Martin Tantow Blogs on CloudTimes.org

Martin Tantow is the Founder of CloudTimes. Founded in 2009, CloudTimes is a leading technology media property, dedicated to providing in-depth research and breaking news on Cloud Computing and related topics. Apart from its well-known news section, CloudTimes hosts the largest research database on the web, featuring free white papers, webinars, and articles from leading IT companies.

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SFNewTech – Apture Content Enhancement

Yesterday was arguably one of the best SFNewTech. Congrats for the 4th anniversary, Myles! Zuumer is certainly an excellent new way of transportation and I’ll try to get one as long as the price comes down a bit. But the tool I used immediately was Apture. I found Apture a great tool for any content and media site that wants to retain users on their site. Simply add a JavaScript line and done. It couldn’t be simpler. Great job, guys! While you are reading my blog – check it out.

Crossing The Pond

Silicon Valley is and will be the magnet of entrepreneurship and the Internet sector – worldwide (see also my earlier post regarding the future of the Valley). I have had the honor to participate in several panels this week, mainly talking about the advantages and obstacles for entrepreneurs around the world to come over to Silicon Valley – either just to open a branch or to transfer their company entirely. The panels were organized by the Plug & Play Tech Center where my own company is hosted and which I highly recommend.

Below I am summarizing some of my thoughts and learnings during these sessions:

1. Define your goals
   You will want to know what are your goals for coming over to the Valley: are they funding related, is it going to be a business development effort or do you want to build up a developer team here?
2. Make a budget
   Coming over to the Valley is not cheap. Of course, I am not addressing large companies with this blog post. Start-ups often have a very tight budget and you will want to consider the costs of an office in the Valley: from travel costs (relatively low recently), to accomodation, office rental, car rental (you’ll need one, as public transportation is limited) and others. Below $3000/month it is impossible if you want your own accomodation.
3. Plan long-term
   I don’t believe it makes sense to establish an office for a short period of time only. You might want to do just a business trip, but establishing an office in the US is a long-term project and you should see it as that.
4. Review your personal situation and communication strategy
   Are you bringing your family, the whole team? How are you planning to communicate with your home based management team? My experience is that this is not trivial. Yes, daily Skype calls are possible (and necessary), but phone calls cannot replace personal meetings and brainstroming sessions, so I believe it is necessary that the team gets together on a regular basis. Once per months seems to be feasible.
5. Plan in advance your “entry strategy”
   Planning at least four months in advance is strongly recommended. In that time you want to solve the issues from above, initiate contacts with office space landlords, lawyers and especially review your own network for already existing contacts in the Valley.  

   A very viable “entry strategy” might be the participation in a contest or conference in general. I have for example participated with my company 3scale in the Techcrunch50 global competition conference which has been hugely successful for our company.

6. Check your local public institutions for support
   There is often much more support available than you’d expect. Local governments, the Chamber of Commerce and other institutions are usually very happy to help – promoting their companies in other countries. Specifically for companies out of Barcelona I can recommend: Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Barcelona Activa, Instituto Español de Comercio Exterior (ICEX), Consortium for Commercial Promotion of Catalonia and many others.
7. Once you are in the Valley: Connect!
   It is very easy to connect once you touched the ground in the Valley, but you need to be out there: attend any conference that is related to your business, check the following networks:  

   European Entrepreneurs at Stanford

   SF New Tech

   SVASE

   Churchill Club

   Events at the Plug and Play Tech Center
   and for some leisure: Meetup

   Oh – and check out Craigslist.org – they can help with almost everything.

8. Do it!
   There are a lot of good reasons to be in the Valley. If your company can make it here, it can make it anywhere in the world. The Valley has the highest aggregation of (Internet) knowledge anywhere in the world and an ecosystem that many other countries can only dream of.

Good luck!

Silicon Valley after the financial crisis

I am often surprised how negative people see the economic crisis that we are in right now. Yes, for sure it is a major downturn and many people are affected, loosing their job – or worse. But, especially when I am in Europe, people almost seem to dump all their problems on the crisis. I think we have to ask ourselves if some of the problems that many countries face have been there even before the crisis – maybe people were just not noticing them that much. The real estate bubble in the UK and in Spain? Well, finally real estate prices tend towards more reasonable prices.

However, I believe what people should be discussing is: “what is the best way to get out of this crisis?”, “which strategic decisions needs to take my company today to survive this crisis?” and especially “which products and services should we develop today that will thrive as soon as this crisis is over?”. I believe that smart companies right now are putting innovative products together which they will launch as soon as the general mood is clearing up and people start to buy again. Do I need to wait for Apple’s netbook/tablet PC therefore that long (the Kindle killer)? The way to go for many companies is certainly to calm down, get the survival strategy out, streamline the organization and especially fine-tune (potentially adjust) the product roadmap. This also goes for early-stage start-ups. Develop new products now and launch when the time is right. Aren’t we always saying: the best companies got founded in economic downturns?

I think it is very dangerous to assume that certain parts of the world will not thrive anymore as they have been doing over the past decades. I recently read an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel about Silicon Valley fading out of ideas (http://bit.ly/uHZs in German). The author believes to detect a downturn in innovation in the Valley and quotes several articles, like the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index (http://bit.ly/MDXwX) which certainly does not look very well. The author however then points out himself that a long-lasting conservative approach by investors in the Valley would be highly contra-productive. In this point I certainly agree with Stefan Schultz, however I would like to stress that I do not believe that there is a long-lasting crisis in the venture capital community in the Valley. I think other regions in the world should rather see the Valley as a role model – connecting capital with innovation and creating companies which is unmatched in the world.

People in the Valley often think back to the famous bubble in 2000/2001 and long dry spell thereafter. But this time it is different. The epicenter of the crisis is New York and not Silicon Valley. Yes, you can feel the crisis in the Valley as well, VC funding has slowed down, companies go bankrupt, people get laid-off… But there are tons of companies just getting ready to make a significant difference, now – and as soon as the economy gets back their confidence again.

Watch out for companies that survive the crisis and then thrive!