Earlier this month, I’ve attended the 16th “Journée Internationale du Marketing Horloger” in La Chaux-de-Fonds (you know, the other watch capital alongside Biel/Bienne). This year’s theme was about experiential marketing, which can be defined as a concept that integrates elements of emotions, logic, and general thought processes to connect with the consumer.. Which industry could more qualified as one which sell so expensive products? A program mixed between presentations from research institutes and industry experts gave the non-geeky audience (yeah, this time, no more than 3-4% of the audience had a Macbook on his knees!) some insights about the topic. Independent of how much efforts the brands put in the experiential marketing strategies, people always stay master of their experience. An interesting formula was presented: a lived experience is the result of People x Object x Situation. What is to learn there …
Cloud & Big Data Summit – catch the opportunity!
Every year in November, the Tech Tour stops by in Lausanne region to match web & mobile startups with investors community. Since 1998, this association has organized more than 55 events throughout Europe and so has a wide reach and awareness among investors. Around hundred of investors (among ones the top notch Index Ventures, Doughty Hanson, Iris Capital or Sofinnova Partners) will carefully listen to 25 entrepreneurs presenting their case around the theme ”Cloud & Big Data” on November 21-22 in Lausanne Palace. Cloud computing is becoming ubiquitous and now people understand what it is (3 years ago, that was… a bit different!). More and more, we are adapting to this new standard and storing a huge amount of data in the cloud. And all these information can be a goldmine, as it opens the way to analyze and interconnect …
It’s time to lift up your startup!
Once a year, more than 1’000 people from every corner of Switzerland and abroad gather in Geneva for 3 days at Lift Conference. In contrary to purely startup events like Next Berlin, Dublin Web Summit or LeWeb, Lift is also focusing its efforts on discovering new trends and helping you to transform them into opportunities. From 6th to 8th February 2013, Lift13 will present you a wide and interesting program, comprising workshops (like the memorable “Hacking Venture Capital” by Fred Destin back in 2010), main stage sessions, speed dating, a startup competition and the amazing cheese fondue-dinner (more than 600 people eat a traditional Swiss fondue, talking about tech and innovation…). The ladies behind the event (Sylvie, Abir and co) are actively engaging Lift community: everyone had the possibility to suggest a workshop idea he would organize during the conference. …
Ireland – a European startup eldorado?
As you already know, I had the chance to attend Dublin Web Summit mid-October and I’m going to share what I’ve learnt and experienced there. First, DWS is probably the best tech startup event in Europe (OK, I haven’t been to all of them – I’ve also heard lot of good comments on Pioneer Festival). Or at least the biggest: Around 300 startups (among them, the Swiss startups mobino, 3Baysover, Alensa, InZair) were present at Startup Village. More than 4’000 startup-minded people (8x as much as the first edition back in…2010!) from over 45 countries attended. Top speakers from around the world (founders from Pinterest, Skype, Flipboard, etc.) presented their point of view or shared their industry knowledge on 3 different stages (main, digital marketing and cloud stages). Moreover, each startup present at Startup Village participated to a competition with a prize …
Dive into the Swiss watchmaking’s marketing
A sector often forgotten when we talk about startup ecosystem in Switzerland is that we already have kind of a “Silicon Valley” of the watchmaking industry here. From Geneva to Basel, there are dozen of thousands people who work in this industry and we have some of the most famous brands like Rolex, Omega, Patek Philipp and hundreds of other ones. We have high-skilled people who can produce microscopic parts and make watch work. But moreover, we also have rockstar marketing people who have experience on an international level. There are a lot of amazing branding and marketing stories that everyone can learn from it. For instance, the most known is Swatch, which revolutionized the concept of the watch itself in early 80’s (that was a total disruption – an affordable watch you can change given your mood or the event …
Seduce your customers… learn how!
My fellow blogger Adelina Peltea, a young actor and supporter of the tech entrepreneurship in Europe, started some weeks ago a new book project: Customer Seduction. Based on more than 100 interviews of entrepreneurs, growth hackers and investors, the goal of the book is to provide first time founders (and also the others!) some practical customers development knowledge from people who have done it before. Book will cover most of the aspects of customer development spirit: how to handle customer feedback, the iterative process until market-fit (when your product seems ready to be launched massively), when you should try to scale (raising money to attract users before having found market fit is dangerous… and often ends up to disastrous results), how to learn from your metrics and finally, how to build a strong team to boost your growth. Wisely mixing theory and …
Swiss investors start to think mobile!
In tech industry, it’s traditional to observe massive disruptive change. Before the rise of internet, the tech cycle time was often lasting decades. Change cycle times are happening more and more often. The last one was the web 2.0, also called the social web. You also hear web 3.0 for some years. It’s not a well-defined concept, but it is mostly referring to internet of things or semantic web. The revolution is now happening on mobile. Mobile web or applications are transforming the life of people and represent many untapped opportunities. Until last year (in my opinion), most people thought before launching a product: web first, mobile second. And there are plenty of poor adaptation of the web pages on mobile. But mobile is different, you have to rework completely the User Experience of your product. And for a growing …
HOW TO contact someone you don’t know
Some of you probably know that I’m a big fan of Guy Kawasaki, one of the rock star of startup world and former Apple evangelist. I’ve spent part of my holidays this Summer reading his book ”Enchantment”. This is again a goldmine to help you in your startup journey. In this book, you’ll learn a lot about how to motivate people to join your cause, or evangelize your cause. But there are also a plenty of tips and tricks you can use directly. One of them is how to contact people you don’t know, technically named “cold call” or “cold email”. I’ll mention here the last one. Guy advises to be highly effective when you’re contacting someone who doesn’t know you, if you’d like to get a response. In 5-6 sentences, you can do it and hope to have an answer. But …