“Thought it was me and you /  Me and you until the end / But I guess I was wrong” I believe is the best way to describe the MySpace – Facebook relationship. It’s official — MySpace is now MyJustin Timberlake for a mere 35 million $.

The “oh I so wish I could date him” American singer Justin Timberlake, together with an U.S advertising company has bought the once called “the Social Network of all times”, MySpace. Rupert Murdoch had gained MySpace for 580 million $ and now the selling price seems a bargain.

Of course, Justin mentions that before Facebook, MySpace was the cool place to be seen at, and he wishes to revive it. I assume that while Facebook still rules the virtual space, the task would be rather difficult to accomplish. He believes and actually motivates his entrepreneurial spirit that fans and artists need a special place of their own, where they can interact with the ones they love. I would be rather mean if I’d say we also have a Facebook page dear Justin? Yes, I guess I would.

Let’s see what happens. Meantime, I believe it would be best if we could simply enjoy our favorite tunes. Ta-na-na-na.

What I love most about my job is the ability to spend time and engage with the most interesting people. And this is why yesterday evening I organized a nice meeting with Stefan Cordiner, CEO of Lime&Tonic and Horatiu Mocian, Managing Founder of SociaLook.

Lime&Tonic was one of the start-ups present for this edition of VentureConnect , June 20.  Stefan’s business was one of the three start-ups which came from abroad and won the attention of the public. What is Lime&Tonic? It is a fresh City Guide ‐ helping locals discover new places to eat and cool things to do in their town, then rewarding them for repeat visits. The hybrid model combines a city guide, special offers and stackable rewards to create a sustainable promotional platform for local merchants /businesses, challenging the widely popular “Daily Deal” model. Lime&Tonic aims to introduce its members to merchants, and then convert them in to repeat clients utilizing our increasing reward program. And Stefan is not only a great entrepreneur, he is also a great person to share thoughts with.

Horatiu, from SociaLook is another wow entrepreneur, this time from Targu-Mures. He embarked on his entrepreneurial pursuit 2 years ago and does not wish to stop.  Now he is working on a new start-up called SociaLook for which he already received a 50K funding. What is SociaLook? SociaLook is an app which helps us discover the truly relevant people inside a company using various social networking sites such Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Cool no? We sure think so

What makes a successful start-up

We were quite curios to know which was the definition of a successful start-up for an entrepreneur; Stefan and Horatiu enlightened us. For Stefan a successful start-up is “a self-sustaining entity which positively contributes to the community“. And we should take his word for it: Lime&Tonic has offices in Prague, Sydney, Rio, Slovenia & Ho Chi Minh with plans to be in 20 by the end of the year (pretty soon in Bucharest as well).

For Horatiu, the definition of a successful start-up is the definition of a successful entrepreneur. Another manner of scaling would be the number, and I would add, love-hate relationship of customers. But what truly stands out is when a start-up manages not only to be a profitable business, but a world-embraced concept: “However, there are a handful of cases where a start-up can start a trend, or can disrupt an industry. [..] Some examples are Netscape (although it can be argued that it was more than a start-up), Napster, and more recently Digg, which ignited the social web, even if was not acquired and seems to be on a downward trend. ”

Entrepreneur or employee?

When asked if there was there a special reason for which they started on the way of entrepreneurship, both of the young entrepreneurs reached the conclusion that they were borne with the passion and developed in time the necessary skills.  Stefan mentioned that in his case it is all about his passion for business: “I’m fascinated by business models and learning how they work. I love immersing myself in a completely new industry and seeing if we can challenge the norm.”

Horatiu argues that there is no actual reason he can pin-point, it just felt right after finishing his university degree: “It just seemed the most attractive path to pursue at the time.” Of course, after some years of experience, there are certain abilities which an entrepreneur has to master in order to be obtain his business satisfaction: “[..] the ability to influence the people and processes around you. As an entrepreneur, you are responsible for establishing the right culture, attracting the right people, doing the right things and so on. ” The teaching which Horatiu finds most valuable and unfortunately sometimes hard to grasp; is that the winning spirit of an entrepreneur is to: “complain less and work more.“Smart, no?

