuses Increasing Aversion Effect. Guess I overcame that one...

Fleck update

2006-06-22T02:42:00.000-07:00

So, it is time for an update isn't it! We are busy with three things at the moment that interfere with blogging: The Fleck Closed Beta, a financing round and The Next Web Conference. I'll give you an update on all three subjects. The Fleck Closed Beta We started the closed beta 2 weeks ago and we received enough feedback to go back to the drawing board. We are planning to dramatically change a few things which might take a bit longer than we thought. Financing round As you might know this always takes longer than you think. It is also extremely important to the future of our company to get a good partner. One of the reasons we didn't invite more people to the closed beta (sorry!) is that our current hosting solution just wouldn't be able to handle the expected traffic. The Next Web Conference Yes, we are selling more tickets every day and the speakerlist is very impresive. We are looking forward to the conference and party after the conference and hope to meet a lot of you there. In short; we are working hard, trying to keep focus and nowhere near the public launch of the software. Sorry to keep you waiting but I hope it will be worth it...

Wikia & Hidden economies

2006-06-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

Last night I found out that Gil Penchina is the new CEO of Wikia.com. I spoke with him briefly about Fleck.com when we just got started so I do have some interest in his carreer. Today I took a closer look at this service and what I found reminded me of a post I wrote a few weeks ago about Hidden Economies. I think every visitor of WikiPedia.~~com~~org at some point wondered 'How could I make money using this phenomena' and several people actually started services to monetize on it. Wikia.com seems to be a serious one and they might have discovered the Hidden Economy behind Wikipedia. I wonder how it will turn out but I'm sure Penchina didn't jump ship (from eBay to Wikia) if he didn't clearly see it. Do YOU see it too? Share it with us in the comments please...

Fleck Closed Beta: live

2006-06-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

So, Fleck is now in closed beta. In the following days we will invite some of our readers to join our beta. If you are not included don't feel sorry for yourself. We only invite about a hundred people for the beta this week.

Low Latent Inhibition

2006-05-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto and colleagues at Harvard University in 2003 published the result of an extensive research project on Latent Inhibition. Their pressrelease was titled: "Biological Basis For Creativity Linked To Mental Illness". I feel much better now! I won't try to explain the whole project here but what I found interesting about it is that it all sounds so familiar to the entrepreneur in me. Low Latent Inhibition is a defect (or talent) that makes it hard for people (and animals) to ignore details or information that isn't important to their cause. In other words: "to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs". I'm sure everybody recognises this. You remember your first telephone number but not where you left your keys. The authors hypothesize that latent inhibition may be positive when combined with high intelligence and good working memory - the capacity to think about many things at once - but negative otherwise. Peterson states: "If you are open to new information, new ideas, you better be able to intelligently and carefully edit and choose. If you have 50 ideas, only two or three are likely to be good. You have to be able to discriminate or you'll get swamped." Sounds like what entrepreneurs, innovators and creative people often talk about. I often notice that I tend to look 'different' at things. I used to think that it was my art academy background that caused this but I'm now thinking that it might not be an acquired talent but a simple case of Low Latent Inhibition. More information: Biological Basis For Creativity Linked To Mental Illness http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031001061055.htm low latent inhibition: one of the biological bases of creativity http://www.straddle3.net/context/03/en/2003_10_13.html Low Latent Inhibition Plus High Intelligence Leads To High Creativity? http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001684.html

SOLD!

2006-05-13T00:58:00.000-07:00

All the domains + Businessplans sold just a few minutes ago for a total of $487.00. Here is the final score: Betafy.com: $233.50 Headr.com: $202.50 Drugle.com: $26.00 Clicksy.com: $51.00 Not bad!

Only one hour left!

2006-05-12T23:10:00.000-07:00

There is only one hour left to the end of the domain & businessplan auction we started at eBay. These are the prices right now. We received 44 bids in total so far. Several people told me that the last hour of the auction if always the busiest. I'll let you know in about an hour if that is true... Betafy.com $173.50 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722883193 Headr.com $152.50 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722882274 Drugle.com $11.50 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722883581 Clicksy.com $26.00 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722883890

Buying Viagra and Getting Things Done

2006-05-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

Admitting that you have a problem is the first step towards a solution. So last week, I looked in the mirror and admitted to myself that I had to do something. I had a problem. I couldn't deny it any longer and I decided to take action. I walked to the store, found what I needed and went to the cash register. The girl behind the counter looked at what I gave her, then gave me a good look and, a little too loud for my taste, asked me 'For you, or a gift?'. At which point I blushed and answered 'No, it's for a friend'. She nodded, smiled, and clearly didn't believe me. Yeah, it felt like buying Viagra, or condoms. But I wasn't buying anything like that. I was buying a book: Getting Things Done by David Allen. Buying a book like that says something about a person. I don't like self-help books and used to think that they are silly and useless. And I didn't understand or respect the people who read all those 'Improve yourself in 6 days' or 'How to feel better about yourself' books. But here I am, with a self-help book that promises to help me get things done. And boy am I impressed! I need more of these books and I'm not joking! Consider this: until last week I had an average of 200 unread messages in my Inbox and another 500 in a directory titled "Mail I still have to read". I also had too many things to do and too many things to worry about and no time to fix them. I explained just yesterday that I always made to-do lists and never looked at them again. Why? 'because they contained all kinds of stuff I HAD too DO and I was always to busy with other things'. Then a little more than a week ago I read the first 25 pages of this book. Something exploded in my head, everything made sense and I changed just a few things in my work methods. And since that day my inbox is clean. No mail at all. I keep a few lists with things I plan to do today, this week or some day and my head is clear. I suddenly have time to do stuff in between and react to sudden questions or issues without feeling like I'm losing control. So, while at first I felt embarrassed and ashamed to need such a thing as a self-help book I am now proud, thankful and happy. I'm converted and liberated and ready for everything! Maybe I'll try some Viagra next!

Thé Essential Reading List for Entrepreneurs and Start-ups

2006-05-10T04:42:00.000-07:00

We try to learn as much as we can and gain insight into as many things as are important for our business. At the office we all love books and share them and exchange tips or highlight pasages. I decided to start a list of essential books every entrepreneur should read. I'm hoping that other people will add their books to the list and I'll discover a few books I didn't know yet. Here is the list: http://www.listible.com/list/thC3A9-essential- reading-list-for-entrepreneurs-and-start-ups When you add a book it would be nice to point it to the right Amazon page.

Auction: only 3 days left!!!

2006-05-09T14:22:00.000-07:00

A quick update on the Web2.0 company Auction which I posted on a few days ago. Betafy is doing quite well. And we were mentioned on ValleyWag, which is cool too. I think traffic to the sites (including Fleck and Fleck Blog) has easily tripled in 2 days. Betafy.com $102.00 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722883193 Headr.com $10.00 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722882274 Drugle.com $1.00 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722883581 Clicksy.com $26.00 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722883890 Isn't that incredible? Nobody is bidding on Drugle??? I think I received over a hundred email accounts via the form on Betafy.com by the way so that domain is increasing in value every minute!

Opportunity Increase by Postponing Action

2006-05-09T02:19:00.000-07:00

With sex, sometimes it is better to delay things a bit. That might be true for business on the internet too. Or is it? Read on and you will know... Timing is important for an Entrepreneur. You don't want to be to early or too late to the market. And costs are important too. These are simple facts that we all agree on and which will never change. But the context around those facts do change and are of great importance. Yahoo was the first big web index when bandwidth was expensive, there was no advertising model, every new customer had to be acquired and developers were treated like movie stars. In other words: it was an expensive and difficult time where Yahoo was able to grab a large part of the market through their first mover advantage. Digg.com is definitely not a first mover and not the first consumer controlled media outlet. It is often described as quite similar to Slashdot, even by the founders. And the businessmodel is based, comfortably, on Google Ads which can be installed on every website within a few minutes. Other examples: Skype (not the first VOIP solution), Google (not the first search engine) and Gmail (not the first web based email). In 1997 you could easily pay 100.000 on servers and 10.000 a month for a leased line while you can get close to infinite bandwidth and traffic for $16 a month now. And you will get better uptime than in 1997 too. It seems that being fast, first and expensive isn't that attractive anymore. It seems that the longer you wait the bigger your audience, the cheaper your developers, bandwidth and storage and the higher your return from advertising. Suddenly it pays to be patient. It might even be worthwhile to wait a bit. Tomorrow is better than today. In the current fast moving and innovative internet economy the companies who take their time, learn from mistakes and take advantage of a bigger piece of the pie are rewarded for their patience. So, hurry, get back to work!

The Hardest Lessons for Startups to learn

2006-05-09T01:45:00.000-07:00

I wish I came up with that title and post but I didn't. It is from Paul Graham and you can read it here: http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html One thing I loved in the article is this paragraph. I think it is something every entrepreneurs can recognise:

If an ordinary employee were asked to do the things a startup founder has to, he'd be very indignant. Imagine if you were hired at some big company, and in addition to writing software ten times faster than you'd ever had to before, they expected you to answer support calls, administer the servers, design the web site, cold-call customers, find the company office space, and go out and get everyone lunch. And to do all this not in the calm, womb-like atmosphere of a big company, but against a backdrop of constant disasters.

Hidden Economies

2006-05-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

Flickr.com was a Flash gaming site that had a nifty feature: exchanging photo's. eBay started out as demo for Auction Software. That was the original businessplan. The people selling shovels where the real winners of the gold rush. I'm talking about hidden economies. Focus is great when you are a start-up. But you might just be stubborn and not know the difference. Let's assume you start a bar for hippies, but every night your bar is filled with hard rock fans. Do you have a problem or an opportunity? Ebay clearly saw the opportunity, Flickr did too. I sometimes wonder what the hidden economy of Fleck will be, and if there is one. Maybe you should take another good look at your job, business or project too? Is there a hidden economy you don't know about yet?

The Ugly Girl Equation

2006-05-08T12:43:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that beautiful young girls often have quite unattractive girls as best friends? I noticed. I think the reason those girls become best friends is because they both benefit: The beautiful girl looks better... by contrast The ugly girl looks better... by association They are both better off. It is a symbiotic (both species benefit) relationship that benefits both parties. But we also know that relationships between girls are never forever. Within days, weeks or months the relationship becomes a victim of parasitism (one species benefits, the other is harmed) when the beautiful girl tries to boost her ego by complaining to her other friends that the ugly girl is stalking her. Kids can be cruel. And so can VCs and Entrepreneurs... I watched two girls playing together today. One was strikingly beautiful. The other girl, well, just not that beautiful. It made me think of the relationship between a start-up entrepreneur and a seasoned venture capitalist. An entrepreneur want to be best friends to the VC. He admires him for the money he manages and the people he knows. He is the ugly girl trying to look better by association. He knows that he is young, unproven and without much power. It's a frustrating and humiliating time. But it it's not all roses and sunshine for the VC either. When the ugly girl is alone she checks herself in the mirror and knows "one day, I'll be just as funny, beautiful and popular". And when that day indeed comes, the ugly girl suddenly gets her revenge. She is tougher, cooler and smarter than the beautiful girl and forgets all about her. Even about the symbiotic relationship they once had. And so does the Entrepreneur. Once the entrepreneur is famous, recognized and praised he forgets who helped him there in the first place. I heard a VC complain recently that entrepreneurs are just like sick people. When they visit a doctor and get well, it was because they were strong and healthy. But if they die, it was the doctors fault. Nobody ever thanks the doctor, or the VC, for their well being. So, a Venture Capitalist should be loyal, even when the ugly girl/entrepreneur asks for too much attention. He should respect his little ugly girl because one day she will bigger, better and better looking than he. And the Entrepreneur/ugly girl shouldn't forget the symbiotic relations ship that started their friendship. And while we are on the subject: think about your other relationships too. Are you the ugly or the beautiful girl in your partnership/relationship or friendship? Image reprinted without permission from: http://www.contemporaryartproject.com/cap/content/collection/artist_beer.htm

