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11 posts tagged interview
Talking to Gidsy Founder Edial about TOA Berlin
Check out the short video interview we did with Gidsy founder Edial Dekker. The video is part of a series of videos we did telling the startup community about TOA Berlin and asking them about feedback and what they would expect/hope for.
Thanks to Edial and the whole Gidsy team for their time!
Interview with App’Olympics Berlin Organizer Mathias Fiedler (CTO, Artflakes)
This weekend is blessed with two great hackathons. Apart from the PhotoHackDay, that TechBerlin reported on earlier, there is the BeMyApp Mobile App Olympics, a 48-hour hackathon and startup bootcamp that unites idea generators, designers and developers in their quest to create some kick ass products. The event will be taking place simutanously in seven cities around the world: San Francisco, New York, Dallas, London, Paris, Zurich and yes, good ol’ BERLIN!
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to be part of such an extraordinary experience and come join other startup ethusiasts for a three day fun ride at Ahoy! Berlin.
The event will start on Friday at 7pm with people pitching their app ideas to fellow designers and developers. After teams have formed around the best ideas, there will be two days of straight hacking with all the clichés of little sleep and lots of Club Mate that go with it. On Sunday a prominent jury will vote for the best app idea and the winning teams await great prizes such as a trip to the Silicon Valley with accommodation covered. The event will finish in Ahoy! Berlin fashion with a wild party and our favorite DJ Daddy Hemingway spinning the tunes!
There are still some spots left for developers as well as party tickets (includes the prize ceremony) for people who do not wish to go through the 48-hour craziness, but want to soak in the unique experience nevertheless. Check out the interview above for more information on what to expect.
Get your ticket now: http://de.bemyapp.com/inscription.php
Thanks to Mathias Fiedler and David Link for making this great event happen!
Interview with Photo Hack Day Berlin Organizer Florian Meissner (Co-Founder of EyeEm)
Hackathons are becoming increasingly popular in Berlin. This weekend alone, there will be two great events for developers to collaborate and create new products in hours.
At the Photo Hack Day Berlin the most innovative developers and designers come together in an old swimming pool to hack the future of photography. Prices include a trip to London to show off your hack at an international agency. TechBerlin is happy to be a media partner and cover the event.
Check out the short interview with organizer Florian Meissner (also Co-Founder of photo discovery app EyeEm) above to find out more. EyeEm has just released its API so your possibilities are unbound. To register, enter your details here: http://photohackdayberlin.eventbrite.com/
Meet Christoph Räthke, Organizer of “Battle of the Startup Bands”
He is the “gute Seele” (“good soul”) of the Berlin startup ecosystem. A man who has “been there and done that.” A startup warrior who seems to have seen it all! Christoph likes to refer to the time before the bubble burst in 2001 as “before the war”. Who knows, maybe that was not even the first tech bubble he experienced :-).
A passionate musician, Christoph came up with the idea of a startup band contest, called Battle of the Startup Bands. The best thing about it: You do not have to be a musician, everybody can take part! Who better to tell you about it all than Mista Organizor himself. Action!
Interview with TWIST Berlin organizer Radek Rybicki
Radek’s story on how he ended up as CTO at a chemical company with a fascinating product outside Berlin is intriguing and we will have a more detailed interview about that soon. In this short interview Radek talks briefly about his background and how he managed to get TWIST to do a show in Berlin, which Radek organizes together with Lutz Villalba. TWIST, the popular startup show hosted by Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley, is actually part of the reason why Radek left the corporate world and became an entrepreneur. Awesome stuff!
BTW: MORE TICKETS TO THE SHOW WERE RELEASED TODAY. THEY ARE SELLING OUT VERY FAST, SO GET YOUR TICKET NOW: http://twistberlin.eventbrite.com/
Questions for the Interview with the founder of Tumblr
Hey everyone, i will be interviewing the founder of Tumblr today and wonder whether you Tumblr users out there have some questions that you want me to ask him. If so, just leave a comment here, tweet me or even better answer the facebook question here:
http://www.facebook.com/questions/370633179619633/?qa_ref=qd
Skype a founder #8: Edial Dekker, Founder & CEO, Gidsy (includes a private tour of their new office!)
