A couple of weeks ago, I finished my internship at SnipClip. Now, it is time for a review.

The internship at SnipClip was a very intense time for me. A few days before I started, I finished my last exam  in university. Afterwards I started straightaway my internship. I don´t really had a clue what SnipClip was all about. Martin and I have been friends since a long time and we came along that I could make a marketing internship.  This was my first startup expierence. I never worked before for a startup. I felt really euphoric and I started with a lot of motivation.

In the beginning, it was all new for me. Martin and I shared one desktop and I started to work alongside with Martin. Soon, I became friends with Andi and Sebastian. They gave me the feeling that I am part of the team. One of my first assignments was to create a Facebook account. My first buddies on Facebook were Martin, Sebastian and Andi. From this moment, we all had lots of fun with the gaming applications on Facebook.

My first real assignment was to make myself familiar with virtual goods. So I read (nearly) every blog post about it. It was very exciting for me, because I had the feeling to open my mind for a complete new kind of market. Martin and I had a lot of discussions on our way from Augsburg to the office in Garching. I really liked it, because we didn´t talk only about SnipClip and virtual goods, but rather about everything and anything. In the starting time, we had many meetings and brainstormings. These meetings were endless. We were sitting for hours in the innovation lab and started with a plain white paper. We discussed so many aspects of the SnipClip application. How things have to work, how the application have to look like and who are the adressable customers. It was exhaustive. We just tried to consider every aspect. At the end of these days, I felt very tired. Nevertheless, the meetings were really fun. I still like the idea to start with a blank paper and at the end of the day you would get a result.

My challenge during the internship was to find an appropriate content for the proof of principle. Unfortunately, the development of the application took longer than we all expected. I am a little bit disappointed that my internship ended before the application went online. I really would have loved to see how the users interact with it. It would have been exciting to watch if the interaction of the users were similar to what we discussed at the meetings.

After 3 Months, it was time for me to get out of the daily business. I had to concentrate on my diploma thesis. I had done lots of research during my internship, but it still took me time, until I wrote my first sentence. For me, it was hard work. I am not a gifted writer. I was so glad that Martin supported me and answered all of my questions. His feedback was sometimes a little bit harshly, but it always gave me a push into the right direction. I have been really exhausted, when I finished my thesis. I hardly slept during the final phase of submitting the thesis. Now, it is finished and I am waiting for the correction from my academic advisor.

Here is a short summary of my internship:

Best feeling: The feeling to be involved in a team that  is starting from the scratch.

Worst feeling: To know that the application didn´t go online during my internship

What will I miss: All the discussions

Will I ever do this again: Definitly YES!

This was my little story about my internship. I wish SnipClip all the best. I say good bye for now. Maybe I will come back. You never know what the future will bring.

During the past months, our trainee Matthias analyzed the virtual goods market, especially in the area of social gaming, social networks and virtual worlds. Today, SnipClip announced at the GamesBeat conference, where Oliver will pitch for SnipClip at the Who’s Got Game competition, that it will publish the results. The press release highlights some interesting insights:

Average revenue per monthly active user per year:

• non-gaming social apps: $0.37
• social games: $3.65
• virtual worlds: $8.04

Market potential for 2008:

• non-gaming social apps: $215 millions
• social games: $340 millions
• virtual worlds: $244 millions

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.

Now I am not longer a virgin. Yesterday it was the first time I visited a Web Monday. It took place at the Nemetschek-Building in Munich and was organized by Optaros. Raju Bitter invited to the Web Monday and round about 25 persons attended the event. I had the pleasure to sit next to Thomas Schulze from Spirofrog, who entertained the whole group with his comments.

First of all Hartmut Grawe of Halle 5 gave an insight of generating 3D-Flash websites. I am not a programmer and so it was too technical for me . Afterwards Nils Hintze invited us to the next Barcamp in Munich and introduced us to the philosophy of the Barcamp movement.

The most interesting talk for me was from Raju. He gave an overview about WebTV and its potential in e-commerce.

My first Web Monday was quite interesting and fun. Round about 10 p.m. Martin and I drove home and our evening ended in the best doner kebap of Augsburg.

Good bye and stay tuned.

When I started a few days ago at Squirrel one of my first tasks was to introduce myself on the blog. Here we go.

At Squirrel I will write my diploma. The thesis is not defined yet. I think I will write about the “Monetization of Social Communities”. Perhaps I can concretise my thesis to “Monetization of Social Communities through Virtual Goods”. However this I have to discuss with my professor first.

Within the company I will support Martin. I will be responsible for the content and the promotion of the closed beta. It is very exciting for me because everything is new, the work is very creative and the subject is very fascinating. I really appreciate the work and i am excited, whether our closed beta will pass the practical test.

In the next time you will find more posts in here from me because I am working together with Martin. I really looking forward to update you.

Goodbye and stay tuned.

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!