Tag: startup

Google and the Gradient

The problem with a system like this is that it’s necessarily a bubble. Everybody inside gets treated grandly, but the outside world gets nothing. Indeed, because of Google’s notorious secrecy, they barely even get to talk to the people inside. A friend who’s a prominent free software developer says that every community member who’s joined Google has stopped contributing to public projects. It’s so bad, he says, that they’re thinking of banning Google from buying a booth at their next conference. They can’t afford to lose any more developers.

true about the black hole

Sakku

via etoy and bernhard comes word of a new messenger bag with solar panels. while not powerful enough to charge your laptop, it will do fine with your other gadgets.

what is especially interesting to me is that sakku is a swiss startup. i have outlined before why switzerland is going down the drain. in fact, i sometimes tell smug swiss people that i am an economic refugee. all the more uplifting if a startup is ignoring the naysayers and delivering a cool product.

Mapping Germany

GoYellow Munich

The screenshot above is from GoYellow maps, a german yellow pages publisher. they are the first customer of my new startup and went live a couple days ago. it is an online map for germany with hybrid satellite/airplane and vector views. GoYellow allows you to overlay this map with yellow pages data, so it’s easy to look for wifi hotspots in berlin or radar traps across germany. of course, it also has the standard issue restaurants, atms, public transport, you name it.

bernhard has more. as noted elsewhere, the image quality is one of the distinguishing features of this application. together with our partner endoxon, we beat the quality you see at the GYM (Google Yahoo Microsoft).

speaking of the GYM, i get asked a lot how you can compete against them. besides kicking their ass in quality, there are quite a few companies that are afraid of going to the GYM, and are looking for partners. we are one such partner workout buddy. (ok, i will shut up about the GYM jokes now).

so what’s next for us? besides settling on a name (heh), there will be more coverage at that crunchy sub-meter resolution, goodies for the mashup crowd and more help for innovative users like this guy who is doing a competitive analysis of his cafe with data from the map. and more.

one-upping trulia and housingmaps

my friend bernhard‘s former company again pushes the envelope of web applications (their mapping site predated google maps by almost 6 months). this time, they are tackling real estate search, a field ripe for a better experience. while there are some nice efforts online by housingmaps.com and trulia.com (trulia seems to have inked a deal with google, their google maps integration does not even load scripts from google..), immo.beta.search.ch does them one better.

  • tighter integration between list view and map (just mousing over a list item show’s it’s location)
  • histograms for the search terms to give you a quick idea what the spread in prices is, for instance
  • shows matches in context (public transport, shopping etc)
  • leverages the superior map quality from endoxon
  • allows you to take notes for each object
  • shows you new matches for your search since your last visit

all in all, an excellent new site that can easily hold it’s own against us-centric players, and is at the same time without equal in (sadly, a web backcountry) switzerland.

Steve Jurvetson on investment strategy

steve jurvetson, managing partner at draper fisher jurvetson, talks about some of the strategies they employ to invest their venture capital.
if too many partners at DFJ think an investment is a good idea, they get worried. they are receiving 30k business plans per year and prune it down to ~12 investments per year. they only invest in unique ideas, to diversify risk. “not what everyone else does”. there were many more points he made, but he was accelerating while he was talking 🙂 i really hope they put the slides online.

Kaywa launches


It feels good to end our self-inflicted NDA. Kaywa Ltd. are the result of a collaboration of switzerland’s weblog pioneers to create the best Weblog tool anywhere, and bring (mo)blogging to the masses. Roger will unveil our tool at the first International Moblogging Conference in Tokyo, and will of course provide coverage with the help of his picturephone.
Meanwhile, we are getting ready with the public beta of our new product. We will waive fees for all participants in the public beta for 2003, so sign up today, and help us to make our product even better.

Kaywa are:

ps. yes we will eat our own dogfood shortly 🙂