Omeletes Sem Ovos.

Ao ler a entrevista de Miguel Pereira Lopes (que era para ter estado na SHiFT) ao DN apercebi-me de que é uma muito boa descrição dos problemas que tenho observado nos últimos dois anos no emprendedorismo em Portugal.

Concordo em particular com o ponto de vista em resposta à influência do intervencionismo do Estado no co-financiamento para o arranque de novas empresas:

Esse é um paradoxo do empreendedorismo. É subverter o fundamento desse conceito: se nós damos dinheiro, não estamos a estimular essa pessoa a encontrar ela própria os recursos necessários para levar avante a sua ideia.

Sou contra o financiamento público das empresas (com excepção dos casos onde existam factores sociais relevantes). Em primeiro lugar porque o dinheiro só por si não resolve nada e a sua existência pode até fazer atrasar o desenvolvimento saudavel de uma ideia e ocultar outros problemas.

Em segundo lugar porque somos todos humanos e gostamos de conforto. Ser empreendedor e fazer sacrifícios ajuda-nos a ir mais longe, a trabalhar mais pelo que não temos. O dinheiro dá-nos conforto e tira-nos a garra.

Aliás esta questão aplica-se ao investimento em geral. Empreender é saber fazer omeletes sem ovos (coisa em que nós Portugueses somos muito bons). A partir do momento que há dinheiro para comprar ovos tudo tudo muda. Antes de qualquer investimento (do estado ou particular) é necessário que um empreendedor encontre formas de resolver os seus problemas. Isso obriga a pensar no modelo de negócio, na estratégia, nos recursos humanos, ou seja, no negócio.

Isso sim, só por si, traz sempre bons resultados.

Insights For Startup Founders.

I’ve been researching a lot on startup related topics as founders, funding, strategy and so on. I’ve been finding some really good resources while doing this. Noam Wasserman’s “Founder Frustrations” blog is one of my favorite and includes well document research on founders issues. I highly recommend reading it as it’s full of useful advice.

In a startup everyone should be aligned in the same direction!

Occasionally I also find some honest and relevant lists of things to do or not to do. Most are rubbish but some I can identify myself with. This list of Insights For Startup Founders is a great resource and I agree with it 100% so let me share it with you:

• 1. Seek transparency and understanding with your partners early. Issues get harder as time passes
• 2. Startup founders work long hours for a reason. There’s more work than there are people. If you’re seeking balance, seek it elsewhere.
• 3. Bad customers will drain you of passion. Really bad customers will drain you of both passion and profits. Unfortunately, most bad customers will degenerate into really bad customers if you don’t do something about it.
• 4. If you’re changing direction often, worry a little. If you’re changing people often, worry a lot.
• 5. It’s lonely at the top, but even lonelier at the bottom. In the early days of a startup, hardly anyone wants to talk to you (except some desperate vendors).
• 6. Eventually, your product will need to work and do something useful. No amount of marketing or strategy will get you around this.
• 7. At the end of each day, ask yourself: “Did the product get better for customers today?”. If you don’t have a good answer, stay up until you do.
• 8. Until you are profitable, time is working against you. Once you are profitable, time is on your side.
• 9. Learn to take calculated risks. The market rarely rewards safe bets.
• 10. To improve the quality of your output, improve the quality if your inputs. Read, converse and connect with the right people.
• 11. Force yourself to write, as it will force you to think.
• 12. At least once every year or so, your startup will almost die.
• 13. The problem you solve should be ugly. The solution you build should be beautiful.
• 14. Even the most successful startup ideas had 100 reasons not to pursue them. There is no perfect idea.
• 15. If the pain doesn’t kill you, it just hurts a lot.
• 16. You choose your destiny, because you choose your team.

Last but definitely not least: Be who you are. Do what you love. Join people you like.

Vou (finalmente) à Le Web em Paris!.

Desde que comecei a ir a algumas conferências (e a co-organizar outra) que pretendo ir à Le Web em Paris. Este ano finalmente consegui uma forma de ir ao evento.

A organização promoveu uma acreditação para bloggers em que davam prioridade aos blogs escritos em línguas que não o Inglês ou o Francês (sim Maria João, as vantagens de escrever em Português). Candidatei-me e consegui um acreditação (quem disse que os blogs não servem para nada pode agora aproveitar para fazer um momento de reflexão).

A Le Web 3 é considerada uma das melhores conferências da área. É também uma das maiores da Europa e, por isso, sofre tanto de paixões como de ódios. Para mim isso é positivo e estou desejoso de ver por mim próprio.

O programa apresentado por Loic e Geraldine Le Meur:

O programa é super interessante e inclui algumas das pessoas mais conhecidas da Web actual como como o Michael Arrington (do TechCrunch, o Dan Farber da CNET News, o Om Malik do GigaOm e muitos mais.

Mas isso não é o mais interessante. Para mim uma conferência é boa por todas as pessoas que é possível conhecer durante os dias da conferência e a espectacular oportunidade de falar do Adegga com outras pessoas criativas e que trabalham na mesma área.

Confesso que sinto que há um certo je ne sais quoi no ambiente à volta da Le Web. Estou curioso para ver quão diferente será da reboot e da LIFT e para aprender como podemos fazer uma ainda melhor SHiFT. Pelo feedback que tenho recebido nos últimos anos parece-me que será uma óptima oportunidade.

