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Great interview with Amen’s Felix Petersen the day before they officially launched Amen at TechCrunch Disrupt. Also read Mike Butcher’s TC post...
Once upon a time the startup investment landscape was...
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2 posts tagged zalando
The Jason Calacanis Rant against the Samwer Brothers and German Copying on TWiST Berlin
After acknowledging the innovative new startup spirit in Berlin (“this is a fiery group”) during the TWiST Berlin show, the host Jason Calacanis starts a rant against the Samwer Brothers and how they had ruined the image of the German startup landscape.
He said that Germany was getting a “bad name” because of the Samwer brothers whom he referred to as “lying and cheating … photocopying thieves”. According to Jason people around the world started to believe that Germans are not original thinkers and that this was not true! He asked the audience to “boo and hiss” at the Samwers whenever someone runs into them and to convince one’s friends to not work for them.
The audience loudly cheered in consent! It seemed that finally someone with broad international reach called out what many Berliners think.
How to optimize your marketing spend
In Germany, the Samwer brothers have long been known for their aggressive marketing. With Groupon buying Samwer’s Citydeal last summer and placing all international expansion in the brothers’ hands (the international HQ of Groupon is in Berlin!), word of the Samwer’s unrivaled execution has spread abroad.
Since most of their incubated companies are consumer facing businesses in young, competitive markets, marketing optimization is a key priority. Above is an interesting talk on marketing performance across multiple channels by Florian Heinemann from Rocket Internet, the Samwer incubator that gave birth to startups lile Zalando, eDarling or CityDeal/Groupon.
Update: TechCrunch writes on June 10th that Samwers are no longer running international operations.
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