May 2012
6 posts
HackFwd Build 0.10: Lineup and Tickets
Since the beginning, HackFwd has organized Build events as a part of our programme. For the first time, we are now opening the ticketing to selected applicants for the Saturday afternoon on 9 June at our Build 0.10 event in Berlin. You can now apply for a ticket (priced only to cover the costs) by 25 May.
We are very excited to announce the lineup for the afternoon:
Niklas Zennström, Atomico
...
How Hike joined HackFwd
Here’s an awesome story from Hike on how they applied to Pitch In Berlin and ended up joining HackFwd. Includes cool photos from the last event! Yes, we bring retro arcades into the Build events, in addition to the coolest startups and the best speakers. Want to join us? Apply to Pitch in Berlin by the end Tuesday, May 15th! Hike applied 6 minutes before the deadline - so you too still have...
Pitch in Berlin deadline extended to May 15th
We have a very exciting announcement coming up on Monday regarding our Build events. For that reason, we wanted to extend the deadline of the Pitch in Berlin contest until the end of day Tuesday, May 15th. Given the quality received this far is already high, we’ve got our work cut out for us. Apply to Pitch in Berlin here!
Announcing Hike
We’re proud to announce Hike as the latest addition to our portfolio! Hike creates awesome apps for Facebook Pages and is based in Cologne, Germany. The startup has been in existence for less than a year but already their apps are used by 65,000 pages around the world. Join us in welcoming Hike by giving them a like on Facebook here (+195,000 people already have).
We’re particularly...
No Mentors at HackFwd?
You may have noticed HackFwd doesn’t have any mentors. Maybe you think that’s crazy given the fact that most startup incubators, accelerators, etc take great pride in their mentors and highlight them boldly on their websites. In fact, it appears that most startup programs believe the more mentors the better. If I’m a first time entrepreneur it must be reassuring to see 50, 60, 70 or 100+ people...
Rise of the Micro-VC - Sean Seton-Rogers at Build...
In this short and punchy talk Sean Seton-Rogers of PROFounders explains how the investment market is responding to today’s lean startups.
PROFounders Capital is based in London and currently has made 17 investments throughout Europe, including Tweetdeck and Made.com. PROFounders has an early stage focus tailored to fit closely with the lean startup way of running a business (also watch Alex...
April 2012
5 posts
BeamApp - Most Innovative App at The Next Web
HackFwd’s BeamApp was initially participating in The Next Web conference in Amsterdam to find developers for a limited number of API keys they are making available, until the event organizers pulled Heiko up on stage to pitch with a ‘wildcard’ - an invitation to the startup contest. Heiko prepared for his pitch all of 30 minutes, and the jury was duly wowed, awarding BeamApp the...
Pitch in Berlin v4 now open
Pitch in Berlin is a pitching contest for European early-stage startups. To apply, submit the details of your startup at PitchInBerlin.com by May 11th. The audience consists of the HackFwd network, top European investors, startup veterans, future stars and members of the press.
We are now running the pitch contest for the fourth time. Here’s TechCrunch on a previous event, and our blog...
Lean Startups Express - Alex Barrera at Build 0.9
Alex Barrera is a serial entrepreneur whose latest venture, Press 42, is a startup-specific wire service that aims to link startups with journalists and bloggers. In this talk he evangelises the “lean startups” approach, which he believes is the surest path to successfully building products that people care about. Alex is also a HackFwd Referrer.
When Alex takes a straw poll in the room he...
Effectuation - Talk from Build 0.9 by Carlo Blatz
Carlo Blatz is a serial and parallel entrepreneur, now running Interactive Pioneers, who has been using the effectuation technique as a way of building successful businesses for years. He is also a HackFwd referrer.
“Future is unpredictable, but you can control it nonetheless.”
While effectuation is a relatively new technique that is being taught in some business schools, it actually...
Loose leadership requires tight footwork
There are a number of reasons why startups must carefully consider their leadership style: the right leadership style can help employees and stakeholders thrive on change; it can encourage an open and learning culture; and most of all, it can help you to retain your best people.
But loose leadership isn’t the same as “laissez faire.” Rather, it’s a high-investment strategy that includes capacity...
March 2012
14 posts
Get early access to TankWars on Facebook today
TankWars is the new game being launched soon by the team behind Reign of Steel, and this afternoon at 6PM CET, you are able to get early access to the game on Facebook. Head over to the TankWars Facebook page. Here’s a video trailer of the battle ahead.