Headr.com, Betafy.com, Clicksy.com and Drugle.com

2006-05-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

I know you have been checking out all those Web2.0 companies and were dying to join the race. But maybe you haven't had any good ideas yet or you couldn't find a good name. Well, today is your day! We have registered 4 beautiful Web2.0 domains, made up a great businessplan for each one and are selling those domains + businessplans to the highest bidder, starting at $1... Yes that is correct, for $1 YOU can be an entrepreneur and get a shot at making millions within a year too! Here are the names and plans + expected revenue and exit: Domain: Headr.com Tagline: B2B Social Networking tool Businessplan: Companies will be able to start internal social networks. You will finally know how you are connected to the girl in administration! You will make money by offering a small company version for free (max 10 people) and a paying version (10+ people, company logo and colors, management tools, etc) for 1 euro per month per user. You will grow to 6 million users in 12 months and sell the whole thing for 600 million in 13 months. Guaranteed! Starting price: $1 (estimated worth domain only : $9.300*) Bid now: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722882274 Domain: Betafy.com Tagline: monetise on the Web2.0 Beta Hype Businessplan: This one should be bought my Techcrunch or The Museum of Modern Betas but you could do it too! The plan is simple. All those damn Web2.0 with their beta programs are multiplying like rabbits. Any you need to test them all out, right? Betafy makes sure you don't miss a single one. You subscribe once and enter a few details (Operating system, browser type, Blogger, etc) and start-ups can buy a mailing to these people on Betafy.com. They won't get the emailaddresses but can buy a few testers. Within a few months every start-up will want to join you and pay you handsomely for your database of 1 million eager beta testers. You will make more money then you can spend. Extra: website up and running! Starting price: $1 (estimated worth domain only : $11.700*) Bid now: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722883193 Domain: Drugle.com Tagline: Sex, Drugle.com and rock and roll Businessplan: AJAX interface to search medical databases. Yeah boring, but you could sell quickly (20/30 million) to an old fashioned Drug manufacturer. They will buy you just so you can explain to the board what the hell AJAX is. Starting price: $1 (estimated worth domain only : $13.500*) Bid now: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722883581 Domain: Clicksy.com Tagline: Professional Surfing Businessplan: Clicksy is a new browser build on top of Firefox/Mozzila that is similar to Flock. But instead of optimizing is for Bloggers you optimize it for the Office worker. You integrate Gmail, Writeboard and OpenOffice and offer a cheap online hosting contract with a Web2.0 online back-up company. Should be a hit within 24 months (companies are a bit slower) and sell for 4 billion to Microsoft. Starting price: $1 (estimated worth domain only : $6.500*) Bid now: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=9722883890 Now I never want to hear anyone tell me that all the ggood names are gone. If you need another name just ask me and I'll make one up for you. So start bidding today for your chance to make millions. The auction will last 7 days (until May-13-06 00:46:23 PDT) and one last thing: if you buy one of these domains and become a millionaire, we get 5%... * = just a lucky guess! No scientific or economic foundation at all.

Alpha

2006-05-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

Fleck is in Alpha... Past the point of no return... Yesterday evening about 20 people took a test drive with the Alpha version of Fleck. I haven't been nervous for many things since we started but yesterday I was shaking in my pants as the first tester arrived at the Fleck office. I welcomed everybody and explained the whole concept in about 15 minutes, urged everybody to keep everything to themselves and then told them where to download the software. We only finished the Alpha version 30 minutes before the meeting and I fixed a few links in the test website just 2 minutes prior to the first visitor coming in. As people were starting to test everything the pizza arrived and we opened the first few beers. After about an hour of testing we held a group sessions where Erik asked some general questions and people were able to respond. We received a lot of feedback, some bugs and a few requests for features. The general feeling is that our solutions seems interesting and usefull and worth a good look. Some people assured us that they would use it several times a day but at least one of the testers told us he didn't see himself using it at all. Conclusion: we are happy to have unleashed our product to at least a few outsiders and having received the first serious feedback. Now on to a public beta...

How to manage too much email...

2006-05-03T03:21:00.000-07:00

Email is killing me. I get 200/300 messages a day and I just can't keep up. This is how I think my email looks:

60% spam 35% company communication 5% other

I already got rid of all the newsletters I signed up for (You have RSS for that now) and use a spam filter which takes care of 95% of all spam. And now we want to optimize the office communication. First of all we decided to stop CCing each other on everything. If it is important, give me a call of tell me in person. Then we implemented OpenSubject. OpenSubject is nothing more than a bunch of 3 letter codes that you can use in front of your subject line. An example:

'NRN: information about office'

means:

'this is information about the office which you might be interested in but you don't have to tell me what you think of it or mail to me tell me you received this message'

NRN simply stands for No Reply Needed. Here are the other 3 letter codes we use:

NRN: No Reply Needed RYN: Reply with 'Yes' or 'No' AYQ: Answering Your question ATC: attachment is important 1QM: One Question Message MQM: Multiple Question Message FYA: For your Archive FYI: For your information (NRN) WFR: Waiting for your Reply/Advice/Permission AET: Answer Expected Today/this Week/within a Month RAF: Read and Forward (jokes, quotes, interesting)

Now when I look at my mailbox I immediatly see that I have a few RYN message which I know I can answer within 2 minutes or less because all that is needed is a simple YES or NO. And then I quickly read the NRN messages because I know I only have to read them and don't have to answer anything! This simple system makes interoffice communication a lot easier and my email manageable. Feel free to try it too. It's free...

Intuitive Decision Making

2006-04-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine told me about a presentation he was preparing for a company event a few weeks ago. It was very important and all the other groups in this company had months to prepare for it. But he and his team were only notified the week before the event. At first they felt unprepared and unable to get anything ready in time and on par with the other presentations. But they didn't have a choice so they worked hard for a week and just gave it their best shot. The result: their presentation was by far the most original, clear and professional one of all. This is an endorsement for my Deserted Island Strategy ideas but it also reminded me of another lesson from art school: If you add too many colors to a painting and mix them all up the result is a painting that isn't bright and multi colored but muddy brown and without depth. And muddy brown and without depth is a pretty accurate description of most company presentations, isn't it? We all know how these things work when too much time is spend and too many people have to look at things and offer their opinion. You start out with a fresh and genuine idea but then everybody has to throw in their own original ideas too just to show that they are quite inventive too. The end result after all this friendly advice and modifications is a weak product with no identity and no sharp edges. Sometimes is pays off to take a more intuitive approach to making a presentation, writing a document or doing anything in general. Try this on Monday: If you have to make a decision, follow your first instinct How do you do that? Simply by doing the first thing that comes up and sticking with it. Your second thought might be 'That doesn't seem logical' or 'that would be too funny' but ignore those thoughts and just do what you intuitively thought was right. Post the result in the comments here. Word of advice: when you operate a nuclear sub or work with dangerous substances or doing any other work which might kill you if done wrong please ignore this post.

Sliding Scale Valuation Formula

2006-04-29T05:38:00.000-07:00

When an entrepreneur pitches his or her company to a potential investor there always comes a moment where the following conversation takes place:

investor: "So how much money do you need" entrepreneur: "About a million" investor: "Sounds reasonable, and much do I get for that?" entrepreneur: "10%" investor: "10%??? So you value your company at 10 million right now? I don't think so. I was more thinking along the lines of a 2.5 million valuation."

I have had to defend myself a few times in this situation but also used the same argument when talking with other entrepreneurs. But I don't like it one bit. I think we need another way to look at this and I have come up with a simple formula which I would like to call the Sliding Scale Valuation Formula. The basic thinking goes like this: If I pay 1 euro for 10% then 100% must be worth 10 euros. Simple and clean and shown in the illustration. But what entrepreneurs and investors often overlook is that in reality each share has a different value. One simple way to prove this is if you would own 10% and would be able to buy 1% more. If the company would be worth 1 million that one percent would cost you 10.000. Right? Now let's assume you have 50%. Would that extra 1% still cost just 10.000, or would you be willing to pay more for it? Having 50% or 51% in a company makes all the difference so my guess is that you would easily pay more than 10 times the amount. So all percentages are not created and valued equal. Another example, in the form of a very old joke: a man pulls into a gas station and asks the owner: 'How much for one drop of gasoline? The owner replies 'don't worry, that's free' to which the man replies 'Ok, give me a full tank of gasoline drops then'. We all understand that there is a huge difference between one drop of a full tanks of gas. So why does this not apply to a start-up? Why does the selling of 10% for 10 imply that the other 90% must be worth 90? It doesn't. In fact, the other 90% is completely worthless to anyone but the owners. If they would sell the full 90% there wouldn't be a company left. So in fact there is a sliding scale in the valuation of a start-up which I illustrated here too. Each company is different and the numbers are influenced by the percentage you sell, the number of shareholders and the age and status of your company and so each sliding scale will be different. In some cases the scale might even tip the other way which would mean that the percentage you are selling is worth less then the percentage you keep. And the more value is inserted into the company and the more shareholders you have the more likely it will be that the scale evens out and a percentage actually equals a percentage. But for start-ups I think we need a Sliding Scale Valuation Formula. So what formula do we use? If you find a good investor, with a great network and fantastic ideas his investment easily doubles the chance that your start-up turns into a successful company. So it doesn't really matter if he has 5%, 10% or 35%, his investment is responsible for 50% of your success. So let's use that as a starting point and construct the following formula: What the investor invests is doubled to calculate the value of the start-up Simple, elegant and effective. It helps you defend the percentage you are offering and puts a bunch of feathers up the butt of the investor because you get to explain that he is responsible for 50% of your success. So the next time a VC or investor asks you about your valuation I suggest you tell them an old joke, about a drop of gasoline...

No original thought?

2006-04-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

Erik at publicworks.nl just mailed me a link to a page for the Computing and Communications Infrastructure Futures Laboratory. They have a logo that is strikingly similar to our logo. The good news: my design looks better!

Completion Anxiety Syndrome

2006-04-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

As we are finishing the alpha version of the software we grow more and more anxious and insecure about, well, everything. It's a natural phenomenon to get nervous just before the finish but knowing that is only slightly comforting. As I was walking home from the office today I noticed a Keyfinder in a shop. It reminded me of all the great inventions that seemed great at first, but weren't after all. When my father first told me about this particular invention (I must have been 8) I was thrilled with excitement over this beautiful and extremely useful gadget. I imagined never losing anything again and saved money until I could finally buy one. But theory was better than reality as it often is. The keyfinder I got only worked if you were within 10 feet of it, it was clearly in sight and I whistled straight at it in just the right tone. In other words: it didn't work at all. Stuff like that scares me to death am I'm sure it has this effect on every serious entrepreneur. After all; it is our job (as entrepreneurs) to convince other people of something 'new and improved' and make some money in the process. But sometimes your 'new' isn't much of an improvement and there is no other way to find out than to try and risk everything. And some people get so scared that they might say 'Maybe the timing isn't right' or 'It's not perfect yet, maybe I should wait' which is all nonsense of course. It's just another way of saying 'I am scared shitless'. And still, every time when I'm nearly finished with a project I feel the same anxiety, which I will now call 'Completion Anxiety Syndrome'. It is that feeling that slowly creeps in and starts messing with your 'Completion Euphoria Status'...

Fleck Alpha Version Testers?

2006-04-25T01:56:00.000-07:00

We are looking for people in Amsterdam who are willing to test the Alpha version of Fleck somewhere in the following week. Testing will take place at the Fleck office and we will shower you with beer and pizza. You will have to bring your own laptop (Mac, PC, Linux or any other OS as long as it has LRF support) with Firefox installed (and Wi-Fi or Ethernet) as you will be needing that to install the Fleck Extension... Aha, so it's an extension??? No, Fleck is more than JUST an Extension. But the Extension is an important part of Fleck and we need to test it. Please contact us if you are willing to participate.

Distributed Wealth Model

2006-04-24T12:57:00.000-07:00

Today I received an email from Joseph, one of our regular Fleck Blog readers, with an interesting question. Here it is:

How do you keep a team motivated when there is no revenue. We are about to establish our Corporate Guidelines and the subject of equity came up. How do you establish who gets what piece of the company at start-up, while the site is being rolled out?

I was just having a discussion today about the same subject and spend some time thinking about it. There is no easy answer and I'm sure different people have different strategies. My strategy is simple: give away a lot, make big steps soon, try to make the circumstances as ideal as possible to grow big fast. Now before you give away your whole company and then complain to me when this doesn't turn out well, a few words of caution. I have no problem with making other people rich if they help me get rich faster and easier. I have always felt that way and have never regretted it. But this strategy can fail miserably too. You need to be very sure that the partners you have are the right people for the job and that they will indeed make your company or product grow faster and better. So if you are sure that your partners are good and are going to make your company a success I would reward them well. Remember that people get motivated most by being appreciated. Respect is a much better motivator than money. So don't try to negotiate their shares down to the last penny. Show them you respect them, care for their opinion and want to give them a fair share. Explain why the percentage you chose is reasonable and that they are valuable to the company. I call my model the distributed wealth model: make sure your employees are happy and make a lot of money, your customers are satisfied and your investors get rich and you will do fine yourself too.