I just become an entrepreneur. What do you advise me to do first?

Of course, they wouldn’t be successful entrepreneurs if they would not share with peers their most valuable tool. And when asked which would be the first thing they would encourage a fresh entrepreneur to take into account first, Stefan and Horatiu considered two main features: traction and discover the reason for which one became an entrepreneur; and how it can turn his passion into a business.

“Traction, traction, traction. Showing traction in your concept is key for any online start-up. If you can’t attract users, you’ll find it very hard to attract investors!” said Stefan.

Horatiu believes that one in order to establish oneself as an entrepreneur, one must first discover the reason behind the selection: “First I would ask myself why I want to be an entrepreneur. If the answer was to get rich, or to be my own boss, or to be highly regarded by others, then I would quit being an entrepreneur and look for a job, or play at the Lottery, or try to become a consultant.” He concludes that an entrepreneur should be guided by the wish to “create a product that would make the life easier for some people, or to fix some of the current issues in society, or to create highly sophisticated jobs“.

I am pitching. How can I win an investment?

After seeing Stefan perform magic for the VentureConnect event, I have asked Horatiu what he considers would make an actual pitch successful. And his answer was straight forward: “the most important elements are the team, and the market.” He also adds that the moment chosen to pitch in front of a VC is fundamental, as an entrepreneur should not expect funding if his business is not showing sign of income, and what is more it is actually running out of resources: “It will be incredible hard to raise a VC round, no matter how good the team or the market is, and if you’re running out of money it probably means that there are some issues either with the team, or with the product.”

If you wish to know more of what is takes to build a business, ask a person that actually made it happen not once, but in a couple of successful start-ups (Seesmic being one of them) and one of Europe’s largest tech events (LeWeb): Loic le Meur. I have the pleasure of knowing Loic and there are so many things I can say about him… But what would best summarize Loic as a entrepreneur and company CEO — he is a wonderful mentor, a great person to talk to and engage in debates with, an enthusiast, a doer not a dreamer, a person I sincerely look up to.

Follow the conversation on: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/06/28/tech-insider-live-chat-seesmics-loic-le-meur-and-wsjs-ben-rooney-answer-your-questions/

What has been discussed so far would be:

Question: what is your take on the upcoming business models (technological /web start-ups)

Loic Le Meur: Broad question, I think freemium is really the model most startups are adopting

Ben Rooney: Any business plan that can be disrupted by technology will be, organizations have to think where there real value lies…

Loic Le Meur: Take Evernote, for example, both an app on pretty much all mobile platforms and also a web app. It’s got huge traction, they got it because obviously it’s an amazing product but also because you can use it free first, it removes any friction.

Loic Le Meur: Evernote only charges about $5 / month, the more you use it for free the more you get addicted to it, then you are likely to pay. Free is the marketing.

Ben Rooney: I also think that for Evernote, and others, very often the value lies in the data you can acquire as well as the product itself.

Loic Le Meur: Also, I am very interested to see that some mobile apps are really doing well revenue wise, Camera+ on iPhone is the best example, millions of $ only mobile. So basically, I believe more in subscriptions than in advertising business models. Free is the new marketing budget.

We’re sure to come back with a summary of which were the most important things discussed. We’ve sent 3 questions ourselves, but let’s see if Loic will answer .

UPDATE

We’ve read the entire interview and because it is such a valuable experience and lesson all tech entrepreneurs, we believe sharing with everyone is the next big thing.

Mobile — the next big thing

When asked what will be the next big thing in the tech world, Loic mentioned straight away Mobile. “Local and mobile are going to change small business models, providing new opportunities. Look at what Groupon is doing providing huge number of leads and businesses to small businesses. ” This creates a powerful marketing opportunity for small business: “small businesses will be able to have their own apps. I know a little start-up here in San Francisco that did a last last minute app for hotels, it’s taking advantage of mobile, local and last minute.”

