You could say that Thorsten Claus, Director of Playout Intelligence at Detecon, Inc., acts as one of the more innovative spearheads of Deutsche Telekom. Focusing on content capitalization Thorsten uses his San Francisco base to know the Bay Area’s start-up scene, meet the founders of the hottest start-ups in Silicon Valley and thus staying up-to-date with all developments in the digital entertainment industry. Being an angel investor himself, he not only knows the distant corporate approach to shirtsleeved founders but he’s fully equipped with what it needs to start, run and grow a company. Thorsten is a very open and helpful guy – so if you are in need for some valuable advice – don’t hesitate to contact him.
Alone in San Francisco? Never! Just visit the Organic Cafe and check in via Foursquare, et voilà! That’s the way we met Wendy right before the start of the Web 2.0 Expo’s second day – trying to awake herself as we did ourselves. Based in Utrecht, Netherlands, Wendy works as an online campaigner at the non-profit organization Oxfam and as a freelancer in web editing and text translation (Dutch to English and English to Dutch). Besides she is a blogger at Dutch Cowgirls. We had a very nice chat about making Foursquare still more social – although it definitely is very social to have an appinion like this as result of a mere check-in!
When Italy-born Carolina Milanesi publishes some figures on the Mobile Industry the crowd is listening: The London-based VP of Research at Gartner’s Mobile Devices team is the the second-most quoted mobile analyst. Responsible for the forecasting and market share efforts of the mobile players she also is Apple’s vendor lead. The launch of the iPhone 4.0 “will keep Apple ahead of the game, although Android has made huge process” – is Carolina’s statement on the latest smartphone from Cupertino. We met her at WWDC10 where we had the opportunity to chat about the App Economy – and to ask her about her usage of apps!
Sarik Weber from Hamburg is well known as tech entrepreneur. He co-founded the social network Xing as well as the mobile app Cellity. Just in time for the next10 conference in Berlin, he organized the “Green Venture Summit” which brings together investors and start-ups in the cleantech industry. Sarik left Nokia at the end of April and we’re sure he is already working on the next venture.
Squirrels, pigeons and woods – that’s what the biggest disruptor of these days, Craig Newmark, sees when he does not look at his computer screen. Is it the behavior and instincts of wild animals or just a very good and basic idea of listening to your community members? However, craigslist.org has resulted in massive problems for the classifieds business of publishing houses. Users all over the United States have shun this mature industry and flocked to the freemium model of craigslist.org where most ads can be published for free – and only a few categories are paid ones. Alas, in our interview, Craig admits possessing a superpower. And he has some advice for other couch potatos like him to start businesses.
Disclosure: From my point of view, Microsoft Corp. isn’t the perfect example of an innovative and sympathetic company. For me, Microsoft has been a giant, desperately trying to keep pace with companies like Apple on the product side or Google on the online side. I must admit: A 30-minute chat with a Microsoft employee has changed my mind if not entirely, but to a great extent.
Stefan Weitz, Director of Bing – Microsoft’s search engine and so far the only competitor to Google – has provided us with some very interesting thoughts about vertical search, the design of search results and the challenge to find out about the users intentions. The next level of search certainly will not look like the search panes we have today – at least according to Stefan.
“Probably the only Werder Bremen fan in SF. Besides that I’m blending in pretty well.” That’s how Malte describes himself. Hey – there are no other Werder* Fans in San Francisco? Really?
Malte is responsible for Business Development at Talenthouse, a platform for creative people to participate in cool projects with artists and brands, collaborate, gain recognition and compensation.
Together with Talenthouse’s founder Roman and Frederik, Malte is the third german speaking entrepreneur at the Mountain View based start-up.
8 employees, $2 million revenues, a low cost basis and high quality content broadcasted continuously – this is TWiT: a tech show on the Internet. Former radio anchor Leo Laporte serves tech pundits with audio and video content, as podcast or live. 6 cameras in the TWiT cottage are filming anything what Leo does: a chat channel with several hundred participants is showing him what people think of his show. Read on…
Berlin born Marcus Greinke, who has been living between Palo Alto and San Francisco for the last 20 years, started in the advertising industry. In 2005 he founded charlesandmarie.com, together with his business partner Claus Krogmann, who’s overseeing the European operations. Sourcing and producing the latest design products – mostly in Asia – is the business model of this ecommerce platform.
The latest project of Marcus and Claus is XXL Commerce, Inc – a Flash Shopping App which still is in Closed Beta. Marcus, who is an iPhone addict, sorts his apps by colours – a unique approach for appinion participants so far!
New Delhi born Atul Arora is one of the hidden stars of Online Media. His network score on Google Buzz lets him pass media heavyweights like Bradley Horowitz or Jason Calacanis in the list of 20 Most Connected People. A father of two, the 42-year-old engineer at online health insurance agent Vimo is a regular tipper at Techmeme and helps to find the most relevant content in the tech industry. Atul shares his insights in tech while having some very delicious Indian food.
appinion - Stefan Weitz, Director of Bing
Low Cost Broadcasting – Leo Laporte leads a new breed of broadcasters
appinion – A Social Disruptor – Craig Newmark, craigslist.org
appinion – Gabe Rivera, Techmeme and Mediagazer
appinion - Atul Arora, Product Management Director @ Vimo
