I just found this presentation which says a lot of the things I stand for. Passion is the most important ingredient in a startup. With passion and the right connections, you are almost home safe. Of course you have to pick the right thing to be passionate about, but that's another story. 
Thanks Jonas for the tip.
Apply online at http://application.seedcamp.com. The deadline for entries this year is 23:59 on Sunday 10 August.
Make sure that you look at the application guide and answer the questions as short and concise as possible.
Feel free to ask me for help filling out the application.
Ok, this is a little bit late news, but Seedcamp has released the application guide for 2008 applications. The applications are due August 10 and I really encourage anyone with an idea and a great co-founder(s) to apply. Even if you are not interested in applying for the "competition" I think it would be good for everyone with an Internet business to look at the questions and answer them for your own sake. If you ever will be looking for funding, those are the questions you will have to be able to answer.
I think the key is to write really concise answers. Don't write marketing material. Write short answers that your grandma would understand.
Last week something odd happened. Or how often would you say that two of your friends start the same business idea - separately - without them knowing about each other. One was started in Sweden, and the other in San Fransisco. I think we have ourself a match.
The two companies are Tuurf.com and Zkout.com. I don't know any details of the business ideas, but I do know that both are operating in the mobile social networks market. They are not alone, and reports keep coming in that the mobile social network market is going to be huge.
What is really interesting here is that the two companies have taken two completely different approaches to creating their businesses - one silicon valley style, and one European style. During Seedcamp we discussed that European startups are usually to humble in their approaches to solving a problem. That Europeans do not aim big enough, and on the other hand, US startups go super big with sometimes very crazy ideas. But crazy ideas are only crazy and funny if they are done with bad timing.
Tuurf has not yet taken any funding, and that is not because they can't but due to strategy. Zkout has on the other hand taken an angel round and are hiring at least 10 people from what I've heard. Tuurf does not yet have any full time employees and it is treated as a project as the founders all have other jobs or are still in school.
So what is the best strategy in this situation. Either you go full speed and work in the market and closely follow all developments in user trends, burn though a lot of cash fast to try and get an early piece out of a growing market? Or do you watch this market grow from a distance, and try and get a trend line on the direction of the market without following all ups and downs, and let others do the dirty work of breaking in the market?
As I'm all for the "go big, or don't go at all" kind of mentality my first thought would be to go for the more aggressive Zkout. But then again, I think this market is still a bit too immature for even early adopters to use these types of services. So, if Zkout are to come out a winner in this fight, their pockets better be deep, or they will run out of cash before the market is ready.
On the flipside, Tuurf might miss out on some key trends by not being focused enough, and might not have the manpower to scale up in time when the market is ready. Going too slow might be a problem, and is probably as hard to fix as going too fast.
I'm not that passionate about the mobile market, so for me I might not even be an early adopter for these types of products. But looking at this match in terms of business strategy, I would not want to miss a minute of the action to come.
Today in about 1 hour I will go down to Condeco, Linnégatan to see if there will be anyone else wanting to network around business. I started OpenCoffeeClub Göteborg as I saw the concept was really working well in London, and I saw that this is something that is missing in the Göteborg area.
So if you need to get in contact with some interesting people and perhaps want to get some feedback on your new business idea, don't be afraid to share it, as this will probably only help you make a better business from your idea.
Looking forward to seeing you all at the first OpenCoffeeClub Göteborg event!
One of the TechCrunch40 companies, .dockstoc, just launched and I got an opportunity to take a first look. What they provide is something I have been looking for for a very long time. Bye bye to all companies trying to charge for their "professional" document templates.
I havn't played around much with it, but just the first look when I logged in was brilliant - all of the documents I have been looking for in one place, for free (for now anyways):
I strongly recommend anyone who is doing any sorts of business planning to take a look at the site.
Here is a screencast of some of the stuff you can do.
Last week I was at Catapult in London - a conference about launching your business in the US - and it was a very good networking experience.
Talking about networking, social networking, which of course is very hot these days, it is starting to turn into something so much more than just playing around on the internet. On one of the panels at the conference a panelist said that
"Social networking is turning into Business networking"
And I couldn't agree more. Not only online, but social networking IRL is one of the best ways to do business.
We would not be where we are today without doing serious business networking. I think that how it is done is one of the main differences when comparing European entrepreneurs to US ditto. In Sweden when people do business networking it is almost always about making money or connections to people that will help you make money. What I have experienced these last few trips to London, but also going to conferences with great entrepreneurs is that, there, the focus of business networking is helping each other.
People are much more happy to help you and give you advice, rather than focusing on how they can make money off of you. This difference might seem marginal, but is an essential detail in the "new" Business networking that is starting to occur. I guess one could say that the sharing trends of social networking and open source are finally coming to business networking. By helping each other I believe we are creating a collective wisdom of business.
So, I believe that by surrounding yourself with great entrepreneurs that are willing to share their knowledge is a key to success in doing business in the future. But it is important that you are as willing to help them, as you are eager to get advice. With this said, I'm happy to give advice, for free, to anyone who would want some.
This is a couple of days late... but we won at SeedCamp!
The week was really exciting and I think I will write a longer post on what it gave me personally.
Wow! What a fantastic week at SeedCamp! Me and Tomasz managed to do a pretty good presentation today. At least in my opinion.
During this week, we have been able to change the way we describe our idea in a better way than what we have been able to do for over 16 months of trying. I'll swallow my pride of not being able to figure it out myself, and say thank you very much!
Tonight we are going to the TechCrunch Party at a really nice and big private flat somewhere in London.
Tablefinder is a finalist at SeedCamp and I will be in London the whole of next week for the event.
This is also the start of my personal blog. I will try to talk about stuff in my daily life as a startup CEO.
Update: It was nice to see our name on one of my favorite blogs: TechCrunch
Best Regards,
//Anders Fredriksson
Tablefinder
