Speakers I listened to Day no. 1 at FOWA:

Robert Kalin, the founder of Etsy.com. His presentation was sadly a near-catastrophe - unfortunately. He’s a very charming and witty guy and he has some abstract and very interesting ideas - but in today’s presentation he didn’t really pull ‘em off. I’m pretty sure he could do so if he hadn’t been as unlucky (lot’s of technical problems) and perhaps he could have prepared a little better? Skipping the chewing gum while presenting would have helped - but what the hell … Robert and Etsy.com has some amazing ideas on UI and IA e.g. browse by color.

Greate quote though: “Innovation can capture market share”. That’s great. It’s true. And I simply love it.

——

Daniel Waterhouse of big VC firm 3i. Not much new under the sun. Basic stuff about the process of luring Venture Capitalists in the net. I’ve been there and I’ve done that (twice), so it wasn’t that interesting for me I guess - besides from some case studies telling the story of insanely huge investment in the $300m range.

——

Ted Rheingold of Dogster. Impossible for me to relate to this product: a kitsch-like dog lovers community. I did like Ted though - he did a great job. Here’s a few quotes that pretty much sums up his style and core message:

“Fuck-up fast” = making mistakes is OK - but undo them fast.
“Make you business a business” = know exactly how to make $$$.
“I used the wisdom of my-crowds” = learn from family and friends.

——

John Resig of the Mozilla Corporation. Since I’m not a developer I didn’t understand half of what he was talking about. But it’s always enjoyable to listen to a well-prepared, truly passionate, and very intelligent young guy presenting. Not surprisingly he’s working for the Mozilla Corp. Guess, Martin, our genius Front-End Developer at TraceWorks would have enjoyed this guy.

——

Kevin Rose, founder and chief architect at Digg / Pownce / Revision3. Sympathetic and relaxed guy who’s doing what he does best; knitting together some fun, simple and useful web applications - often with some sort of inherited social twist. One can only respect him. His presentation though was unfortunately not all that interesting: going through some rather basic things: Hire a DBA to ensure scalability, features that work for us, watch you burn rate, and stuff like that. The best part was the anecdotes from the actual start-up days.

Share This