Deserted Island Strategy

2006-04-23T04:08:00.000-07:00

It is a common mistake for start-ups (and people in general) to presume that if they would have more [anything] their product would be much better. More money, more people, more clients, more anything. People complain 'If only I had the resources' or 'If only my boss would support me more'. You see these obstacles and think that if in some way you could make them disappear, everything would work fine. We make the same mistakes at Fleck, regularly. But we are aware of it too and try to recognize our mistakes and fix them. Funding is a good example. A lot of 'would be' entrepreneurs think that they can't get started before they have their funding taken care of. They say 'I can't do anything before I get funded'. of course, they are wrong. Getting started is hard but also simple. You can register a domain name for $9.95. You can start a blog for free in 5 minutes. Can't afford a developer? Go to php.net and learn PHP in two weeks, for free. There is no excuse for not starting. So how do you shape the best circumstances for success? How would you motivate someone or a team? A: get them all the resources they need, a great team of talented people to work with and enough money to buy anything. Get the whole company behind it and make sure no obstacles are in their way. B: take away their resources, give them nobody, no money and publicly criticism them. If you could chose in which team you would want to work you would take option A, right? Me too. But history shows that the greatest products are often the result of a situation that more resembles option B, not A. Take the Apple Macintosh as an example. The developers make less money than all the other developers at Apple. They had to hide their consultants in a closet when they suspected the CEO would visit and if management found out what they were doing they were likely to be fired. Think about that for a minute: would you work on a product in your company if it might get you fired if your boss would find out about it? Who is more likely to be really motivated to build a boat? A: a well fed and well paid employee B: someone stranded on a deserted island My guess, and experience, would say that the stranded person will be very motivated. Despite, or thanks to, his lack of money, food and resources. Hence, the Deserted Island Strategy... So what does this tell us about start-ups? We at Fleck are constantly working on funding and improving our setting and resources. You want to have the best resources and the most money we can get and build the best product possible. But at the same time it must be very clear that a lack of resources, money and time can never be a reason to have a less than great product. The only thing that really has an impact is the dedication to the product and your personal motivation.

Wasting time on important things

2006-04-19T04:54:00.000-07:00

I spend the last two days on getting my Mac OS X Subversion client set-up. It's one of those important things that you just have to do and you know are important but you still feel like you are wasting time. Don't get me wrong: making back-ups is important. But it's one of those things that don't seem to be constructive and when I look at my todo list I'd rather work on the user section of the website than back-up my stuff. Anyway, it's all part of the game.

How do you paint a white rabbit?

2006-04-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I was visiting my parents house to celebrate Easter Day. As we drove there we noticed a perfect white rabbit sitting by the side of the road. I stopped to show it to our children and told them it must have been the Easter bunny. My parents hid painted real eggs and chocolate ones in the garden, which the kids had to find, and then had lunch. After lunch I took a nap in my sisters room. As I woke up I looked around the room and noticed a drawing of a white rabbit. I stared at it for a while and noticed that that painting was actually a very good metaphor to starting a company. When you start a company you have to know the answer to the question:

'How do you paint a white rabbit'

In art academy (which I attended) you are taught to think different and one way to practice that is to think in negative shapes. You can paint a white rabbit, or an invisible form, or a bright light by outlining the outside of the form you wish to make visible. In the case of the white rabbit painting in my sisters room there is a background and a shadow which make the white rabbits stand out from the paper. In art academy they call that 'inversion' or 'a negative'. In Flecks case the white rabbit is our product. As you start to establish the company you build the background. We started with a patent, a blog and logo, then a website and a little funding. Then we hired developers and worked up a demo. You could say that we started working on all the stuff around the actual product and the more stuff you but in the background the clearer the white rabbit/our vision becomes. This is a scary procedure. All the time you are building around, talking about and building upon something that simply isn't there yet. You are constantly thinking "this is all background stuff, I want to see the actual product!'. But to get there you have to go through all that other stuff first. It is strange to talk with investors about your dreams and vision. What you are actually trying to do is show them the white rabbit. The more stuff you show (Excel sheets, patents, demos and plans) the more clearer the white rabbit becomes. Then one day, you wake up, and are suddenly staring at a very real and white rabbit and everybody can see it...

Burning Cat Strategy

2006-04-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

Warning: If you like cats and/or have strong feelings about animal cruelty you might be shocked by part of this story. The first time I started a company I spend a lot of time writing a press-release. On the day we launched I faxed the press release to a few newspapers, relevant magazines and websites. I hoped the press-release would get picked up and make us famous. I was hoping for a spark to start my media engine. And it did. These days things are different. Sure, I would still write a press-release but just a spark isn’t enough to start an online business and attract millions of users. What you need is (a great product or service and) a Burning Cat Strategy. When I was in college there were a lot of fires in the city where I lived. Every month a shop that wasn’t doing very well burned down in an effort to collect money from the fire insurance. Most of the time they failed because the investigators, by looking at the source of the fire, could easily show it wasn’t an accident. But then a strange thing happened. The investigators suddenly were confronted by fires that seemed to have started everywhere in the room. The whole room seemed to have caught fire at once. After a few months of similar fires the investigators started to notice one similarity in those unexplainable fires; they always found a dead cat. It turned out that the arsonists poured gasoline over the cats and used them as living torches. The burning cats would run around the store and spread the fire everywhere in seconds. Cruel but effective. You are now thinking ‘Who comes up with such a cruel thing’ and the answer might surprise you. Forrest fires and often spread by burning rabbits and other animals and sometimes fires are spread from one house to another by a burning mouse that tries to escape to the house next door. These criminals probably just watched National Geographic. I thought of this story as I was trying to explain the marketing strategy of Fleck and other internet companies like us. We can’t rely on a single spark to get us noticed. To start our fire we need a Burning Cat. We use a blog to get users interested before we launch, promise journalists a first look at the beta, talk with potential users, give speeches at universities, design affiliate services, tools for webmasters, collect email-addresses for the beta program, organize a conference and do a hole range of other things to make sure that when we go live we are everywhere. And even this post is part of our ‘Burning Cat Strategy’. I'm coining the term, partly to get mentioned in the ValleySpeak post on Valleywag, and hope you will use it too. So if you blog about it, please make sure you mention Fleck.com and link to it. We need all the sparks we can get...

The 50 most anticipated applications in the webosphere

2006-04-12T01:14:00.000-07:00

A friend just emailed us a link to the The Museum of Modern Betas Most Anticipated list. We are right there on number 9. Not bad. A lot of people are very anxious to hear from us and more importantly to try our software. Or at least hear what it is about. We like the positive excitement but are also very aware of how a phenomenon like that can suddenly turn against you. We all know companies that created tremedous pre-hype and then took months to go live. Some days we almost regret having gone live with this blog and the sign-up form. But mostly we are happy with all the support we get by mail and the positive feedback we get. And the pre-hype did get us noticed. We were contacted by investors, journalists and developers and are still benefiting from that every day. So, if you feel anxious, multiply that feeling by 10 and then you will know how we feel. We as kfor just a little but more patience so we can finish the beta and go live with that

Fleck.com opens SF office

2006-04-08T05:15:00.000-07:00

We love modern times. It used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollar to open an office. Now, all you need is a PC and Skype. We just bought a SkypeIn account with a San Francisco area code. Here it is: (415) 315-9395 (country code +1, United States) Our Skype name is 'fleck.com' so you can also just Skype us from now on. We have a dedicated iBook installed. If you want to sing us a song just give us a call and we will put you o speaker. Now only if we could take a virtual trip to Sandhill road...

Blogger doesn't know what a 'Blog' is???

2006-04-07T03:47:00.000-07:00

The devil is in the details, isn't it? Call me a perfectionist, accuse me of paying to much attention to details but stuff like this just fascinates me. Here is what happened: I'm writing this blog, on Blogger, which is a service for bloggers, who blog. Still with me? So I spellcheck my Blog, with the Spellchecker provided to me by Blogger and what happens? The spellchecker doesn't recognize the word 'Blog'. It suggests I use 'Bloc' instead and for 'Blogger' it suggest 'Blocker'. It also seem that this Spellchecker has an identity crisis. From now on it wants to be named 'Splicer'. So, do you think the owners of Blogger use their own product? Do you think they ever use the word 'Blog' or 'Blogger'? Guess not...

Fleck.com & The Next Web Conference 2006

2006-04-07T03:11:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I read this blog post from Charles from Mailroom (excellent service!) about the cost/reward ratio of attending a conference versus getting mentioned on the Signal vs. Noise blog. Let me quote:

Launch at DEMO Cost: almost $30,000 increase in traffic for two days following: 100% Cost per % increase: $300
Brief mention on Signal vs. Noise blog Cost: $0 increase in traffic for two days following: 50% Cost per % increase: $0

As I was reading that post I wondered how I could get the best of both worlds? You DO want to attend a good conference and get your company known. But $30.000??? I figured, for $30.000 I could host a whole conference myself... And so we present to you, the conference from heaven, initiated by Fleck.com, organized by Live Solutions and hosted by Barbizon Palace in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We called it: The Next Web Conference 2006 We recycled the Fleck webdesign for theNextWeb.org website and I designed a simple but elegant logo and left all the work to a professional organisation. Although it won't make us rich, it will cover our expenses. And we think it is quite cool to actually break even or make a little money on your marketing. We will be able to attend a conference we would love to attend, get to know all the speakers, meet every Web2.0 company in Europe and promote our own company in the process. We did spend a lot of time on how to present ourselves. We decided to sponsor the party and not plaster our logo all over everything. We would like to promote our company but this conference should be more than a vehicle for Fleck promotion. More information: http://www.thenextweb.org

Working 9 to 5.....? Says who

2006-04-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

This week we have planned multiple night sessions at the Fleck Headquarters with the Fleck team (Fleckees). As the Beta release comes nearby, everybody is getting more and more enthusiastic and is staying as late as the girlfriends (wives) are allowing. So while Boris is getting us McDonalds, we are working, joking and of course watching some footage at YouTube :) The Todo list seems to grow by the minute, ....hummmm isn't it supposed to do the opposite? We'll go on and meanwhile you can watch the best dancescene ever shown on your 23" flatscreen, brought to you by Napoleon Dynamite. Definitely gotta get some dance classes.

Seeing the future, in 1945

2006-04-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

The article 'As We May Think' by Vannevar Bush has been a great inspiration for many scientists and inventors. Even the technology behind Fleck is based on it. Today I reread the whole article (19 printed pages) and once again I was inspired, intrigued and in awe at the incredible foresight displayed by the writer. In his article he describes personal computers, digital photography, tagging, Wikis and the world wide web. He doesn't name these specific inventions but sketches a future where these inventions might be implemented. It is incredible that Vannevar Bush made al of these assumptions in 1945. And as I was reading the article it also became clear to me that inventing something and actually implementing it is a very different thing. A lot of the concepts that are described are still not available today even though the technology we have seems capable enough. It takes more that just knowing what to do. The actual doing is the most important fact. 'Yeah right!', you might say, but I think this is often overlooked. And applying that to the reality of my own work I realized that there are some similarities. At Fleck we figured out the basic functionality in about, oh, 10 minutes? But then we started building, and restructuring and making sure everything is scalable and adding 'Wouldn't it be great if' features and, and, and... ...and now it's April. So, last week we threw out those 'Wouldn't it be great it' features, got back to the basics and bought more coffee. Just between you and me, I think we might be able to launch in April. Or May...

A small break?

2006-03-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

Wednesday evening, Patrick and me will leave for a meeting in Luxembourg. We will stay in a hotel and have our meeting on thursday morning. Then we will drive to Meribel, France and stay there until sunday evening to meet with one of our advisors. Then drive back on monday. Meeting your advisors in one of the best ski regions in Europe is not a bad thing. Unfortunately our appartment has no cable, phone or any other way to access the internet so we will depend on our Blackberry (Boris) and Treo (Patrick). Emailing won't be a problem but blogging, designing or coding will be difficult. I guess there is nothing to do but ski then. Sigh...

top 5 Web2.0 Songs?

