N’hésitez pas à vous abonner à leur flux (avec Notifixious), car leurs émissions sont toutes très bonnes (j’ai beaucoup les Gérants Verts presenté par mon ami Jérémy)

© julien for L'Ouvre Boite, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: interview, Notifixio.us, TV

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Techcrunch wrote an article about us in France, I had a few interviews here and there (some more are coming), many people started to use Notifixious as their main feed reader. We published our very first application: a firefox addon that you can use to subscribe in one click to your favorite websites (please, if you use it, add your review there). Our widget has also been selected as a featured widget on the typepad platform (probably the biggest pro-blogging platform). We also released our first mashups and they brought us some users who didn’t how and why they should use Notifixious. We also released a MovableType plugin, a Bookmarklet.

It’s now -almost- time to rest a little bit and see what Santa will bring to Notifixious! Maybe some love?

© julien for L'Ouvre Boite, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: christmas, looking back, wrap up

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Most of the “buyers” cash will decrease in the next semesters. Additionnaly, don’t expect any company to be able to borrow enough money to acquire anyone, which means the number of M&A will probably shrink to a minimum: no more YouTube deal.

The only remaining option is probably shares buy back from the startups. It means that the startups will soon have to buy back their VCs shares. Most of the time, VCs don’t invest their own money and they have to pay back their investors at a maximum of 10 years. My assumption is that this will slightly increase (12 years), but also that the VCs expectations for startups’ profitability will skyrocket to pay back the investment with dividends and/or buy-backs.

So, yes, it’s cheaper to create a nice web business, and, as Fred Wilson says, the need for money is not linear anymore, but this money will probably also be more “expensive” in terms of expectations and will probably lead to lower post-money valuations.

© julien for L'Ouvre Boite, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Buyback, Crisis, Exit, IPO, M&A, VC

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Conversing over the phone is way more efficient than by mail. Similarly, conversing over Twitter is more efficient than by email… etc. Notifixious’ mission statement is to allow a better information consumption. Consuming the information can have several meanings, but conversing and sharing thought is definitely a big part of it. In this case, yes, real-time is a key feature.

That is why I am really looking forward to the integration of Notifixious on several “conversation” services, such as the advanced commenting systems (Disqus, IntenseDebate…), Video conversation (Seesmic), … 

And for you, is real-time a key feature?

© julien for L'Ouvre Boite, 2008. | Permalink | | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: conversation, Notifixio.us, Real-time

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I was quite impressed a few years ago when I read about Aubrey de Grey, who let’s admit it looks like a crazy guy! His theory is that researchers have now identified the 7 types of damages that aging causes and that we can now focus on each of the to each theoretical immortality. Look at this video from Ted to learn a little bit more.

Does it still look crazy? Our life-expectancy is evolving in already evolving in a interesting way. When someone is 60, his got 23,53 years ahead of him, (he would die at about 83,53), but when he is 61, he as 22,71 years to live, so he would die at 83,71… Leave one more year, and you gain 0,18 years! If you take this at the first degree : the longer one lives, the longer he lives! Isn’t that immortality? Of course, there is actually a flow here, and I’ll let you find it, but the tendency is here: on average, every year which passes grants me with 0,33 years to live more [see this life expectancy table]. 50 years ago, it was probably way lower… and we can bet that this will somehow reach 1 at some point (or close enough to one, so that we can consider being immortal… at 0,9 we could probably live for centuries)

Anyway, this brings a lot of questions and raises a lot of political issues : how can we manage/share our “limited” resources forever? And I really wish I can be there to elaborate solutions and debate about it!

© julien for L'Ouvre Boite, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: death, immortality, Life-expectancy, TED

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I’ve been lucky enough to make some money with my first venture, but I haven’t found a way to gain time. Not sure anyone did though! I’ve got a todo list longer than the phonebook, and I’m just talking about the things I must to. For me the secret is all about doing things at the right time, not when I want to do them. 

Adding features doesn’t make any sense if users are not requesting them. Finding a business model is useless as long as Notifixious doesn’t have enough users, raising money is wasting time if I don’t need right now, … and the list goes forever.

So now, each of my days starts with a timeline : what do I need to do now for tonight, for tomorow, for this weekend, for next month… It’s amazing to see the number of things that I can do, but I don’t need to do ASAP. However, it is sometimes painful to skip on things that I want to do, or that I can do now and for which I am not sure another opportunity will show up later…

© julien for L'Ouvre Boite, 2008. | Permalink | | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: entrepreneurship, Patience, time management

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And do not forget to click in the confirmation link that you will receive by email, if you want your vote to count

* hum, we couldn’t find a category that describes Notifixious better!

© julien for L'Ouvre Boite, 2008. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: award, mashable, Notifixio.us

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First, I have to repeat that the ‘rules’ around this visa are all but precise. No numbers, no date, a lot of ’should’, ‘may’, ‘can’… 

1. The “amount”. It’s the question everybody asks. The only valid answer is : it depends on your business plan! Are you trying to create a new car manufacturer? Bring a lot! In my case, I created a Web Startup with a lighter investment. However, everybody shares the fact that below $100k, it is very tough!
2. The requirements : your company should better have a decent track record (sales, users, growth numbers…), or, if it’s a start-up, you must have this track record : repeat entrepreneur, top executive… etc. In my case, Jobetudiant.net helped a lot, my exeprience at BNP Paribas a little less!
3. Get Endorsments : the guys at the consulate don’t know you… and they probably don’t know anything about your business or your industry either, so don’t get too much in the details here. However, they know what everybody knows : big corporations, so bring them Letters of Intent, Contracts… anything with their name and your name on it!
4. Be Risky : your investment should put at risk, so risk it, and don’t be grumpy on the money! You’d better show a lot of expenses to prove that you’re actually building a company and not trying to get a visa to spend the next few years in the US for the fun of it!

© julien for L'Ouvre Boite, 2008. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Entrepreneur, Visa E2

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• Visa : it should be fine… so hoepfully, I’ll be back in sunny California by the end of the week, with my precious E2 visa (at last…)
• API to create channels : anyone can now create a channel through which users can subscribe to Notifixious (XMPP based)!
• Smart Widget : this widget follows you everywhere and remember what are the channels you already use
• Public Timeline: This is a twitter-like feature that allows anyone to ‘listen’ to all the notification that Notifixious sends. What is it good for? Creating a search engine, doing statistics… etc! 

Ok, time to enjoy the week-end now, I have 10 hours until monday morning

© julien for L'Ouvre Boite, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Firehose, Timeline, visa, week, widget, XMPP

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I totally see the point here… but still, patents can also protect start-up sometimes, don’t you think? It’s probably one of the only things that a start-up can have to face the fierce competition from the big guys.
What we need, rather, is probably shorter time to benefit from a patent. A start-up that can’t turn an invention into a successful product/service/business in less that 2/3 yrs shouldn’t be able a hold the patent any longer. Also, an invention should always come with “real” products and services; There is nothing worse than having a great idea, and seeing that someone had the same but locked it and didn’t do anything with it!

Originally posted as a comment by julien51 on A VC using Disqus.

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