Did you hear about the web20map? It’s cool and we are on it with only 2 other Web2.0 companies in Europe. Only uncool thing (and not very WebWhateverVersion) is that they concentrate the map on north america. You have to scroll to see the world. Come on guys, think big, think global, think web2.0!

We are trying to release a product without bugs (duh!) but we are sure that we will have our fair share them when we go live. That’s just the way it works. So it’s comforting to see that even Google still has it’s bugs. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself:

Go to Google
Click on Advanced Search [http://www.google.com/advanced_search]
Go to the “Page-Specific Search” field
Enter ‘www.fleck.com’ in the field titled “Links”
Do a search.
Nothing..

Now do it again but on the result page add one space between ‘link:’ and ‘www.fleck.com’ and search again. Aha! 578 results! Try again for any URL…

So somehow that damn search field only works with a space between those links. I tried it on several browsers and on a mac and on a PC. Same thing everywhere. If you try Google.com without a space you get 3.5 million results. Add the space and you will get 14.5 million results…

A market cap of 126 billion dollars and there is still room for bugs. Cool…

UPDATE: Loren Baker from Searchenginejournal.com took the time to explain what the real problem is. It turns out the Google form itself isn’t buggy but the Link Tracking Search is. Although Google knows that there are hundreds of pages linking to Fleck.com and shows this in an normal search (try ‘fleck’ and see the 5th link) it suddenly forgets this when you use the Link Tracking feature.

Loren Baker: ‘Yep Boris, that’s the bug, Google’s link tracking is more or less broken. It’s kinda old news for the SEO types out there’

Sigh, and I thought I was on to something.

If you read ‘Never Eat Alone‘ by Keith Ferrazzi you know that good networking is key to leading a successful life. At the office we are all proud of the people we know and the network we have build around us. The way we go about networking is not by trying to be interesting but by trying to be interested.

But when you are working at a start-up, with a secret product, you become interesting. This means that networking is even easier because now we are interested in people who are interested in us too.

In the last 3 months we have emailed, spoken to and had lunch with a whole bunch of people who we didn’t think we would ever meet before we started. Mind you; they didn’t all like what we pitched to them or agreed with what we are planning to do so this isn’t a list of supporters. The reason I list these names is, well, to brag a little and thank them for their support, or constructive criticism.

In December we spoke with the master of Social Networking: Reid Hoffman
We didn’t even realize until 10 minutes into the meeting that he is the founder of LinkedIn. The conversation didn’t go that well until we started asking questions about LinkedIn and started being interested instead of interesting. He cheered up, told us a bit about his experiences and then gave us a few great tips for our own business.

Scott Rafer has been very supportive since we first told him about our ideas back when it wasn’t much more than an idea. It is just great to speak with people like Scott who bring so much energy to a meeting. One hour with him is the equivalent to 10 espresso and 5 cans of coke. I only wish we could speak with him more often.

There are also a few VCs which emailed me after the ‘10 tips for a perfect pitch‘ post with compliments or suggestions. I kept emailing with a few of them for extra information and we are now connected. I think this is a very good way to get in contact with a VC, don’t mail them your businessplan: write a blog that they like and let them contact you!

I wouldn’t suggest to anyone that to expand your network you might as well start a company but we do see it as a nice side effect.

Everybody is watching Yahoo as they buy their way into Web2.0 with the acquisition of Flickr and del.icio.us and maybe soon Digg. People wonder what Yahoo’s strategy is with these acquisitions. We can all guess at the added value to their search engine, the future of tagging and how Yahoo has to buy it’s way into innovation to keep up with Google. And as with every acquisition of a smaller player by a bigger player there is the recurring ‘Buy or Build’ decision and discussion: ‘Del.icio.us only had 300.000 members!’, ‘how hard would it have been for Yahoo to build their own photo upload service?’ and ‘They would never buy Digg because they could build a system like that themselves’.

The truth is, I think, that Yahoo bought ‘Entrepreneurial Spirit’. Ok, these small companies also have some technology, a few members, a little revenue and great PR but that wasn’t the main reason to buy them. The truth is that big companies don’t innovate. They can’t. And I have a simple anecdote to prove this to you.