2006-03-20T04:27:00.000-08:00

There are love songs, dance songs, shout-a-long sonds and sad songs. But do YOU know of any Start-up songs? Or even better: Web2.0 songs? We slected the top 5 Fleck Web2.0 songs: #1 Title: The Sharing Song By: Jack Johnson Why: "...It's always more fun to share with everyone..." #2 Title: Hate it or love it By: The Game Why: Hate it or love it! Vote, rank and rate. It's very Web2.0 to ask for user feedback! #3 Title: Just a lil bit By: 50 cent Why: deliver today, not later! Develop fast and go live in beta. Ah yes, our beta program should start in a lil bit too... #4 Title: It's All About The Benjamins By: Puff Daddy Why: It IS all about the benjamins isn't it? Cash is king. #5 Title: one thing By: Amerie Why: She sure know how to focus on just one thing doesn't she! It's what we try to do too: less features! Looking forward to your suggestions. It's illegal to send us your MP3 files so you better don't do that. If you send us your MP3 File we would have that music and we wouldn't have paid for it. So don't send your files. If you do decide to send us your files we will delete them. Yeah. uhh, we promise...

User Fleck Hand Signals...

2006-03-20T04:11:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I posted about the Fleck Hand Signal. Check it out if you haven't read it yet. This week I received 2 User Fleck Hand Signals that I wanted to share with you. This one was submitted by Abdul Mueid from Mozambique: New2mac send us this creation: He also mentioned that it was the male version of the Fleck Signal. Who would have thought! And another one by Sexy Ninja Monk... Right, did you just try to imagine what a Sexy Ninja Monk would look like too? I don't even wanna know. But here is his hand: I look forward to more creative translations of our hand signal so start sending them in. I will add them to this post as they come in...

Kill your darlings...

2006-03-16T15:19:00.000-08:00

This last week I have been trying to finish the layout for the main user interface screens. And I just couldn't finish them. I kept postponing my work, checking my mail, staring out the window and finding reasons to do other things instead. At first I thought I just had a (code)writers block but after 3 days I still didn't feel like finishing my work. I couldn't even explain why I didn't finish the design, after all, I had 90% of the screens finished and we only needed a few more pages. So yesterday Patrick and I were in the car and suddenly I blurted out 'The design isn't good enough. I want to start over'. Patrick looked shocked and confused and I explained to him that we were making things to complicated for users in the current design and we needed to go back to the basics of the service. We went back to the office and decided to spend a few hours just trying to look at the whole thing with a fresh look. After 2 hours we were sweating, high on caffeine and extremely excited because of what we sketched on our whiteboard. We decided to throw away my 2 weeks work and implement a much simpler design. It reminded me of this great story which I'm going to ask you to read now: From Folkore.org: MacPaint was good at drawing text, allowing the user to specify characters at any position, with any font, size or style. But once the text was instantiated, it just became pixels like everything else; you couldn't go back and edit it as text. In June 1983, Bill thought he could do something about that. Bill decided to try to turn pixels back into characters when you selected them with the text tool. He wrote a lot of elaborate code, probably as much as for any other MacPaint feature. First, he wrote assembly language routines to isolate the bounding box of each character in the selected range. Then he computed a checksum of the pixels within each bounding box, and compared them to a pre-computed table that was made for each known font, only having to perform the full, detailed comparison if the checksum matched. Bill got his character recognition routines working well, and it seemed like magic, if you were used to the earlier MacPaint, to be able to recover and edit previously placed text. It wasn't perfect, because it would fail to recognize a character if a single dot was out of place, but it was still very useful. Everyone loved the feature, and congratulated Bill for pulling off another miracle. I was surprised a few days later when Bill told me that he decided to remove the character recognition feature from MacPaint. He was afraid that if he left it in, people would actually use it a lot, and MacPaint would be regarded as an inadequate word processor instead of a great drawing program. It was probably the right decision, although I didn't think so at the time. I was amazed that he was able to detach himself from all the effort that he put into creating the discarded feature; I know that I probably wouldn't have been able to do the same. So why is this story so important to me? Because it shows a lot of courage to throw away your work when you realize that the final product will be better without it. And I was lucky that it was MY work that I thought we should throw away and not someone else's. How would I have felt If I would have been happy with my work and Patrick would have suggested we throw MY work away? I would have resented the suggestion and been offended. Which I shouldn't be. I should welcome the suggestion. That is why I think every developer should read the story about Bill Atkinson and MacWrite. Every day you should ask yourself 'am I doing the right thing? Should I start over? Is this feature really cool or do I just like it because I CAN build it?' and if the answer is no, you should be able to detach yourself from your work and throw it out of the window. Like a rabbit chewing off its leg to get out of a trap...

How Many Words Are There In The English Language?

2006-03-13T03:03:00.000-08:00

This question came up today while we were having a brainstorm session with our developers. Google was only a click away so here you have it: "All told, estimates of the total vocabulary of English start at around three million words and go up from there. Of these, about 200,000 words are in common use today. An educated person has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words and uses about 2,000 in a week's conversation." From: http://www.wordorigins.org/number.htm Oh, and we still don't have a place to sleep in or near Luxembourg. We did receive a few invitations for London, Paris and Amsterdam, thank you!

Ok, we will tell you what Fleck is about if...

2006-03-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

...you make sure we (Boris & Patrick) have a comfortable place to sleep on march 22 in Luxembourg. We have a meeting there the next day (march 23) at 9:30 so we need a place to sleep. Yes we could just pay for a hotel but where is the adventure in that? So, here is our offer: - You provide us with a place to sleep, for free - We will tell you the secret behind Fleck! - We will give you the full tour including a personal demo - We bring something small to eat, from Amsterdam (eat, not smoke) - You provide something to drink (beer/wine/cognac) - You provide a simple meal (pizza, Big Mac, any kind of fastfood) - You can ask a few friends to be present too - You won't tell anyone else until we tell you you can! You can even host a party if you want as long as we can go to sleep before 12. Cool deal isn't it? Email me (boris@fleck.com) if you think so too...

Fleck is hiring!

2006-03-09T05:38:00.000-08:00

We just noticed that we missed one vital part that we need as a web2.0 company! The sentence 'Fleck is hiring' should be present somewhere on our site to qualify, so here it is. This is what we are looking for: PHP & Ruby on Rails developers Fleck will change the way people use the internet. Being a start-up, everything is new and in constant flux. Working for Fleck means being part of an enthusiastic crew that demands a lot from you. You'll be working on server-side technology, our web site and browser extensions. We're looking for people matching the following profile:

Excellent technologist.
Fluent in PHP or Ruby on Rails.
Good knowledge of JavaScript.
Good knowledge of Linux, MySQL, Apache.
Good writing skills.
Knows how to make a Fleck Handsignal
Preferably some Perl or Python experience.
Eye for detail, inspiring and energetic.
Based in Amsterdam.

Interested? Contact us. Not interested? Contact us too!

How to get a better rank in Google!

2006-03-08T04:56:00.000-08:00

So a few weeks ago I asked people to help us a bit with our Google Rank to make sure we would become the first result for 'fleck'. A lot of people added our button or badge to their blogs and homepages and this paid off! In the picture you can see our whiteboard with a graph of how we have been growing the last few weeks. We started out way below the 200th search result and then came in on number 220, then to 20, 16, 10 then down one notch to 11, up again to 6 then down to 10 or 11 again and back up again to 8, 6, 5 and then down to 9. And then... suddenly... today... 3!!! Yes we are now result number three for Fleck in Google. Try it yourself while it lasts: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fleck&btnG=Google+Search And if you want to help us a bit to get to that first spot please add our button or badge to your blog or homepage or just post something about Fleck.com. Here is the code for our badge:  <a href="http://www.fleck.com/" target="_new"><img src="http://www.fleck.com/images/fleckbutton.gif" alt="Fleck.com" border="0" height="137" width="98" /></a>  Every link helps!

Blackberry dispute settled!

2006-03-03T14:26:00.000-08:00

This just in: NTP and Blackberry settled the dispute out of court! We don't know how much was paid or any other details right now but it sure is good news for all Blackberry users world wide. As many of you have noticed I use a Blackberry every day and this enables me to answer most emails within minutes instead of hours. Now I never really thought that Blackberry service would actually stop and the whole thing reminded me about my electricity bill. If I would forget to pay my bill one month the first reminder I would receive would describe what would happen if I wouldn't pay: another warning, then a fine and then finally if I would ignore ALL warning they would disconnect me. Now if I would be famous enough a lazy journalist would be able to write an article "Boris threatened with shutdown by power company". In reality we would all know that I would simply pay the bill. In RIMs case that meant winning, the case, losing the case and then pay a fine or settling before the trial ended. They chose on of many options to prevent a shutdown. Still, happy to hear this is all over now and looking forward to hear about all the details. UPDATE: $612.5 was the ammount we were waiting for. Stock should fly on monday. CNN has more details here: http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/03/technology/rimm_ntp/index.htm?cnn=yes

Fleck Lunch

2006-03-01T07:37:00.000-08:00

Patrick and I just had lunch (pasta!) in Elf, the restaurant on the top floor of our office building. As you can see in the photo we didn't waste valuable working time during our lunch. And the wine sure did help the creative proces. We should do this more often. Or maybe not...

