Prezi Hackathon II: 2 days, 37 hackers

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

Last weekend, 37 hackers, including Prezi employees and students from around the world, spent two days in the Prezi office to create fun, and (sometimes) useful projects using Prezi.

After two days, teams presented their incredible projects:

  • Prezi Kinect Hack: Control your prezi using body gestures
  • Prezi Wars: Use Prezi Meeting to play a third-person shooter with your friends
  • WebGL Prezi: The results are in, our developers tackled creating a rough version of Prezi in WebGL!
  • Prezi Usage Map: A zoomable map of prezi creations, visits, and tweets about Prezi
  • Whiteboard to Prezi application: Automatically create a prezi from a photo you’ve taken
  • Hipchat bot: Type in a command in hipchat, our HP bot will let the office know what’s up; break something in Prezi, sirens and lights!
  • Democratic Voting in Prezi: Make life’s toughest decisions using Prezi voting
  • Prezi Logo from Post-its: See the Prezi logo, made “pixel by pixel” from Post-it notes
Check out a nice video from Day 1 (stay tuned for Day 2 footage):

And some nice photos of the weekend (more to come!):

Third-person Prezi Meeting shooters are no joke
Hackers working on the hardware
Hackers taking a step back
Prezi uses Kinect motions to navigate
And the hackers seem to like the results
A zoomable map of real-time Prezi usage
One team created a third-person shooter in Prezi Meeting
Make life's most important decisions in Prezi
Prezi co-founder can be seen and heard, even when in SF
Prezi employees' children make circular art tool
Made from post-it notes


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Startup Exits Event

Startup Exit Event #4 is now starting to materialize, so please save the date for 19th of January, 2012 in San Francisco!

Join successful entrepreneurs and startup acquisition professionals for a special evening event in San Francisco on the topic of “Startup Exits.” Hear stories from entrepreneurs who’ve sold their companies– how they did it, what they learned, and what they would do differently next time.

The event is going to rock, and will give crucial insight for any VC and startup Entrepreneur, the current line up for the panel is made up of:

  • Ilya Fushman, Corporate Development, Dropbox
  • Bruce Jaffee, EVP of Corporate Development, Glam Media
  • Lorraine McDonough, VP of Corporate Development, eBay
  • Tom Duterme, Corporate Development, Groupon
  • Nathan Beckord, Principal, VentureArchetypes Startup Advisors (Moderator)

How to succeed in Silicon Valley @ Innovate Sweden event at Stanford

A short presentation on some key things about connecting to the Silicon Valley eco-system, presented this Wednesday, BootstrapLabs founder and CEO, Nicolai Wadstrom presented at the Innovative Sweden event.

They made it with Prezi on iPad!

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

We reached out to top Prezi Viewer users, to ask how the Prezi iPad app helps their work. Middle school teachers Ben Robinson and Mark Davis, and PR communications expert Gonzalo Adriasola agreed: Using Prezi Viewer completely changes their work routines, and opens up new horizons in their careers. Upon our request, they kindly shared their experiences with everyone…

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Prezi Named "Rising Star" in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

We are pleased to announce that Prezi has received the second prize “Rising Star” in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50. This prestigious annual award honors the fastest growing technology companies in Central Europe.

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Prezi hearts Facebook: One click signup, embed prezis to your wall

Fresh from the Prezi blog:


Signing up for the free Public Prezi account has become even easier. Now you can sign up with your Facebook account, and start to create your first prezi immediately.

Embed prezis to your Facebook wall

Sharing nice prezis from our public library, or put your latest work to the test in your Facebook community became more effective as well. Paste the link of any public prezi as a status update to our official Facebook page. Your link will be converted to an embedded prezi that can be clicked through or set to full screen straight from Facebook. It works just like YouTube video embeds.

Please note: if you already have a Prezi account, you cannot log in using your Facebook account.


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Prezi Zooms to 5 Million Users

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

We are thrilled to announce that, today, Prezi crossed the 5 million user mark!

Prezi Zooms to 5 Million Users on Prezi

You continue to inspire us with your creativity, enthusiasm, and with the amazing prezis you create. Please continue to innovate and let us know if you have new ideas for how to use Prezi.

Thank you!


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Founder liquidity – good or bad?

The topic of founder liquidity is interesting, proponents talk about helping entrepreneurs “pay the mortgage.” or get less stress around driving the company to an exit.

In other words: A company gets founded, generates revenue, the CEO pulls a modest salary but the challenging exit environment means that they remain distracted by personal financial obligations. So VCs feel it’s often best to remove this distraction, either by buying back shares themselves or letting early employees sell shares on the secondary market.

I am a proponent of this, and it makes perfect sense to me. Being a cash starved entrepreneur numerous times (while being “rich on paper”), I know that this really works to create more focus as an entrepreneur. And sometime there is a fairness to this (you worked hard to build significant value for others, and sometimes you have given what you can to create that value (and it is time to take another role with your company), a smaller partial exit can be a good thing for everybody.

This story emerged in the morning news flow: The IPO filing of Brightcove that yesterday filed for a $50 million IPO. Brightcove was once considered one of Boston’s hottest up-and-coming tech companies (when there was a booming startup scene in Boston). Its founder Jeremy Allaire previously was credited with creating Flash (after he sold his first company to Macromedia), and Brightcove seemed to be the enterprise version of YouTube.

But then the company stumbled repeatedly, and has yet to make a profit in its seven years of since inception. However, early employees sold around $7.2 million worth of stock back to lead VC firms Accel Partners and General Catalyst. Included in these sales was CEO and founder Jeremy Allaire, who sold around 35% of his shares for $4.86 million, according to the S-1.

