http://en.narcisocerezo.com/ Just another entrepreneur's blog? en Copyright 2007 Wed, 14 Feb 2007 23:17:37 +0100 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss contents are selected by the mass, and the selection criteria usually does not match my selection criteria. They are like television where you must read what others decide. I'm sure that the on-demand content model is the future of television, and coRank is the future present of content aggregation. coRank lets you decide what kind of content you want to receive, and from who. It also helps you find people that share your interests. Rogelio, the mind that has created coRank, says that it has some pieces of Digg, other pieces from del.icio.us, but I think that it is more like a social Bloglines: you select the sources, and you receive not the content they create, but the content they find interesting on the web. You select the people whose judgment you trust, and the content flows in a network driven by common interest. Would you like to try it? coRank is now in closed beta, but will be open very soon, so stay tunned.]]> http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2007/02/corank.html http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2007/02/corank.html Blogosphere control corank information Wed, 14 Feb 2007 23:17:37 +0100 I'm not going into deep details, as this matters require a lot of privacy, but the truth is that I have had a meeting with a VC that makes global investments. It's too soon to know if the outcome of the meeting is a positive one, I mean, if we will continue speaking about working together. And there's a cultural difference that makes it hard for me to know if the other part was interested or just polite. I think that I did it reasonably well, but I must admit that my spoken English was not as fluent as it should. In my daily life I read, write and hear a lot of English, but I don't actually speak English, so it takes me two days or so of only-English to get my brain used to it :-) The meeting was not a presentation, it was something more relaxed, with no power point and just my cellular phones to show what we do. My interlocutor was very polite and professional, and I felt very comfortable. She made a lot of questions, very well aimed to know if we have a clear view of our own business and what opportunities lay ahead for us. I know that I failed to mention a couple of things and that some of my explanations were not as clear as I would like. I have to improve that! But she said a couple of times that she found our work very interesting, and she spoke about a possible big customer using "our" instead of "your". I usually pay a lot of attention to that kind of details, as well as to the non-verbal communication, but sometimes I feel I'm a bit paranoid about it, and that I find information where there are only words. I'm also a very optimistic person, so I try to keep my feet close to the ground until things actually materialize. I prefer to think by now that she was just polite. If that is the case, I feel grateful for the time and interest. But we have invested a lot of money, time and effort; we're absolutely commited to the project, and we're pretty confident that we will success: we have a great product that is starting to sell with great projections. I really hope that we find a way to work with this guys I met, because we think they're the best VCs for our company, and because I need to keep focused on the company. http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2007/02/my_first_venture_capital_exper.html http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2007/02/my_first_venture_capital_exper.html Venture Capital venture capital Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:23:23 +0100 TechStars (seen on Brad Feld's blog) I get really tempted to pack my belongings and take a plane to USA. It's very hard, not just for legal matters, but for the personal ones. But things like TechStars are the ones that make the difference between USA and the rest (specially Spain, where I live). I've never fully given up on my American adventure, and who knows, it might get truth one of these days because things here are very deceiving when compared. That's why I've been thinking about a promise I've made to myself. A promise that I make now to other tech entrepreneurs that come afterwards: As soon as I can, I'll create a Spanish TechStars. I know that this is confronted to focus, but I need to look forward and imagine the future. It's insane to sweep like Beppo all the time. That "as soon as I can" is way too blurry now, but I know that success is very close, and the economic and networking power is a little bit farther, but not so much I hope. Every entrepreneur here, at Spain, is always complaining about the lack of help from the government (and usually help means money), but I don't remember anyone at the USA saying that their government has gave them money. Money, contacts, help, the ecosystem is something that people create and companies empower, not the government. Of course, there are a couple of things that the USA government does and the Spanish one does not:

• Laws, like the bankruptcy one that mitigates the risk of creating a business.
• Easy and cheap administrative procedures.
• Low taxes, at least at the first stages (in Spain you have to give a 27% of your earnings to the government, from the first euro you win).
• Easy and stablished legal frame for BA's and VC's.

All of these things are out of our reach as single persons, but the creation of help, investment and contact networks is in our hands. So there goes my promise, one that I hope to honor: Spanish TechStars. Will you join me?]]> http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2007/02/spanish_techstars.html http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2007/02/spanish_techstars.html Entrepreneurship Entrepreneur TechStars Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:33:55 +0100 "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us". If Web2.0 means anything, I think it's well reflected in this video. Despite being a good exercise, I still find that it's a bit techy and again that probably restricts the audience of the video and so it's capability of explaining Web2.0 to the masses. ]]> http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2007/02/does_web20_mean_anything.html http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2007/02/does_web20_mean_anything.html Blogosphere the machine web2.0 Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:05:40 +0100 How to Double your Valuation has made me think seriously about what we are doing to reach VCs. The fact is that we started with a very concrete product for a very concrete market: A sales management software for distribution companies that will run on a simple Java-enabled phone, instead of the expensive and difficult PDAs or industrial terminals. The name for this product was BaseMovil. After all, we ended up with a technology that can be used for almost anything: a database and synchronization engine for Java-enabled phones. So we took the name for the technology, and renamed the product to bmSales. We're receiving new ideas from customers and prospects every day, and we have developed some interesting solutions (fine emission with integrated photos, generic forms, defect management, etc.). When we address a concrete forum, we use either a product-based approach or a technology-based one. We choose the one that we think fits best. But I must admit that the executive summary that we've written for VCs talks a lot more about technology than about the product and it's market, and that's probably an error. We've not fallen into the trap that Peter says of developing a technology instead of a finished product, but we're surely falling into "selling" the technology to the VC instead of the product. We know the market that our product addresses, and the VC has a lot more of "wide market wisdom" to imagine where our technology can be applied. So thank you Peter, we'll rewrite our executive summary focusing on the product but showing the technology behind it. This comes in a very good moment for us, as we're starting the search for VC now. ]]> http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2006/12/focus_sells.html http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2006/12/focus_sells.html Venture Capital focus venture capital Mon, 18 Dec 2006 11:37:12 +0100 I don't know it I will really honor the question mark at the end of the title, that's a question you should answer, not me, but I will try to do it. You will find here my thoughts and experiences as a technology entrepreneur, some information about me, and some programming posts. Welcome to my blog, thanks for reading it, and I look forward to reading your comments. After all, this blog-thing is about conversations. http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2006/12/just_another_entrepreneurs_blo.html http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2006/12/just_another_entrepreneurs_blo.html General Sun, 10 Dec 2006 11:15:28 +0100 Elondra S.L., a small software startup company from Spain. Elondra has developed a high performance, high capacity database and synchronization engine for Java powered cellular phones, that is, simple J2ME.]]> http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2006/12/about_me.html http://en.narcisocerezo.com/2006/12/about_me.html General Sun, 10 Dec 2006 09:37:16 +0100