E-Commerce — Invest now

Loic believes that not only now, but in the next couple of years as well, Facebook Commerce is going to be huge. He feels that  by adding the social trusted component of your friends everything will change, even the most basic activities, such as buying a new car and spreading the word of how great or bad the results are. “You will be likely to buy that car much more if one of your friends give you a comment about it because you trust him.” Moreover,  Facebook is not anonymous, you are now connected with: “people you know” and this will be the definite influence on e-commerce.

European Entrepreneur should have more business guts

Being from France himself and the organizer of the biggest tech event in Europe, Loic fervently supported European entrepreneurial spirit and continuous development. “I think there is a problem in Europe that we lack the history of entrepreneurial culture – but that is changing.”He believes it is not a lack of will on creating a start-up or not having inspirational business ideas, but actually a lack of investment funds and a lot of paper work to overcome. “I think it’s not a question that Europeans want to create start-ups or it’s more difficult to find money, those are not the real reasons in mu opinion.”

Moreover,  speaking for personal experience, Loic encourages European entrepreneurs to be more outgoing and risk taking, and actually have more business guts than they show now: “It’s more a cultural issue to me, European entrepreneurs (or would be entrpreneurs) are too focused on the risks, while in Silicon Valley people don’t care much about failure. Start, if you fail it’s ok, you can try again”.

What Loic also finds important is the not necessarily wise desire that European entrepreneurs have to lead first locally, and then become international known figure. “Problem is by the time they do this someone in Silicon Valley has targeted the world and raised more money etc. Europeans should also aim at global day one, I know it’s easier said than done, but it’s a question of point of view. If you target Paris and try to lead it, you may succeed but by the time you do someone will be bigger WW likely from Silicon Valley.”

I have just become an entrepreneur. What’s next?

When asked what advice he would give to a first time entrepreneur in the “Planning” Stage, Loic outlined the most important steps an entrepreneur should focus on:

• don’t focus on the business plan (I know) it’s too early for that
• focus on a small niche, white space you identify, a need that you think doesn’t have much people addressing it
• something you really care about or have passion for is a plus
• execute as fast as you can building something to address that narrow niche, even a little buggy
• launch super fast, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn said “if you are not ashamed of your product when you launch it, you launched too late”
• focus on the very little group of initial users of that product, make it a community, listen to any feedback

Social Media – Only for Multinationals?

Loic argues that when it comes to marketing in the digital sphere and focusing on Social Media, you don’t need an unlimited cash flow. “You can build a huge following really quickly and incredibly cheaply. Since I get that question all the time, I recorded a series of 30 short videos for small businesses to learn social networking and how they can build their brands using it http://www.buildyourownbrand.tv/”

Of course, these are just a few ideas, but you can find the rest of the interview on: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/06/28/tech-insider-live-chat-seesmics-loic-le-meur-and-wsjs-ben-rooney-answer-your-questions/. Enjoy and take your time to read it through, there are valuable lessons outlaid and guess what: it’s free!

If you’re passionate about going out, then you most probably are familiar with Metropotam, the platform that allows us to see what’s hot and what’s not from cafe bars, to restaurants, concerts and all kind of events and social activities. Dragos Novac is Managing Director for Metropotam Group and CEO and Co-Founder of Krogos Software. His professional training is in corporate finance, investment management, consultancy and top management.

When asked what’s best: entrepreneur or employee and what actually makes the difference, Dragos was very frank: he does not know.   “No idea. In theory one is a risk taker and the other is more risk averse. In practice it is more difficult to generalize. A good
professional is good at what she is doing regardless of being an entrepreneur or not.”

The beginning is the hardest part to overcome, and for Dragos the break from being an employee to becoming an entrepreneur was the hardest when thinking of having salaries to pay each month. But the one principle which empowered him was the passion for his projects and also the pleasure of having the most valuable people around him. And from this experience Dragos has learned the most important thing – after having set your business “work your ass off to succeed.”

