Blogcamp CEE 2008 w Kijowie

W Kijowie odbył się Blogcamp dla Centralnej i Wschodniej Europy. To już drugie spotkanie takiego poziomu.

Było:
- duża ilość prezentacji nowych projektów. Może później opowiem.

- Wystąpienia fachowców z różnych dziedzin bliskointernetowych.

- Dzień inwestora na którym młode startup'y próbowali zdobyć przychylność biznes aniołów z całego światu.

Najbardziej ciekawe rzeczy można było usłyszeć w Dniu inwestora. W ogóle głównym pytaniem całego spotkania było - czy nie zaszkodzi branży kryzys światowy. Odpowiedź brzmiała że nie. W czas kiedy obcinają się budżety reklamowe w tradycyjnych media internet zyskuje. Prawda to czy nie, ale małe zrastanie środków na reklamę internetową niektórzy potwierdzili.

Jeżeli chodzi o otwarcie nowych startup'ow i pozyskanie środków w Silicone Walley to:

Trzy kierunki, gdzie można działać zaczynając startup: tematyczne sieci społeczne, produkcja web-widgetów, agregatory kontenta z wielu stron.

Trendem ostatniego czasu jest zmniejszenie ilości używanych przez jednego internautę sieci społecznych do 3,6. Czyli jedna biznesowa w stylu LinkedIn, druga personalna w stylu Facebook, i trzecia - z hobby. Właśnie na tę trzecią radzą zwrócić uwagę eksperci. "Szukajcie niszę tematyczną, kształcicie naturalny monopol, i nie puszczajcie tam konkurencję", - radził ukraiński ekspert i dyrektor BayView Innovations Inc Denis Dowgopoły. Brzmiał ciekawy przykład z jednej amerykańskiej konferencji inwestorów. Chłopaki otworzyli sieć społeczną dla miłośników obserwacji ptaków przez binokle. Kiedy było powiedziano, że w Stanach ta kategoria ludzi kupuje różnych urządzeń dla swojego hobby na $30 mld., u inwestorów od razu zaiskrzyło w oczach :)

Były także wystąpienia ukraińskich i rosyjskich staruperów którzy już realnie dostają środki. Ich porady: zapomnieć na jakiś czas o Stanach, tam teraz "kryzys", a wschodnia Europa to coś dalekiego, niemal inna planeta. Do tegoż dodatkowo narobił hałasu piątkowy raport Sequoia Capital. Najlepiej teraz szukać fundusze w Europie. No i zalecano robienie projektów z szybkim zwracaniem kosztów. Takie wolne oczekiwanie na zyski jak kiedyś dla inwestów już nie pasuje.

Z polskich firm na Blogcamp'ie zauważono Agorę ze swoim mocno promowanym Bloxem, GG z prezentacją na której nie byłem, Profeo (ci już mają autorytet pośród ekspertów), Ganimede.

Poniżej podaje listę finalistów startup'owych i listę jury:

Seed Stage

DomVsem
DomVsem is a real estate portal and search engine that will deliver flexible search, accurate results, eyecatching property visualization, advanced mapping and a range of features to help real estate agents and agencies do their jobs more effectively. DomVsem claims to change the way users search for real estate and the way agents and agencies advertise online by qualitatively shifting expectations of what the user experience should be.

Hippocrat (zwycięzca)
Historically patients of all ages and social status face three challenges: i) unified and easily accessible storage of their medical records, ii) background check of a doctor's reputation, and iii) getting a second opinion to support diagnosis of their current doctor. None of these problems had been solved so far separately and as a whole. Hippocrat's teem suggests that a social network is created which will connect key participants: doctors and patients to solve all three problems for them. Monetization opportunities are vast, especially when we have in mind pharmaceutical companies, equipment manufacturers and even drug stores. Rollout will start in Europe, with Asia and finally the US followed.

Relenta
Relenta is a simple email-based contact and task manager that helps small work-groups get things done quickly and with fewer interruptions. Relenta replaces five types of software by combining the functionality of shared email, contact manager, online calendar, task manager, and email newsletter marketing software into one elegant CRM-like application.