Good or bad for founder equity? What is your take?

New York Times: Zerply: A Non-Corporate LinkedIn, Built For and By the Web Generation

Great article about Zerply in the New York Times:

Despite its recent IPO, there’s a strong feeling among many people online that the professional network LinkedIn doesn’t quite work for them. Despite its millions of users, it isn’t necessarily easy to find people on LinkedIn that you’d want to work for you. And just as importantly, young people in particular feel as though you have to “put on a suit and tie and become part of a corporate structure” in order to participate.

Read the full article here

European Startup Demo Night in San Francisco

BootstrapLabs, in collaboration with PariSoma, is looking for three European startups that are ready to come to Silicon Valley to participate in the European Startup Demo Night in San Francisco on July 21st.

The European Startup Demo Night is an invitation only event, that will match a select group of 10 startups with an audience of over 40 investors. Many leading angels and venture capitalists will be in attendance – among the anticipated audience: DFJ, Bessemer, Intel Capital, Accel, Trident and Google Ventures among many others.

All of these investors focus on early stage venture capital and/or angel rounds.

BootstrapLabs will select 3 candidates based on presentation, product / technology, team, and market potential.  Candidates who are selected will be allowed to give a 4 minute presentation, followed by a 4 minute Q&A at the event in San Francisco.

Participating companies will be responsible for all costs during the trip.

Requirements:

  • European startups looking to raise an early stage round in Silicon Valley
  • Roadmap that includes going to Silicon Valley
  • You must be able to come an present in Silicon Valley at the event on July 21st.
  • Product focus in IT, Internet, Software, Cloud, SaaS, Digital Media.

Reach out to us here.

UPDATE: We have now found our 3 referral companies for the event.

BootstrapLabs now also in San Francisco!

Starting in May, BootstrapLabs now also has an office location in SOMA in San Francisco. CEO/Founder of BootstrapLabs, Nicolai Wadstrom will be working from this office from now on. At this location we also have space to host our European founders when they are in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Redwood City through our Partnership with White & Lee (and Whiteboard Accelerator), will continue to be a great location for our companies, to host their staff and operations. With the addition of the San Francisco location, we are also close to all of the startup activity in the San Francisco SOMA area, and a great location for events and networking.

Nordic Incubator Night with BootstrapLabs Founder on April 13th

Please join BootstrapLabs founder, Nicolai Wadstrom, on April 13, 2011, from 5:30pm to 8:00pm for a Silicon Vikings evening focusing on the needs of Nordic companies in transitioning to Silicon Valley, and the services, training and preparation which ought to be offered by incubators in the Nordic region to prepare start-ups for the journey.

University based business incubators are needed to facilitate commercialization for university developed technology as well as to give entrepreneurs hands-on practical training. What practical training do they need? What is the feed back loop? What regular program of “show and tell” sessions will ensure that entrepreneurs get feedback early and often.

While an incubator cannot duplicate or replace an entire ecosystem, learning to interact with the other players in the entrepreneurial startup ecosystem is a key driver — how is this to be done? Where and when does the tech transfer office get involved? How do the incubators prepare the startup for the challenges and opportunities of Silicon Valley?

Silicon Vikings has gathered a panel (including BootstrapLabs founder, Nicolai Wadstrom) to debate these topics and offer observations and suggestions. The audience will include the heads of InnovationsbronSIVAAalto Venture Garage and many other University affiliated incubators from the Nordic Region in the Valley to attend the National Business Incubator Association Conference in San Jose April 10-13.

More details at Silicon Vikings Website.

Please RSVP here.

 

Asia is zooming!

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

Having lived in Asia myself, it’s really nice to see that Prezi has started to grow in Korea and Japan. I felt really impressed with the energy and all the creative use of Prezi.



Prezi for Dummies – the Korean translation of last year’s original US release – was brought to life with the help of Jihoon Roh (upper left). He’s the guy that helped us to get our first Korean font set. Prezi lecturer Do-won Lee (upper right) wrote another book for the Korean market which introduces Prezi’s best practices and a manual. Dowon also created a nice prezi introducing his book. Check out Daum, Facebook or Naver to join the Korean buzz, these community sites for more info.

We also had a great Prezi Night Tokyo party where the first Japanese Prezi book was introduced.
The tickets for the party sold out in a few hours! You can keep up with Japanese community on both facebook and twitter.


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Arctic Startup: Zerply Wants To Be The Next Generation Professional Network

ArcticStartup writes about Zerply:

Zerply is California based startup, that has its roots in Sweden and Estonia, through its co-founders. Zerply aims to be the best way to present yourself in a professional way. What they currently have available to the public, is bunch of very stylish profile pages which integrate relatively seamlessly to other online services. However, there’s a lot more in store according to Christofer Karltorp.

Read more here.

Social professional networking company Zerply joins BootstrapLabs

Today it’s official that the exciting professional social networking startup Zerply is part of the BootstrapLabs accelerator companies. We have been advising and working with Zerply for a few months, and we are really exciting about what Zerply is doing.

Zerply is catering for the fact that the established leader in the professional networking space, is a fairly “corporate” service, that really just made papers resumes into digital versions. Today communication and networking on the web is social, and moves in real-time and not static.

In short Zerply is redefining how professional social networking is being done, LinkedIn took paper resumes online, and Zerply is making them social.

The company is based in Silicon Valley, and was founded by Christofer Karltorp and Taaniel Jakobs.

And yes, of course I am also on Zerply!

More about Zerply here.