HackNow winner launches HolaIO
Last summer HackFwd created HackNow, a coding contest for under 18-year olds in Europe. The contest’s inaugural winner was Luis Iván Cuende García. Then at the age of 15, Luis Iván entered the contest with Asturix On, a distributed web-tech based desktop that promises to be a challenger in distributed personal computing. You can read the awesome Knowledge@Wharton interview with Luis Iván...
Early-stage investing in Europe - Talk at Build...
Nikolaj Nyholm, General Partner at Sunstone Capital, has been a serial entrepreneur and is now a VC. In this talk he unlocks the secrets from the other side of the investment equation.
Nikolaj has had a broad and successful career with startups, beginning with a domain name registration company and ending with facial recognition software that he sold on to Apple. Since 2010 he’s been working with...
Accidental SEO - Talk from Build 0.9
Sebastian Deutsch from Watchlater, one of the HackFwd startups, shared his experiences of SEO that any startup can benefit from.
There are three options for your growth. The first is ‘blitzkrieg’ style where you push your product out into the market with heavy machinery. The second is having the Facebook-gene that naturally translates into a hockey stick. First option takes lots of...
"Easier to train a geek how to do business than a...
The quote by Lars Hinrichs, tweeted by Heather Russell, was the most retweeted tweet in the London Web Summit which took place this week. This is what we believe at HackFwd and what we have geared our program towards. We look for and support Europe’s most talented, passionate geeks, and with our network of experienced entrepreneurs and professionals, supply them with both business and tech...
8 Habits of Highly Motivated Startups
Startups are tough. You’re out there carving a path that no-one else has carved before. You have no idea whether you’ll succeed or fail. You encounter well-meaning worriers and envious doom-sayers. And on top of that you have to get a business off the ground. How do you keep going?
If your motivation has failed you and you feel like giving up, here are eight steps that will help to get you back on...
Fail Better
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett, Westward Ho
Hackers break things. Sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately but we always break things. The joy of breaking things doesn’t come from destruction, it comes from learning how to put things back together more elegantly and stronger than before.
To non-hackers this can seem like a risky,...
The Minimum Viable Deal - Talk from Build 0.9
Michael Jackson is partner with Mangrove Capital and a HackFwd board member. This is the first talk from Build 0.9 that took place in Berlin March 8-10th.
In this talk Michael reduces ‘business development’ down to three categories: buying, selling, and bullshit.
Programmers often don’t like business development, for a good reason. It is a convoluted field with a lot of...
Delta Strike iPad Prototype – Export 3D Flash...
This is a guest blog post by Michael Plank (@Michael_Plank), CTO of Pro3Games, the startup behind Delta Strike.
I’m sure you’ve heard people saying: “Flash doesn’t work on iOS” or “Flash is dead“…
I would say: “Flash is currently the best cross platfom technology for developing games for both desktop and mobile devices!”
Read about how we got the Delta Strike prototype running on the iPad in...
Pitch in Berlin v3: Startups & The Winners
Pitch in Berlin is a pitch contest that we at HackFwd run in conjunction with our Build events in Berlin. Pitch in Berlin, already in v3, took place on Saturday. The following 12 startups from seven European countries presented their product to an audience of investors, press, tech experts and other startups from all over Europe. We received nearly 90 applications so just getting invited to pitch...
Build 0.9 kicking off in Berlin
HackFwd’s Build 0.9 started today with updates from the HackBoxes, from new to alumni. The startups all came in with plenty of news of progress. A few good examples are Equilibrium’s 130,000 organic downloads on Android, 2.3m unique views for Infogr.am (that’s before product launch) and the impressive monetization power of YieldKit’s YieldWord.
The first talk was given...
How to find the right domain name - a talk from...
Michael Marcovici is one of the co-founders of the Domain Developers Fund – an investment fund that develops and trades domain names. In this talk, Michael shares his insights into domain name investment. He also gives examples of the value of owning a category-killer name. Watch the video to learn how to find the right domain name for your startup.
While Michael started out as a collector of...
Meetings considered harmful: debug your groups
“You may joke about how committee meetings make you feel brain dead, but our findings suggest that they may make you act brain dead as well,” according to Read Montague, a senior researcher at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. Their neuroscientific research showed that people drop a few IQ points when they’re asked to perform in “social” settings like meetings. Not only...
Fantasy Shopper in The Economist
Fantasy Shopper gets a great treatment in this article in The Economist, The Buying Game: Can play shopping transform the real thing. Chris Prescott, Fantasy Shopper CEO, introduces the key ideas behind the startup, why it is both appealing to its key users, and why “pre-purchase validation” can be a game-changer in retail.
