Dec 9, 2010

NetCamp 2010 review - insights for online entrepreneurs

Yesterday, 8th december 2010, took place this year's edition of NetCamp - a conference for existing and wanna be online entrepreneurs, organised by Manafu and Evensys team in Bucharest, Romania.

The event gathered more than 200 people with ongoing or planned businesses in the online environment, most of them men (80 - 90%) and very young (age average: 25 y.o.) and some great international and national speakers.

Some insights from the speakers (quotes from their presentations and discussions) that might be useful for you:

Ian Broom - Launch 48
- For inspiration, there are some opportunities trending in online entrepreneurship that you might consider working on as your future business: analytics, geo based business, flash mob (example: Groupon), mobile apps, social games (examples: Foursquare, FarmVille).
- Do your research, test your customers.
- Launch with interest. If your first customers like your product,  they will be your greatest sales force (word of mouth).
- Launch is not the end. Iterate and expand.

Jure Sustersic - Nokia
- There are more people accessing Facebook from mobile than desktop
- We are facing an "app economy"
- Think how your business can benefit from mobilization.

Zoli Herczeg - Microsoft
- Presenting Gartner Hype Cycle 2010
- Cloud computing is good to use for non-flat/ unpredictable usage scenarios because you can use it for how much you want at each time (flexibility).

Hugo Pickford-Wardle - Launch 48 UK
- Solve a problem that others don't know how to solve or that they didn't even know it existed (but it did).
- Envision a perfect world without constrains. Work backwards, until you hit the wow line.

Cem Tunakan - Groupon Romania
- Focus on not just selling a product/ service, but also on connecting people.
- As long as our competitors play correctly, there is space for everybody.

Oana Solca - Romtelecom
- Try on Twitter and Facebook to focus on customer care, not on commercial messages.
- For targeting people knowledgeable about internet services and online shopping and also for building trust, make a partnership with a bank on their online banking platform.

Teodor Cimpoesu - Kaspersky Lab Romania
- Made an online shop on the Facebook page, as a Facebook app (fShop).
- Think how much your online accounts value and protect them not to lose your identity.

Marius Ghenea - serial entrepreneur
- For doing a business you need the right skills, chance and attitude.
- You can contribute with sweat capital, not just money.
- Plan for cash-flow, not for profit.
- Hire less, outsource more.
- Forecast bottom-up. Don't start from market size predicting your share, but from how much you can make starting from what resources you have.
- Start with a service business, then develop bigger projects. You can compare entrepreneurship with playing poker - you start with small sums and while playing you begin to understand the game, then you can come in with bigger sums.
- The FFF (family, friends and other fools) have no clue about your business. An investor can offer you advice and can ask you some good questions to think about.
- For the entrepreneur there is total commitment, for the investor this is partial - is just one more business he believes in.
- While an entrepreneur thinks of his business for a life time, the investor thinks in shorter terms, thinks of exit strategies.

Dragos Novac - online entrepreneur
- Most of online entrepreneurs think as a revenue source at online advertising. But keep in mind that you share your clients' online advertising budgets with online/ communication/ media agencies, and so you get only a small share of it.
- Other revenues sources for an online business: subscription revenues, affiliate revenues, rental of subscribers list, sale of information about subscribers, live events, cobranded spinoff, selling souvenirs, e-commerce, sponsorships.

Bogdan Secara - serial entrepreneur
- A business plan is useful because: it makes you more responsible, you establish your limits, you communicate better, it sells your idea to investors.
- Don't spend too much time on making the business plan.
- There will always be something unpredictable when you put your business plan into action.

Dragos Roua - serial entrepreneur
- You promote your business everywhere you interact.
- You are the promoter of your business. Even if you work with an agency, you are the one giving your ok for a campaign, so you are the responsible one.
- Your personal blog is your ID - it will work for you even years after you started it.

Vlad Stan - serial entrepreneur
- I don't like observers, I like players.
- How to make a good pitch: a creative introduction will make you memorable; the language should be simple; identify the problem of the one in front of you and then tell him your solution - and so you don't sell, but you help them to buy (you should have different pitches for different people); tell how your solution is different than the other existing solutions.
- There are not problems, but business opportunities.
- I cannot work only for money, I should like what I do and inspire others too.
- Think of what do you want people to remember you for at your funeral and so you will know what you should do in your life and don't waste time on other paths.
- If you earn 1.500 euro a month as an employee, in your whole life you make 720.000 euro. So you sell your life for this money....in installments. Being entrepreneur is not like that.

Other reviews of the event:
Quality time
Refresh.ro 

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