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The MIT Forum September event will discuss strategic and tactical, analytical and story-based approaches to starting your start-up and getting through raising your first round / brining on your initial team, managing crisis and generating income, special emphasis on consumer internet products.
Moderator: Ayla Matalon, Executive Director, MIT Enterprise Forum of Israel 15:30 - 16:00 Registration & Networking 16:00 – 16:10 Welcome & Greetings Prof. Asher Tishler, Incoming Dean, Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration Ayla Matalon, Executive Director, MIT Enterprise Forum 16:10 – 16:20 Shula Keshet, CEO, "Achoty – for Israeli woman" 16:20 – 16:50 Internet Multimedia Business Models and Trends Yossi Cohen, Founder & CEO, DSP-IP 16:50 – 17:35 Ingredients for a Successful Start-up Seth Sternberg, Founder & CEO, Meebo 17:35 – 18:20 Break & Networking 18:20 – 19:05 Travel Tips for your Internet Ride Ariel Yarnitsky, CEO, SpeedBit 19:05 – 19:30 Panel: New Entrepreneurial Opportunities Seth Sternberg Ariel Yarnitsky Elan Oren 19:30– 20:00 Q&A
§ Product Simplicity: The meebo that launched in September 2005 is clearly very different from today’s meebo. The original product was far from perfect when we launched, but we wanted to get it out as soon as possible. Our philosophy was not to spend too much time on building in non-imperative features, but to develop a product that was simple, fun and solved a problem immediately. A pitfall that many companies fall into is that they spend years and years developing features for a new product that have not been specifically requested by the target audience. This can result in a bulky product with unused features. One piece of advice to new Web entrepreneurs – just launch already! :) § Solicit Feedback Early and Often: From the moment you launch, actively solicit feedback from your users, the media, peers and even competitors. Once our product was out, we considered all feedback seriously to determine what our users really wanted. We held local and international meetups to connect to our users. We launched a blog that pops up every time you log into meebo. We answered every email and call and took every media interview. The same holds true today. § Traction Means Everything: Within two months of meebo’s release, more than 100,000 people used the service daily. Good early growth helped demonstrate there was a real need for this type of Web-based IM. Without traffic, fundraising would have been nearly impossible. Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm that backed YouTube, Google and others, invested in December 2005. Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson joined meebo’s board in January 2007. If you launch a product and get a lot of traffic, investors and VCs will come to you. Remember, it is extremely hard to raise money if your team and product are not known quantities. § Bootstrap, Bootstrap, Bootstrap: At meebo, even though we’ve raised Series A and B funding, we still act like we’re a pre-funded startup. Every hire is taken very, very seriously and every purchase is made with great care. We’re determined to provide great value for our investors and stretch our funding very far. § A Passionate Team: A great foundation for starting any company. If the meebo team shares one thing, it’s passion. We all have the strong desire to create a product that has a really positive impact on users that borders on obsession. Not a minute goes by that isn’t spent thinking about improving meebo, building a better user experience, and how better to connect people live on the Web.
Seth is a co-founder and CEO of Meebo. Prior to Meebo Seth worked at IBM in Corporate Development leading M&A transactions and working on strategy and venture capital initiatives. Seth flies airplanes, rides motorcycles and rollerblades. Seth majored in Political Science at Yale.
meebo.com is a website for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere. Whether you're at home, on campus, at work, or traveling foreign lands, hop over to meebo.com on any computer to access all of your buddies (on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber) and chat with them, no downloads or installs required, for free. Meebo launched in September 2005 and received funding from Sequoia Capital in December 2005 and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in January 2007. Today, Thier users exchange over 90 million instant messages daily. The meebo team is just a fun bunch of people trying to bring IM to the web!
§ What would it take to get married in a world with no divorce option? Choosing your partners – founders, employees, investors § You will never know till you try – prophets live in the bible § Are you a decathlon player? – know the different arenas you will need to star on § Put the wisdom of crowds before yours § Crisis – it's not a question of "if" it’s a question of "How Many" § The joy of riding the tide § What is truer and when - "revenue is a distraction" or "where is the money?" § Intellectual property – does it really make a difference? § Was Abba right when they sang "the winner takes it all"? What about the #2 player in the market?
Ariel is the CEO of Speedbit and the former co-General Manager of ICQ. Speedbit is known for its Download Accelerator Plus which has over 142 million registered users and lately also for its Speedbit Video Accelerator, which happens to be the fastest growing application in the history of the web with more than 1.5 million registered users in under three months from launch.
VoIP and video services are very popular but are they making money? What will be the services supplied by the next Skype or Joost? This lecture review the business models of current VoIP and Video services and try to predict future trends in those fields.
VoIP Bizmodel - main problem is the erosion of per minute prices. Solutions include:
Other Trends:
Issues: Identity management
UGC video - business models is based on advertisement: text advertisement and content wrapping, no personalization or focus. Solutions include:
Issues: How to filter content, centralize web search, create personal recommendation platforms, work on all three distribution channels
Yossi is the founder of DSP-IP a VoIP and Video & Mobile consulting and development company. Yossi is a well known lecturer on; Imaging, Video, IPTV, Mobile and more in the professional academies and colleges in Israel like: Logtel, NGN Academy, NetBryce and in Hi-tech college.
Elan is a self-directed high technology executive with a 20 years track record of leading high-tech companies to success. In 2004 Ilan co-founded LeanWay Ltd. and served as the company’s CEO. The company has pioneered the technology of Data Stream and Complex Event Processing (CEP) and within less then two years the company became a market leader in this field. At the end of 2006, less than three years from its incorporation, LeanWay was acquired by a NASDAQ enterprise with a market CAP of $10B and as a result the LeanWay’s investors made over 2500% on their investment in the company. From 2000-2004, Elan was the CEO of iMesh.com and turned it into one of the worlds leading file sharing (P2P) services and a highly profitable company. In 2003, iMesh was chosen as one of Israel's ten leading internet companies and the 2nd largest P2P services in the world (after Kazaa). Elan has also become a desired spokesman for the world media on the most debated internet issue during this time – “Digital Copyrights Infringement and the Music Industry”. Elan has lectured on this matter in front of US congress senators, law schools, MBA business schools and has given numerous interviews to all of the leading newspapers and TV channels in the USA including NY Times, LA Times, Financial Times, Business Week, CNN and CNBC. During this time he continuously attempted to negotiate a workable solution with the five major record labels of the music industry. As a result, in 2005, iMesh became the first file sharing company to reach an agreement with the music industry. This made iMesh the first P2P paid service that provided original music tracks (MP3’s) on its file sharing network. |
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NIS 60, Entrepreneurs
who are also MIT Forum paid subscribers * The special rates are only available if you register by September 4th Cancellation fee:
NIS60 by September 4th, beyond this date - full payment |
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DSP-IP is a leader in providing Technology Services including: Consultancy, Knowledge Transfer & Development, provided by our pool of experts and freelances- as well as Outsourcing and Placement solutions- for Mobile, Video, multimedia over IP, VoIP, IPTV, Flash and more. DSP-IP Ltd. Is a privately owned Technology Services company, located in Netanya, Israel. |
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The MIT Enterprise Forum of Israel provides advice, support and educational services to innovative and technology-based companies of all sizes. The Forum is a not-for-profit organization and is directed by a volunteer board which donates its time and services to consult to entrepreneurs in high-technology companies. To unsubscribe from this emailist, pls mailto: unsubscribe@mit-forum.org.il |
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