Por último devo dizer que os preços dos bilhetes não são os mais baratos mas esta também não é uma conferência qualquer. A ver vamos. Se quiserem aproveitar a oportunidade o registo pode ser feito aqui.

À bientot!

Update: there’s a special 20% discount if you want to attend!

I miss SHiFT.

SHiFT 2008 from Joao Correia on Vimeo.

Wisdom.

Wisdom - Introduction on Vimeo.

Inspired by the idea that one of the greatest gifts one generation can give to another is the wisdom it has gained from experience, the Wisdom project, produced in cooperation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, seeks to create a record of a group of people who have all made their mark on the world.

Photographed against the same white space, all of the subjects are removed from their context, which not only democratizes them, but also allows for a clear dialogue to exist between them. In an attempt to create a more profound, honest, and truly revealing portrait of these luminaries, the project encompasses their voices, their physical presence, and the written word. This comprehensive portrayal of such a profound and global group is an index of extraordinary perspectives

Inspiring and Historic.

Interview about adegga.com @ shift08.

Viktoria and her lovely German accent interviewed me at SHiFT while enjoying a nice bottle of Cortes de Cima wine:

André Ribeirinho is all about wine and he wants to share his passion with other people by providing an answer on the always returning question which wine to choose. You want to know how it works and how it integrates your offline-shopping experience, have a look on the demonstration which André provides in the video by bringing QR Codes on wine bottles! For more infos go also to www.adegga.com. André is also co-founder of the shift conference and put in a lot of energy in realizing this event.

Viktoria also interviewed other Portuguese startups:
Interview with Bruno Pedro about tarpipe.com
Interview with Leonardo Xavier about thestartracker.com
Interview with Sergio Veiga about 9idiots and stream19.com
Interview with Eddie Correia and Moses Mehraban about ChamaInc, Buzz and Filmz
Interview with Celso Pinto and Vitor Domingos about handivi.com

Viktoria has been doing a lot of great interviews with startup founders and other interesting projects throughout Europe. You can find all of them on Tiburon-Tv.

We get what we promote.

In a world where consumers have so much power, we now have two responsibilities:

• If you don’t like what an organization stands for, work actively to spread the word and force them to change.
• If you will miss a product, a service, a book, a site or a professional when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them masses of new business.

We get what we promote.
(via Seth Godin)

New badge & widget on the blog.

We’ve just launched the new badges & widgets at adegga so I’ve updated the sidebar of my blog to feature the new badge with My tasting profile and a widget with My favourite wines.

Here’s how it looks:

Go here to get one for you.

Web Startups in Portugal.

This is my personal list of web startups and projects based in Portugal. I recommend these web startups (small companies working with web technology) and projects because they are either very interesting concepts, have a good technology or show good potential.

Texts are mine except when quoted. This list is ongoing and more projects and startups can be added or removed at any time.

Adegga
Adegga is a social wine discovery service that lets you track the wines you are drinking and share your wine opinions with the community. (disclaimer: I’m a co-founder at Adegga)

Blog.com
Blog.com is a free blog hosting company and one of the first web startups in Portugal.

Bookworms (Think Orange)
Think Orange is the company behind the brand new Bookworms. Book Worms is Portuguese social book discovery site where you can organize your book collection and share your recommendations with other readers (mainly in Portuguese).

Destakes
Destakes is a Portuguese news aggregator that sources news from a great number of Portuguese online media.

GoPlan (WeBreakStuff)
Webreakstuff is the company behind GoPlan, an online project management and collaboration tool. WeBreakStuff is a team of designers, developers and strategists that also develops Web projects for other companies.

Gimmestock
Gimmestock is a photo stock site where people can find high quality stock for only $1 on a Royalty Free basis.

Guestcentric
Guestcentric develops an online platform for hospitality applications that helps independent hotels integrate next-generation online marketing and a booking platform.

Handivi (7syntax)
7syntax is the company behind Handivi. Handivi is a mobile application that allows people to share messages, photos and videos with their friends from anywhere.

Jobtide

Jobtide is a job search engine that aggregates data from hundreds of job sites. It’s available in Portugal and Denmark.

MyTVShows
MyTvShows is a service that helps people manage their daily fix of TV Shows.

Postcrossing
Postcrossing is a project that allows anyone to exchange postcards (real ones, not electronic) from random places in the world.

Survs
EnoughPepper is the company behind Survs. Survs is a cool collaborative tool to create simple and elegant online surveys.

Stream19
Stream19 is a social network for action sports’ fans with some interesting technology supporting it.

Tarpipe
Tarpipe makes it easy to share content across different social media applications. (disclaimer: I’m an advisor at the company)

TheStarTracker
The Star Tracker is an social network that focuses on building an online network of Portuguese talented people. Members share the same interests and affinities to promote networking and help each other attain success.

TubaraoEsquilo
TubaraoEsquilo is the biggest Portuguese blogging network.

QuestionForm
Questionform is a web application for creating, publishing and analysing online surveys and forms.

Wizi
Wizi is a location sharing and free traffic network.


Other interesting projects: mobifeeds, whit.me

Note: I don’t (obviously) know all the startups in Portugal and although this is my personal ‘interesting startups’ list, if there’s a project that you think I should know, please leave a comment.
Updates: Added Gimmestock, Guestcentric, Wizi and a new paragraph for Other interesting projects.