Gidsy, together with Readmill, is surely one of the most anticipated new startups in Berlin. The p2p marketplace for authentic experiences is said to launch very soon, but organizers can already create their listings.
Former Etsy designers and founders of acclaimed design agency Your Neighbours, the founding team takes design seriously. Finally we are seeing a trend in Berlin towards functional AND beautiful design - it took long enough! A great example of their design work is their handbook on making the perfect listing on Gidsy.
The Skype A Founder interview above includes a private tour of their great, new office!
Butcher vs. Samwer: The audience Looses
It was a draw. An undecided battle between two new media leaders. During Idea!Lab on Friday, TechCrunch journalist Mike Butcher was promised an interview with Oliver Samwer (Rocket Internet), but in the end it never happened, with Samwer walking out of the “meeting”. To put it more precise: Butcher and S Samwer couldn’t agree on the term sheet for the interview. (Btw: Usually when meeting and negotiating with Oliver Samwer a term sheet is typed on the spot and a notary appointment arranged within hours so that young founders don’t even get the chance to pass it by a lawyer. #samwerbashing.) In this case both parties parted before any agreement was made.
Both men sure had valid points to their argument. However, while both certainly did not put on their best performance, in the end it was the audience that ended being the biggest looser.
I am always under the assumption that an interview is important for both parties involved. The interviewee gets some promotion for his/her company and persona and can present a carefully crafted story to the outside world. Me, as a journalist, I get a decent story for my channel as long as I am allowed to ask everything I want. I would think that Butcher and Samwer work under the same principals.
But in this case both made mistakes. While Samwer’s communication team conveyed a fixed interview date, there seems to have not been any interest on Samwer’s side. Butcher never got a personal confirmation from Samwer himself which should have left him in doubt and trade in the depressing scene of an early morning low cost airline for a long sleep in and some fresh bakery treats from Paul. Pubs open early in London, too, right? Or do they just close early? :-)
Another mistake of Butcher was to ask Samwer questions about topics that he obviously cannot answer due to the SEC quiet period. Any journalist should know that. This must have confirmed Oliver Samwer’s false belief that TechCrunch lacks professionalism.
Samwer on the other is very naive if he thinks he can ignore the blogosphere. He is an extremely successful entrepreneur but widely regarded as a copy cat and thief. Even if that does not hurt his own feelings, it sure is uncomfortable for the thousands of people who are employed by him. I have heard this from various people who work for Rocket companies again and again: They believe that his personal image hurts the image of the portfolio companies. This interview could have offered a good platform for him to explain his business tactics and answer to those who portray him as an unethical, morally condemnable business man.
Anyway, we all want a new interview battle on fair grounds. Do the contestants look for a neutral location? The Friday at Six Radio Show is more then happy to offer both a seat at the table. Are you both up for taking central stage?
We could have the Xhill Stumpers entertain the crowd between individual interview rounds, some beer, popcorn and an audience of aspiring young entrepreneurs. Whatcha say?
Samwer needs to realize that if he goes on avoiding the interview, the audience will never be able to pick a winner. And he sure must be interested in #winning, DUH!
TechBerlin in Fredland! Wrap-Up.
Las week, Fred Wilson was so kind and posted a Skype A Founder video interview on his influential blog AVC. Needless to say that he made my week doing so. I have been an avid reader of his blog for years and it has been a great source of knowledge to me. IMHO it is the best blog about startup financing and company building out there, period! It surely is the most popular with more than 240.000 monthly readers and 180.000 Twitter followers.
Unfortunately the audio on the video I originally sent to Fred was out of synch. Although I fixed it (you can see the fixed version here), the fixed version did not make it up on Fred’s blog. When I got worried about it, Jerry acting as the calming coach he is, replied:
“no worries. it makes for a more interesting video. ;-).”
Well, people just ended up listening to it i guess. Good old radio days!
To date there are 170 comments about the video on his blog :-). If you are interested in Jerry Colonna and maybe debating whether you should attend his seminar in Berlin, I recommend you scrolling through the comments.
Just one of the many interesting comments:
“… the most powerful tool a coach has is the question. Coaching is NOT advising or mentoring (although sometimes advice and mentoring is used)…coaching is really about helping the client get to the next level through inquiry.
