Claude Ritter

Link randomness #1

Posted by claude - 18/05/09 at 07:05:21 pm

So I constantly find cool stuff and sites on the web, which when bookmarked, get lost forever. Because of this I’ll start blogging these links so that they can live on and don’t get locked away in the dark bookmark cave.

All right, here we go:

• Benchmade
  Really cool knives. Might buy one of those soon (not that I need one anyway).
• Fitbit
  A thing that tracks your fitness and sleep. Might produce enough pressure to finally get me into a gym.
• CureTogether
  Just a cool idea. Crowd sourced health research.
• Just Play
  Article about Harmonix, the creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band – must read!
• Sonos
  Multi-room sound system. MUST HAVE!
• thesixtyone
  Don’t know, interesting music site.
• foursquare
  Must copy for China…

Zurich, the next startup epicenter, not.

Posted by claude - 12/05/09 at 01:05:41 pm

Paul Graham has an interesting blog post essay about startups and the idea that most successful startups are located in a startup epicenter, such as San Francisco. According to his article, all you need is a first-rate university and a place so nice that rich people would want to live there.

Being Swiss, I was always quite optimistic that Zurich could become one of these places. It’s a beautiful city, it’s home to the ETH, it has a nice lake, an international airport, nearby mountains to go skiing and, last but not least, a “flexible” tax system for high net worth individuals.

Unfortunately, my high hopes took somewhat of a hit a couple of weeks ago when I was invited to speak (video conference) at an event of the EPFL, the French speaking counterpart to the ETH. The event was dubbed “Managing Risk of/for New Ventures” and was a mix between presentations and shorts pitches from local entrepreneurs. The event being part of the university’s “Executive MBA in Management of Technology” program, I had quite high expectations and I was looking forward to seeing some good pitches.

Sadly, I thought that the presentations were quite disappointing and I was almost shocked by the way these entrepreneurs pitched their products and services. Out of 6 two minute pitches there was only one pitch where I understood what the company is doing and what their value proposition is that will help them succeed. The other 5 pitches all had the following “features”:

• Slides with so much size 12 Arial text that you could write a book out of it.
• Graphics that came straight out of the word art gallery.
• Speakers with very limited English skills.
• Inability to tell the audience what the company is doing within two minutes.

I do think that some companies might actually have a good product but I strongly recommend that they all start broadening their horizons, start reading some English blogs about entrepreneurship, get their pitches right and live up to international standards because Switzerland just isn’t that big of a market. Granted, Lausanne (EPFL) is not Zurich but I fear that the level at ETH isn’t really all that different.

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