entrepreneurship, Events, hustling, startup

Yossi Vardi let me use his keynote to pitch my startup

Recently I was invited with our startup to the Campus Party – the biggest electronic entertainment event with keynotes from rock stars like Paulo Coelho, Yossi Vardi, Don Tapscott and Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

It’s no secret that I’ve been a fan of Yossi Vardi for some time, so it was only natural that I was camping out on a front row seat, eager to hear his keynote.

Then about ten minutes in, something unpredictably awesome happened; As I was answering Yossi’s question to “what’s keeping people from executing on their ideas?” shouting “FEAR OF FAILURE!” out loud from the crowd, Yossi told the keynote audience that I should perhaps hold the keynote instead of him and then proceeded to let me pitch Gauss to his whole keynote audience! Needless to say I was pretty gobsmacked.

Watch it as it happened:

This kind of spontaneous generosity completely blew my socks off and caught us totally by surprise!

So thank you, Yossi – I’m incredibly humbled and grateful! You are even cooler than I imagined. I hope we meet again sometime in the future. You rock! :)

Here’s a bonus interview with Dr. Yossi Vardi from CP Europe 2012:

entrepreneurship, startup, video

Interviewed by TechHustlers

Recently I got to sit down with TechHustlers‘ (@techhustlers) Eric Strait (@ericstrait) and had a conversation via Skype over the atlantic between Cologne, DE and San Marco, TX.

From the post:

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with my new friend, Vidar Andersen, & founding genius behind the “people magnet” app Gauss! We recently had the craziest happenstance way of connecting and believe it or not, we meet each other via Glancee, one of his competitors app at SXSW! He happened to be the closest SXSW event attendee staying near my home, so I thought I would connect. Little did I know, he was actually launching their direct competitor app Gauss. Gauss is a mobile app that let’s you discover and connect with interesting people around you. They describe it as a “People Magnet for your pocket.” I would not just say this and just blow smoke up your a$%, but after Vidar demoed Gauss to me, I was blown away at it made Glancee look like an amature! […]

Wow! Thank you, Eric!

Make my day: Get Gauss on the Apple App Store for free and start discovering new people around you today! :)

entrepreneurship, Events, News, pitching, startup

Startup Weekend Amsterdam

I recently attended Startup Weekend Amsterdam because:

1.) It’s just a whole lot of damned good fun!
2.) SWAMS has got to be one of best Startup Weekends anywhere
3.) I recently founded Startup Weekend Cologne so I had to attend a Startup Weekend as a requirement – Stay tuned for more!

James Digby (@digbyj) kicking it all off:

Then the awesome legendary Steve Blank (@sgblank) made a cameo appearance and I just had to ask him if he invests in European startups – On which he retorted I should first take some of his classes. Hah, so we meet again, Steve! I think I’ll have to take you up on that one! :)

UPDATE: I did take Steve up on that one. :)

So exiting that we’re all standing on our chairs!

The amazing SWAMS location, Pakhuis De Zwyger:

Easygiving.co winning the grand prize for thinking big; A non-profit charity where 100% of your donations go to the cause:

And of course I couldn’t help pitching myself and accidentally ended up winning the Startup Weekend Spirit award for our team http://lunchroulette.co for completely p0wning the judges and capturing the audience but also by telling the story of the learning made, how we invalidated the business model of some other guy’s idea I had originally joined, how the team then collapsed and the idea owner going home, leaving us basically a couple of hours on the last day to come up with this.

W00t! Good times!

I’m incredibly excited about bringing Startup Weekend to Cologne!

UPDATE 2013:

Almost exactly one year after i presented Lunch Roulette at Startup Weekend Amsterdam, I was visiting the new Facebook HQ in Menlo Park and found out that they had implemented some of the ideas for their staff internally.

Hah! Even the logo looked uncannily familiar! I’ll take that as validation, thank you.

See for yourself:

Internal Facebook memo on the wall at the HQ in Menlo Park, June 2013.

Events, Lessons Learned, News, startup

Gauss @ SXSW 2012

Gauss arrived at SXSW in Austing, Texas:

To pitch at Frank Gruber’s (@FrankGruber) TechCocktail SXSW Startuplife Showcase:

Where we met and pitched awesome people like Don Dodge (@dondodge) and Ben Parr (@benparr)…

And got invited to the incredible Startup Weekend VIP party by Déborah and James:

And got interviewed by the wonderful StartupLive:

And Harald Neidhart (@hneidhardt) of MLOVE:

Got invited personally by his awesomeness himself, Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) to the Rackspace / Startup Bus party:

Ate late night post-party pizza with the awesome people of SendGrid:

Thanked the amazing Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) in person for retweeting us:

Pitched the legend Steve Blank (@sgblank):

Who loves Gauss and called it a killer app:

And gave us a signed copy of his new book with this awesome testimonial:

Hung out with the awesome twitter master Calvin Lee (@mayhemstudios):

Hung around the Austin Hilton pitching all sorts of awesome people, including Micael Yavonditte (@mikeyavo) who hated us – but which is sort of OK since he hates all location based services – including Foursquare: