Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 22nd June 2009
1 COMMENT 
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Besides blogging at The Next Web we also enjoy organizing conferences. This year is the 2nd time we organize Kings of Code, a conference for web developers. Last years conference was super! With 320 developers it was sold out, people learned a lot and were enthusiastic about this geek gathering.
Kings of Code will take place next week (June 29-30) at the extraordinary Tuschinski theater in Amsterdam.
Here are 5 reasons why you should send your (more…)
Written on 10th June 2009
2 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Next week we will be attending Jeff Pulver’s 140Conference (@140conf) in New York!
We will be blogging our asses of to make sure you don’t miss a thing. Jack, founder of Twitter, is speaking and so is everybody else.
Want to join us at 140conf? Want to see @Wyclef Jean being interviewed on-stage by @sacca? Want to find out why @fredwilson invested in Twitter? Want to hear the story behind the sale of CNNBRK to CNN? James Cox (@imajes) will tell you all about it.
We have one VIP ticket to give away to our readers.
But you will have to earn it! (more…)
Written on 6th April 2009
7 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
David Weinberger once said “Hyperlinks are little acts of generosity“. We certainly agree and would like to share with you all the (hyperlinked) companies that are attending the upcoming Next Web Conference 2009 in less than two weeks. Some companies in this list are ‘1 person companies’ and some companies are coming over with complete management teams. Check and see if your company is attending, or your competitors, and make sure you are there too.
If you haven’t bought your ticket yet, what are you waiting for?
A Pretty Different Factory, Accenture, Level 3, agilician, Citywire Financial Publishers, Danish Broadcast Corporation, Ador, Big Bang Ventures, Arcticstartup, National Museum Wales, Aqris Software, FD.nl, Haagse Hogeschool, Dutchcowboys, Arnekeuning.nl, Away.gr, Jupidi, Gemeente Amsterdam, Bright, KB-H, Kennisland, KPN, Libersy, CleverClogs, Curtin University of Technology Australia, Dechnology, Deloitte, BlueInsights, bol.com, Bookit, Springwise, Stenden Hogeschool, Kennisnet, Frankwatching, HITmedia, HMP Consultancy, Hellocanvas, Capgemini, Cash Flow, Freshheads, CCAA, Chellomedia, Citywire Financial Publishers, Eduhub, Erstmedia, Euroforum, Fabrique, Fier Concept & Design, Firmhouse, Forcefulme, Func, Graydon, Grip MultiMedia, HENQ Invest, HighProfile, Himes, Hogeschool van Amsterdam, HotelVideoReviews, Humane Magica, IDline Communications, ING, Innovation Factory, Innoven Partners, InSites, Interactive Pixels, Marketingfacts, Jobcircle, Mollie, Meulenhoff Boekerij, MichaelStraathof.com, PrismaStar, Probaton, Proteq Verzekeringen, Main Capital Partners, LUON, MrSearch, National IT and Telecom Agency, The Next Web, The Next Women, Netlog, NHL, markee, noob, OrangeValley, parchitadesign.com, Pascolo, Nokia, PerfectPebble, Pixengo, PMtD Online, Migas Consultancy bv, Mimic Media, Rabobank, Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken, Mobilnova, Moviq, MRM Worldwide, McCann Erickson, Ruigrok Netpanel, NPO, Publimarket, Stichting STAP, Sun, RankOne Media, Realtime register, SPIL GAMES, Rebelic, Sanoma, Seeking Alpha, Sdu Uitgevers, threekings, TechCrunch, Technoport, The Funded, Telecom Italia, The Bean Machine, TNO, TROS, Trendwatching, TUT.BY, Uminova Innovation, UNISYS, Universiteit Hasselt, Vodafone, Void Station, VPRO, WatchMouse, WAXTRAPP, Webtrekk, Webwereld, Westtoer, WiseLine, Wowww!, XS4ALL, Yandex, zemanta, Zion, Nascom, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twine, Wordpress, Twitter, Techfluff, Dutchcowgirls, Toscani, Acton Capital Partners, Mangrove Capital Partners, Adyen, Aerob, Solid Ventures, Neuhaus Partners, Raffle.it, Hell Yes INteractive, WebWorkerDaily, iForced, Rijksmuseum, SynCore Systems, Automattic, Etera Group, Amazon, Mobile DevCamp, Van Den Ende & Deitmers Crossmedi Fund, Carrypad, Streamedge, Citynumbers, Holder, Nu.nl, Siruna, Pestoala, Achmea, Invest in Western France, Burgerlink, Shoutem, Coincide, ABN AMRO, Mouria Publishers, Yieldivision, Teliasonera, Televizier, IDG, De Groene Amsterdammer, Van Dusseldorp, IntroNiche, Wegener, Dicole, Sun Microsystems, New Venture Partners, Vrij Nederland, Ilse Media, ORF.at, Lazzo, The selfservice company, F&L Publications, Data News, Amsterdam Internet Exchanges, yellowBird, Contextured, 
Prezi, HelloMyNameIsE, Aroxo, Silentale, Klomptek, ShoutEm, Quick TV, Mimic Media, Yourtour, plista, Yunoo, Mendeley, Huddle.net, IRL Connect, Visibuild, tarpipe, CoTweet, Google, Favorit, Duval Guillaume, TROS, Hello Group, Amsterdam Historisch Museum, Quintura, Mergermarket, Yarra, Marvia, Volkskrant, NAU, NRC-Next, The Next Speaker, Wakoopa, DigitalBiographer, Unive, 80beans, 20 startups that need your help to get in, and you?
Did you buy a ticket but don’t see your name here yet?
Let us know so we can add it!
Written on 2nd April 2009
3 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
We are proud to announce another keynote speaker for The Next Web Conference: Jeff Jarvis
Jeff is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism and consulting editor of Daylife, a news startup. He writes a new media column for The Guardian and consults for media companies.
Jeff is also one of the internet’s A-list bloggers. His blog, BuzzMachine, is part of the top 1000 most popular blogs in the world at number 558.
Jeff recently published ‘What Would Google Do‘. As Jeff describes:
“I try to reverse-engineer the success of the fastest growing company in the history of the world, the one company that truly understands how to succeed in the internet age, and then take those lessons and apply them to a number of industries, companies, and institutions, from carmakers to restaurants to universities to government.”
Yesterday Jeff published this PowerPoint version of his book. Browse through it for an idea of what it is about but make sure to visit us at The Next Web Conference 2009 so you can experience his talk live.
We previously had Nova Spivack scheduled to speak again during this years conference. Unfortunately he had to drop out at the last moment. Luckily we were able to replace him with Jeff!
Written on 31st March 2009
29 COMMENTS
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
Update: Vote Now!
Yesterday we emailed 43 startups that they were selected to give a 5 minute demo/presentation for The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally. The jury had selected these 43 companies out of almost 200 companies who applied. It is very difficult to pick 43 start-ups from 200 submissions and the jury spend a lot of time checking out all the information presented to them to make an informed decision.
Of course a lot of startups were disappointed that they didn’t make the cut. I can imagine the frustration these people feel as I’ve been rejected in many Startup rallies as well. I received many emails, calls, IMs and tweets asking for ‘5 minutes of my time’ and a second chance. This and the fact that many startups are really cool got me thinking on how we could give them a second chance…
I think the jury did an excellent job and have invested a lot of time to rate all companies (thank you Barend, Adeo and Stewart) and we stick with the choices we made. But we still decided to adopt the idols (Pop Star) model and let the people, our audience, help us pick 3 of the 24 companies we will see on stage at The Next Web.
We have room for 24 start-ups presentations on stage. 20 start-ups will be selected by our jury, 1 start-up will be selected during the conference (from attending start-ups with a booth) and 3 start-ups will be chosen by the audience by votes.
So here is your second chance to present your startup at The Next Web Conference. If you want to take advantage of this opportunity, read this closely.
How you can join
- Record a 90 second pitch why you should be presenting at The Next Web (not a second longer).
- Upload it to youtube with the tag ‘tnw09demo’
- Leave a comment here with the url to your movie
We have developed a voting mechanism and post all videos here on Thursday and let our audience vote on them. The top 3 startups with the most votes will be invited
Who can join?
Any startup can join, if you’ve submitted your company for the Rising Sun Startup rally or not. As long as you enter your movie before Wednesday 14:00 CET.
Written on 28th March 2009
3 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The iPod shuffle Happy Hour started last night and we already shipped TWO iPod shuffles since then!
You have until Sunday evening to buy a ticket for The Next Web Conference 2009 and get a free iPod Shuffle.
More details:
http://thenextweb.com/2009/03/26/free-ipod-nano-web-ticket/
Buy ticket + Free iPod shuffle:
https://thenextweb.paydro.net/event/the-next-web-conference/ipodshuffle
The Next Web Conference 2009:
This will be the 4th edition of The Next Web Conference. We’re looking forward to welcoming 900 web professionals for 3 days of interesting talks, business and fun at The Next Web in the city we love so much; Amsterdam.
The Next Web conference is known as one of the best networking events in Europe. We’ll welcome a blend of decision makers from the European & American Internet scene, technology entrepreneurs, start-ups, innovators, along with venture capitalists, industry journalist, bloggers, and senior level executives.
Written on 21st March 2009
1 COMMENT
Srikanth AD, Web Designer, Search Engine Optimizer and Google Devotee
If you missed out previously, we call this segment the Interestingness!. Where in, we’ll cover intriguing articles from across the web which are ‘Hot wire’ and ‘Eye Catchers’.
Here we go with this week’s Interestingness!
Let us know your views about this segment and feel free to share links to interesting articles you have come across in the comments. Just make sure it has interestingness!
[ Photo Credit ]
Written on 12th March 2009
1 COMMENT
Nicolas Mertens,
After meeting some great people and hearing some good talks on stage,
it was time for the startups to do their elevator pitches. I love startups and I love to hear them pitch! A good pitch should be brief and to the point but without losing sight of your companies message and with a hint of mystery.
