I know it’s a bit late, but I’d like to wish you all an amazing and successful year 2014! 2013 was great for me. After having spent years on the other side of startups (I was previously active as a startup mentor/coach/investor for a small technology park), I’ve started my new life as a real entrepreneur (and no more as a “wannabe entrepreneur”) over the course of Summer 2012. The least I can say is that I do not regret it! It’s time for me to make a little wrap-up of 2013. Unfortunately, I’ve been some times less active on the blogging side. Time is always getting scarcer and I had some times to delay some posts (sorry about that!). Here are some highlights of 2013 for me. DLD conference: I was – to my big surprise – invited to …
A great news for Swiss startup scene!
It was disclosed yesterday morning. Jilion, the company behind the amazing, customizable HTML5 video-player SublimeVideo, has been bought by video platform giant DailyMotion. The amount of the transaction has not yet been disclosed and seems to be both an acquisition of technology and talents. You can find more about the announcement here. The core team behind Lausanne-based startup Jilion started to work together long ago, in 2007. The initial project was something extremely different (and in another industry). The company pivoted in 2009, after spending some spare-time (understand: between 22:00 and 01:00) to build a video-player in the nascent HTML5 technology. They’ve quickly understood they had something valuable in their hands… and a single tweet to announce their release made a lot of buzz on the global innovation/startup scene. SublimeVideo started “as an accident”… amazing, no? I know the founders (Mehdi …
The Evolution of the Geek
“Geek” is sometimes considered as negative, but it has changed since the 2000’s. Here’s an excellent infographic published on social media marketing blog Flowtown
Launch time
As most of you probably know, I’m working hard with an amazing team in my own startup, Coteries. We’ve been quite a bit out of the radar and most of you don’t know what we are up to… Now is launch time! We are now 2 days away from our official launch. We will be launching our first mobile application for musicians on Thursday, July 18th, 19h00 (CET). You now better understand why I’ve also been less active in blogging on startupolic… I couldn’t dream of a better timing to launch: recent news in the music industry are just validating our concept. And we are ahead of what they say. Crazy, no? If you’d like to be one of the first to discover what we are doing, why not registering to our newsletter? I’ll take a break after that (at least …
Hardworking sunny holidays
It’s soon time to Summer holidays. 6 weeks from now and most people will be in vacation. Yes, in Switzerland, between mid-July and mid-August, it’s extremely hard to reach people, have answers, well, make business. If you read this blog, odds are high you’re in a startup business. And there is a common (but so wrong) belief that entrepreneur should never stop working hard. Sure, you can have the feeling that if you take some free time, your business will be hurt hard, or even in danger. Yes, it can be true. But everyone, even the craziest and most resistant hardworkers, needs a bit of downtime. Or different time… If you’ve not planned anything and were planning to continue hardworking, you may consider SunnyStartup, a 15 days bootcamp in Marrakech (!) to boost your project. Or have new ideas. Or simply …
The Swiss Ice Hockey national team – a role model
If you are a fan of ice hockey (as I am), you may have lived two amazing weeks watching and following the Swiss national team. Not being ranked in the top 8 of ice hockey nations, qualifying itself to quarter final would have already been considered as a success. But that was before… before the tournament which happened in Sweden. Which was magic! Switzerland won every game, beating top ice hockey nations like Sweden, Canada and Czech Republic (twice, with quarto final). And then, USA in semi-final. Unfortunately, Switzerland lost the final against the host country, Sweden (BTW: congratulations to the Swedish team). It’s an authentic exploit for Switzerland and will remain in mind of everyone during years… or not. Because what we have been able to observe is a deep mentality change. Some years ago, everyone would have been …
A personal interview (in French)
Last week at Festival of Media Global 2013 in Montreux, I was introduced to Stan Pic, known as “The interviewer”. Stan is a friendly guy, passionate about Public Relations video blogger and former journalist. He is blogging (in French) about what’s happening in Western Switzerland and sharing his thoughts about social media, entrepreneurship, etc. He’s a passionate guy with a extrem talent to make people comfortable… So I’ve easily given away: I gave him a video interview (in French). Normally, Stan records 5-minutes interview… but you know, “I couldn’t stop talking” and he didn’t interrupt me! It was a funny experience (and I love having fun!) and I thought I could share it with you – hope you will appreciate it. And otherwise… I will be back soon with some non-personal stuff. (Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
10 questions to the founder of the Festival of Media’s Hot Company of the Year… 2012!
Last week, the Festival of Media Global 2013 happened in Montreux. I was fortunate enough to be invited as an official blogger (again!) and I had the chance to interview Mr. Risicato, winner of the startup competition M.A.P. (but in 2012) with his startup VideoHub. Many thanks to Anthony to answer my few questions. Here they are! Could you introduce yourself with a few words about your career so far? Why did you start Videohub, what was the Eureka moment (if any)? I’ve been a digital native for 18 years, working at the intersection of marketing and technology. I was fortunate to work at DoubleClick (now part of Google) starting in 1998, just as the digital economy began to take off. That experience, of bringing Brands to Technology, got me “hooked” on this whole Internet fad… My interest in VideoHub was …