by Startupbusiness special correspondent Carlo De Micheli
If you think LeWeb is an event like any other, you’re wrong. Some of you may have attended LeWeb Paris and know what to expect in terms of the level of speakers and attendees. In 2012, for the first time, a LeWeb edition has been held in London, right in one of the most beautiful parts of the city, Westminster. The conference, split in two stages, a primary one upstairs and another one dedicated to the startup competition, was located in what was a church, now being a conference hall; it’s useless to point out the beauty of the venue. On Plenary 1, some of the most famous and influential people of the web gave their talks. Kevin Systrom from Instagram, Kevin Rose from Google Ventures, to sixteen year old startuppers where some of the ones on stage. All of them were able to answer the interviewer’s questions nonetheless. The opening speech was held, as usual, by the organizer Loic Le Meur. Right after that was a talk by the advisor to the British Prime Minister. Other than being renowned for the quality of the speakers, LeWeb is also a source of inspiration for many entrepreneurs. Organizing team vs. team discussions on stage between competing companies, trying to put them in difficult situations, participants were able to analyze different strategies adopted by the CEO’s to make their companies successful. An example the first day was between two members of Uber and Hailo, both global emerging companies in the taxi and private driver business, but we’ll cover this in depth in the next article.
During breaks we tried to find some of the speakers to ask them what their suggestions were towards today’s young entrepreneurs. Other than the usual answers such as ‘being determined’ and ‘passionate’ about what you’re doing, one of the most sought characteristics is having a good team that can complete the project autonomously. Using a football metaphor, you need a complete team, from the goalkeeper to a striker, if you’re missing any of them, you can’t play. In technological terms, developers, both web and mobile, designers, and people who do marketing are all essential in modern startups. Most of you will be asking yourselves how such young guys (and girls) have built their companies and found investors. One of these, the CEO of BoxCryptor, an application to encrypt your files in cloud storage services, has told us it’s better when investors come to you rather than looking for them. Obviously this works only for people who have really great and revolutionary ideas or in cases when the product is easy to monetize. Going back to what investors look for, monetization is one of the first factors to keep in mind…
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