It was moderated today by Sien Luyten, Founder & Managing Partner Oraura.
The jury and audience selected 3 startups from the group of 20 finalists :
Jinni (Israel)
Mendeley (UK)
Myngle (The Netherlands)
The overall winner was Mendeley, based in London. They described themselves as the “Last.fm for research”. The startup essentially aims to enable academics to manage and sharing their research paper inventory and at the same time discover like- minded people and papers thanks to a recommendation and matching algorithm.
The People’s Choice Award went to Myngle, based in The Netherlands, pitched itself as a ‘new way to learn languages’. Myngle was founded by ex-eBay employees and operates a platform for online language education where teachers and students can virtually connect and determine if there’s a match for an online course to start between the parties (from both sides).
We have The Next Web Rising Sun Startup Rally coming up in April, sign up closes the 15th of March… So hurry up!
Written on 12th March 2009
0 COMMENTS
Nicolas Mertens,
Robin Wauters, organiser of the Plugg conference, decided not to host this years edition at the same 
location as last year, instead it is now being held in the Belgacom Surfhouse, here in the heart of Europe. The event kick-off didn’t change, it was Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Uk again getting the conference going in his signature style.
The talks this morning were pretty good, although I had a feeling some of them got up on stage because they had their company-logo printed on all the promotional material.
The most interesting of all was certainly Inmaculada Martinez (stradbrokeadvisors), digital media strategist & Venture Capital Investor. Her presentation was well balanced between little jokes and delivering a clear message. She started off comparing Europe to Silicon Valley (as well as Lisa Sounio of Dopplr ). Europeans being great pioneers but lousy marketeers… but are we? She showed us this great movie made by crowdsourcing Europe led by the initiators wreckamovie. Inmaculada urges Europeans, known for their freedom of speech, to use their cheekiness.
As a VC-investor she wants to give some advice:
1) Starting up with friends is more than ok, but make sure everybody (equally) invests.
2) From the moment the development starts, you got to include a marketing strategy.
3) Don’t let R&D lead your startup. Put your product in the market and start making money, even if it contains imperfections.
Now I’m really looking forward to the startups pitching today!
Written on 3rd March 2009
18 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The title of this post is a quote from Wittgenstein which kept popping into my head as I was traveling through Europe these past weeks. I visited France on a ski trip, stopped over in Vienna by airplane and then traveled to Budapest by car.
I speak Dutch, some English, a little German and unfortunately only know one word in Hungarian. The conference I’m visiting only had 4 English presentations: my own, Ernst-Jan’s and two more. Unfortunately none of the other presentations used the only Hungarian word I know.
Hungary has a population of about 10 million people. After WW1 the country got split up and Hungary lost 72% of its land (a sensitive subject even now) which means that there are about 14.5 million people who still speak the language.
In Europe we tend to compare ourselves to the US regularly. We are jealous of the great start-up cultures in cities like San Francisco and the entrepreneurial spirit that so many Americans seem to have. But how much difference is there really between these two parts of the world? Lets take a good look at some statistics.
Population
The US has a population of more than 300 million. Compare that to Hungary and you aren’t too well off. Compare it to Europe as a whole and the figures look different. There are more than 700 million Europeans. That is twice as big an audience as the US?! Suddenly I don’t feel so alone anymore.
Language
Those 700 million people are divided by language, right? They all speak different languages so it is too difficult to reach them? Well yeah, there are 23 official langauges in the European Union and 65 languages and/or dialects in total. That sure sounds fragmented.
Everybody in the United States at least speaks English, right? Well, almost. English is not the official language of the United States but more than 82% of the population speaks it as their native language.
Lets look at Europe again: 51% of all europeans speak English as a second or first language. That actually means that there are more people who speak English in Europe (357 million) than there are people in the United States, in total!
Money
It isn’t really about the language is it? It must be about the money. The United States is a richer market. But is that really true?
It looks like the GDP of the US was about USD 14,330,000 in 2008 and USD 18,930,000 in Europe (In millions of dollars).Yep, Europe is doing a lot better than the US when it comes to GDP. Maybe GPD growth? Is the US growing faster than we are? I don’t know what the results will be of the current economic crisis but when you look at from 2006 till 2007 the United States GDP grew 4.9% and our GDP grew 16%.
Maybe you say I’m making these numbers up as a biased European? Nope, they are from the CIA World Fact Book. Surely the CIA can be trusted on their own numbers?
The more I think about it the more interesting Europe becomes to me:
- There are more people in Europe
- More people speak English in Europe than there are people in the US
- We have more money in Europe than in the US
- We are growing faster
I have to admit, all these ‘facts’ are based on statistics. And we all know how trustworthy those are. But I do suggest you do your own research and look at what you can find out about the differences between Europe and the United States before you pack your bags and move to San Francisco.
Now all that is left for me to do is convince all the Internet Entrepreneurs in Hungary, and Europe, to actually start speaking English…
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
