amazee’s year 2007!
December 27, 2007
New Year’s Eve is coming up – time to review 2007. What started at the end of 2006 as a vague idea during a few after-work-beers between Gregory and Prodosh has become reality in 2007. Below a short summary of Amazee’s past milestones.
In February Gregory and Dania decide to quit their jobs with Bank Julius Baer and KPMG as per end of June and fully commit to the Amazee project.
In April Gregory and Dania take two weeks off and combine a windsurfing trip with an intensive business plan camp on Isla Margarita, Venezuela.The Amazee idea becomes more and more specific and is written down in a 30-page business plan.
June is the last working month for Greg and Dania with their old employers… they can’t wait to fully concentrate on Amazee!
Amazee needs a business angel in order to realise the project. In August Greg and Dania present the Amazee project to Daniel Model. He likes Amazee and we like him.
Towards the end of August Gregory can win Lucas for Amazee. Lucas decides to quit his old job at Zurich University and join the Amazee team by December.
On 3 September, Prodosh, Gregory and Dania sign all required establishment papers and found Amazee Ltd. The project turns into a company.
In the beginning of October Lucas, Gregory and Dania go on an adventurous and fun trip to Belgrade (Serbia) and Timisoara (Rumania) to meet epoint, a PHP/Drupal programming team. They sign the first collaboration agreement for the platform development.
On 20 October the Swiss Blog Camp at ETH Zurich takes place. This was a great opportunity to meet interesting people and the first event to talk about Amazee to a wider group of people. The result was great: Dania and Greg met Amazee’s future CTO, who is joining the Amazee team in March 2008. Name to follow soon…
Adela from epoint visits Zurich for a couple of days in the end of October to discuss the larger platform development plan.
A very important milestone is achieved in November: Daniel Model decides to become Amazee’s angel investor for the start-up phase. The contract is signed on 26 November.
In November Amazee signs the lease contract for a nice office space at Technopark in Zurich, which provides an inspiring environment, a good infrastructure and allows lots of exchange with other young entrepreneurs. You will find Amazee there beginning mid January 2008.
A lot of research time in Xing has a positive outcome: Alexandra Schneider joins the Amazee team in the area of Marketing & Sales by the beginning of December.
On 11-12 December Gregory and Dania attend the conference Le Web 3 in Paris and meet lots of interesting people and potential future partners.
Adela and Daniel from epoint come to Zurich discuss the past and next development steps. Amazee’s social collaboration platform is evolving and the whole team is very satisfied with the relationship with epoint.
I’m convinced that you will hear a lot about Amazee in 2008 and am very much looking forward to an interesting, fun and eventful year 2008!
switzerland?
December 23, 2007
no, dania and i just returned from a family visit in lebanon, the charming country that is often referred to as the switzerland of the middle east.
like switzerland it’s a small country, there are some renowned educational institutions (like the american university of beirut), most people speak various languages and there are mountains, snow and ski resorts with salomon, rossignol and nordica competing for the consumers attention! we even spotted a chalet “Gstaad” style…
unlike switzerland its cultural and religious diversity have turned to disadvantage of the world’s melting pot. a walk through beirut gave me a depressing account of the past and the present: bombed and shot buildings, army posts all-over town. and like a cool, foggy layer covering it all, the people’s tension awaiting the next political milestone: election or assassination.
i’m the wrong person to draw a conclusion. I just hope that the confessional order will not be further entrenched and the libanese people can take up a normal live in a non-sectarian state. without the cancerous influence of external stakeholders and religious fanatics.
our hunter working on her acquisition list…
December 12, 2007
the fast beat the slow
December 11, 2007
let me summarize just one of today‘s seriously interesting presentations: google‘s nelson mattos on „technology’s impact on corporate culture“. i’m chosing this preso because it once more opened my eyes to one of the most important ingredients to success in the internet business: rapid, user oriented innovation
according to nelson, the 3 basic ingredients to google’s rapid, user oriented innovation are the right culture, speed and efficient and extensive collaboration.
culture stands for empowered googlers, a rather non-hierarchical structure, access to the best hardware and the biggest data centers, a campus approach with better food, 20% time given for free use and a development philosophy where users needs come first (and revenue and profitability are an afterthought).
speed means what the word says: innovate at speed – fast is better than slow.
collaboration means to google that collaboration does not just include googlers but all external stakeholders ranging from universities to the end user. some secrets are more valuable when shared. teams have to be based around the world; global skills are required for a global business taking all local preferences into account. the average brazilian for example does not like to blog, french people do.
so to end amazee’s so far longest blogpost: what’s the conclusion for us? we‘ll go public rather sooner than later and try to lose the (swiss) fear of not getting to the market with the most perfect product. this will give us the chance to get the direct feedback of our early adopters and avoid ending up in the 70-80% of product developments that fail due to the missing understanding of the user needs.
Amazee meets Le Web 3.0
December 11, 2007
after a short night, thin walls, very active hotel room neighbours and a sportive taxi ride with a Buschido-like taxi driver, dania and myself arrived at Le Web 3.0 in paris! we’ll keep you updated as soon as we get the chance. looks like there are a lot of people to meet…
ooxml – say no to micrsoft office broken standard
December 7, 2007
als openoffice (ok, neooffice) -user sowie natürlich als frischgebackener amazeean – und als solcher bin ich nicht nur persönlich, sondern auch ganz im sinne meiner beruflichen tätigkeit und unseres unternehmenscredos sog. "open standards"* verpflichtet – , ist es mir ein anliegen, kurz auf diese wichtige aktion hinzudeuten.
"What is OOXML (ECMA-376)?
Via ECMA, Microsoft has submitted documentation for the XML-based file formats used by the company’s "Excel 2007", "PowerPoint 2007" and "Word 2007" products for "fast track" approval as an "international standard".Why is this so controversial?
There is already an international standard for XML-based file formats for office documents, known as the "OpenDocument Format" (ODF; standardized as ISO/IEC 29300). Nobody denies Microsoft’s right to freely decide that the company does not want to support this international standard in their products, and nobody denies that computer users have the freedom to choose office software which supports this standard, such as e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice or Google Docs. However many people feel that Microsoft’s initiative to get their file formats also recognized as an "international standard" is an abuse of the system of international standardization and should in fact be seen as an anti-competitive attack against the company’s competitors, especially against Free Software like OpenOffice." (weiterlesen)
hier gehts zum online-unterschriftenbogen
*
Bedeutet in aller Kürze: "development: multi-partisan and open, independent non-profit body; documentation: public specification; use and implementation: open standards are 100% license-free standards."
Nun ist wichtig zu wissen: "OOXML stands for Microsoft Office Open eXtensible Markup Language, which is misleading: it is no open standard.
ODF = OpenDocumentformat is an open standard. It is also an ISO standard."
(Infos und Zitate: http://www.noooxml.org)
market provider – job with a promising future
December 5, 2007
reading the last print version of the spiegel (Der Spiegel 48/2007, Globalisierung ganz privat) i once more realized how internet and globalisation are enabling a market of its own: peer-to-peer markets.
ranging from the good old electronic stock exchanges like virt-x to merchandise exchange platforms like ebay or ricardo, human exchange portals like monster or parship, to give-money-take-something-else media like smava or kiva - the number of peer-to-peer market providers is increasing rapidly.
the core of a good market is liquidity (lots of offers and demands). the equation to success is therefore easy and might remind you of your last trip to the states: bigger = better. so make sure you get going quickly, the winner will take it all…
