JanBeckers.com

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.”

Some weeks ago Felix Haas, CEO of Amiando.com visited me for some days while he joined a conference in the valley. Some years ago he made his pilot license here in the valley while he studied at Stanford. So we went to the Palo Alto Flight Base and rent a nice small Cessna to fly over the bay area. We flew over the headquarters of Google and Co. and had a lot of fun especially when I took over the control of the machine…

The whole Area is pretty nice but for me San Francisco is definitely the best place around…

Tuesday night I spend with Manuel and Philipp, founders of Spickmich.de, at some web2.0-expo after parties. We started our tour at the office-party of six apart where hey had arranged a beautiful mini golf course - built mainly from macbooks and thinkpads…

Maybe that`s the reason why the vc-rounds tend to be a little bit larger in the valley

Anyway we had a lot of fun at the parties of Six Apart, Yahoo and Mashable…

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.

Today I had the luck to attend a interesting presentation of Andrea Zurek. She was the first sales employee and a leading executive at Google until she recently left the company.  She started angel investing in start-ups like BluBet.com and joined Sand Hill Angels, a Palo Alto-based network of individual Investors. Beyond the work with her investments she`s a licensed formula one driver and attended the gumball rally last year…

In her presentation she focused on the cultural and structural mechanisms that provide the DNA which enable Googles huge growth and efficiency. That reminded me to a great article about Google`s marketing. I have huge respect for the long-term vision, which the founders and early stage employees of Google had, when they build the (social and structural) architecture of Google at a time when nobody could really predict that amount of growth.
That`s really visionary entrepreneurship and goes even far beyond that (large) amount of vision what it needs to built, grow and sale “only” a medium-sized player for a more or less specific market.

Despite the attraction of the challenge to find (and pursue) an opportunity that could be the basis for the next Google I will concentrate my energy (at least for the next time ) on medium-sized companies…

I look forward to meet Andrea again and would like to provide you with an interview on Gruenderszene.de.

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.

Hi together, I´m enjoying blogging since I joined Lukasz Gadowskis famous german Entrepreneurship-Blog “Gruenderszene.de” in May 2007.

Now the time has come for me to start also a personal blog while I will continue to write also for Grunderszene.de.

What do I expect from this blog and what can you expect from my blog if you are going to read?

First of all I hope this blog will allow me to share some more personal minds which would be in the wrong place on a general entrepreneurship blog like Gruenderszene.

Second I`m going to write this blog from an international viewpoint, with a focus on regions that will play the largest role for my further plans as entrepreneur:

- Silicon Valley (and the U.S), the most entrepreneurial region of the world and also my current residence.

- Germany (and the rest of Europe), where I spend most time of the first 24 years in my live, started my companies and enjoy my family and friends background.

- China (and other emerging countries in Asia) that I look forward to explore in the second half of 2008.

While I will not have the time to publish a lots of “News” or company details I want to provide you from time to time with some deeper analyzes mainly related to entrepreneurship and social life in a world, which people and countries are becoming more and more connected.

Furthermore i want to give you some recommendations for interesting articles and blogs that I found.

Beyond business I will also add some personal notes on stuff that I´m interested in.

I hope you enjoy my blog as well as I do and give me new insights on the covered topics by sharing your thoughts via comments or my profiles.