The last panel of How to Web 2011 was dedicated to European startup incubators. It was moderated by Ivan Brezak – founder of Netokracija and featured Jon Bradford – managing director of Springboard and initiator of ignite100, Eoghan Jennings – co-founder of Startup Bootcamp, Mikko Jarvenpaa – chief marketing geek at HackFwd and Zuza Stanska, chief marketing geekgirl at GammaRebels.

Watch the full video of the panel for some nice insights from incubator people regarding what incubators are looking for, what sets one incubator apart from others and other interesting insights.

Jon Bradford, managing director of Springboard and initiator of ignite100, held a talk at How to Web 2011 entitled The perfect team: it’s a patchwork quilt. He drew some lines that should be followed by any startup building a team from day zero. In Jon’s opinion you should always look to hire people who are smarter than you, you should search for people who are passionate about what you do and always look for people who complement you. Watch Jon’s full talk for other useful advises on building the perfect team and a nice set of Q&A!

How to Web 2011 also included a panel entitled The API effect: social media layers. The panel was hosted by Martin Bryant, european editor at The Next Web. His guests were Max Niederhofer – founder of Qwerly, George Lemnaru – co-founder of eRepublik, Konstantin Hristov – founder and CEO of Favit and George Petre – product manager for social media products at Bitdefender.

The guys talked about the wide use and development of APIs in the technology products world. They talked about the major issues that appear when you create and offer an API for your product to the community, but mostly, the problems encountered by businesses developing apps based on the Facebook and Twitter APIs. If you plan on doing something similar, this is certainly a must watch for you!

Eric Wahlforss, co-founder and CTO of SoundCloud, held a talk at How to Web 2011 named Bootstrapping – The ride from zero to hundreds of apps and millions of users. His talk focused on detailing the way SoundCloud develops its API. He described some key steps in developing an API that will indeed be used by the community and drawed attention to some mistakes that could be done along the way.

During the Q&A session, he discussed the advantages and disadvantages of having an API and talked about the attitude that the major music labels have towards delivering audio content through APIs.

Max Niederhofer, founder of Qwerly, held a talk at How to Web on Social Identity. He spoke about the traditional, real world, types of identity and then moved on to what he calls identity 1.5 in the digital world, which is what we basically have now with the Facebook connect feature being used all over the web. He went on describing what he sees as Identity 2.0, a concept that would bring even more of the real world identification process in the digital world.

According to Max, identity is very much about reputation – who you say you are and who the others confirm you are, but we still have to solve security and privacy issues on the web. Watch the full video for some very interesting ideas and also, a few insights on his recent exit with Qwerly.

Facebook announced earlier today the worldwide release of the much-talked-about Timeline. So I grabbed it and played a bit with it. The result? I love it! I keep shouting all over the social media that it’s like my last years flashing before my eyes. I love the possibility to look through my updates by year and month, it’s been great seeing pics and statuses 2 years old.

Today I found out that I joined Facebook on September 25h 2008. If this morning I had to answer this question, I wouldn’t have been able to give you the year. Is that an important question? Definitely not, but it’s nice to know. I also found out who the first people I friended are, so now I remember exactly who put the Facebook virus in me.

It’s a great amount of data Facebook has to retrieve, and they’re doing it amazingly fast, in my opinion. I was pretty afraid when I upgraded that it might affect the way I see other people’s updates. Facebook had already messed with that enough in the recent past. I was relieved to see that part remaining exactly the same. The timeline affects only your profile page, not the news feed.

So I say, get yours! Go through the quick tips at the beginning and you’re set. It’s a huge change, but it’s for good. If you’re ready to switch, you can do it here.

Branko Milutinovic, co-founder and CEO of Nordeus (producer of Top Eleven), held a talk at How to Web 2011 called Social gaming – lessons learned. He offered some nice tips about the process of designing a social game and talked about the key-metrics that should be followed. He also underlined the importance of maintaining players involved, keeping their interest alive by adjusting the challenges they have to resolve and the rewards they get.

Since social games are by definition free to play, you have to choose wisely the way you monetize. Watch Branko’s full talk for some nice monetizing ideas and other interesting lessons learned from his Top eleven experience.

The second day of How to Web 2011 included a panel on key-metrics for SaaS businesses. The panel was moderated by Raluca Georgescu – co-founder of How to Web, and had as guests Alexandru Costin – EiR at Adobe with Business Catalyst, Vladimir Oane – co-founder and CEO of uberVu and Max Niederhofer - founder of Qwerly. The guys talked about CMRR (=committed monthly recurring revenue) and the ratio of customer acquisition costs to customer lifetime value as the most important metrics. They underlined the importance of carefully watching the churn rate and methods to bring it and keep it to a low level.

Watch the full video for some nice explanations of the concepts and advises and lessons learned from the speakers. And learn to constantly grow your business – as Alexandru Costin said, “especially for startups, you need to at least double your business every year to be on a good growth curve”.

Adam Fischer, co-founder of Prezi, held a talk at How to Web 2011 entitled Prezi, the language of writing in space. He talked about the vision of Prezi, the journey it went through from zero to 5 million users, how they monetize the tool and what makes prezis so intuitive.

Did you know that Al Jazeera uses Prezi? During the Q&A session we found out some unconventional uses of prezis and there has been a little talk on how the product should be improved.

Mark Randall, chief strategist at Adobe, delivered the last keynote speech at How to Web 2011 on Finding your big idea. Watch his speech for some really useful and inspiring advises on how to look for your great idea and how to act to make it happen. Mark also talked about a study on how innovators find their ideas and what the key trends that drive innovation are.

Also, find out about Mark’s idea for 100.000 Startups – a program to allow easy and cheap access to information and collaboration between entrepreneurs from all around the world.