February 2012
9 posts
sharypic releases iPhone app for event photo...
sharypic has just released its free iPhone app in the App Store. The sharypic app lets you take and share photos for an event, and discover and enjoy the best photos of public events (concerts, festivals, sports events, conferences etc.) nearby or around the world, most recent or most popular. The iPhone app fits sharypic’s strategy well and complements the original sharypic event photo...
Time Management for Startups
Time management isn’t just about making sure you don’t miss a deadline. Better time management helps you to choose which priorities to focus on; it helps you to be more effective; and it helps you to remain motivated.
Many time management techniques were developed for the corporate environment. The underlying assumption is that you have a clearly defined role and goals, and that there are people...
HBS: Persistence Leads to Startup Success
Harvard Business School undertook a recent study to determine the factors that lead to success in startups and, while nothing succeeds like success, a previous failure can still help an entrepreneur make it.
Paul Gompers and Josh Lerman studied over 30 years of data from venture funded businesses under the title “Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship”. If a business went public,...
Acquiring Customers: Talk by Florian Heinemann at...
In this talk Florian Heinemann (CEO, Rocket Internet) shares his insights into the ways that a good business analytics concept is essential to your growth.
Florian’s message from his presentation at HackFwd’s Build 0.8 is straightforward: understand who your key customers are, the ones who are responsible for the highest lifetime value, and tailor your product around these people. The execution...
Europe Embraces Entrepreneurship
Historically, Europe has been viewed as the quieter sibling in the international family of entrepreneurship. Commentators have pointed to a higher degree of risk aversion, the difficulties of raising finance, and even differences between European education systems and the education systems in the US and Asia as reasons for this reticence. These differences have been eroding, however, and the...
Understanding your users - Jonathan Briggs
Jonathan Briggs, co-founder of Hyper Island and a HackFwd Referrer, issues a rallying cry: “put users at the heart of your products.”
In this talk, Jonathan leads us through his years of experience with user modelling, some formal and some less so. What he has learned and is keen to impart is that too often we don’t think of “users” as real people. He gives the example of the Google image search...
HackFwd announces Infogram
Latvian Infogr.am is the latest addition to HackFwd’s startups. Infogr.am let’s you create professionally designed infographics in minutes, and the startup aims to fundamentally change the way people work with visual information online. In a similar fashion that you can snap a photo and share it on your social networks, you can now make a statement or an argument graphically and share...
Starting up when the economy’s down
Entrepreneurs who launch their startups in a downturn have to get used to being thought of somewhere along the scale from “brave” to “reckless” but in truth, the state of the economy has very little impact on whether a startup will thrive. Apple and Microsoft famously began in a recession; and 16 out of the 30 Dow Jones corporations started in an economic downturn. If you have a marketable idea...
Om Malik: Who Says Startups Are Easy? Talk from...
Om Malik is the founder of GigaOm. In this presentation from HackFwd’s Build 0.8 event, he takes a long-term perspective and talks about why startups are hard.
“We all think that startups are so cool, but there is a lot of work involved in them. [Having] seen at least 4 bubbles in my life, I feel privileged at least in that I can see patterns,” he explains, and he spends the first half of...
January 2012
9 posts
10 Rules of Networking for Startups
Networking is essential for startups: in order to build trust and credibility in your business you need to be visible and to make personal connections. Whether you want to recruit, attract funding, or win clients, it’s the personal touch that will win people over.
You almost certainly need to build new contacts as you get your startup off the ground and, if you’re innovating a brand new field,...
Build Communities Not Content - Paulina Bozek at...
Paulina Bozek is the co-founder of social entertainment startup INENSU. In this talk she shares the insights that she’s learned from her years in social gaming.
Paulina spoke about the virtue of building communities before content in her early (9:05 AM) talk, opening the program for the Saturday of HackFwd’s Build 0.8 event.
INENSU are focusing on two platforms that cover two...
Fantasy Shopper $3.3M round announced
As reported first by TechCrunch Europe, Fantasy Shopper has recently closed a financing round worth $3.3M, led by Accel Partners and New Entreprise Associates. Fantasy Shopper joined HackFwd at the end of 2010, and developed (in stealth) and launched the incredibly addictive social shopping game in October in the UK. They also cleaned awards tables in the UK and the US, most notably first prize at...
Roberto Bonanzinga: Do VCs help or hurt? A talk...
In this lively talk, Roberto Bonanzinga from Balderton Capital asks whether VCs help or hurt entrepreneurs and offers some answers – some of which might come as a surprise.
