Every day we discover interesting articles on the web about virtual goods, social gaming, branded goods, social networking and many other exciting topics that we like to share with you! There are multiple options to do this: re-blog them here, twitter them or tag them with a social bookmarking tool. Because especially I use Google Reader to read my articles I will use the Google Reader recommendations as of now. There are multiple options for you to get those recommendations:
Take a look on the recent recommendations section on the right side
Follow our twitter updates (this is the recommended method because not only the recommended blog readings will be published here, but also all blog postings, all other link recommendations and of course status updates)
It’s all about luck – and an open mind! When we decided to apply for EXIST we had to find a mentor from a university in Munich. This is one condition for getting financial support from EXIST. The mentor should be an expert on our field of business activity. However, finding an expert on the virtual goods business in Germany isn’t that easy! But, we had luck and a smart trainee, Matthias.
Matthias is doing his Diploma thesis about virtual goods in online communities at SnipClip and he was interested in participating at the Virtual Goods 2008 conference. On the conference website he discovered that Prof. Dr. Thomas Hess, who is a member of the conference’s program committee, is also the director of the Institute for Information Systems and New Media of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München! So we emailed Prof. Hess, met him a week later, pitched our idea to him and finally we had found our mentor!
Prof. Hess is the perfect mentor. He immediately understood our concept and business model, but even more important he gave us valueable feedback and provided us with insights about the media industry. Even more better, he and his team meet us every two months to discuss relevant topics. So we did not just found a mentor but a mentoring team! Here you see a picture of Prof. Hess and his team (not all are involved with us).
Of course, the team of Prof. Hess will also benefit from SnipClip. We will provide them with insights on our virtual goods business. I hope there will be one day also a scientific publication covering those insights. Be sure, we will let you know when it is published. So stay tuned and have a good time!
The German web magazine CREATE OR DIE published an article by employees of the UnternehmerTUM (an innovation and entrepreneurship centre in Munich)Â about social prototyping. The aim of social prototyping is to develop as early as possible a design and/or functional prototype which is used as a common model for internal team discussions as well as for presentations in front of customers, investors etc. in order to get feedback. The article introduces SnipClip as a successful example of how social prototyping helps startups to develop its product and business.
We faced tough times after we lost our potential business angels but in retrospect it was one of the best things that happened to us! It forced us to focus on our vision and our strengths and it taught us the value of money. If you have no money and have to borrow money from friends and family, every cent becomes important and you think about every cent you spend twice. However, having no money at all is not productive in the long term, because you have to spend too much time on thinking how to achieve your goals without cash. So having a little amount of money, especially for living, makes life and work much easier and more efficient!
So you can imagine how happy we were when we heard that we will get financial support by EXIST:
“EXIST is a support programme of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) aimed at improving the entrepreneurial environment at universities and research institutes and at increasing the number of technology and knowledge based company formations. The EXIST programme is part of the German government’s “Hightech Strategy for Germany†and is co-financed by funding of the European Social Fund (ESF).”
This is really great and it will boost the development of SnipClip! Now we can focus completely on product and business development. So stay tuned and have a good time!
PS: Thanks to Mr. Zinser from the LMU for all the advice and the feedback you gave us on our EXIST application!
In case you didn’t know, there is also a SnipClip Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/snipclip. We will tweet there interesting links, posts, videos etc. Thanks to all present and future followers!
Today, I participated at the first Web Montag in Augsburg, my home town. About 35 web developer, designer and business people joined the event at the Capitol. The event was organized by WEKA – thanks to the organizers! The next Web Montag will be held in March and again organized by WEKA.
Despite the strong interest for the first Web Montag in Augsburg, I was the only one presenting at the event. My presentation was about social games and virtual goods. Some people from the audience asked me for the slides. So here they are:
