A good friend Antonio developed this app for the iphone after I had a fun chat at a dinner with my other friend Micha to come up with the idea together.
Its called “isaycheese” and Antonio asked me to help him spread the word. Its a really simple app that was developed in a few days and allows you to select a fun sound (like i say cheese or patata etc.) just before you make a picture.
It also has a useful crop feature (its a little hidden, he should improve that).
Its actually fun and pretty useful, especially if you have a daughter like me that keeps moving or not looking at the camera when you try to make a picture of her.
Anyway its one of the apps I use the most frequently since I’ve downloaded it (and I’ve downloaded a lot).
Really nice to see how an idea can still become a cool product in just a few days. You can find out more details on it and download the app here
You can also find it in the itunes appstore directly from your iphone, just search for isaycheese or if you are reading this on your iphone click this link
Oh and if you like it and can spare a moment to leave a review and spread the word… It think that would be much appreciated :o)
There I’ve done my good deed for the day, lunch break post over.
In case you had not noticed, there is an avalanche of deals this year around the social gaming and virtual world’s area. Some recent investment rounds like the Big Fish Games one are very large (83 million $). Fellow entrepreneur Jussi Laakkonen did a list of a lot of the deals on his blog here.
Of course given that Erepublik is a massive multiplayer online strategy game based on a mirror world, it is right in the middle of that hot space, although we take a different approach to most (the reverse approach). So I am obviously excited by the interest of the investment community for our sector.
This is of course good news. On the other hand I do worry about the size of some of the deals. Of course I can understand the logic of trying to raise as much money as possible in particular in times of financial crisis. I don’t understand it just from a security perspective (ie: surviving); I understand it in particular from an opportunity one and there are more opportunities in times of crisis. But I still do worry that too much money can also be a bad thing. I have been involved in both over funded and slightly under funded start ups before and I have to say that the later are often more creative and have a better ROI. Also another danger of doing a very large round is that you might set unrealistic expectations on how much your business might be worth both for your investors but also for the people in your team. The pressure around that might actually make you a less successful company or even kill you, forcing you to take decisions at the wrong time or worse ones that are just wrong. I have some of my entrepreneur friends that have lived that situation and that is a very bad one to be in.
For Erepublik, we are in advanced beta and about to launch V1 and have had pretty good momentum so far. So after bootstrapping the company we had a relatively easy angel round and are lucky enough to be receiving a lot of interest to do another round.
So for the Erepublik institutional round (yes we do plan to do one) we will be careful to aim for the right balance between having enough cash to seize opportunities but not to much, so that we don’t loose our creative edge and our common sense :o)
This is a truly inspirational video that I came across reading theequitykicker blog (a blog that I recommend). The video is by Michael Wesch, an anthropology professor from Kansas State University. Its the first time ever I’ve watched 55 minutes of one single video on Youtube. If you have anything to do with the Web, or want to understand what really is beneath this web 2.0 bla bla you should check it out.
I’m posting less frequently in August but will be back to speed in September.
My friend Tariq Krim the founder and CEO of Netvibes annouced today that he will be moving to a non-exec position so he can concentrate on a new project.
I’m posting this in reaction to my friends Martin Varsavsky post on another friend’s startup, seesmic whose solution I use for this videoblog. There is also a great post by jason calacanis on why he has changed his mind on seesmic, I have to say I agree with most of his points, only things he is missing are:- Its hard to put yourself in front of a webcam for all to see (easier to hide behing words)- The 100%, 40%, 10% rule that I explain in the video. One that I think might change this.
Hi, most of the contents of this blog will actually be video. In it I will try to share part of the experience of building an internet start up (Erepublik.com) and will share when I can the different steps involved in doing so, mistakes I have done and eventually the things I get right. So no advice, just shared experience. I hope this will help or give ideas to other entrepreneurs.