According to Dragos, not everything stands in a powerful and well organized business plan. What matters most is having a “strong vision and a sense of where you’re going to, and to be able to anticipate the resource needs on daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.” It all stems from just how well organized the person is and “things will evolve naturally. If you’re not, you will need a business plan.” The same organization and ability to set priorities will help entrepreneurs in finding a way of allocating the budget internally: “From my experience, the most of the budget goes into operations and sales. Alas, most of the budget, at least in the beginning, should be for the salaries.”

When asked what best defines him as an entrepreneur, Dragos made it most obvious that without persistence there will be no results. What an entrepreneur definitely has to be is a “a risk taker persistent sob, that is all. ” And if he fails, he does not need to feel discouraged, Dragos mentioned, but actually have the strength to start all over again.

He is a risk taking person, but has given a lot of thought to when the best moment for an investment is. What usually entrepreneurs do not know is that funding is a marriage agreement between a start-up and a business angel and VC.  What Dragos suggests is that usually, the best investment is the revenue from customers, and the best time to look for external funds is when you don’t need the money. “In theory, investors will be more likely to be interested if you have paying customers. In practice though, there are more variables you need take into consideration.” mentioned Dragos. What’s even more important is the manner in which the entrepreneur succeeds in convincing the investor to believe in him and his business. To generate revenue when you still have a project in incipient forms is the hardest thing to sell.  “Achieving the objective of that pitch – i.e. if you pitch a customer, closing a sales deal, if you pitch an investor, getting funds from her.”

He has done great — Metropotam is one of the most powerful online brands among teenagers and young urban people. And Dragos would not change anything or do things all over again: “Most likely I would try to be more focused. But in the same line of business.”

He is a true resource when it comes to building a stable business and achieving actual results. We were extremely happy to having the chance of catching up a bit with Dragos and consider that there is so much more to come in the future — as the number of customers and online interaction is growing, so will the market and the available possibilities. Happy “entrepreneuring” everyone!

If you have a company, then by choice you need to have a website, a platform, a blog and a Twitter and / or Facebook Page at least. Without online presence, you actually cannot say you have a company.  But, what sometimes we neglect to add is that apart from having and populating these accounts, we also need to monitor our presence and make sure our work pays off: numbers, followers, engagement, interaction, user-generated content and so much more. Therefore, what I find most interesting is discovering the tools which enable you to filter the content and draw out the necessary learning and insights.

If you search for the definition of monitoring, you will find results such as:

• To check the quality or content of (an electronic audio or visual signal) by means of a receiver.
• To check by means of an electronic receiver for significant content, such as military, political, or illegal activity: monitor a suspected criminal’s phone conversations.
• To keep track of systematically with a view to collecting information: monitor the bear population of a national park; monitored the political views of the people.
• To test or sample, especially on a regular or ongoing basis: monitored the city’s drinking water for impurities.
• To keep close watch over; supervise: monitor an examination.
• To direct.

When it comes to online and tracking the activity of your company, I have learned from experience and also encountered in other helpful articles, there can be two layers of understanding which you can go by: casual monitoring and engaged monitoring of your start-up.

Casual Monitoring reflects the simple fact of scanning the internet and finding out mentions of your brand/company/competition/news. With Casual Monitoring, if you’re activity is somewhat basic, you can resort to free and interactively easy tools such as: TweetStats, Social Mention or set Google Alerts to track down each time your brand is mentioned on Social Media, blogs and forums. Set particular instances in which you wish to be alerted when someone mentions you and number the amount of times your inbox is being flooded. Most people that have a clear knowledge of Social Media practices, but are not particularly interested in tracking down the numbers behind their online activity end the process here — without the dedicated analysis of the gathered data.

What can be named Engaged Monitoring is the activity of monitoring your online presence and scale up the process from there to further levels ahead. This means that you look for inside knowledge of what these stats mean:

• has your presence grown?
• why and how much?
• when are your followers most likely to read your posts?
• where have your followers found you?
• how many times a day do they visit you and for how long? and so on.

