Microsoft published the presentations from the Xtopia conference as online videos today. Here is the online video from my presentation about making money with virtual goods in social communities:

“In den USA beläuft sich der Umsatz mit virtuellen Gütern bereits auf über eine Milliarde Dollar, dann muss in Deutschland doch auch Geld damit zu verdienen sein“ erläutert Martin Szugat seine Motivation für SnipClip.com. Zusammen mit zwei Freunden gründete er SnipClip.com und konnte jüngst die ersten Startup-Preise sammeln. Social Communities erfreuen sich immer größerer Beliebtheit und daher müssen sich nach Meinung von Martin Szugat alle Händler und Marken mit ihnen auseinander setzen. „Wenn wir unsere digitalen Produkte verkaufen wollen, müssen wir in die Social Communities, dort sind unsere Kunden. Außerdem setzen wir auf die Sammelleidenschaft der Deutschen.“, Im Rahmen der Microsoft Gründerinitiative wird SnipClip.com uns ihre Lösung für den „realen“ Vertrieb von virtuellen Gütern auf der Social Community Plattform Facebook zeigen.

“unternimm was.”- die Microsoft Gründerinitiative: Startup3: SnipClip.net – Geld verdienen mit virtual goods und social communities

The introduction is by Carsten Rudolph, head of the “Unternimm was”. initiative of Microsoft. “Unternimm was.” supports startups not only in a technical way, what most people would expect, but also in business development. So thanks Carsten for your support!

Here is Susan Wu‘s presentation about the virtual goods market:

A must watch! Susan is one of the leading experts on virtual goods.

I’m in Berlin – once again. This time I attended a workshop from the VDI (yesterday; it was great!) and today I visited the Startup Lounge. I’m a little bit disappointed: there were just six or so investors, mainly venture capital companies, but no business angels. The sessions weren’t exciting either. However, there was one session that was inspiring and very entertaining. Titus, the sixty year old founder and head of Titus, a famous Skater company, told his life story. It was very encouraging.

Here is a picture of me at the Startup Lounge together with Stephan from sofatutor, taken by Alexander from Deutsche Startups:

Have a good time!

Here is my presentation from the Xtopia 2008 conference: 

Thanks to all participants for your attention and your questions!

Cool, the sessions from the Virtual Goods Summit 2008 are online now, e.g.:

Update: sorry my first post referenced the old videos. I updated the link and the video.

Last weekend I attended with a couple of friends the BarCamp in Munich. That was my first BarCamp and it was quite fun. Around 300 people came to the headquarter of Sun Microsystems, where it took place. There were a lot of interesting sessions. I learned something about the monetization of blogs, got inspired by new techniques of PowerPoint presentations, were impressed by a really crazy magic session and participated in a discussion about the financial crisis and the consequences for start-ups.

I even gave my own session! The week before the BarCamp I spend a lot of time preparing my presentation. I hope you like it (sorry folks, the presentation is in German).

Despite the presentation was a success I got a little bit frustrated: first I got no slot on Saturday and on Sunday the organizers forgot to put my session on the board. Finally I had technical problems when I wanted to start my presentation. Bad luck! I gave my session in the cafeteria. Unfortunately, not more than 15 people found the way to the cafeteria, but that did not matter. First I was a little bit nervous, but in the end I really enjoyed it. Here are some impressions of my session:

(Thanks for the photos, Tobias.)

The feedback after the session was good (thanks for that!) and I liked the discussion afterwards. I am really looking forward to present “Virtual Goods in Social Networks” still another time.

Thanks to the organizers of the BarCamp and also to the sponsors. The organization was perfect except the little mistake with my session. Next time I will definitely participate again.

Goodbye and stay tuned.

Here it is live from Vallendar:

• Tough times are coming: the financial crises is becoming an economic crises
• The main objective for startups must be profit instead of growth
• transaction based models and paid services / content are becoming hot
• keep your burn rate as low as possible
• survive the next two, three years
• it will be hard to get venture capital, however some VC companies are investing because of the crisis
• the crisis is not a risk, it’s an opportunity
• It’s the best time to start a company because competitors will be rare 

To summarize: great event for young founders!

… denn dabei machen Start-up-Förderer gerne mit. Jedenfalls soll Niklas Zennström, der Gründer von Skype, mit dieser Aussage bei Venture-Capital-Gebern leuchtende Augen erzeugt haben, obwohl er Skype gerade an eBay verkauft hatte. Jedoch sollte man als Start-up vor dem ersten Schritt seine realistischen Ziele und Möglichkeiten kennen – die Welt ist dann der zweite Schritt.

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