TalkFest
Talkfest.net is the data-oriented resource divided into thematic communities. The project is designated to unite people with similar interests and give them an opportunity to create information, share it with others and earn money on this. The resource unites the information consumers and creators into a single self-regulated mechanism with high possibilities of communication, information structuring, interface convenience and established connection with the administration so that the project could be adapted according to the users' needs.

Youstyler
Youstyler is a localized social network of fashion-obsessed people. It relies on users' interest in streetwear, who benefit from the service by getting feedback on the photos of their outfit options and socialize with like-minded fashionistas in the area. For revenue raising purposes it markets this audience's attention to the local fashion boutiques. Having the resources and major connections in the retail business in Kyiv, Youstyler can build up good advertising business based on its social network. Currently in beta stage, this invite-only service already generated certain buzz among users.

Early Growth Stage

ClienteQ (zwycięzca)
Clienteq is a collaborative CRM solution that is open to clients. It is a shared collaboration space where your team and your client's team can plan meetings, track project status, publish minutes, share and discuss documents, publish reports, and receive feedback. All client-related information is centrally located - you just decide whether a comment or a document is to be shared with the client or to remain internal. Internally, you can track clients' status and sales progress on the companywide dashboard.

DeepMemo
Deepmemo is the information processor, which helps any reader of Web to easily work with information - to cut interesting information (quotes, pieces of text and/or pictures), save, organize and share these quotes online. Deepmemo product-line today includes web-site with web 2.0 and social network functionality; deepmemo-toolbar for Firefox and IE; virtual toolbar (widget) for online mass-media; "My quotes" widget; API for web-developers etc. Deepmemo.com eliminates friction between reader and text - any internet-user are able not only read the text, but easily work with it.

P-Navigator
P-Navigator is a tool for professional information search and retrieval. It runs on top of existing search engines, analyzing, enhancing and restructuring their results and providing end-users with semantics-centered GUI to navigate through found documents and hidden connections between them.

TuneStory
TuneStory is a service making iPod and iPhone devices more social. After installing our software, the user can generate musical recommendations on-the-go right from her iPod, so that they are published on TuneStory website where her friends can subscribe to them, as well as on her blog, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter profiles. The revenues will be generated primarily from affiliation fees from selling music.

Alltunedin
Alltunedin.com was founded in '08 to provide easy-to-use on-demand solution to build and manage niche social networks for businesses and organizations. They have already tested alpha product at the Russian market (http://vsevteme.ru) and collected positive customer references in this segment. Also alpha product won such award as "Software of the Future" at BIT business plan competition and was funded by Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovation Enterprises and Microsoft Corporation.

Investor day experts

Maksym Shkolnik – TechnoBridge (Ukraine)
Andres Susi – Martinson Trigon Venture Partners (Baltics and Russia)
Allan Martinson – Martinson Trigon Venture Partners (Baltics and Russia)
Ihor Semenov – Aventures Capital (Ukraine)
Anna Dvornikova – AmBar (California, USA)
Wojciech Dolkowski – Business Angel Network Poland (Poland)
Nikolay Mityushin – ABRT (Russia)
Stas Khirman – Khirman and son (California, USA)
Inna Proshkina – Go2Market (Russia)
Yelena Masolova – AddVenture (Russia)
Gleb Kaplun – Web2People (Russia)
Pavel Pogodin – Sughrue (California, USA)
Andriy Slyvynskyi – Aval Brok (Ukraine)
Maksym Polyakov – IDE Group (United Kingdom – Ukraine)
Reshma Sohoni – SeedCamp (UK)
David Waroquier – Mangrove (Luksemburg)
Ihor Lisytskyi – IT Ukraine (Ukraine)
Tom Paffen – Capital-CVentures (Netherlands)
Georgiy Korpachev – Intel Capital (Russia)
Alessio Beverino – Sofinnova (France)
Valeria Temple – Independent consultant (California, USA)
Slava Kritov – Symantec (California, USA)
Igor Plotnikov – Cisco (California, USA)
Odd Moe – Fornebu Management (Norway)
Alex Gurevich – Draper Fisher Jurvetson (USA)
Evgeny Pilyankevich – TechInvest (Ukraine)
Sergey Grebenyuk – DolphinStrategy (Ukraine)
Mykhaylo Lopatin – DolphinStrategy (Ukraine)
Igor Vlasyuk – Private investors of Ukraine Association