And when you wish to track down metrics for your online engagement, you do more than just counting how many times a day someone mentions you, you try to find a direct way to get in contact with these people:

• visit their profile, find a connection and engage in order to create a valuable and on-going online community
• see if their degree of satisfaction is high or not
• measure the emotional value (love/ hate) of the product and service
• analyze the vocabulary / manner of expression of the customer and see which part of the social hierarchy you have reached (teenager, adult, highly educated and the list can go on)

Another aspect you should consider when tracking down the influence of your start-up online is to have a clear perspective by means of which you analyze the collected data. What do you want to find out more about and which will be resources you will put into action afterwards? If you use basic tools to measure your presence, you will receive regular notices each time. But, what you will not find is: putting it all together by time frame/category/demographics/ sources and study the relevance of the gathered facts and figures.

The hardest thing which you as an entrepreneur have to establish from the beginning or have your marketing department arrange is setting your objectives and message. “Me, as a start-up, to which audience will I address and which are my expected results?” Bearing in mind your deliverables, you will personally and rapidly select the best Social Media monitoring tool.

Of course, there will be voices which will advice you the following: get many followers and that’s it. There are even a bunch of online websites that advertise this: www.getmoretwitterfollowers.info/, www.buytwitterfollowers.org/, or www.tweetadderpro.com just to name a few. You know that this is wrong, don’t you? Your marketing objective is to transform these people from followers to advocates and promoters of your service, in the end to customers and really life-long devotees of your brand.

So, now that you’ve set your objectives, have your planned KPIs and designed a communication strategy to fit your mass audience on each of these communication channels (social media, print, TV, banner campaign, PR etc), here are a couple of tools to resort to in order to find out how well you’ve done (just a few, as the list can go on and on and on):

• http://spy.appspot.com

• http://sproutsocial.com/

• http://www.omllion.com/

• http://www.ubervu.com/

• http://www.radian6.com/

• http://www.reputeme.com/

• http://www.brandwatch.com/

I consider myself a lucky person: I am not afraid to speak up in public. Of course, this is not a natural borne quality, on the contrary, it is skilled, ongoing battle with oneself: conquer your fears and win the attention of your audience.

Nevertheless, I ask myself is delivering a pitch as easy as talking in public? I believe it isn’t, since you no longer have to entertain the audience, but also sell your product and market your skills the best way you can. And to convince someone to believe into something, or to buy it, well, this is what I call true bravery.

Searching Quora, I have found some pretty interesting ideas which I sincerely hope you will find useful, and most of all apply when you get the chance to.

• Create a clear and concise introduction that makes for a good hook (makes people want to know more)
• A presentation no longer than 10 slides if the allocated time permits it – there are pitches which last 10 minutes long, other that are bound to be only 2. The main features which are good to have covered would be: Problem, Value Proposition, Revenue Model, Channels, Market, External Risks, and Customer Segment.
• Have an app that does something? Have a demo!
• Tell a good and most of all convincing story – make the audience believe that you are the next ground breaking theme
• Grab an investor’s attention in less then 15 seconds and hold it for 1 minute. Half of the battle is won.
• “I have no competitors” is a Death Statement.
• Deliver what you, if you were an investor would be looking for: the product vision clearly laid out; the financial potential of the product; the individual – your skills and passion.
• Display a passion for your product: if you don’t show it love, who will?
• Are y0u, as an entrepreneur, flexible? Sometimes, it is wise to show that despite your affinity with your own idea, which is understandable, you will be able to identify when a better option to what you have created is suggested, and most important demonstrate a willingness to pivot towards making it happen.
• Demonstrate the size of the impact of your idea. Now, this is a result driven approach which most VCs do not neglect.
• Communicate the pain the customer was having before you have identified the need and addressed it through your app / service.
• Explain the size of the opportunity and how you will secure a portion of it.
• If you do not receive the same warmth you are expecting, don’t get discouraged from the beginning. Remember you are the geek in high school that is going to ask out the most popular girl in class,  you are going to receive an impressive number of laughs. Deal with it and accept it.
• Have you been picked by, say, Apple to be featured in their app store? (Or other third-party verification you are as good as you say you are?) Show it.
• Do you have a superstar on your team? Even if they sometimes fail, they surely raise sales and awareness.
• If during your pitch, I search for info on Google and Twitter concerning your product, what will I find? Copywriting is the new SEO.