And smart questions can come from someone who may not have had direct experience.” (Jerry Colonna)
More comments here.
SKYPE A FOUNDER #5: Alexander Ljung, Founder & CEO, Soundcloud
If there is one startup that symbolizes the buzzing startup scene in Berlin, it would have to be Soundcloud. It is creative, bold and disruptive. Oh, and yes, it was launched by expats.
What started out as a tool for DJs to share music tracks, has developed into THE platform for sound creation and sharing.
With more than 5 Million users, an investor lineup that includes well renowned investors such as Index or Union Square Ventures (btw: Fred Wilson’s Blog is a must read for any startup entrepreneur) and offices in Berlin, London and Silicon Valley, Soundcloud has become a global player.
However, even though many of his platform partners reside in the US, Alexander sees Berlin as the place to be, explaining that the intersection of “art, culture and technology” made him move to Berlin to start the company with Eric Wahlforss in 2007.
Watch the interview to find out how Soundcloud achieved hockey stick growth without paid user acquisition, how the music space is evolving and what other startups Alexanders finds hot at the moment.
And just for the record: Alexander said that Soundcloud will never move its HQ away from Berlin. #keepingitreal
Enjoy!
(Sorry for the video “freezes”. #skype #fail :-))
“Billion Dollar Darling Airbnb” Exclusive Interview with all Founders
Last weekend TechBerlin met up with the founders of Airbnb Brian Chesky (CEO), Joe Gebbia (CPO) and Nathaniel Blecharczyk (CTO) for an exclusive video interview (below).
Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world. What started out with the founders renting out their living room and air mattress in order to make rent, has developed into a fast growth marketplace for all kinds of spaces. Now you can rent rooms, apartments, houses, castles, saliboats and even entire countries if you wanted to.
STATS AND FIGURES (CEO BRIAN REVEALED SOME NEW STATS)
Airbnb currently offers over 70.000 spaces in 184 countries and 14.000 cities, growing their offerings by “40% month-to-month”. A total of 1.9 million nights have been booked on the site to-date. There are more spaces to rent on Airbnb in New York, than rooms in the biggest hotel of the city. Brian mentioned that the Hilton Group, the largest hotel group in the world, had 600.000 rooms to rent worldwide and that Airbnb strived to top that within the next 12 months. While they “only” have around 900 spaces in Berlin to rent today, Brian said that by summer next year, they would have “more spaces to rent here than the leading hotels have rooms combined”.
How do they finance such expansion? They were one of the first to come out of YCombinator, announced a $7.2M Series A from Greylock Ventures and Sequoia Capital and are allegedly in the process of raising $100M or more (at $1 Billion+ valuation) with Andreessen Horowitz and DST participating in the round. Oh, and Ashton Kutcher is an investor, too.
WHAT BROUGHT THESE GUYS TO TOWN?
Airbnb recently made their first international acquisition in Germany, buying essentially the team behind the small, local player Accoleo. Next to being of strategic importance, Germany is also the birthplace of the strongest competition for the site. The “copy-caty industrial complex” of the Samwers raised over 90M for Wimdu and its chinese sister Airzu, while Qype founder Stephan Uhrenbacher raised more than 10M for 9flats. Playing high stakes is not always a subtle game and Airbnb decided to openly address some alleged malpractices on behalf of competition, referring to some players as “scam artists”.
The community truly is important to them and may ultimately make them win over their competitors. The founders have done community meetups in more than 100 cities of the world, talking one-on-one with hosts about their experiences with the service. That feedback is what drives product development at Airbnb and while competitors can copy the service today, they will have a tough time to anticipate future product developments.
I met up with the founders at the Airbnb community event at Betahouse in Berlin.
THE VIDEO FROM THE INTERVIEW
During the interview I deliberately leave out questions on the great startup story of the company, because it has been well documented in countless interviews. The story is phenomenal and i can only recommend you to watch the presentation by Brian at YCombinator and find out how the service became what it is today. There is also a very interesting email thread between two legendary internet investors in the US, that gives insights into the great vision and stamina of the founders and their first investor Paul Graham.
Photo: Thanks to Alexander Gloning
