4 month after launching in beta-mode Absolventa announced today to welcome the 50.000th graduate. The sales and key accounting team is also busy: Far more than 300 Companies have now access to our graduate-database, - active clients include Daimler, Google and E-ON. Anyway there is still a lot to do and the team of now 22 great entrepreneurial employees, interns and founders is still working day and night…
Klaus-Martin Meyer has interviewed me about Absolventa.de and Entrepreneurship:
After I left San Francisco last week I stay for a short while in New York, before I move back to Germany next week. The city is beautyful and it`s great fun living here. I spend my days mostly watching the typical tourist attractions, celebrating the clubs, meeting locals and inhaling the city spirit by meeting some locals. I also met some nice entrepreneurs with roots in Austria and Singapur…
The picture was taken at the Top of Rockefeller Tower with the Central Park in the background.
I just posted an interview with Loic Le Meur on Gruenderszene.de.
Loics friendly greeting to European entrepreneurs: “Don`t do Copycats. That`s no good advertising for Europe.”
Yesterday I met again Calvin Chin in a coffee bar in Palo Alto and we had an interesting discussion about entrepreneurial chances in China and elsewhere. Calvin and I got in contact when we both hold a discussion about “getting started as entrepreneur” at Barcamp Shanghai during september of last year. Calvin worked for several years in the U.S.-VC-sector before he moved to Shanghai, where he founded Qifang after he worked for a while as broker between Start-ups and VCs. Qifang is a (pre-launched) p2p-lending platform that is going to connect chinese students with wealthier individuals. I like the concept which seems to be both an attractive entrepreneurial chance as well as it could help millions of people to better their chances to get a good education. I look forward to meet Calvin again when I stay in Shanghai later this year.
Auren Hoffman sent me an interesting article why recessions must not be bad for innovative Start-ups:
Recessions promote breakthrough inventions
Auren is a Silicon Valley based Serial Entrepreneur and currently founder and CEO of Rapleaf. He is also an investor and advisor for diverse internet start-ups like Meebo or - more surprisingly - a non-internet-company called Lotus Vodka…
I recently got to know him at a nice web2.0-entrepreneur-dinner that he organized in San Francisco`s Thai-restaurant Tara (123 2nd street).
His article fits very well with my strong believe in a long-lasting “Golden Age” for Entrepreneurs. While there will certainly be an up and down in several sectors as well as the provided amount of venture capital I am pretty sure that we will see great times for entrepreneurs for a very long time - given any point of the economic cycle.