First survey results

2006-03-01T07:29:00.000-08:00

We asked our beta testers to do a survey and we are getting the results now. A lot of people have left comments and some of them are realy funny. Here are all the comments we rceived so far. I have read ALL of them... Question, suggestion, insult? / What is the meaning of "dyslictic "? / WTF with the "How do you spell 'dyslectic'" question lmao =) Regards, E; / can't think of a proper insult right now. / What is fleck?! / Took more than 23 seconds, but maybe I'm slow this morning. GREAT idea to put "23 seconds" in the survey. It'll help with your % of takers. Adam Nollmeyer www.acmephotography.net Phoenix, AZ / ummm... / Looking forward to your launch. / take a bath / what a stupid survey... ;) / what do I have to beta test? New search engine. It is that I know you Boris otherwise I would have jumped out of the boat / Don't like the 'dyslectic' question! ;-) / dyslectic? you silly boys / come on guys, i cant wait anymore for the beta! hahha / http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1960560666275249045&q=cannibal+aneurysm / The dyslectic question is awesome. / No insults here, have me in the beta please!! w00t! / the facts contribute only to the setting of the problem, not the solution / let me in!!! / this is nice already, it would be nicer if a bit of graphic is put next to a few questions above / How do you spell dislectik? / Great survey. Great job / antialias a lil more the big pink "F" logo :√û / schiet eens op met Fleck.com! / naah / Funny man! / Naah / You inslult / rotfl :) / het was meer dan 23 seconden / These question for you : Do you know Free Energy ? Do you believe in other world order ? / hmm / good luck with fleck.com / took more then 23 sec. / i have been eagerly waiting for your release..all the best for the release...it will be success!! / rabbit / just open the beta test asap. / Can't wait for beta, hope I can be included. / How DO you spell 'dyslectic' ????!!!???? / Cool, Man! / make sure that you have your suits dry cleaned before any photoshoot / live long and prosper and if your search the answer of all take 42 ;) / null / Hoping to be able to preview this technology and help in any way I can. / cmon! / http://www.rddusa.com/product_info.php?products_id=307 / How Fleck are you? / JK / hmmmm i got the e-mail and submitted to Fleck but hasnt used it yet whats the link to download it? / what is fleck / The secrecy thing wears thin - might be a good idea to tell people where you are going before we get bored and stop playing. / Love this survey.I bet the *Do you prefer a bath or a shower" discouraged many people from finishing this survey / go! / The 'dyslectic' got me lost. I mean, the right spelling is in the question. Looking forward to hear from you guys ;) / Why didn't you include the correct spelling of dyslectic? / sounds useful.... / good luck!!! / great! / i don't know what will your website do. / Keep up the good work! / How about a joke? A horse walks into a bar... / Good Luck! / some of these answers just don't find. I can only post to my blog once a week or never? I do it more like once a month. and I can't spell anything. / nice survey, keep em commng, by the way, i've registered no fleck sone time ago, why don't u make some kinda' reminter if i don't log on let's say, for a month, or something like that. / hi, probably you are gonna laugh. i wrote to you first time around xmas 2005 (i think you said i was the first commenter on your web) but i still cant understand what you guys do :P it looks very cool, but could you gimme a hand? Thanks / hi, probably you are gonna laugh. i wrote to you first time around xmas 2005 (i think you said i was the first commenter on your web) but i still cant understand what you guys do :P it looks very cool, but could you gimme a hand? Thanks BTW: the way, the way you spell "dyslectic" is d-y-s-l-e-c-t-i-c / ^_^ / Original form. Jotform rocks. Let's try Fleck! / If I had a fleck loging, I'd try it : ) / I think you all are a little of teh crazy, but I look forward to whatever you're putting out nonetheless. / The new TV on the Radio is good. / very, very funny...i almost wet my pants! / FLOCK YOU!! I'm j/k ;) / Looks good Boris. :D / take care! / none / Fun survey. But.. isn't 'dyslectic' correct? Hah. Either way, Fleck sounds interesting. "World changing, paradigm shifting and user experience enhancing technology." Paradigm shifting, ay? Man, can't wait to see what Fleck is about. Heh. Brian Benzinger http://www.solutionwatch.com / why the name fleck? / dislyklic / i dont really know what you are going to do with fleck.com,, but please just dont waste that name,it really is good,like arrington said.hope its not just hype. can i have a beta membership please.. / I don't get it. / Most of these questions lack purpose. / good luck... / It took me more that 23 seconds... / what the fuck is fleck? c'mon, just a little hint / What was this for? Jot or Fleck? For Jotform, please include a tooltip to rename the form from untitled to whatever name user wants to give. Further instead of tooltips you can make a very cool looking CSS pop up which loads faster and adds up completeness to your web2.0 jobform. / The martians have landed. / .ynnuf yllear saw gniht citcelsyd eht thgouht uoy teb I / Vaaaaaaaa! / good / I'm launching a blog soon. Can you make a choice for that? / This is all so intriguing. / "I am a programmer" for preferring shower to bath is funny, and I really don't get the dyslectic one. / Why don't cars have big bumpers on them? I mean, really really big bumpers? / looking forward to seeing Fleck / Boris, buy some more furniture for your appartment. Other than that, I love the place... Flamsvelt / Hey, you mis-spelled 'beta' on this page. / That was more than 23 seconds, the but the chuckles made up for the time. / put a screenshot of the product benefit so i can see why you think i should care about fleck. shopify does a good job of having me sit on the edge of my seat. / Do you know who Bartholemew Cubbins is? / Hahaha. It's not anonymous if you're asking for a blog url!! As for bathing, I am a programmer, but I'm also a girl, so I still have good hygine! / What is Fleck anyway? Come on, you can tell me. / -laugh- that's an awfuly bright pink you have... / Love the dutch sense of humor. Used to work with a bunch of dutch guys and it was a blast. Seemed we were always laughing. / When? / give muh tha betah! / Great questions indeed / hehe, some of your questions are so ...geek, hhha~ / your form is too long and kind of annoying. Next time, I suggest you ask fewer questions. The whole "beta" thing is tired. / ADgf / vote for boris / hurry up and launch! :-) / Rawr / Ok, how long did it take you to work up this survey then, eh? ;) Now that you know everything about me, what are you going to do? / Sorry, but... WTF? / You smell funny. Pee-yew. / What was with the dyslexia question? Is that a sort of "right type of person" thing going on? Well anyway, looking forward to beta release/preview.. / I dislike you "dyslectic" question!! / :) / little weird / I want a Hi-Fi iPod boom box!!! and please add to your list of countries Colombia, I had to pick the closset one to the left: Venezuela! Gracias! / Show me the beta! / I use del.icio.us to search / funny setup / sorry, what was your company again? i've signed up to so many of these damn (betas) !!! ;) / good luck with web 2.0 in europe. :) / Jullie maken het wel spannOnd... / all your base are belong to us. / Yuzung khilin birnime kensen. / Meow. / interesting, but curious whether some questions are just for entertainment / answering on w-zero3. wee! / funny survey / Whats up with the dyslectic question? Im confused, yet entertained, go figure. :) / release! / 'This is an anonymous form so if you want us to contact you please provide your email addres below.' oh rilly? / Why am I taking this survey? / hell yes! / Cuando sale la Beta....? Cuando uno tiene que esperar demasiado por una Beta no desea contestar muchas encuestas... / I like the mystery, oooooh! / I'm not sure why I'm doing this. What is Fleck again? / Cupcakes? / what a dumb survey. do i at least get free shit? / yes / Silly folks! How are we supposed to use Fleck.com as a search engine if it's not ready yet?! / You guys are great. Hilarious. / mildly intertaining... now let's see the fuckin product, ey / How do you spell 'dyslectic'? / How do you spell 'dyslectic' / oh man! Your homepage has so much hype. I can't wait for whatever this thing is. / Cool/ / gimme early beta plz / Sushi? / What's the reason that info? Any contest? :-) / see my blog for stuff u can use.All of it will not be relevant though. / lol / What is dyslectic? / Cool survey would be cool to know how many sites us geeks visit a day! =) I know you're busy but if you have a chance to send that stat would love to hear. Good luck guys! / what? try this... you idiot! / What the hell does fleck do? / Dyslexic, actually. Can I have my chocolate now please? You said there'd be chocolate... / when can i be a member of fleck? / uhhhhhh / Waiting for the vapourware -> beta transformation. / Loved The Survey, Can't Wait To See More From Fleck! / I spell dyslectic d-y-l-e-c-t-i-c / Yeah baby, yeah! Gimme the beta Fleck now! :) / Cool survey ! / cool waste of 23 seconds ;-) keep up with the goodwork! Massimo / Get on with it! / suuces boris, afz charles vivian / What's about? / It's a little odd filling in a form when we know practically nothing about Fleck. But then, I suppose we're less likely to tell you what you want to hear. Odd, though. / GOOD LUCK ! / first i have to browse your site. then i will comment. / good survey, please send me results :) / Interesting survey, very NON-dutch... Curious how you will use this info for your service :) / Don't Kill DUCK ! They're very cool / cute and funny / Um, what is this fleck stuff about anyway? / ggod luck . . . the survey is unconventional, to say the least / why the sushi-question ? / Firefox rules / Anyone but Hillary. / Nice one. / i consider Flickr my Blog over Blogger cuz thass where i interact the most with people! / Hi Guy‚Äôs You definitely are making me curious about Fleck. But‚Ä¶ my expectations are high, so it better be everything you promise it to be ;-) I‚Äôm looking forward testing the first beta release. Leon / Do I ask you if you can spell "les petites femmes de paris"? / i like flock, but found i had issues wih links not opening. i am planning on waitin on a more stable release. Also, i was a little dis¬≠s¬≠a¬≠poin¬≠ted that it only works with hosted blogs and not stand alone (ie, word¬≠press). / check spelling on "addres" De controle spellend op adres / Hello! / Why on earth would you think a serial blogger would have only one blog. I also plog at Amazon Connect. Does that count? / More interesting stuff from the survey later. Wouldn't you want to know if our beta testers prefer to shower instead of take a bath? And which percentage likes sushi? And if you sign up for the beta you too can take part in our survey!

The Actual Fleck Hardware (with photo!)

2006-03-01T01:45:00.000-08:00

Arjen just returned with a few bags filled with hardware. It's strange to handle actual goods in this virtual world but it also feels really good to see actual stuff getting build. So we didn't just order a server, we decided to build our own server, in true Google style. These servers are test servers to test the different processes that make up the Fleck service. We are going to host them locally and they won't be accessible online. We are splitting those processes to make sure the whole service will be scalable. If one process is taking too much time or processing power we can just move it to a new server. From the receipt: 5 x 256 DIMM (we are missing one!), 3 x 80 GB Harddisks, 1 x DVD rewritable player, 3 x Intel Celeron 2.67 GHz processors, 3 x black boxes to house the stuff, a lot of cable and one Sitecom xDSL/Cable router + 4 port Switch. Cool huh?

Rasasa.com launched

2006-02-28T06:22:00.000-08:00

Fleck kind of got in the way of a few other projects we were involved with. Rasasa.com was one of them. Fortunately the project did get finished in time, even without our daily care and attention. So I'm proud to be able to tell you that Maarten Wolzak yesterday launched Rasasa.com. Here is a description of what it does: Rasasa will keep you in touch with your favorite news sources, you probably know by now that RSS feeds are really handy and keep you up to date on all kind of things. Rasasa helps you to keep track of all this news. It will deliver the news to your messenger if you're online and to your mobile phone if you're offline... Or to your email box if you're in a 'quiet time'. It is still in Beta and I'm sure it will stay that way for at least a month or so. Go over there and sign-up for an account! http://www.Rasasa.com

New Design in action

2006-02-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

You can admire my CSS efforts on Fleck.com right now. As detailed in an earlier post I had a hell of a time getting things working cross browser. As usual it's the simple things that are the hardest to get right. Hope you like it and; comments welcome!

New design in action: http://www.fleck.com/

Fleck Beta Test Survey

2006-02-28T04:33:00.000-08:00

We are still accepting sign-ups for our beta test and I'm happy to tell you that the number of people who want to join our beta far exceeded our initial expectations. To get a better idea of who all of those people are we build a short survey at JotForm.com. JotForm is a great web2.0 application that let's you drag and drop everything you need. We build this survey in 15 minutes and that included a small meeting to decide which questions we we're going to ask. If you would like to join the beta program feel free to leave your emailaddress here on on the Fleck.com front page. In the welcome message you will find the link to the survey. If you already signed up you will receive a seperate message with the link.

Size does matter

2006-02-28T04:26:00.000-08:00

Last week I visited my parents in Rotterdam. My father owns a huge inkjet printer which he uses to print his drawings. He is an architect. I asked him to print the biggest Fleck logo possible on his printer to hang on our office window. It's a huge print measuring 1.2 by 1.2 meters. You CAN see it from the Amsterdam central Station, if you look REALLY HARD! The funny thing is it looks huge in our office but more like a Favicon on the streat. Click the photo for a larger view. I think we need a larger printer...

Fleck Technology Update

2006-02-28T03:57:00.000-08:00

We are still working on our technology as hard as we can. Some people have mailed us to ask if we couldn't at least post some screenshots or product specifications. We decided not to do this and stick to the original plan of finishing the beta and releasing it in March. Right now we are buying our servers, installing systems and putting the finishing touches on the client software. So we are still on schedule!

Downhill from here...

2006-02-27T00:17:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it was a slow week for most of us but a huge downhill slide for me personally. Don't worry about it; I have been skiing in Meribel, France. :-) So now I'm back and I have a ton of work to catch up with! Patrick, Arjen. Ivo and Erik have been working very hard during my small vacation and the mail didn't stop pouring in either. I now have 160 unread messages in my inbox. I did use my Blackberry to answer some of the more important messages while on vacation but you just can't keep up with the avalanche of mail coming in every day. I wil spend today cleaning my inbox, getting up top date with Fleck development and talking to the guys. It's good to be back!

Funding a (European) start-up

2006-02-21T01:40:00.000-08:00

A lot can be read about Venture capital. Nowadays the role of the traditional Venture Capitalists is being questioned and this discussion is rather interesting. Some nice posts and articles about the role of the VC (VC2.0) can be read on the following pages: - A VC rant with an opportunity and part 2 by Rick Segal on Jan 26 and Jan 29 respectively. - How to reform the VC industry by Dave Winer on jan 28. - The ventures we need by Robert Scoble on jan 28. - On Venture Capital by Michael Arrington on jan 29. - A New VC Model? by Mark Evans on Jan 29. Probably there are a lot more out there, but these are the ones I've selected. It gives you a smell of what's going on in the VC world (in the internet start-up sector). I think this discussion is quite interesting but there is one problem: It's all about VC in the US! As you might have noticed Fleck is based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. When funding an internet start-up in Europe other rules apply. The money is not the problem; there is plenty of it available in the Netherlands. A lot of Dutch investors are waiting to put their money at work again, but internet start-ups left them with a sour taste after the bubble burst in 2001. Although in the US the 'groove' is back again, with VC's investing in new hot web2.0 start-ups, European investors are still hesitating to invest. To raise initial capital for Fleck we have been talking to different VC's and Angel investors, from the US and (mostly) from Europe and we've sensed a huge difference between European (Dutch) and American investors. (1) In the States investors talk about initial investments with 'an extra digit', (2) they understand the market and (3) see opportunities (and always ask if we're willing to move Fleck to Sand Hill Road). Americans think BIGGER, FASTER and are willing to take more risk (the chance of success will increase as well). Our goal was to raise just enough first-round capital in the Netherlands to build the company and its 'juice' and to be able to keep on developing (see also these interesting post of Joe Kraus and How to ride the fifth wave in Business2.0 by Michael V. Copeland). As mentioned before, Dutch investors are still hesitating to invest in internet start-ups, knowing this, we decided not to raise 'the whole nine yards' at once at a very high pre-valuation, but to reduce the risk of the investors by raising less money (for a shorter period, for less %, at a lower pre-valuation). This way we can build the company (achieve our goals) and the investors are exposed to less risk (ok, their upside potential is reduced as well). The ideal situation for an investor would be to decrease the downside risk and fully exploit upside potential. The problem seems that this would contradict the interests of the entrepreneur. So what is the solution? I've been thinking about a solution that takes the interests of the investors (especially the Dutch investors) and of the entrepreneurs into account. Hear me out: 1. The start-up sells a small amount of its stock to the investor at a realistic valuation (through a convertible bond). 2. In addition the start-up sells an option to the investor to buy more stock in the future, so the investor can expand its stake in the start-up when successful. The option to buy additional stock gives the investors the right to buy additional stock at a pre-defined valuation (higher than the initial valuation) within a specified time (expiration date). So the investor invests not only a certain amount in the convertible bond, but it pays a premium for the option as well. This way the start-up can raise some extra money, just enough to achieve its goals. To decrease the downside of the option one can make it a convertible option. So before it expires it gives you the right to buy stock at a set price and if it is not exercised the initial fee paid to obtain the option converts into a loan. If the start-up is flourishing, there is no need to do a second round of financing (the initial investor will exersize its option) so everyone can focus on the important stuff. Entrepreneurs happy, investors happy. When things aren't working out that well, the investor will not exersize its option (or even convert his bond) and the company has a liability to the investors, which it needs to pay off during business (and hopefully can). I don't know if this financial structure, which I call a Convertible-Bond Convertible-Call-Option combination (or in short: a Financial Fleck), is used to fund internet start-ups somewhere else in the world (the convertible call option seems quite unknown), but I think that it resolves the possible conflict of interest between the entrepreneur and investors and is very suitable to fund high potential internet start-ups (especially in countries where investors are not investing with US dollars). I believe that this financial structure results in a win-win situation for both parties. Isn't that what everybody wants?