According to Roberto, there are lots of ways in which a VC can damage or even kill a startup. This might be a message from an unexpected quarter, but he knows what it is to sit on both sides of the negotiating table. “[At...
Fab.com: from zero to hero in 9 months - Talk from...
Jason Goldberg, founder and CEO of Fab.com is passionate about design, and he made the decision to shutdown a prior startup and retooled to follow his passion in Fab.com. In this talk he explains why this bold move was the path to success. Fab.com recently raised a $40 million venture round.
Jason spent 2010 building his latest startup, Fabulous. By early 2011 he realised it wasn’t getting the...
betashop: Behind the Scenes: How Fab Raised $40... →
Jason Goldberg’s super-insightful blog post on how Fab.com raised their recent round. Jason’s talk at Build 0.8 is following up in the next post.
betashop:
Let’s face it, fundraising can be a real pain in the ass for the entrepreneur.
It takes up a ton of time that can be otherwise spent managing the business.
Sure, it’s a necessary evil, but it’s also typically a big...
Marco Börries: Leadership in startups - Talk from...
Marco Börries has built three successful startups, including StarOffice (later known as OpenOffice). He shares his experience on how founders can be better leaders, and what he is doing differently now that he is running his fourth startup.
Here are summaries of the three of Marco’s six insights. If you are a founder, or want to be a better leader, watch this video.
“You are...
Pitch in Berlin v3 now accepting applications
Pitch in Berlin is a pitch contest organized in connection with our Build events in Berlin. The next one takes place March 10th, and the applications are now open. The audience consists of top investors, startup veterans, future stars and members of the press.
Application window remains open until 10. February, 23.59 pm GMT. Check out the TechCrunch TV coverage from the previous event,...
How to Create a Hit iPhone Game - Torsten Reil
Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion, spoke at HackFwd’s Build 0.8 event on how to create a hit iPhone game.
NaturalMotion Games started out as a game technology company, and their Euphoria-technology has been used from Grand Theft Auto IV to Pepsi TV ads (check out the Pepsi ad 3:00 into the talk). With the introduction of the iPhone, Natural Motion moved into creating new types of mobile...
December 2011
3 posts
Delta Strike: Santa Release
Delta Strike has been busy over the last days of the year, pushing their latest Santa release two days ago. The new release sees the introduction of two new characters, Commander Kozel and Sergant Noemi, who will guide the players through the new missions. In the end, the player may face the ultimate Shar’dal boss adversary, and upon triumph, receive a pretty special item.
The game also...
Filmaster released for Android
Filmaster has just released an Android version of the smart movie recommendation and schedule app and updated the iPhone version to include TV showtimes too, better serving the selection available to movielovers.
They are also adding local film festival support, serving the needs of film buffs on a local level. At launch, Filmaster is the official app for ten festivals in the UK and Poland, where...
Tom Hulme: Is Entrepreneurship Mad Science?
Tom Hulme, IDEO Design Director and HackFwd Referrer, talks about entrepreneurship being a form of mad science. There is much chaos and uncertainty, but there are also great formulas for succeeding.
We have more computing power in our smartphones than NASA had when they put a man on the moon, “so you have to start feeling guilty about using that to fire little birds at pigs”, Tom...
November 2011
8 posts
YieldKit wins WebFuture award
Last night YieldKit was awarded the WebFuture first prize in Hamburg. Selected from among 10 finalists, the judges valued YieldKit’s innovativeness, execution and marketing prowess in their appraisal. YieldKit took home 10,000 euros in prize money and another valuable milestone. You can read more about the event here (in German).
YieldKit recently launched YieldWord, a semantic page...
Time to Market - Talk from Build 0.7
For startups, time to market is the time from having an idea to having that idea out in the market making money. In this talk Stephan Schmidt imparts his experience in this key product development concept.
“If a feature is worth developing, it is worth getting to market sooner”, Stephan posits. Short time to market is a huge lever that you can employ to the benefit of your bottom...
Future of 3D game technologies - Talk from Build...
Jonas Echterhoff works on the Mac browser plugin of the Unity 3D game engine, and in this talk he outlines what he thinks is the future of 3D games technology.
Unity 3D allows developers to develop a game on one framework and port that to multiple platforms quickly. Jonas discussed the future of 3D gaming in the browsers from a technical and platform perspective and gives an appraisal of the...
Delta Strike launches in-game item shop
In tune with their roadmap, team at Delta Strike has just released an in-game shop for decking out those starfighters. Keeping with the high visual standards, the items look awesome and surely those hard-earned credits will go into good use. We’re definitely grabbing a few droids to go on the side.
Read the team’s detailed blog post on the milestone here.