I imagine that you are most probably familiar with these statements, but a Romanian saying goes something as: “Repetition makes perfect!” Practice until you get in right and accept the feedback which you receive — it sometimes makes the difference. Best of luck!

Business Mentoring Program is an intensive mentoring business program dedicated to well-known entrepreneurs. The program is developed on the initiative of Post Privatization Foundation (Romania), also endorsed by Entrepreneurship Ventures Ltd. (USA).

Monday, June 20, the first edition of Business Mentoring Program was completed. At the end of nine months of intensive courses of MBA level, the 40 participants of the program conducted last elevator pitch in front of important members of the jury such as Marius Ghenea, Mircea Tudor, Eusebius Burcaş, Dragos Cristian or Christian Manafu. With the completion of the program, Bill Aulet and Kenneth Morse gave the first grant from the MIT Center for Entrepreneurship to the most active entrepreneurs in the program.

If you have missed your chance of being present for this edition, the following session will be in autumn, this year. Calin Stefanescu, Managing Director www.TJobs.ro, declares that results are starting to show while applying some of the business techniques developed during the program. At this edition of the event, I have managed to spend a little bit of time with some of the Romanian entrepreneurs present at the venue, and all have certified one aspect: in order to conduct a successful business, you need to have a clear understanding of the best managerial and financial methods. This happens during such a mentoring process, which usually takes 2 full days made up of various activities which put entrepreneurs on the spot: Q&A, mentoring sessions, as well as project development and delivery.

For more information, you can access the program’s website and also find out more of the admission process.

If you are an entrepreneur, then your radar starts blinking when hearing the name of Mark Suster. Mark founded Launchpad LA, a program designed to help mentor LA’s most promising first-time startup CEO’s. He runs the Southern California Venture Capital Alliance (VCA) and is on the board of advisors for the venture capital fund of the UCSD Rady School of Business. If you wish to find ou more from Mark, you can follow him on Twitter or read his blog posts.

Why we recommend listening to this keynote? Because you have an “ entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC” summarizing what a fundable start-up has to achieve:

1. Traction
2. Team
3. Product
4. Social Proof
5. Pitch/Presentation

The point which you have to note and understand is that VCs are looking for exceptional qualities. In the entrepreneurial market, and especially when you are in full discussions with a VC, you no longer have to be great, you have to be exceptional: “Investors are trying to find the exceptional outcomes, so they are looking for something exceptional about the company.”

We recommend that you start your morning by listening in to the speech and applying the lessons which Mark emphasizes:

As you already know, we love web startups. And everything about them. However, there are some startups which we like more than others. And Prezi is definitely one of them. The Hungarian startup, Prezi, was founded by Adam Somlai-Fischer, Peter Halacsy and Peter Arvai in 2009 in Budapest and represented a real revolution for business presentations. Later in 2009, Prezi received an investment from TED Conferences and Sunstone Capital.

As we are huge fans of Prezi, we decided to have a chat with Adam Somlai-Fischer, one of the 3 Prezi founders, and find out something more about the motivation behind Prezi and their road to success.

How To Web: Adam, you define yourself as an artist and you studied architecture. How did you get from architecture and design to Prezi?

Adam Somlai-Fischer: As an architect and artist, I always worked with innovation wich enables people to express themselves. We create interactive spaces, surfaces, experiences. So to me Prezi is really a continuation of all this. Its amazing for me to see how much creativity happens when people use Prezi.

HTW: How did you come up with the Prezi idea? Did it  start from PowerPoint problems you experienced and features you would have liked?

Adam Somlai-Fischer: The original idea in 2001 was really about creating something more spatial than slides, pages. Coming from architecture, I felt that we should use the immersive power of spaces when sharing information. Experimenting with this, I found that people really enjoy these zooming presentations. However, here the story stopped, I was happy using it alone. Luckily, in 2006, I met Peter Halacsy, my co-founder, who saw the potential but really wanted to create an easy to use editor for Prezi. And in 2008 Peter Arvai, our CEO joined and he propelled the whole idea into a fine business and product.

