A couple of months ago, OpenFund was founded by the Greek OpenCoffee organizers. What is OpenFund? As its name states, it is a fund willing to help newly formed startups to develop by giving them a seed capital as well as providing top quality advisors.

George Tziralis, one of OpenFund’s initiators, recently twitted that “Openfund’s main offering is not money”. In my eyes, this is wrong. Don’t get me misunderstood, I believe that their team of advisors is great and that it can help many ideas turn into kick-ass companies. But, their biggest advantage is the money they are offering.

Advisors will give you solutions in current problems. Advisors will make suggestions on how to develop your company. Advisors will probably introduce you to people who think out of the box, who are able to tell you a totally different opinion about your service. Advisors may even save you from some difficult situations, even bankruptcy. To make a long story short, advisors are very helpful only when there is a business model, a product and not just an idea.

And what is necessary for an idea to evolve into a product? Yeap, you guessed right, money. You need money to get someone to build even the simplest thing for you. You need money to pay your host. You need money to rent some office space. Even if you work all by yourself, you need money to buy some food. Maybe in the beginning all these sound “too much” but how far do you believe is that situation?

To sum up, in my opinion, money are much more important than advisors, especially when we are talking about seed fund. Because getting top level advisors is difficult but getting top level advisors without having any money is pretty pointless.

[photo via flickr.com, user jovian]

That is what Andrew Keen said in The Next Web Conference some days ago. What was also mentioned was that every old-fashioned industry is on its way out. The first victim of the new age that is coming is the music industry. Torrents, Limewire, Rapidshare are some of the reasons that music industry is about to change. iTunes & Amazon MP3 are the most important reasons though.

These e-stores were able to understand the new conditions and they adopted to the new market. They made the right choices that helped them to gain a great market share while offering amazing services to their customers. You are able to download only one song, get all the metadata you want with just one click and the most important, the MP3s you are buying from e-stores are already in the format you want them. Nobody buys nowadays an album and he is not ripping it for his iPod, it is so much easier to already have an mp3 file in the first place.

The next victim is definitely the publishers. The days that the newspaper’s brand name was more important than the journalist are long gone. One of the main characteristics of that new era is that individuals are much more important than their organization. Writers websites are being visited much more than a publishing’s company, their twitter accounts have thousands of followers. People are more important than the brand.

Big publishing companies have no future unless they are able to rewrite their business plan from scratch. Very few magazines & newspapers keep making money the old way. News are traveling very fast thanks to the Internet and, lately, thanks to twitter. Just remember the recent earthquake in Italy, the riots in Greece, the plane in the Hudson river in NY and all these cases. Until now, I have never seen a media corporation to integrate a twitter search in their site. Can you think of a better way to inform your people immediately? You don’t need money to send your reporter on site, you don’t need somebody searching twitter, you only need a twitter script. It is FREE, DIRECT content, give me a reason not to want it on your website.

What else is really important is trusting the media. Come on, let’s be honest, do you totally trust news corporation? Because I don’t. In the other hand, I almost fully trust bloggers and twitter-ers. Of course I don’t mean that I trust social media personas with one blog post or one twit, but you get my point.. As Chris Sacca said, Twitter makes us more honest, and that’s the greatest advantage of all. Individuals have already risen above their companies, we are probably in the start of the individual’s age.. Think about Obama, do you believe that majority of people out of the US know whether if Obama is in the Democratic or Republican party..?

[photo via flickr.com, user: tayseerh]

I am flying at least once per month from Athens International Airport. What I am most happy about is the moment after check-in that I am diving into a bookstore’s International Press department. The magazine that I never miss is the British Car. As its title proves, it is a magazine about cars and generally about automotive news.

Some of you, may already know that I am blogging about cars in one of the bigger blogs in Greece, pestaola.gr. That means that I have subscribed in the most known web sites, both from Greece and abroad. I also have subscribed to some less known web sites. I get too many information from all these online sources. However, when I am reading Car’s latest issue I get all those *useful* information. Car has one advantage that I have not found (yet?) in any web site: every single car presentation has the right ratio of everything that is hidden under the “shiny new car”: technical stuff, market placement, journalist’s driving experience, even some times driving tips from the guy who actually tested and improved the car just before its launch (to name one, Walter Rohrl in every Porsche). If you add the great (love it or hate it) British humor in the equation, you can get the picture..

I don’t want to be misunderstood, web sites have all the information that I need to write an article but I have to read three or four web-articles before getting all the necessary information. And that’s ok when you are about to write an article, but what happens if you are just a car-enthusiast that simply wants to get all the latest information? Even in that web-driven era, certain things have not been replaced by the web. Will they ever be?

[photo via]

“Money makes the world go round” sang Liza Minelli back in the days. Although many years have passed since then, that song contains the biggest truth to be ever told: Money makes the world go round. I strongly believe that there is no such thing as free beer, especially when we are talking about business and web2.0 startups.

