What’s Next?

This must have been the most confusing time of my life. A decision to move on is not an easy one. Friends, colleagues and relatives kept advising me to take a vacation. But for me, a vacation is something you go to from a workplace, and get back from, to a workplace. If it’s from nothing to nothing, then it’s probably not a vacation. And for me especially: I need to be constantly busy.

So I started by listing all possible future plans. All those ideas I’ve been shoving under the bed, hiding in the drawer. Every urge that was swept aside. I let my passions carry me to better places, called my imagination free and came up with at least one or two really good ideas every day, and probably some weird and not so great ideas too.

In the meantime my ever so clean and organized study became messy. Really messy. Tons of papers, notes, post its, receipts, notebooks, business cards from all over the world, pens and pencils, reading glasses, a broken netbook that needs backing up before sending it to be fixed. A long long list of things to do that keeps getting longer. On my desktop tens of incomplete blog posts, started just like this one, but never ripened to be presented in public. Another list that is not really getting shorter of people to call, schedule meetings, bring up to date.

I respond to event invitations, but rarely gather enough energy to go. What will I say? What shouldn’t I say?

I need time to heal, apparently.

Saying goodbye after almost 2 years isn’t simple.

It’s as complicated as finding the next focus at least.

September 2011

This September is very eventful. The ongoing social demonstrations and protests across the country continue. The school year opened. The Palestinians intend to declare their independent state. A game, from Israel, “Shaker” won Techcrunch Distrupt in San Francisco. Saveby has launched and running a successful alpha version. And by the end of the month we, that is myself, hubby and kids, are on our way to a first ever family vacation in the US.

There were so many topics to write about, I just kept starting and never got to finish any of my posts.

New School Year
My eldest daughter has started her last year of high school. All education revolutions we are talking about for the past 3-4 years will have no effect on her. I just hope some changes will happen before her future born kids will begin their own schooling.

My son started 8th grade, which is the last year of elementary school here; next year he is starting high school. This year he will choose a high school, and hopefully will be accepted into any program he chooses. Isn’t that what parenthood is all about? Opening as many options to our kids? This year is so crucial that we have jointly decided to give Ritalin a chance. A bit sad, in my view, that a child needs to be sedated in order to make it through a school year. But the effort to keep up without it has become a real burden. Grades are just too important this year.

My youngest joined a new school this year. For him we chose a Waldorf Education  school, fortunately not too far from home. He is still hanging to his skepticism about “any school ever fitting” his state of mind regarding education.

Shaking Disrupt
I was very excited at the winning of Shaker at the Techcrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. Not only because it’s one more representation of the startup nation, coming from Israel, but because it is a game.

The gaming (not to be confused with gambling) industry is moving forward big time. From the launch of Maple Story, to the launch of Q2L, a public middle school in NYC dedicated to games and game development, and now the winning at Techcrunch of an entertainment feature. Not technical, not tool, not another commercial innovation – all those are great, and fantastic, and every new idea is exciting, but the winning of this game puts another crown on the head of this industry. “People want to have fun”, I told a colleague who was wondering about this choice. “And it’s time we acknowledge this need across the board. From the obvious social networking, to other aspects of life, like education systems (yes, that again) and you know what? even health systems. We Want Fun!!”.

Shaker holds a tremendous promise and great potential for many other industries, way beyond Facebook. I really hope I get to meet with these guys soon and share some thoughts with them. Congratulation Ofer Rundstein, Yonatan Maor and Gad Maor.

Saveby a Totally Different Way
Saveby is my own startup, on which I am slaving for the past year with my co-founder, Yoav Perry. After a lot of research and development we released our alpha version and sent out alpha codes to willing participants across the US.

Saveby is the self-service group-shopping platform where parents from across the web -who are interested in the same product, band together to get it at group discount. Merchants accept these group offers to get volume sales.

Saveby is NOT another daily coupon, local deal or private sales site. It is not a middleman, haggler or merchant. It is simply a platform where parents can form or join group offers for the things they want -and have quality merchants accept their offer. Saveby is free to use. Payments are processed securely with PayPal. We really aim to disrupt current ecommerce by finding a real way to restore the power of the masses, the shoppers, to their hands.

Merchants are only happy to participate: “it’s our turn to sit back and relax and get best deals offered into our inboxes”. So this can really be the breakthrough ecommerce needs now. If you want an alpha invite too – let me know.

Launching the alpha isn’t a simple task. And it is especially complicated when half of the company isn’t located where the market it. But that’s how things are at the moment, while we’re still bootstrapping.

The idea about an “alpha” stage is that it isn’t perfect. Our alpha testers are people who have agreed to help us make the suit fit better. They take the time to share their feedback with us, make suggestions, try it and of course – tell others about it.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank some alpha participants for taking the time to go over the system with us: Josh Becker @DadStreet, Jim Turner @genuine, Amit Knaani @amitos from Vikido and BabyFirstTV, Aparna Vashisht-Rota @parentella and many more. I hope to meet face to face with some of my favorite parent bloggers during my visit to the US (starting next week) and introduce the system to more alpha testers. Next stage will take us to a full commercial testing.

A First Ever US Family Vacation
Vacation? Now?? Indeed this sounds strange. Who has the time to take a vacation during an startup launch?? Well, apparently we do. Even startup founders need to take some time to breathe and relax and renew. My kids and hubby deserve some quality mom time. Of course this cost mom a lot of hours in planning, reserving, ordering, arranging (getting a house sitter…)… And did I mention I intend to use some NY time to meet with my favorite business and blogging connections face to face? Let me know if you want in my schedule, between a sea of museums my kids (yes, it is them) insist on visiting. Oh, and recommendations are welcome.

Reply: Why Index believes Israel is about to have its moment

I read the GIGAOM article titled “Why Index believes Israel is about to have its moment” by Bobbie Johnson yesterday and started to write my comment, when I realized it’s pretty long and should be posted on my own site too. So…

It’s true. Israel is about to have its moment.
It does not have a deep culture of UI and design and is traditionally technology lead. So much so, that if you are not offering a big tech invention (preferably the scope of the wheel…) people hardly perceive you as an entrepreneur, and would be skeptical about investing. Well, at least that was the case until recently.
Almost a decade too late concepts and web ventures have started to gain some acknowledgement, but as mentioned in the GIGAOM article, web entrepreneurs have had to move to the US to build their company.
Sad and a bit strange too, considering the development in communications and access. One of the things Saul Klein of Index Ventures said at a recent conference in Tel Aviv is that entrepreneurs don’t have to think relocation so quickly, and if they do, then a midway – like the UK – can sometimes be better than all the way to the US, especially if you intend to go global, beyond the US market. He also mentioned a CEO who traveled to the US once a month, if I remember correctly, and people in the US west coast he met with regularly were not even aware of the fact that he wasn’t based in the US.
What??? Really?
Yes. After all there are phones, email, Skype…
Still, there are challenges in running an international web venture from our small country, 7-hour time-zones apart from the east coast. I know. I am facing those challenges daily, though thankfully I have a NY based partner. That does not prevent the question from popping at every meeting “so, are you planning to relocate?”.

But Israel is about to have its moment, I say. It is. People won’t have to relocate to run their businesses. Companies will always need local marketing people at every market they’re penetrating, but there is no real excuse for managements to relocate into those markets.

As for the question “Can a home market of just 7 million people ever be big enough to support multinational internet businesses? Is Israel, which exists in its own political and geographical bubble, able to play host to all this?” – Israel can play host but not because of its 7 million people market, nor location, obviously. It’s the state of mind that provides the nurturing environment entrepreneurs need to grow a multinational internet business. It’s the spirit that has always existed here, and is now gradually shaking off the 7-million-people & geographical-constraints thanks to open and thick worldwide communications and social media.

A couple of years ago I attempted to establish an elementary school for entrepreneurship in Israel. I believe in entrepreneurship as a state of mind. I believe that directing kids at thinking entrepreneurship can prevent violence and bullying and promote creativity, learning and happiness, as in being self content. Looking around me there are so many broken systems, in Israel, in its neighboring countries and around the world. Only entrepreneurs can really make a difference, create the change. Being an entrepreneur you take responsibility over your own destiny, you give birth to ideas and do what it takes to execute them. You learn to collaborate and appreciate others, and the diversity around you. I promise you I am not taking it too far when I say that I believe entrepreneurship can bring peace. And so, yep, Israel is about to have its moment.