HTW: Some say that you need to be tech savvy in order to work with Prezi. Is there a learning curve for standard Internet users for using Prezi?

Adam Somlai-Fischer: People who have great ideas, great presentation to share are not necessarily tech savvy. So our aim is definitely to make it as simple as we can. It has much less buttons than ppt For example, kids find it very intuitive to use. I think you just have to let go of your tried and tested (and maybe dusty) slide design habits.

HTW: This January you launched the Prezi application for iPad. What feedback did you get from users so far?

Adam Somlai-Fischer: Prezi works very intuitively on the iPad, since zooming around on a touch surface feels very good. We started with a very basic Prezi viewer and we are developing the application based on feedback from our users, learning from how, where they use it.

HTW: What are your main development plans for Prezi for 2011?

Adam Somlai-Fischer: Unfortunately, we can’t disclose our future plans.

HTW: As you know there are very few web startups coming from Eastern Europe and you are one of the few success stories we had during the last years. What do you think is the cause of this? What is Eastern Europe missing?

Adam Somlai-Fischer: I think the culture of entrepreneurship, teamwork, and commitment could be better. let me explain. for me, a true entrepreneur is a very intelligent and motivated person who loves to work with people and wants to change the world with them. power is a mean, not a goal. are most of the business owners you see here like this? sadly not. teamwork is not even educated in most school, more so its sometimes even punished (judging great teamwork is extra work for teachers, so they prefer just to grade individually). commitment is something where people don’t even think of excuses, if they promise something, it will happen, no matter what problems came. I think commitment is needed for any business, but sadly in our region the decades where businesses where prohibited left a bad mark. i think its changing, but it needs time.

HTW: What do you think we need to do in order to build a more active Eastern European web ecosystem?

Adam Somlai-Fischer: Meet more, exchange more, and not only meet at Western European events.  I think the mobility of workforce is great too, its crucial.

HTW: As far as I know Prezi has also got an office in San Francisco. How did it benefit Prezi so far and how was life in the Valley compared to life in the Budapest web ecosystem?

Adam Somlai-Fischer: Even though we keep our Budapest office for R&D, our main market is the US. People present even at the kindergarten there. It’s so much more present in the culture. We had to open our San Francisco office to be present in our main market, to understand it better, to grow with US employees, and of course to be close to the valley. The main difference I think is speed. Here, sometimes companies wait for months to meet, decide. There, even with large names, things happen in days. People focus more.

HTW: OK, Adam, thank you for the interview and we wish you great luck with Prezi’s development in the Valley!

GrowLab is a Canadian incubator that is coming up this fall and promises great results. Although the submission period is over, interested entrepreneurs can send in their application forms for the spring edition. If you don’t know what GrowLab is, it is an incubator that supports entrepreneurs through seed funding, office space, mentorship & and creating a steady connection with investments funds and VCs in Silicon Valley and Vancouver.

Each selected project will receive up to $25,000 Canadian Dollars at the the start of the program.  Every team will get at least $20,000 depending on the number of founders. Up to an additional $5,000 can be awarded depending on the size and location of the founding team as well as valuation or other factors. And if you are asking yourself how much of the company you will have to give in, the news isn’t bad at all – depending on the number of founders it can be between 5 – 10% in common shares with no liquidation preference. What the organizers promise and actually encourage is a good-to-know-and-apply motto: “Your success is our success.” Moreover, GrowLab has a nice team supporting the event with important names such as: Boris Wertz, Leonard Brody, Debbie Landa and Jason Bailey.

Why do we encourage the event? Because Summify was there in 2010 and had an outstanding performance. And since Mircea Pasoi and his team have put Romanian entrepreneurship on the Canadian map, Romanian entrepreneurs striving to make it international can apply for the spring edition. Up to 5-10 companies will be selected. You can find out more information on the website. Good luck!