nowEurope

A comment to Bernhard Schmid’s post from Oct. 21.

The world’s economy is based on growth, and growth implies competition. If one grows, the other one shrinks, that’s a law.

Until a few years ago this has been restricted to businesses only. All sectors of industry and trade, from the lone entrepreneur to the multinational giant underlie competition, and naturally, there’s always the question of who’s the biggest, richest, best etc.

Recently, in connection with the commercialisation of public services of all kinds, research and education entered the game. Schools and universities find themselves in all kinds of rankings, the quality of life is being measured, the businessability (my creation) of countries is published and thus Hungary suddenly must learn of its unfriendliness towards start ups, and such listings themselves could be submitted to a ranking …

What does this have to do with innovation awards? Continue reading ‘Innovation Awards: Yes, but.’

Juri Kaljundi, a passionate ICT entrepreneur based in Tallinn, sent me (and Steve) a few questions before his presentation at the Techcrunch meeting in Stockholm. Unfortunately I was too busy to answer them in time and so now I’m taking this opportunity to comment on the summary at his personal blog.

I still remember very well Juri coming to Brno before his CV-online international roll-out and then his introductory speech at one of our very first First Tuesday Prague meetings. Now he is providing a very good insight of the Baltics we can compare with our Centrope region.

Continue reading ‘What do the Centrope and Baltics ICT scenes have in common?’

It was in 1994 when Jeff Bezoz and his few employees created a web site and database in Bezos’ Bellevue, Washington garage. It was few months later when he approached local venture capital (VC) firms in search for valuable growth capital. None of the venture capitalists invested – they evaluated the idea good, but company not attractive enough for investment. Today, with about 45% stake in Amazon.com Bezoz’s share is worth at least an easy $2 billion, while initial investment he received from business angels totaled marginal $1.2 million.

Ironically, a year later angel and venture capital investments soared and investments were made into virtually everything that went on Internet. Total venture capital investments in the USA increased nearly 15 fold in six years, from a mere $6.3 billion in 1995, to an unworldly $90 billion in 2000. However, the feast did not last long. Everything came back to earth again in 2001, when dot com bubble eventually burst, and when forty-nine out of the Silicon Valley’s fastest 50 lost value, with the majority experiencing market capitalization declines of 80%.

Continue reading ‘National seed capital fund to be rolled out in Estonia in 2006?’

The other day I was having lunch with my wife, an investment manager from one of few VC funds operating here in Slovakia. I brought her Steve’s article and asked for her comments.
Here are some points showing tech investment in Slovakia last year:

• All companies that received investment are considered rather high-tech and all investment occurred during the expansion phase of development. Interest in start-ups and seed capital is still limited (see Steve’s conclusion). Continue reading ‘Venture Capital is active’