Yesterday, my colleague Oliver forwarded me an email by Dan from VentureBeat stating that SnipClip “is one of seven finalists selected to present at GamesBeat on March 24th in San Francisco.” I couldn’t believe it! Of course, we applied for GamesBeat, but I didn’t expected that we get approved, especially as a German startup and with respect to the dozens of other phenomenal startups that probably applied, too! Today, my doubt vanished when I read the official statement on VentureBeat:

VentureBeat announces finalists for Who’s Got Game startup competition at GamesBeat 09

SnipClip – This German company lets consumers engage in a social game where they collect virtual items related to their favorite stars. They can trade and exchange these items with friends. SnipClip lets media brands, sports franchise, and bands form deeper relationships with their fans and sell them virtual goods. Among the things fans can collect and trade are short video snippets of their favorite stars.

This is fantastic! For two reasons: first, we get the chance to present our product to a relevant audience, and second, we will probably meet many exciting persons at the GamesBeat conference. The bad news: I can not attend the conference. There are several appointments in Germany. Of course, there is also good news: Oliver, who lives in San Mateo near San Francisco, will pitch for SnipClip. At the moment he is in Hamburg, but he will fly back to the US next week so he will be in time for GamesBeat! In case you like to meet him at GamesBeat you find his contact details on our website.

So dear friends, wish us luck again and have a good time!

Martin

It’s unbelievable! Thanks to our partner the UnternehmerTUM we are invited to present SnipClip to a jury of US venture capitalists at the Intel + UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge! There are just twenty other teams and one team from Germany. Last year the German startup Navaris Medical won the challenge and received 25.000 $ as well as a huge press coverage. One of the Navaris team members was a colleague from Manage&More, so the expectations are very high.

It will be a tough challenge! So wish us luck dear friends! And have a good time.

Martin

Pitching at the Community Summit was much fun! I was last but the audience was still focused and listening. Thanks, especially for the applause! The applause decided which startup would be best. No, we are not #1, but nevertheless the day was fantastic. I met many interesting people and learned some new insights from successful communities. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, the second day of the Community Summit.

SnipClip! 137 Counts for SnipClip! Unbelievable! Thanks again dear friends and fans! You are wonderful!

Greetings from Mainz (BASTA conference)

Martin

This is incredible! So many friends and fans voted for SnipClip and posted so many cool comments about SnipClip on the Community Summit website! Thank you so much for your comments about SnipClip! Here are some of them:

• “SnipClip rocks”
• “SnipClip :) SnipClip :) SnipClip :)”
• “Snipclip rulez!”
• “SnipClip – cooles Geschäftsmodell!”
• “SnipClip gefällt! Die Jungs haben was drauf.”
• “SnipClip, weil virtuelle Güter the next big thing sind!”
• “Wow! – ich vote für SnipClip … hoffe das kommt bald an den Start!”
• “SnipClip muss gewinnen, die Idee und das Team sind super :)!!”
• “SnipClip: three points”
• “SnipClip wird es rocken”
• “SnipClip has got it!”
• … and many many more!

You still can vote here. To vote you have to leave a comment on the webpage telling which startup you prefer. You can mention up to three different ones. Please note that you have to scroll to the end of the web page. There is a form where you can enter your name and your comment. By the way, you can win tickets for the Community Summit!

Have a good time!

Martin

We knewed it for one month, but we were told not to tell it publicly. Yesterday was the day: the German Ministry of Economics and Technology (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie) awarded SnipClip a prize for its unique and innovative business concept. Find more information on our (new) news site.

Our soulmate Spirofrog is participating in an online start-up competition of the Financial Times Deutschland. Spirofrog is an online marketplace for traineeships.

Vote for Spirofrog!

This morning, Martin came across with a cool Silverlight Deep Zoom Application called Deep Zoom Obama.

It was developed by Donovan West for a Silverlight 2 (beta 2) Article Competition. The application shows in an impressive way the power of Silverlight and Deep Zoom, especially the smoothness of the zoom. For those of you who want to try it out: zoom into Barack Obama’s left eye, there you’ll find a picture in high resolution which loads smoothly and almost immediately. Unfortunately you’ll need to have the proper Silverlight 2 (beta 2) client installed to run it on your computer.

For me as a developer the associated blog article was even more interesting. Donovan West describes therein stepwise, how he built his Deep Zoom project. We’ve also been discussing several times, if we should integrate some Deep Zoom feature into our project. Examples like this are very encouraging. I will let you know, as soon as we made a decision.

Until then, hang in there!

Here are some exciting news from our head quarter in Garching (near the “Atomei” – the nuclear power plant of the Technical University of Munich that looks like a egg):

1. We lost our business angels: they demanded 50% of the company, we offered much less. The insight from this eposide: always speak to multiple investors at the same time. Now we apply for different governmental support programs and further competitions.
2. That’s why we spend for example the whole Monday until Midnight to update our business plan for the Gründerwettbewerb “(founder competition”) of the Wirtschaftsministerium (“ministry of economics”) and for the competition of the magazine “Wirtschaftswoche”. Wish us luck!
3. Our team (see about us) gets bigger: Matthias, he studies media business in Mainz, joins our company as a trainee; André, a computer science student from Aachen, speaker colleague from the BASTA! conference and author for CREATE OR DIE, works for us as a freelancer (for Silverlight development) and will join us in october for a trainee semester; finally, a well experienced marketeer helps us two days a week with our marketing.
4. The UnternehmerTUM provided us four additional monitors! Yeah! So we can use the monitors of our notebooks in addition to the big ones what makes development and design much more fun! A big thanks to Sebastian from the UnternehmerTUM!

Now, we have full house in our office room: there are only three desks, but six people, six notebooks and five monitors. What a fun!

Have a good time, too!

53 teams filed a business plan, 10 teams were invited to present their business idea, 6 were elected to the 4th place, two to the 3rd place, one to the 2nd and one to the 1st place at the senkrechtstarter business plan competition. No, we didn’t make it into the top 3 (a.k.a. top 4), but nevertheless, we are happy! Not because of the money, but because of the feedback. Thanks to the jury! And thanks to the organizer (= Bochum 2015 and the mayor of Bochum)! I hope more German cities like Bochum will organize a business plan competition. Btw: Bochum lost Nokia, but announced today that RIM (a.k.a. Blackberry) will open a research institute at Bochum. Gratulation!