We need you

2006-02-13T05:04:00.000-08:00

When I was crawling the web, I came by this site. In the list of web2.0 companies I found Fleck, surprisingly on the first place! And the great thing is.... number two is Flickr, then gmail, del.icio.us, and Digg (I wonder how long we can handle this number one position :) With a little help of our Fleck friends.... Fleck for President! VOTE HERE ) There is somebody out there who likes us, thanks!

CSS tears and frustration

2006-02-13T03:22:00.000-08:00

CSS seems to be cool and we can't afford to not use it for everything. But I must confess: CSS sucks. Sure, it is great and light and easy to use and everything and I understand why I can never go back to tables. But man, what a nightmare to build something simple, and make it look good cross browser and cross platform. When I started with the Fleck.com design in Photoshop I decided to do something very simple. Just a few blocks and then 3 cells and maybe a floating logo or 2. Nothing too complicated. It is now a week later and we have tried over 20 different variations of CSS code tricks and hacks. I googled and googled and tested and tested and NOTHING works! Once I get the boxes aligned the logo disappears. Once the Logo is back the boxes stop aligning. I was just staring at my test PC and just felt overwhelmed with anger and frustration. Every solution seems to introduce a new set of problems. And I thought I was starting with something simple! If I would have done it the old fashioned way I would have finished the design within a few hours. Now I have been staring at the damn code for days and had several people looking over my shoulders to try stuff. It just isn't working. So now I have to decide: use tables for some stuff, forget the whole CSS or persevere and try to do it all in CSS after all but spend another week on getting everything aligned. I haven't made up my mind yet so first I'm gonna cry for a little while...

web2.0 Maps, the new new thing?

2006-02-09T04:47:00.000-08:00

Another week another hype. This week: Maps. And in particular Web2.0 maps! I don't see the businessmodel yet but I'm sure someone does. I just received a message with 3 more maps that include (or should include) links to Fleck. This is one is new and has a focus on europe: http://www.frappr.com/europeanweb2startups I wonder what all these maps are going to lead to and how we will benefit from knowing that there are more Web2.0 start-ups in some places than others.

Design issues for a web2.0 website

2006-02-08T13:31:00.000-08:00

From Dreamweaver to BBEdit to CSSEdit to ImageReady to Photoshop and back to Illustrator then F5 in Explorer, Firefox and Safaria and don't forget to double check everything on the PC! Ooops! back to BBEdit and where is my back-up! Shouldn't that span be in front of that div and why is the logo suddenly on the right and should this div be relative or absolute? In other words: I'm working on the design of the new Fleck.com website. And because we so desperately want to be Web2.0 we can only use CSS. No Tables allowed! So, take a look at the (stripped) design here and let me know what I should change. I know, there isn't much to see but I had to strip the thing to remove everything that could ruin the surprise! Anyway, bring on the flames (be gentle?), comments and please, maybe even a compliment...

InnovationMap, LogoPoster and FleckTattoo!

2006-02-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Naaah, not the tattoo yet. But that got your attention didn't it? But the Web2.0 Innovationmap is cool and the LogoPoster is also cool. Check it out: LogoPoster I'm realy busy on the webdesign for Fleck.com and should be able to show you a picture of that tommorow. If you like...

Chosing the right hosting partner for your start-up

2006-02-03T04:00:00.000-08:00

We are looking at a good hosting solution at the moment. That seems to be a harder decision than I thought it would be. The choice seems to be fairly limited to 3 kinds of hosting: really cheap, slightly cheap and not cheap at all! I think what every entrepreneur looks for is a cheap but scalable solution. In other words: almost free until you get visitors, cheap when you get a bit more visitors and then still cheap when you turn into the next google (yeah, everything scalable expect the price!). So where do you go for that? It seems that when you start at a shared hosting company (really cheap) you are in trouble when your business is successful and you need your own server? Changing IP addresses etc while you growing isn't what you want. We could go for RackSpace but that starts at several hundred $ a month. Not the solution you are looking for as a start-up. Go for a cheap hosting company and crash and burn when you finally get good traffic? Hmm... I still don't know where to host. Tips or suggestions are welcome...

How about that?

2006-02-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

Which one do you like the most? How can we improve the Fleck badge? Oh and before you ask: no we are not building a new browser. Doesn't mean we don't like the way they market their stuff and want to do that too?!

WikiPedia: Fleck?

2006-02-02T01:36:00.000-08:00

Shouldn't there be an entry for the word Fleck in WikiPedia? Not an empty entry linking here but a complete one with an explanation of the word and a few words on Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Margaret Fleck and her research on finding naked people (No, I didn't make that up) and yes, also a few sentences about the hypersecret web2.0 company on Fleck.com? I know, I could do it myself but that wouldn't be correct as I'm with Fleck.com and wouldn't want to be accused of just advertising my own company. Sooo, could someone else do this? Just let me know how much you want for it and remember to add my name in capitals, bold, underlined and linking here. Please...

Another Podcast

2006-02-01T01:26:00.000-08:00

Heidi Miller publishes an excelent podcast with great tips for professional (and amateur) presenters. In her latest podcats she talks about y post 'Top 10 tips for a perfect pitch'. Made me blush with pride when I heard her read my tips out loud... :-) http://talkitup.typepad.com/weblog/2006/01/dssp_38_show_no.html

Put a Fleck on that (web20map)map!

2006-01-31T07:16:00.000-08:00

Did you hear about the web20map? It's cool and we are on it with only 2 other Web2.0 companies in Europe. Only uncool thing (and not very WebWhateverVersion) is that they concentrate the map on north america. You have to scroll to see the world. Come on guys, think big, think global, think web2.0!

Bugs: nobody is perfect (or: Google is broken)

2006-01-31T03:40:00.000-08:00

We are trying to release a product without bugs (duh!) but we are sure that we will have our fair share them when we go live. That's just the way it works. So it's comforting to see that even Google still has it's bugs. Don't believe me? Try it yourself: Go to Google Click on Advanced Search [http://www.google.com/advanced_search] Go to the "Page-Specific Search" field Enter 'www.fleck.com' in the field titled "Links" Do a search. Nothing.. Now do it again but on the result page add one space between 'link:' and 'www.fleck.com' and search again. Aha! 578 results! Try again for any URL... So somehow that damn search field only works with a space between those links. I tried it on several browsers and on a mac and on a PC. Same thing everywhere. If you try Google.com without a space you get 3.5 million results. Add the space and you will get 14.5 million results... A market cap of 126 billion dollars and there is still room for bugs. Cool... UPDATE: Loren Baker from Searchenginejournal.com took the time to explain what the real problem is. It turns out the Google form itself isn't buggy but the Link Tracking Search is. Although Google knows that there are hundreds of pages linking to Fleck.com and shows this in an normal search (try 'fleck' and see the 5th link) it suddenly forgets this when you use the Link Tracking feature. Loren Baker: 'Yep Boris, that's the bug, Google's link tracking is more or less broken. :) It's kinda old news for the SEO types out there' Sigh, and I thought I was on to something.

Starting a Start-up as the ultimate networking tool?

2006-01-31T01:54:00.000-08:00

If you read 'Never Eat Alone' by Keith Ferrazzi you know that good networking is key to leading a successful life. At the office we are all proud of the people we know and the network we have build around us. The way we go about networking is not by trying to be interesting but by trying to be interested. But when you are working at a start-up, with a secret product, you become interesting. This means that networking is even easier because now we are interested in people who are interested in us too. In the last 3 months we have emailed, spoken to and had lunch with a whole bunch of people who we didn't think we would ever meet before we started. Mind you; they didn't all like what we pitched to them or agreed with what we are planning to do so this isn't a list of supporters. The reason I list these names is, well, to brag a little and thank them for their support, or constructive criticism. In December we spoke with the master of Social Networking: Reid Hoffman We didn't even realize until 10 minutes into the meeting that he is the founder of LinkedIn. The conversation didn't go that well until we started asking questions about LinkedIn and started being interested instead of interesting. He cheered up, told us a bit about his experiences and then gave us a few great tips for our own business. Scott Rafer has been very supportive since we first told him about our ideas back when it wasn't much more than an idea. It is just great to speak with people like Scott who bring so much energy to a meeting. One hour with him is the equivalent to 10 espresso and 5 cans of coke. I only wish we could speak with him more often. There are also a few VCs which emailed me after the '10 tips for a perfect pitch' post with compliments or suggestions. I kept emailing with a few of them for extra information and we are now connected. I think this is a very good way to get in contact with a VC, don't mail them your businessplan: write a blog that they like and let them contact you! I wouldn't suggest to anyone that to expand your network you might as well start a company but we do see it as a nice side effect.

The truth behind the Flickr and del.icio.us acquisition

2006-01-29T03:24:00.000-08:00

Everybody is watching Yahoo as they buy their way into Web2.0 with the acquisition of Flickr and del.icio.us and maybe soon Digg. People wonder what Yahoo's strategy is with these acquisitions. We can all guess at the added value to their search engine, the future of tagging and how Yahoo has to buy it's way into innovation to keep up with Google. And as with every acquisition of a smaller player by a bigger player there is the recurring 'Buy or Build' decision and discussion: 'Del.icio.us only had 300.000 members!', 'how hard would it have been for Yahoo to build their own photo upload service?' and 'They would never buy Digg because they could build a system like that themselves'. The truth is, I think, that Yahoo bought 'Entrepreneurial Spirit'. Ok, these small companies also have some technology, a few members, a little revenue and great PR but that wasn't the main reason to buy them. The truth is that big companies don't innovate. They can't. And I have a simple anecdote to prove this to you. In 2003 I sold my small company (15 FTE) to a large company (18.000 FTE). They replaced me as the CEO and I worked as an advisor for a few months. One day I was on the phone with the new CEO and he sounded depressed. I ask what the problem was and he told me he needed 4 photo's for a mock-up brochure for a pitch on wednesday. It was thursday when he told me this. He told me he asked for the 4 photo's and was told it would take 10 weeks to produce them. I laughed and offered to get him the pictures by monday evening. 'You could do that?' he asked in disbelief. 'Sure, no problem' I replied. So I called a photographer and asked him if he could take the pictures for me on monday morning and what that would cost. He responded 'For you, I'll do them for free' and I said 'That is very kind but I'll pay you €1000 anyway'. Then I called the best looking girl and guy I know and asked them if they would like to pose for me on monday. I'd give them €100 for their trouble. So on monday we did the photo-shoot, developed the photo's, had them digitalized and I delivered them on monday evening. Then I send them an invoice for €2500 and kept the difference, about €1000. So, the next week I had a meeting with the CEO of my old company and he kept thanking me for the photo's. He pitched their product to the client and the client was really impressed with the brochure and the pitch and had signed the contract right away. The CEO was so happy I started feeling guilty about the €1000 I made on the deal. But then I asked him 'So why did it took your company 10 weeks to get those photo's'. He smiled and answered 'They would have had to assign a project manager to it, he would have had to go find a photographer, set-dresser, make up artist, modeling agency and location scout and they would have hired a stylist too'. I was silent for a moment and then asked 'Well, how much would that all have cost?' and he answered 'between €35.000 and €45.000'... You can imagine I don't feel sorry about the extra €1000 anymore. But besides being a funny story there is also a lesson to be learned here. While we were negotiating the price for our company they told us 'This is a buy or build question for us. You do understand we have over 18.000 people working here so we could copy your concept within a day'. That sounded very real to us at that moment. In reality however a big company can't do anything in 24 hours. It will take a week just to get a meeting with the first person of the 100 people you need to reach and convince if you want to do anything. And then there are budgets, targets and other projects that take up all resources or seem to be more important to the CEO or your manager. So, back to Yahoo. What exactly did they buy? They bought Entrepreneurial Spirit. The spirit to think of something and just doing it. Even though it is a weekend, middle of the night or you haven't checked with your boss yet. That is what they bought, and they admit it. Here is a quote from the december issue of Business 2.0 from an article titled 'The Flickrization of Yahoo'. The quote is by Horowitz, Senior director of Yahoo's technology development group: '"I met Stewart and Caterina and fell in love" Horowitz recalls. "It was beyond Flickr. I saw them as kindred spirits, entrepreneurs who could infect Yahoo with that small-company focus"' There you have it. I rest my case. This is the true reason Yahoo has bought Del.icio.us and Flickr. So the next time a VC or potential investor asks you 'But what about the big companies, why wouldn't they just assign a few thousands programmers to this and blow you out of the water. They have 10.000 programmers!' just send them a link to this story.