In 2003 I sold my small company (15 FTE) to a large company (18.000 FTE). They replaced me as the CEO and I worked as an advisor for a few months. One day I was on the phone with the new CEO and he sounded depressed. I ask what the problem was and he told me he needed 4 photo’s for a mock-up brochure for a pitch on wednesday. It was thursday when he told me this. He told me he asked for the 4 photo’s and was told it would take 10 weeks to produce them. I laughed and offered to get him the pictures by monday evening. ‘You could do that?’ he asked in disbelief. ‘Sure, no problem’ I replied. So I called a photographer and asked him if he could take the pictures for me on monday morning and what that would cost. He responded ‘For you, I’ll do them for free’ and I said ‘That is very kind but I’ll pay you €1000 anyway’. Then I called the best looking girl and guy I know and asked them if they would like to pose for me on monday. I’d give them €100 for their trouble. So on monday we did the photo-shoot, developed the photo’s, had them digitalized and I delivered them on monday evening. Then I send them an invoice for €2500 and kept the difference, about €1000.

So, the next week I had a meeting with the CEO of my old company and he kept thanking me for the photo’s. He pitched their product to the client and the client was really impressed with the brochure and the pitch and had signed the contract right away. The CEO was so happy I started feeling guilty about the €1000 I made on the deal. But then I asked him ‘So why did it took your company 10 weeks to get those photo’s’. He smiled and answered ‘They would have had to assign a project manager to it, he would have had to go find a photographer, set-dresser, make up artist, modeling agency and location scout and they would have hired a stylist too’. I was silent for a moment and then asked ‘Well, how much would that all have cost?’ and he answered ‘between €35.000 and €45.000′…

You can imagine I don’t feel sorry about the extra €1000 anymore. But besides being a funny story there is also a lesson to be learned here. While we were negotiating the price for our company they told us ‘This is a buy or build question for us. You do understand we have over 18.000 people working here so we could copy your concept within a day’. That sounded very real to us at that moment. In reality however a big company can’t do anything in 24 hours. It will take a week just to get a meeting with the first person of the 100 people you need to reach and convince if you want to do anything. And then there are budgets, targets and other projects that take up all resources or seem to be more important to the CEO or your manager.

So, back to Yahoo. What exactly did they buy? They bought Entrepreneurial Spirit. The spirit to think of something and just doing it. Even though it is a weekend, middle of the night or you haven’t checked with your boss yet. That is what they bought, and they admit it. Here is a quote from the december issue of Business 2.0 from an article titled ‘The Flickrization of Yahoo’. The quote is by Horowitz, Senior director of Yahoo’s technology development group:

‘”I met Stewart and Caterina and fell in love” Horowitz recalls. “It was beyond Flickr. I saw them as kindred spirits, entrepreneurs who could infect Yahoo with that small-company focus”‘

There you have it. I rest my case. This is the true reason Yahoo has bought Del.icio.us and Flickr.

So the next time a VC or potential investor asks you ‘But what about the big companies, why wouldn’t they just assign a few thousands programmers to this and blow you out of the water. They have 10.000 programmers!’ just send them a link to this story.

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with Fleck technology

I shave. I’m a guy. I have to shave. This means I also have to buy shaving tools. And I own quite a few. Depending on mood, humidity of the air and my skin, time of day and people present I either use a Gilette razor with cream or a electric shaving tool from Philips. As with every other acitivity I undertake in life every time I shave I try to think of ways to improve this system. The tools also inspire my thoughts ofcourse with recent innovations like 2, 3, 4, 5 blades on one Gilette razor and added electricity for extra vibrations for an already shaky hand.

last week I came up with an innovation that I’m sure is easy to add and would make Gilette or any other razor company more money: the Sharpness indicator

This is how it works: on each individual blade they add a small plastic clip. The first one is red, the second yellow and the third is white. When you shave you break off the white tip. The next time you shave and use this individual blade you break off the yellow tip. You are now entering the Red zone! Then the third time you shave you try to break off the red tip but that one won’t break off. That willl be Gilettes signal to you that you are shaving in the red zone now. A zone where hairs are torn out by the root because you are using dull blades.

Get it? I think most people use their blades 5 or 6 or even 20 times before replacing them. I don’t even know how many times I use a blade. I just look at my blade with a blank stare and try to determine if I should or shouldn’t throw this one out and get a new blade.

So, do you work at Gilette or some other shaving company? Well, what are you waiting for? Introduce the idea on monday and send me my money before the end of the week. You know I deserve it…

I own almost every Wired Magazine published including the hard the get first editions. The technology behing Fleck was invented on sunday while reading one particular article in Wired. Every month I look forward to getting my next issue of Wired. One day I hope to make it into Wired magazine or even better: make it to the cover of Wired magazine. One of my friends, Scott Rafer, got quoted in the february Wired magazine which I just bought about an hour ago. It is just a quote but it makes my week. Just knowing someone who makes it into Wired is great for me.

Here is the quoted article:
http://rafer.wirelessink.com/?p=10