However, there are some people out there that can not understand that. Let me explain that. 2 days ago, a web-developer presented me a great project that was already built and ready to be launched.  To be completely honest, I liked it and I also liked the proposed role in the team. There was even a venture stake after a trial period that was really appealing. The problem was in the trial period.

To explain myself, I totally agree with trial periods, they are like a test drive before buying a new car. You have to understand how your colleagues work and vice versa, to check your compatibility and if both sides are satisfied you can keep working together. There is always a but though. My “but” comes when I was asked to work for free in the trial period. I didn’t expect a great amount of money and frankly, I wouldn’t believe that I deserve much money for the 3-4-5 first months.

You will probably think: Hey, you are about to get a venture stake and you are talking about 3 months work? I agree, if we consider that I will keep working in that startup. What will happen if not? As the owner of the startup told me, I ‘ll get a big, fat NOTHING. What I also didn’t like, was the attitude that he had: It’s your big opportunity to do something great, if there is somebody to ask money after a failed trial period that is me and not you. Take into consideration that we are not talking about somebody who is starting right now and has no cash flow but about a fully functional company with income and expenses that is just not willing to pay me.

The combination of these three things drove me to reject the offer although the project rocks. I value my time and my will to do things much more than “you ‘ll work for free for 3 months”. And that’s far from snobism, I am willing to work for free in a project that there are no money (yet), in a friend’s project or in a project that I will have asked to work, but working for free for someone who found me and made an offer is not in my to-do list.

[photo via flickr.com, user: Your Teacher]

I got an iPhone 3G in late October, so, after almost 4 months I think it’s time to write a review about it. To be completely honest, I was disappointed in the first days. The battery didn’t last longer than a day, some times even less. There were not so many great apps and -taking into account that I already had an iPod Touch- I was not really amazed by the simplciity and the innovation of its menu.

However, I wanted a mobile phone not running Windows Mobile or Symbian, able to sync with my email accounts and… pretty much only these things. I know, I am describing a Blackberry but iPhone’s looks (and me being a mac enthusiast) won the duel. In the first days, I had to answer million of questions from friends and not friends, about it. In fact, most of the guys already knew the cons of iPhone but they kept asking about them, like wanting a confirmation. Yes, many basic features are missing -copy/paste function, greek keyboard, camera (only 2MP? Are you serious Apple?), SMS delivery report, etc etc- but I believe that all these functions -except the greek keyboard- are only necessary to power users. I don’t feel like one, so iPhone is great for me.

How really did I change my mind from being dissapointed to loving it? I don’t know. I guess it grow on me and I got used to it. Many great apps appeared in iTunes Store that made my life easier (to name a few: Twitteriffic, Tris, Shazam, Air Sharing) and in addition to iPod function and Safari, it has everything that I want. What I also appreciated is Contacts and Calendar. Synchronizing with my MacBook is like heaven to me. All those small features that my previous mobile phone (K800i) didn’t have made me love my iPhone. However, I don’t know if I would have enjoyed a Blackberry more, but I am almost sure that the next mobile duel will be between an Android-powered phone and next-gen iPhone.

[photo via flickr.com, user Gojca]

As some of you may already know, I attended LeWeb conference at Paris, France. Probably you have already read about LeWeb’s main issues, food, WiFi and maybe the broken-down heating in the first day. Ok, I was dissapointed but I was kinda waiting them, especially food and WiFi. I mean, I had the same problems also in NextWeb, so I didn’t have my hopes up for LeWeb.

However, this conference was not about food neither about WiFi. It was about listening to inspiring people sharing their experience and ideas. It was about meeting new people who are willing to help you in your projects. It was about hearing about new startups. It was about finding out how YOU can help web move forward. It was about asking successful people how they managed to be successful. And at all those parts, LeWeb was a huge success.

As I am going through my notes from the conference, I realize that I have so many things to blog about. So many things that I found really interesting and I want to give my point of view. And I strongly believe that all those conferences are about motivating. Making you think about what your potential and try to actually reach it. It was 2 full days of web2.0 mode for me. I had nothing else to do. I didn’t work, I didn’t study, I didn’t do anything else besides networking and thinking of what I can do and build.

In fact, it was a great experience although I didn’t find it as fascinating as it was NextWeb back in April. However, it was one more experience, that made me think and put me back into a brainstorming mode. Hopefully, an idea that I had during LeWeb will be online in January.. Because LeWeb was about me and changing my way of thinking…

[photo via Robert Scoble @ flickr.com]

Or at least, that’s what a professor told us the other day. I twitted about it and, as I promised, I am blogging right now about it. But let’s start from square 1.

I am a Computer Science student and my department allows its students to follow some courses from other departments.  By making use of that allowance, I chose to follow “Education and social inequities”. I went to the fifth lecture and I was expecting to listen about.. education and social inequities. However, what the professor told is that “all people are equally stupid” (or smart, doesn’t really matter). According to sociologists IQ doesn’t exist and what makes someone more capable from someone else is his enviroment. In addition to that, every single person is capable of doing everything and what has stopped him is only his enviroment. She also gave as an example where 2 twin brothers were given to different parents after their birth and they grew up with completely different ways. One of them happened to be smarter than the other one.

I have a counter example.. Michael and Ralf Schumacher. They are brothers, they grew up together, in the same enviroment, same moral support from their parents, etc etc. They also happened to love the same thing, car driving. Both of them, made it to Formula 1 world. However, one of them is the most successfull driver in F1’s history while the other one has never won a title. By that, I am not proving that IQ or talents exist but I simply prove that there are many many many more things that play certain role in developing an ability.

I accept that IQ is not something that we know where it comes from. We don’t have proved that it really exists but there are effects that we suspect that have something to do with “brain superiority”. However, we don’t have fully understand how our brain works so saying that “IQ does not exist, skills do not exist, talents do not exist” is at least immature. Especially when it comes from a professor in a room fully packed with students..

[photo via flickr.com, user: Kyle Jones]

Everybody turns to wikipedia someday. But, how many really write something in Wikipedia? Judging from myself, although I have been using it for a couple -or more- years, only a month ago I actually contributed by editing a minor detail about a Ferrari (that I don’t even remember right now). And that was the only time I ever contributed to such a well known open project.

Yes, I take part to some other kind-of open projects but I am not 100% devoted as I would have been in one of my personal projects. If it was just me, then I would believe that the problem is mine. But, as it seems, some of those community projects are not so active. Although the idea is pretty great, nobody cares enough to develop it. But, why is that?

I guess because in the community projects a very small amount of people really want -or have the free time- to participate and help it develop.

However, the exactly same project, if it was a personal, or team, project, it would have already reached the public. People are doing what they are said to do and, let’s be honest, if there is no one forcing you to do something (and by forcing I mean “motivating”) chances are that you are going to give it up for something more interesting.

My point of view? Simple.. As long as there are millions of users, a community project will be a huge success (Linux, wikipedia, etc).. Otherwise, there is better to be a “boss” in the small community. A leading-personality is more than necessary for the other group members to work efficiently..

The last two weeks have been extremely busy and with millions of things to do. I wake up at 9:00 in the morning (without using an alarm) and I can’t manage sleeping before 3:00. I don’t feel tired. Having so many things to do, keeps me happy and motivated.

Every night, just before going to bed, I check my next day’s schedule in iCal. It’s the last brainstorming session of the day. And the most creative. How to get “this” task done, what to do in my 1-hour break between classes, etc. Also, that’s the time I am trying to sum-up the day and realize what I did wrong, what I should improve in the future and where I should have spent less from my *extremely valuable* time.

However, I can’t wait for Saturday. I try to keep my weekend free of “to-dos”. Quality time is my first priority. Probably some coffee with friends, maybe a lunch but sure there will be time for my favorite things to do. Watch all the new episodes of TV series that I had no time during the week, cook my favorite food, maybe some shopping.. Everything that does not allow my mind to think of next week’s obligations.

Don’t get me wrong, I love having an extra busy schedule during the week with things that I love, but I also love having enough personal time in the weekend! That’s the only way I can really appreciate both busy weeks and free time. Having only free time or everyday a busy schedule doesn’t make you productive, it just doesn’t let you see the difference and the pros and cons of each situation.. So, try keeping some days for yourself, it will only help you.

[photo via flickr.com, user: Lisa Brewster]

OpenCoffee Athens XV took place in the 7th of October. Guest star was Jason Calacanis, the guy behind Weblogs Inc and mahalo.com. He talked to us completely informal, just a small notebook, no powerpoint, not even a laptop. Although I have seen many people talking on stage, Jason’s keynote was absolutely stunning.

He talked about his experience, his mistakes and his view. But most important, he motivated everyone in the room. I left the Open Coffee and I went home with a desire to do things, to work. There is no excuse such as “I have to make some money, I don’t have time to do what I want”. Nobody works 24/7, there is always some free time. In that free time, you can work on your side projects.

As Jason said, there is only one difference between entrepreneurs and wanabe-entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurs dared to start something! Failure is part of the game, nobody is mr.Perfect. But, as I already have stated, there is always something to gain, even from your biggest failures. Jason decided not to sell his first company for 20 millions and 9 months later he shut it down. Although he was back in square one, he managed to come back and built Weblogs Inc. He dared to do things, he worked hard and nothing was given to him for free.

However, motivation is one piece of the puzzle. One other piece is getting organized. He suggested that we create groups specializing in specific topics, like graphics design, Amazon EC2 etc. Sharing the knowledge will make everybody better, greek start-up community will improve and, who knows, maybe next year there will be some greek start-ups in TechCrunch 50..

PS. The day after the OC event, some of us had breakfast with Jason. Great speaker, great guy to hang out with, he even talked about greek basketball and he promised to be in Greece again real soon.. Nice meeting you Jason!

[photo via flickr.com, user: nsyll]