Shaving innovation

2006-01-28T08:27:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with Fleck technology I shave. I'm a guy. I have to shave. This means I also have to buy shaving tools. And I own quite a few. Depending on mood, humidity of the air and my skin, time of day and people present I either use a Gilette razor with cream or a electric shaving tool from Philips. As with every other acitivity I undertake in life every time I shave I try to think of ways to improve this system. The tools also inspire my thoughts ofcourse with recent innovations like 2, 3, 4, 5 blades on one Gilette razor and added electricity for extra vibrations for an already shaky hand. last week I came up with an innovation that I'm sure is easy to add and would make Gilette or any other razor company more money: the Sharpness indicator This is how it works: on each individual blade they add a small plastic clip. The first one is red, the second yellow and the third is white. When you shave you break off the white tip. The next time you shave and use this individual blade you break off the yellow tip. You are now entering the Red zone! Then the third time you shave you try to break off the red tip but that one won't break off. That willl be Gilettes signal to you that you are shaving in the red zone now. A zone where hairs are torn out by the root because you are using dull blades. Get it? I think most people use their blades 5 or 6 or even 20 times before replacing them. I don't even know how many times I use a blade. I just look at my blade with a blank stare and try to determine if I should or shouldn't throw this one out and get a new blade. So, do you work at Gilette or some other shaving company? Well, what are you waiting for? Introduce the idea on monday and send me my money before the end of the week. You know I deserve it...

Scott Rafer: Fake It Till You Make It

2006-01-28T06:51:00.001-08:00

I own almost every Wired Magazine published including the hard the get first editions. The technology behing Fleck was invented on sunday while reading one particular article in Wired. Every month I look forward to getting my next issue of Wired. One day I hope to make it into Wired magazine or even better: make it to the cover of Wired magazine. One of my friends, Scott Rafer, got quoted in the february Wired magazine which I just bought about an hour ago. It is just a quote but it makes my week. Just knowing someone who makes it into Wired is great for me. Here is the quoted article: http://rafer.wirelessink.com/?p=10

World wide premiere: Fleck mentioned in a Podcast

2006-01-27T01:42:00.000-08:00

It might not be completely newsworthy but the fact that Fleck is now podcastworthy made it blogworthy for me. Yes, Fleck was mentioned in the VentureWeek Podcast. I don't know how many people think that podcast is iPodworthy but we were still happy and surprised that we made that podcast. You can listen to it here directly of visit their site: Website VentureWeek: http://www.ventureweek.com/ Podcast: http://www.ventureweek.com/VentureWeek_7.mp3 I hope you will find it commentworthy and tellityourfriendsworthy.

Other Fleck Logo designs

2006-01-26T11:02:00.000-08:00

As you can imagine there are more people in the world who knew about the word 'Fleck' before we started using it. And quite a few decided it would be a good name for their business. Some people even have 'Fleck' as their last name! Designing a logo is hard. I love it when it is over but the process is painfull and takes a long time. Every time I have to design a logo I feel useless, unskilled and without talent. Then the logo is finished and I think 'Wow, that was simple' and kind of forget how I felt during designing. Today I decided to do a search for Fleck logos on the web to see what other people came up with. I found quite a few Fleck logos. Here they are in no particular order:

Even David Cowan agrees...

2006-01-25T10:54:00.000-08:00

I'm still getting great feedback from readers all over the world on my blog titled '10 tips for a perfect pitch'. I was just reading my RSS feeds and noticed David Cowan (of Bessemer Venture Partners) updated two of his blogs. I scrolled to the end of those blogposts to see what information he added. Well, it looks like he agrees with me. Getting mentioned by David Cowan is not as good as getting funded by David Cowan but it sure made my ~~day~~ ~~week~~ month! Go check em out: http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2006/01/practicing-art-of-pitchcraft.html http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-to-not-write-business-plan.html

New Fleck Badge/Button

2006-01-25T03:57:00.000-08:00

A few people emailed with with the same message that the banner I posted yesterday was a bit, well, normal... I'm not offended, I like feedback. I took some time today to design another Fleck Badge so here it is. This is the code for the banner.  <a href="http://www.fleck.com/" target="_new"><img src="http://www.fleck.com/images/fleckbutton.gif" alt="Fleck.com" border="0" height="137" width="98" /></a>  Feel free to change the code as you please but do let me know (by email) when you add it to your page!

Birthday

2006-01-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

So today is Patrick's birthday. I bought him an Airport Express to go with his iPod and iBook and a laserpointer and flashlight that connects to his iPod. If you read this and have a spare minute do me a favor and send him a message on patrick@fleck.com to congratulate him. I'm sure he would love the attention. He didn't take a day off (and why would he, we have work to do!) so a few extra messages would make his day! It's his 27th birthday...

GoogleIgnoreDataBase?

2006-01-23T12:59:00.000-08:00

Finding a good name for our start-up was hard. But we figured Fleck would be good and descriptive name for our technology and we hoped a short domainname which was registered first long ago would do good in Google. Imagine our surprise when we couldn't find Fleck.com in Google, at all... No, the whole site wasn't available in Google no matter how hard we searched. We clicked through all 6.500.000 results looking for it and it just wasn't there. The whole domain disappeared into the GoogleIgnoreDataBase. This was a huge disappointment! But then we started this blog and some blogs started linking to us and something changed. Today I decided to give it another try and lo and behold, we are suddenly there, and on the second page! We are now search result numer 18 for 'Fleck'. I hope we can even improve on this by getting a few more links to our page. So if you have a blog or homepage I am going to bribe you with this scheme: If you want to make sure you are the very first person to get your hands on our beta product you can now earn that right. Display the FleckBadge on your blog and send me the URL where I can find it and you will get a premium placement in our BetaUserDataBase. Here is the code you need to correctly display the Badge:

<a href="http://www.fleck.com/" target="_new"><img src="http://www.fleck.com/images/fleckbadge.gif" alt="Fleck.com" border="0" height="30" width="88" /></a>

I hope you like it! Any other ideas for getting a good rank in Google are welcome... UPDATE: we are now search result number 10 which means we are on the first page! Only 9 spots to go... UPDATE 2: we are now search result number 8! It's getting better every day...

Fleck Hand Signal

2006-01-23T04:57:00.000-08:00

We Fleckers are a secretative bunch of people. Whispering and hyping all day, silently writing code or mingling with VCs to get our funding. An underground movement like us needs a signal. Something to use as a indentifier when we are among strangers. We tried 'the nod' for a while but that didn't really work. Nodding at strangers while keeping your eyes fixed on them and looking suspicious didn't have the desired effect. But we found a solution! The Fleck handsignal! As you can see in the image you use 2 fingers to make the V for Victory signal but then horizontally. Do you see the F for Fleck?? That is the secret handsignal for Fleck from now on. If you see people doing this to each other in the street (while nodding and staring) you will know it is us. Don't ask us to be included in the beta but DO fleck us back, you know how...

More tips for a perfect pitch!

2006-01-22T14:32:00.000-08:00

Funny thing about the post '10 tips for a perfect pitch' is that I received several comments from VCs and so far no comments or questions from entrepreneurs. It seems that I hit a nerve somewhere. I would have rather hit a goldmine to be honest but attention is good too. I'll post a few links here to blogs that reacted on my post and added their own tips: A comment on this blog from Seth Levine (Mobius Venture Capital): http://sethlevine.typepad.com/vc_adventure/2006/01/how_to_make_a_g.html A few very good tips by James L. Chen (CXO Ventures): http://purevc.typepad.com/pure_vc/2006/01/the_pitch.html A few links that might help: David Cowan from Bessemer Venture Partners about your Elevator Pitch: http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2006/01/practicing-art-of-pitchcraft.html Top 10 lies of Venture Capitalists by Guy Kawasaki: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_top_ten_lie.html The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs by Guy Kawasaki: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_top_ten_lie_1.html Ablog dedicated to giving great presentations: http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/