Startup life: It’s a family effort

One month into the summer vacation and the kids are pretty busy. They keep themselves occupied, they don’t get bored, and they seem to be really happy with their freedom. I get to see them during meal times mostly. They don’t complain, yet I can’t escape the guilty feeling that’s creeping on me: What a terrible mom, not dedicating quality time to my kids during their summer vacation.

At the height of it, when I finally decided to take an hour off emailing and social networking to play a board game with my 9 year old son, he accepted me with a hug. Enhancing that guilty feeling.

But they know, and I even heard them explain it to their friends, that their mom is working, working really hard, working a lot. Sure, mom is at home, but mom is in her study, and shouldn’t be disturbed.

So it’s not only me paying the high price of a startup set up. Not that I ever believed it was only me. I can safely say that I am lucky my family accepts my crazy work hours and supports the startup effort.

The Mad Hatting Pioneer

Having to write and re-write executive summaries, business plans and a variety of texts for various uses doesn’t leave much time to blog. The micro blogging going on Twitter is a consolation prize, but it’s not as good as a full text blog.

I am now officially wearing the hat of my own company’s CEO. All through thinking and working towards the official launch of the company no one was wearing any hat. The hats were all lying around, waiting patiently. It’s time to start wearing some now.

All this hatting business reminded me of this hilarious scene of the “39 Steps”, where two actors switch between several roles, represented mainly by – hats. Establishing a startup you get to feel exactly like that on a daily basis:

It’s pretty easy to list the major hats in every hi-tech startup. You’ve got the CEO hat first, then the Technical hat or product hat, then the marketing hat. In between there’s an operations hat, and a financial hat, and an HR hat and the other hats, that are hanging just underneath those heavy hats, on the same crowded hat hanger.

When you’re bootstrapping the founders of the company have to divide those hats between them. It’s a very exciting time when a CEO gets to be also the VP marketing, Chief Financial Officer and Human Resources manager, and the President is in fact the Chief Operating Officer, the VP R&D, the Chief architect and Designer and, in our case, location’s fault, he is also the VP Business Development.

In a way it feels absurd. We’re at the point where we have the biggest amount of work to perform – creating the system, developing it and marketing it. Yet, this is the point where we have the least amount of resources to perform all these tasks. So it’s up to us to be fantastic hat jugglers.

It’s not easy to juggle all those hats. These can be stressful sleep-deprived times. Yet, to be perfectly honest, it’s also a lot of fun and excitement. The feel of generating something totally new, the feel of pioneering, of having to do with just what you’ve got, and still make it happen.

Success? What is it?

Amidst all the attention and hard work I almost forgot to be excited about the launch of my very own startup. I didn’t dwell on what it means, or what it might bring, on terms such as success and failure. Until yesterday, when I received a very surprising phone call.

A TV researcher was on the line. She told me of a TV series they are just beginning to produce, that will attempt to explore the question of success, what is it and how to achieve it.

How or why did she land on my phone line I have no idea. She mentioned being referred to me, but wasn’t quite sure if she should be talking to me as a representative of the successful female, or about motherhood, or education, or entrepreneurship.

Am I successful? I asked myself. Is there really an absolute “successful” definition?

I think people are rarely an absolute success. They could be more successful here and less successful there. When we talk about successful people we usually add another description – like, a successful business man, a successful artist, a successful student.

To make it even more confusing the TV researcher mentioned that the “Success” series is produced following a previous production of a series discussing “Happiness”.

Success and happiness are entangled and interdependent, yet in the western society we often let financial criteria interfere.

So I asked my kids what is success? My daughter said success is achieving things you want, goal by goal. My son said success is when you achieve happiness. The little one just said I hope I will succeed in saving wildlife.

I guess it’s all of those, really. Each goal I achieve makes me feel successful and happy. Each achievement makes me hungry for the next goal. Happiness can be a goal in itself, with different ways to achieve it.

And success in school? Well that’s a whole separate discussion.

Why am I “doing a startup”?

The past two weeks have been the busiest I’ve experienced. Well, no wonder: I’m launching a startup. Hadn’t expected it to be any different.
And as I am doing my work, including among other things constant research and networking I ran across Dave McClure’s blog post titled “Why NOT to do a Startup — becuz yer Gonna FAIL. (spend more time with your kids)“.
It’s got McClure’s presentation on the topic from the Seattle Startup Day. I watched it twice, and tested myself on the question of to do or not to do, or: why am I really doing it?
Here’s the presentation:

so why am I “doing” a startup (and planning the next one, or two)?
1- My correct reasons:
Because I am pissed whenever I approach online shopping
Because I have to solve some problems there
and yes, some fear is fueling my drive for this startup (and a lot of fear regarding the next one)
2- The unreasonable:
I live in a nice apartment, raise 3 happy kids and a hubby, and am a trained, professional, multi tasker: I have to be, because I always look beyond and watch for the wider contexts.
3- I’ve re-written the business plan so many times, to a point where I’d let the product and the customers interact with the business plan to make it true and dynamic as a good business plan should be.
4- My idea is GREAT! But I haven’t settled for my own view about it. I tested it on a wide variety of contacts, some less closer then others. Most comments are “Are you sure this wheel hasn’t been invented yet?” and “Let me in!”.
5- The idea was born as an awesome solution for the shoppers. But I was constantly aware of the fact, that if sellers interests aren’t met there will be no value in this solution. As I recruited my co-founder, a seller among other things, I’ve discovered this in fact solves a real problem for sellers too.
6- Leader or a looser? I must be some sort of a leader, if so many people recognize me in events or venues and contact me to help them solve their problems or answer their questions. I’m always happy to help, open to discuss anything and eager to learn from everyone.
7- My pitch is short and to the point. I don’t need a presentation (though our video clip is really cool!). I hope I’ll raise money to get out of bootstrapping and to -…
8-Recruit a full team!
Between us, the two co-founders we’re a tech, brand and GUI expert, and an international marketing, communications, social networking and biz dev. But to make it work we’ll need a full team of experts, each a master of his or her area.
9- Hopefully we will be able to establish a company based on care and generosity. It’s all about the people. First and foremost. People make the company, and not vice versa.
10- Can I sell or market? Marketing and communications strategies are my forte. Yet, even within marketing, you need the help of experts. No one can be an expert in everything. Recognizing this, and not trying to be a “know it all” is one of the keys to a successful startup. At least from my experience.
11- Oh YES! I want to change the world. Step by Step. Some steps will make more noise then the others. I fear this is only my beginning, because once you’ve liberated the startup bug, ideas will keep flowing.

To Be or Not To Be

Judging by the list of events and parties over the past month and the future one, it seems what the Israeli hi-tech industry is best at is – conventions, conferences, unconferences, more events, and parties. Just got a new invitation for an industry event last night, and as someone posted on Facebook – my calendar burst out laughing.

I wonder why this is. I mean, for me, an entrepreneur working on my own at home, every event is a chance to meet my co-workers. Same as you people, who work at your offices, get a chance to chat with the person sitting next to you in the office, or to go out for lunch together. I get this chance at those events, and sometimes much more.

About a year ago I’ve decided there are enough events offered so people like me, the bootstrappers, can settle for free events, and actually do some work between one event and the other. One filter applied. But it’s still hard to choose.

Some events seem more important or even valuable than others: You’ve got to show your face, make sure someone takes a photo of you, preferably in the same frame as someone “famous”, don’t forget to tag yourself on Facebook – that’s how your co-workers the other entrepreneurs, not to mention the surrounding industries, will know you are alive and kicking and just about to make your big announcement. Networking is a big part of any entrepreneur’s job. When the time comes to raise funds or launch, who your friends are might come in handy.

This week was amazing: I’ll start with the obvious – The Marker’s “com.vention”. Two great blogs posts were written about it in Hebrew immediately after the event. Yami Glik wrote on “The co.ils” a post title “a reason to worry” – about how small the local dot-com industry really is and how obvious it was in this huge convention, where every body who is any body had to show their face, but no real networking was possible nor the contents was of any real value or information to the dot-com industry members. Read it here.

Yuval Dror wrote about it a funny blog post – “A twitted summary of the com.vention” – which gives a pretty accurate impression of the event. Yuval didn’t attend the event this year or last year, but what he writes, (read it here ) makes a pretty accurate description of the trend.

The groupies trend.

An urge to see and be seen. To brush against the leaders. To have this important sense of belonging (“for those who missed #techonomy you missed out big time…”), not to mention the even stronger feeling of “being chosen”, preferred, favored, to participate in such events like Kinnernet or TEDx TLV, strangely enough filtered by the same figure, who’s groupies we all are. Or should better be, if we want to have any chance of success in the small, intimate, interdependent community of startups in Israel.

See you all at the next event.:-)

The Mangorangeberry Startup

Imagine you just had the thought of inventing a Mangorangeberry, a product that doesn’t exist yet. Sure there are oranges, there are mangoes and there are berries, there are even fruit salads, but no one has thought or produced anything similar to your idea of Mangorangeberry.

You begin to explore the market and see what they could be thinking about such an idea, without giving away the exact map of your Mangorangeberry. You encounter many people who are talking about the need for a combination of these flavors, these textures, the colors and the shapes of oranges, mangos and berries.

You read articles of great scholars explaining the need for change in the fruit market, especially the combination of oranges, mangos and berries. You encounter professional chefs aching to get their hands on such a combination. And thousands of hungry people seem to be just waiting for your Mangorangeberry to appear.

You know the concept is right.
You know the timing is perfect.
You know what should be done.

Yet…

You need to buy the land, buy the seeds, hire professional lab researchers to develop the combination’s seeds, plant the seeds, grow the plants, harvest and then, begin the tasting phase. You have a great idea, but you can’t make it happen all alone. You will either need money to buy the land, seeds, lab work and field work, or you need to get partners: one with the land, one a lab pro, one with the seeds… OK, with the planting and harvesting you can manage.

Now the search begins.
And potential partners are all over the place. They are interested. They are enthusiastic about your idea. But still, you haven’t found the partner with the land, or the partner who’s the lab pro and are available to join you.
Those partners, who will contribute their new set of skills, totally different from the set of skill you bring in, are hard to come by. Or they are too busy. Or they can’t afford to invest their time and effort in your startup.

Or maybe you aren’t looking in the right direction? Or perhaps you have been making the wrong offer?

Full Time Job. Think Full.

When I set out and decided I am going to pursuit my dream and become a full time entrepreneur I couldn’t imagine this. That endless number of hours spent on thinking. I mean, of course you’ve got to think. I think there for I am. But we’re used to thinking and acting. Thinking and doing. Thinking with team members.

Yet here I am, a struggling early-stage entrepreneur and I find myself spending a lot of time on thinking, as in reflecting. Not writing, though sometimes scribbling. No team work, though I often talk it out with my colleagues or mentors. Still most of the work is thinking.

I want to be able to be totally focused when I finally go out there and recruit or raise funds. I want to be able to have an answer for every question. I don’t want to postpone dealing with these questions to a later stage. I know, from my experience as a consultant, how wrong it can be so start up with not enough ready answers.

So thinking it is. Strangely enough, though it is time consuming and energy draining, it doesn’t “feel like work”. There is no actual product for every hour of work. And that thinking job consumes every minute of my being. When I shower, when I drive the kids to their afternoon classes, when I do my daily Sudoku, when I eat, or talk with my friends, when on vacation. There isn’t a stone on the street that won’t be able to generate inspiration when I am on the job. It just gives a whole new meaning to a full time job.

Ready to step out of the box and into online reality?

It was a strange call from reality. The whole time I have been planning my startup and working on its development I felt a little protected from reality. That big wide world I will eventually embark on, in a quest to turn my plans into a real business. But that call last week was a much needed shake.

Sivan Biran, a young and vibrant entrepreneur and the founder of her own company – Sergata – told me about the Internet-startup reality-style competition they will be running – exit09. For 4 weeks the general public will choose their favorite startup idea. The public will eventually choose 4 finalists, and a team of judges will choose their 4 finalist, and 2 of the 8 finalist will win a week work on the development of whatever you can develop in a week. The two developments will compete on the final prize – 100,000 dollars plus hardware to start it up.

I must admit, I might be a competitive person, but I am not the competitions person. I am even less a reality shows fan than I am a competition person. I wish the daring competitors all the luck and success they deserve. Of course I can’t help wondering what would have come out of twitter, for example, if it had to go through a popularity competition to justify its launch. How many votes from the public would it have received? I am not even sure about the judges votes.

It’s pretty scary out of the box. There are things there which we do not completely comprehend. Not to mention expect. I mean Twitter, again. I’d expect all the contest’ judges to have an account there. How can they judge a competition of Internet ventures if they are not ON the Internet?

No names, but here is a quick research, excluding Sivan.  Judge 1 – cannot be found on either twitter or FaceBook. Too private? Judge no. 2 has a FaceBook account with a nice photo and exactly 4 friends, and no twitter presence. Judge 3 is a lot more web active, still couldn’t find a twitter reference. Judge 4 is on Twitter, yey! Private twittering though. FaceBook page doesn’t reveal number of friends. Judge 5 has a FaceBook account, with more friends than judge 2 but a lot less then judge 3 and no twitter. Judge 6 is a mystery. Judge 7 is probably the wildest web animal of them all.

Now to the general public. Do they even know what’s a browser?

Going back to my roots I am examining the communications strategies. Reality shows communications strategies are very simple: they work like the basic popularity contests, much like in high school. They are great when you want to be a pop star. I’d even go for it when you want to market a pop product. But is the general public ready to step out of the box and into the online reality?

Platform or a service? That is the question

Do you go to a barber or to a hairstylist? Do you get a haircut or a hair design? Trends and fashion surely impacted the use of terminology in many industries over the years. The hi-tech arena is not different. The only thing we can say to its defense is that in many cases the evolution in terminology is accompanied by real technological developments, not just perception changes.

Think of how the web, “just web”, left the prime stage for the sake of web 2.0. Or the distance from the original LinkedIn concept to Twits. It’s just an example, of course.

And now, is “platform” the new trend pushing “web services” aside?

I’ve asked this question around for the past couple of weeks. It looks like the “platform” concept is very popular. Many developers of web services have decided to dress their companies with the air of “platform”. Isn’t offering a platform for buying and selling a lot more impressive than suggesting an online shop?

Similarly, venture capitalists say, many developers of various software solutions present their software as “an engine”. Having a software that performs isn’t impressive enough. But offer an engine – now you’re talking!

The investors are not that impressed with the new terminology. Although some treat is as “semantics only” and ignore the choice of word, others prefer it if the entrepreneurs would call their child with its proper name. That would lead to the correct market strategy, from research to penetration and management of competition.

So what is really the difference between a web service and that glorified platform?

A web service usually offers an actual solution to end users.
A web platform, however, offers a basis for the creation, by others, of services or solutions, which are then offered to end users. A platform is a basis on which you can build new things.

“The web is a platform”, claimed Tim O’reilly in his article from 2005 “What Is Web 2.0″. But some ventures have taken this concept too far. For instance- “The Meretz USA weblog is a platform for discussion of issues related to Israel and the American Jewish community…” – why not simply a forum?

In many cases it’s simply a confusion, where the usage of the term “platform” is correct – language wise, even if not venture-wise. “ParagonEX Trader is an advanced online trading platform for the Forex market”. “Erayo is the world’s first online wholesale platform for boutiques and independent retailers.” “BlogTV is a well recognized platform that has won several awards”. Qoof widget is “The Most Advanced Video Platform on the World Wide Web”.

Qoof executive chairman and founder Richard Kligman explained: “I think we just started a few years ago with the term Platform and so that is what stuck. Even though SASS (Software as a Service) may be a better fit for us now, platform is still more understood when talking to clients and investors. If I remember correctly we looked at what Brightcove called themselves and since we are the best solution for video as a selling tool, as opposed to an entertainment tool like Brightcove, we decided to go with that. I think SAAS is on its way up and will be more common in the next 12-24 months, but for now Platform is the one you need to explain less.”

On the other side there are companies who could use the sexy term, but elegantly avoided the trend:
“Fring™ is a mobile internet community and communication service that allows friends to connect…” but “Fring provides an Open API, providing 3rd party developers with the building blocks to create mobile web apps and leverage Fring community & hardware capabilities” which actually adds a platform to the service.

Things are very clear in the eyes of entrepreneur Yossi Taguri (Nuconomy). “A platform is something you build on, a service is something you give out of the box…For instance: Windows is a platform, hotmail is a service. Google app engine is a platform, Google apps for domains is a service.” Yet on the company’s web site “NuConomy helps companies better assess and understand website and social marketing performance with its free, next generation web analytics and optimization platform.” Taguri clarifies: “we have an analytics service and an advertising platform”.

You can get a hint on the perceived importance of ‘platform’ from a sentence Jeff Pulver wrote on one of his blog posts “…Facebook’s opening of it’s platform with the APIs … transformed FaceBook from a social networking application to a social networking operating system”.

So my guess is, we should be looking at the development of a lot more platforms in the next couple of years. And probably a process of separation between services or SAAS and platforms.

Kids Out of the Box

During the Purim school vacation I drove my 11 year old son with his classmate to the yearly conference of StartupSeeds. On the way the two boys spoke of their creative ideas, using phrases like “thinking out of the box” and giving a new meaning to fun.

I liked it. I like their creativeness, their openness and their ambition. The conference hosted some 80 kids or more. Formally it is directed at kids ages 13 and up, but there are individual cases where it appeals to younger kids too. The warmest part of the event for me was meeting Oz Ben-Hamo and Andrey Boukaty, two 17 year old kids, who started the http://joinmylife.co.il/en/ project during the last Gaza war. Their aim was to explain to the world what kind of life are the kids from southern Israel forced to live. I “met” them online, through facebook conenctions and gladly helped them translate texts and posts to English. The blog is still alive, though the frequency of posts declined and not all posts are translated to English.

One other story that came out of StartupSeeds and made headlines on the same week was the story of Yuval Shoshan, a 12th grader, who made his first ‘exit’. He started his web venture at the age of 14.5. He received mentoring through StartupSeeds from Yaniv Golan, one of the founders of Yedda, which was sold to AOL. Yuval’s venture is a rating site – www.opinion.co.il – allowing users to rate books, music, movies, blogs and restaurants. Users can sort opinions according to genres and rate the raters and the ratings. Shoshan sold the venture, among other things, because in a short while he will have to go into the mandatory military service for 3 years.

StartupSeeds is doing a great work, obviously. I just wish there was a growing awareness of the need to educate for entrepreneurship. Some kids have it like a natural gift, others need to learn it. But entrepreneurship is a must skill for life.

Two ideas at the cost of one

March broke of with a set of terrible storms. Winds, rain and very cold for this area. It went down to 9c degrees. I didn’t feel like going out at all. But on Monday having pre registered to attend the ISOC and GamesIS convention I have decided to ignore the storm and just do it.

And a good thing I did. Heard some interesting talks. Met interesting people. Some were contacts I have been meaning to meet for a chat for a very long time. So finally we had the chance to do it.

I met a colleague who asked me why I came. I said I like these events because they usually get the wheels going. It’s always a push, no matter where you are. He was surprised. In his view this was too much an official venue. You need some letting go, some nonsense atmosphere, don’t you?

Well, apparently, I don’t. Not that I mind doing the unofficial events too, but I was really happy when at the end of the day I knew I had a new idea for a startup, and I also knew what is the next step on my current startup idea.

Of course, this has some good sides and some bad sides. I almost dared to think that perhaps I should avoid such inspiring events so that I don’t get distracted and can keep on my track, my current startup idea. Why did I have to get this diversion now? I was almost sorry.

But then, having a new idea is exciting. So you can’t stay “sorry” for very long.

So, now what?

Who will invest in startups in 2009?

While working on the script for a demo to present my startup venture, I am approaching the dreaded point where I will need to get other people’s money to advance my vision. In other words: fish for investors.

‘Investors’ are like a dirty word nowadays. When talking to other entrepreneurs the word “investors” or “investment” is whispered. As if by saying it out loud the dream will crumble and disappear.

The gloom projections for 2009, based on the sad financial events at the closure of 2008, add to a global pessimist atmosphere. The “realists” I meet say to me, nodding their heads, “well… a startup venture?? Now??? This is really not the time, you know??”

Well, what can I say, it’s now that I have this idea, and not later. True, I assume the competition will be fierce and the chances of landing that deserved funding are lesser this year. But that does not mean that by putting my project on hold for two years I will be able to promote the idea faster or safer then.

So I am back to my desk. Following the financial news and learning of the financial figures. I am trying to adopt my message to current times and events and see if I can find that path into some investors’ hearts.

*Click to Play Money by Pink Floyd