My mother’s boyfriend recently asked over breakfast, in a very quiet voice so no one could hear him, “Jenny, what is up with all this 4G? Do I need this? Or should I wait for 5G?”
Then he pulls a flyer out of his pocket from Verizon that is heralding the coming of 4G with a bunch of shiny spanking new marketing lingo.
He’s concerned. He’s a smart man, owns his own company, made millions. And he’s whispering to me in a breakfast nook cause he thinks he should know this.
This brings me to the acronym du jour – DDoS, Distributed Denial of Service – which moved from the world of hackers into the mainstream to terrify the average consumer.
I won’t go into the massive amount of technical detail behind this, but I will say that Zeus Technology has decided to explain this to consumers with pretty pictures, otherwise referred to as infographics. Zeus provides traffic management software, and as part of its solution, it helps customers keep their sites available to legitimate users, even when they come under a malicious attack like a DDoS. This actually turns out to be pretty cool. – JLH
Tough week, even though it ended in Barcelona, it was the final event of the 2010 and we give thanks. But the week did bring some insight we can’t even print here, but what we did learn we will share with you.
1. Barcelona is really pretty at Christmas time and all those annoying sweaty tourists are joyously missing.
2. When you approach a table with three VC’s and not one of them gets up to 1) offer you a chair or 2) offer you a glass of wine from the bottle they have on the table; They are just impolite and have no manners. Run away.
3. Surprisingly, it is still very much a man’s world when it comes down to old school networking and investment discussion.
4. If a man turns to you and says, don’t worry we are just talking about VC stuff, walk away, that guy is a jerk.
5. People take advantage.
6. Reality is a prison.
7. Fishnets with a knee-length black dress are a perfectly acceptable attire for a cocktail party with uptight European VCs and money men in Barcelona at La Pedrera.
8. Clean tech is sexy, ICT is a boring piece of re-hashed, re-heated slop.
9. If the bartender can’t make a Gin martini, leave.
10. If a man walks into a dinner meeting already making excuses for how tired he is, or how busy he is or how annoyed he is by his own circumstances, get sick and leave.
It’s one of the most hard to control shows out there. It’s as big as any show should ever be and it keeps spreading all over Las Vegas like a bad virus. It’s CES. We love it and we hate it. Its virtually impossible to hear anything at that show except the biggest brands and their exciting news about nothing. It’s annoying. And it’s the world we live in today. Small companies have a tougher and tougher time getting any mindshare out there are big obnoxious trade shows and yet they all flock there like moths to the flame.
That’s cool, we will be there too, but we will try and dig out some juicy bits like what PrimeSense is doing post MS Kinect. And whats going on with content in terms of TV and GoogleTV – we hear that a company out of the UK, MiniWeb is doing some sneak previews of a new TV app which we want to get our hands, uh, eyeballs on. — JLH
We were on the ground in Barcelona at the Eurocan European Venture Contest – essentially the final of all finals for the best start ups in Europe (including a handout of 30,000 euros in cold hard cash) in ICT, Life Sciences and Clean Tech. This isn’t a popularity contest or for the faint of heart like some of the other more pop culture VC/Tech contests out there. This was about a year-long slog through regional contests with tough judges and a bunch of hoops to jump through. Our guess is that you won’t see most of these final 25 start ups (many with revenue already) in the other pop tech scene cause they are busy making money, bootstrapping and well just can’t be bothered with yet another 20-something booze fest with the trendies. We digress.. again.. so more on that later…(Our favorites: TaxiPal, Defendec, (both from Estonia BTW) and Denmark’s Lithium Balance)
But what we actually learned will indeed change the face of venture in the Nordics forever. A new 150m Euro fund is being raised out of Finland and is backed by three heavyweights, and I mean heavy, tipping the scales. We do know that it is expected to launch in Q2 2011 and it is comprised of three men – Telco pioneers and a Finnish investment, fixer, numbers man direct from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
Yuuup. You heard that right. So what does that mean for the regions government backed incubator programs and seed round VC firms? Nothing. But what does that mean for the Nordics sad shape of affairs with A round and up VC firms? A lot – the region has seen a handful of firms whither away, no new funds are being raised, several are shut down and the current “names” haven’t had an exit or IPO in ages. So this group of Finnish cowboys are taking matters into their own hands and putting Finland squarely on the map where it belongs. I’m told by one of the three founders that the fund is going to be for extreme innovation with long term strategic commercial appeal in Clean Tech, ICT and Life Sciences. – JLH
A great replay of why PR doesn’t work anymore. If you have 57 minutes, start at slide 14 and sit back and remember, its not the news its the story. Tell the story.
We’ve been saying this for years, now it looks like others are finally starting to notice the genius coming out of Europe‘s young tech community. Milo Yiannopoulous starts us off with his top ten list of innovative European companies that are blazing the trail in taking on Silicon Valley‘s reputation. We think there are a lot of others (I see a future post here), but he’s got a pretty good start with his WSJ Europe article, naming our client – PrimeSense – as one of them doesn’t hurt.
We said it here first – Europe is comin’ for ya, Silicon Valley!
Well, another week gone – this one took us from November into December without pause. Not sure why that keeps happening. One thing we can say is that it was seamless.
Tons of stuff out there this week — snow storms, more WikiLeaks stuff, Last.fm with a loss of 2.8m GBP (see TechCrunch article), and the fact that UGGS can finally be worn (not by me of course) for their true purpose – to keep your feet warm.
But that’s nothing considering what we really learned this week:
1. Basically, no one knows what they are doing. Period.
2. Simple technology is often the best and most well adopted by users. (Ge.tt)
This just in.. someone actually means it – one-click file sharing. Mashable today interviewed the Danish start up Ge.tt today for its Spark of Genius series and exposed the fact that ….. wait for it… that simple is better. Most often, simple is overlooked and in the flurry of new technology, open API’s, mobile blather, # of handsets in the market, Android v Blackberry v iPhone clutter, we miss the simplicity of things. And what do we do the most of these day? Share and send files – music, video data.
Read for yourself, but we think Ge.tt is onto something.
what is up with all this 4G? Do I need this? Or should I wait for 5G?”