10 tips for a perfect pitch

2006-01-19T06:23:00.000-08:00

You are reading this blog so you probably know we spend a lot of time talking with potential investors. Because of this I think we know a little bit about the subject so I decided to write down my own experiences in a blogpost. Hope it is of some help or maybe it is just funny for you to read. If you have tips to add or disagree completely tell me in a comment. Here we go: So you have a great idea and need some money to start a company, right? Well, so does the rest of the world! To make a good impression and improve your chances of getting your seed money I have compiled a list of tips. I might not be the ultimate expert on this matter but we use these tips ourselves to prepare for meetings with potential investors so at least you know they are tested tips! In no particular order: Tip 1: No more than 5 slides for your presentation! A simple formula to explain this tip: if you have a 30 minute meeting you will want to spend 10 minutes getting to know each other, asking some smart questions about the investor and giving them your elevator pitch and at least 10 minutes for general questions after your presentation. That means you have 10 minutes left for a presentation. You will be talking for at least 30 seconds about each slide and then the investor will have one or 2 questions taking another 30 seconds each. That leaves you with 1 slide for every 2 minutes or so. So the maximum number of slides is 5 for a 30-minute meeting. How do you know how much time you spend on each slide? Practice your story at least 10 times and you will know! Keep a few slides with extra information in the back of your presentation or even in the middle. If a certain issue comes up that you can illustrate with a slide you can always show it. Quit all programs except the one that you need to do your presentation. Don’t check your mail in the background! Tip 2: don’t read the text on your slides Never read the text on the slide out loud. People can read faster than they can listen. If you read the text on the slide people won’t listen to you anymore and just read your slides and then be bored. Make sure you know what is on the slide (keywords and figures) and illustrate them with your story and details. This is another thing you should just practice a lot! Tip 3: watch yourself! Borrow, rent or buy a video camera and tape your presentation and watch yourself to see how you can improve your story. This does miracles for your presentation! I promise you that the first time you see yourself you will be incredibly embarrassed and will see at least 5 ways to improve your story. When you practice, let your partners play the investor. You all know damn well what the painful questions are so ask them. It’s fun to see your partners sweat and talk their way out of a tough question, and a great learning experience! Tip 4: timing is everything! Practice your story with a timer next to you so you know how much time you spend. It’s terrible to be in the middle of your story and then suddenly realizing that you only have 1 minute left to go through 4 slides. The only way to prevent this is to practice. Tip 5: test your story Call your mother-(or father)in-law and explain your story over the phone. If she gets it you are ready to talk to your investors. If she doesn’t get it: back to the drawing board and video camera. And if you can sell her some shares, even better! Tip 6: answer EVERY question Make sure you have the answer to these questions: who is your audience, what is your marketing-plan, when are you going live, how much money do you need, what kind of percentage are you thinking about. Be firm and decisive when you answer these questions. Don’t make them up on the spot and don’t try to be interesting by being mysterious about these issues. It won’t work. When you are practicing with your video camera and you are playing bad guy (well, a VC anyway) try to think of every question you can think of and not just the ones you have the answer for. Tip 7: Don’t bluff, lie or try to be a smart-ass! What you shouldn’t say: We don’t really need money right now (THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE?), that your exit is going to be an IPO or acquisition by Google (YOUR INVESTORS KNOW THAT), that this is a sure thing (NO SUCH THINGS AS…), that you don’t have any competitors (YOU ARE LYING, DIDN’T DO YOUR RESEARCH OR YOUR PRODUCT SUCKS), that you aren’t going to do it yourself (MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR IDEA, MONEY AND TIMING IS THE ENTREPRENEUR. IF YOU DON’T DO IT THAN NOBODY ELSE WILL) and don’t tell them they should decide quickly because you have other investors waiting unless it is true! Tip 8: Use your deodorant Some entrepreneurs say ‘I don’t like selling. They should take me as I am. I’m not going to dress up for them!’. That might sound cool in a bar but when you go to meet with an investor he looks at you more than at your idea or company. You are your company! So if you are late, unshaved, unfriendly or smelling bad you make a bad impression and so your company makes a bad impression. You also make a distinct prediction about how you will treat important partners, clients and employees in the future: if you don’t respect the investor, you won’t respect anybody else who matters in the future. So: take your hands out of your pockets, stand up straight, smile, say ‘please’, open the door for your investor, be on time, offer coffee or something else to drink and don’t interrupt the investor! Avoid saying ‘Euuh’ and ‘Hmm’ too much. The more you practice your story the more confident you sound. Remember that investors look at you more than anything when they invest. They think ‘Is this someone I can trust? Will he be able to motivate his people? Can he sell his product? Will he work through the night to get things done? Will he do anything to protect my money and our future company?’. Did you forget your slides, did you get stuck in traffic, forget your tie? Then you will also do that with your important first customer. This opportunity might change the rest of your life! Sleep in front of their office if you have to avoid traffic, pack 3 spare ties in your bag and bring 16 backups of your presentation on CD, DVD, memory-stick and paper. Tip 9: don’t be a clown Be serious about your stuff. This concerns you for the rest of your life! If an investor makes a joke laugh politely but don’t be funny or make jokes about your company. If you don’t take your story serious, why should they? Tip 10: don’t pick a fight Don’t argue with your investors. If you disagree with what they say never say ‘Yes, but…’. You can say ‘I don’t think that that is the case but maybe we can talk about it some more after the presentation because it is an important issue which I would like to explain further’. If you absolutely want to answer that question right there and then say something like ‘Excellent question! I’ll tell you why that isn’t the case in this particular case…’ Free bonus tip: be prepared for ANYTHING!!! Make sure you know how the place looks like. Come early and inspect the conference room. Try to feel at home. Take a pee before the meeting. Make sure you can park your car and you have a full tank of gas. Drive there the day before so you know where it is and you don’t get lost. Google each potential investor so you know if they have kids, play football, like to ski and if they are male or female, tall or short, fat or thin and might be interested in your company or not based on earlier investments. Know what you need to know about their investment company. Find out what their latest successful deal was and congratulate them on it. Brush your teeth, wash your hands and use your deodorant! Bring cash to pay for coffee if you decide to go out for some. Imagine that during each presentation there is a crew from CNN who is going to tape the meeting and broadcast it worldwide the next day: how do you want to look? Unshaven? Unprepared? Fly unzipped? I think not.. Conclusion: So what happens when you ignore one or all of these tips? Not much. You can ignore all the tips in the world if you have a great idea and are able to make a good impression on your investor. If he is unshaved, smelling and too late too you might get along fine! Remember: This is a list of tips, not rules! One more thing: the people you are meeting are entrepreneurs just like you. They want to make money just like you. They we’re young and brave once too. So if they ask a tough question try to take it like advice and thank them for it. You don’t even have to be nervous because the least you can get from a meeting is some experience and a few good tips. You have nothing too lose here… So, good luck with your presentations and may you be showered with money! And now I’m telling you for the last time: Practice your story at least 10 times!!!

FeedBurner

2006-01-18T04:15:00.000-08:00

I just added our RSS feed to Feedburner. Please delete the old URL and use the new one. Or enjoy your anonimity and use the old URL! ;-) http://feeds.feedburner.com/Fleck I wonder how long it will take for this image to fill up:

TechCrunch & hype

2006-01-18T01:49:00.000-08:00

When we decided to at least put up a simple webpage and a blog we hoped it would be of some interest for our friends, family and businesspartners. You know; about 5 visitors a day. We would have never dreamed of creating a small hype and even getting featured on our favorite weblog: TechCrunch. Ok, I admit we did think (and hope) to get picked up by someone somewhere in time. But since this morning we noticed traffic multiplying and sign-ups for the beta going through the roof. We are jumping up and down in our office! We are close to the target we set for our beta program which is a bit of a problem (or not!) because we were hoping to get to the number we now have around the end of February. It looks like a lot more people will participate in the beta than we anticipated. A few things make us proud: people seem to like the logo and appreciate our sense of humor. That's good! Now go and read the TechCrunch article: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/17/fleck/

Fleck goes China ?

2006-01-17T05:53:00.000-08:00

Since Keso has posted Fleck on his clearly popular blog "Playing with IT", a large number of new beta tester are joining us from China. I don't speak Chinese, but it looks quite impressive! Thanks Keso. And welcome new Fleckers from the east.

The GREAT thing about GREAT ideas

2006-01-13T07:50:00.000-08:00

FROM: Flickr Ideas? Almost all people have them, some more then others, but almost everyone claims that one or two (well-known) ideas found their origin in their heads. There's a big diffence between having an idea and bringing your idea to reality. 99.9% of all ideas belong to the first category, the part that is left (0.01%) are ideas from entrepreneurs (or intrepreneurs). And of those ideas about 90% fails. There are some ideas that stick and always come back in your mind / conversations, maybe because people love to dream about the 'what if....' question, or maybe just because it is a very good idea. How do you recognize a good or even a great idea? A couple of weeks ago I gave a lecture at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam about ideas and how to go from idea to product (or even better: from idea to IPO :)) and that same question was asked by one of the students. How do you recognize a good or even a great idea? For a moment I had to think about this seemingly easy, but in fact difficult question. I could have summed up a list of components that a good idea is comprised of. Instead I came up with only one thing: You know when you have a great idea, when that idea arouses a #%&!load of new ideas around itself. Maybe I was wrong, but I believe that the GREAT thing about a GREAT idea is that there are infinite possibilities. When you have a great idea, there is only one problem left: How can I stay focused when there are infinite possibilities that all seem great? Then it comes down to: Good people, open communication, enthusiasm, drive, listening to your customers, and manage the process (but not too much)

Fleck on Flickr

2006-01-13T04:58:00.000-08:00

Try repeating the title of this post out loud for several times for kicks. Yesterday Factoryjoe (A Flock developer) posted a screenshot of our website on Flickr. http://flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/85393285/in/photostream/ And he also posted a few photo's of me (Boris!) on his blog here. Quite funny: http://factoryjoe.com/blog/

Immortality!

2006-01-13T04:55:00.000-08:00

Ahh, being part of a hype is soooo gratifying. We just became immortal (for about a month or 4 I guess) because we are now included in 'the Museum of Modern Betas'. I'm not sure how honorable this but until I hear otherwise, I'm happy... Check it out: http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net/invitation/fleck

New logo

2006-01-12T00:09:00.000-08:00

As you might have noticed we updated the Fleck.com website with our new logo. We chose this one after looking at several options. We finally decided to pick this one and are really happy with it. It looks a bit like an old Yin and Yang logo but fresher and the F is clearly there. And when you look at the logo on a different background you can see the white F that is upside down too: Later this week I will update the look and feel of the blog and add the new logo there too. Oh, and did you see the Favicon at our site? It even works in 16 x 16 pixels! I'll post some of the other logos too if you are interested...

Start-Up Tools

2006-01-01T03:40:00.000-08:00

Fleck is a modern company. And a modern company uses modern tools. So we use a lot of cool and innovative tools to organize our company. One of the most important tools is our project management system. For a few dollars a month we rent the services of BackPack. It's a great tool where you can collaborate with your partners on documents, todolists, milestones and notes. We keep all our stuff there available for everyone at any time within our company. And our project has it's own RSS feed so we all know when things change or are updated. Very web2.0!!!

Fleck.com and SPAM

2005-12-30T08:16:00.000-08:00

A few months ago we started looking for a good name for our project and found out that all the good names were gone. Well, not really gone but taken. That meant we had to buy our name instead of just register it. At first we tried to come up with a name that nobody had come up with before. But none were as good as the ones we could buy second hand. So after a while we decided to buy Fleck.com. One of the good side effects about the domain was that it was registered a few years ago so wasn't a completely new domainname. And since Google treats older domainnames better than newer domainnames this is also something to consider. But there was another side effect we didn't think about when we bought the domain: SPAM. Our domainname was out there for years and apparently ended up in several spam databases. As soon as we transferred the domainname to our name and set up our emailaddresses (with a CatchAll account pointing to MY personal account) the SPAM started streaming in. Up to 100 spam messages a day! After 4 days I disabled the CatchAll account and that was the end of all that SPAM. It was a minor problem but still, I wonder what other side effects our new name will show in the future and hope the rest will be good ones...

I LOVE MY WORK

2005-12-30T04:56:00.000-08:00

Starting a new company is a very intensive, but exciting experience. From the day we came up with the idea of Fleck, already a lot has happened. The first week we started to brainstorm a lot about the idea and how it should be done. Then we did multiple sessions of 'good cop bad cop' and found answers to every possible difficult question. Then we started filing the patent. That was a good experience as it was our first patent. With the Patent Pending label on our foreheads we started to talk to some well know Internet entrpreneurs and Investors. During our tiny 'road show' we met a lot of interesting people who gave us some very nifty advice. Therefore I'd like to thank some people we met on the way... Scott Rafer (ex CEO feedster and chairman Wireless Ink), Reid Hoffman (CEO LinkedIN) and Soren Kenner (Lund & Kenner) and a lot more (for example my Mom). We've already met so many intelligent and interesting people of whom I learn every day. All with different views and its up to us to make the best of the best out of all advices and give the people a new surf experience. It is as if your trading on the Stock exchange; you know what you have to do, but there is a difference between buying stocks and selling options at the same time and buying stocks and selling options at the same time at the best price. We'll do our best to get the best out of it for our Fleck users. Its exciting... I don't lie when I say: I LOVE MY WORK

Fleck: what's in a name...

2005-12-26T13:02:00.000-08:00

A good start for this blog would be to explain something about the name and how we chose it. We spent a lot of time looking for a good name. We incorporated our company a few months ago and chose a technical name for that. But the name of our product, website and technology would be decided later. And we didn't just come up with it, we actually had a long list of alternatives which I'll post here in no particular order: PubLink.com, Hyperi.com, Flink.org, TagaLink.com, Flink.org, Flinck.com, Linkes.com, PubLink.com, Hyperi.com, OURL.com, Wordinc.com, WordLink.com, WebWords.com, WordInfo.com, Lincs.com, LWeb.com, URABLE.com, Jizzle.com, Prlink.com, MyLink.org, Unlink.net, Allink.net, YLink.com, ZapLink.com, Linka.net, NowLink.com, LinkLab.com, Linkers.net, Interink.com, RefLink.com, GodLink.org, Linkse.com, OnLinks.com, LinkOff.com, Linkate.com, Blinki.com, GeeLink.com, HotLink.org, Outlink.org, InWords.com, Pulser.com, clicator.com, hypertie.com, youzing.com, inteliyou.com, linksnap.com, tiesnap.com, flealink.com, linktonic.com, democratiq.com, interwhip.com, interutopia.com, blinkburner.com, linkstie.com, linkwired.com, flungle.com, clicksy.com, klinka.com, reciproque.com, elinkt.com, metatie.com, flexmeta.com, spirimeta.com, elatos.org, elastical.org, modifier.org, flexile.org, suppletob.com, ulinq.com, linquer.com, quirley.com, ilastik.com As you can see we did have a few alternatives to chose from! Fleck was a name that came up somewhere in the middle of our search and kept returning in our conversations. One reason we didn't chose it right away was the pricetag. These days, finding a domainname like this means paying for it. We ended up buying Fleck.com from BuyDomains. It wasn't that expensive, but more expensive than lunch. If you want to know more about the word you can check the dictionary: http://www.answers.com/fleck I'll write a bit about our feeling and ideas about the name in a later post.

Fleck Blog first post

2005-12-25T02:24:00.000-08:00

So this is the first Fleck.com Blog post. We decided to start this blog because the first few months of starting a company are very exciting and we wanted to share our experiences with everybody. From now on we will keep everybody up-to-date on what is going on with Fleck.