SortiPreneur

Seedcamp Calling Turkish Entrepreneurs

Emre has a post announcing that Seedcamp is coming to Turkey.  This is great news for Turkish entrepreneurs, because where Seedcamp operates is precisely the zone in the Turkish capital universe with a vacuum.  From Emre's post, my interpretation is that the Seedcamp team is not actually visiting Turkey but has indicated that they are interested in seeing Turkish ventures.  I was not able to find any Turkey-specific details on the Seedcamp website.

What is Seedcamp?

Seedcamp is an attempt to jumpstart the entrepreneurial community in Europe by putting the next generation of developers and entrepreneurs in front of a top-tier network of company builders; including seed investors, serial entrepreneurs, product designers, architecture experts, HR specialists, marketers, lawyers, recruiters, and venture capitalists.

Why is this important?

Europe has the necessary ingredients to build the world’s next generation of leading technology companies; talent, capital, ideas, and examples of success; but what it lacks is the tradition of entrepreneurialism. This makes it hard for young entrepreneurs to secure funding, develop the right connections and build teams. Seedcamp is directly addressing these challenges by bringing together entrepreneurs from all over Europe and exposing them to the collective experience of people who can help turn their grand visions into successful businesses.

What is Seedcamp looking for?

A strong team of at least two people who have a creative idea and the energy and commitment to execute. The teams do not need years of experience; in fact, Seedcamp would most benefit first-time entrepreneurs with early, seed-stage ideas. Ideas should leverage the Internet and not have previously been funded. For a full list of selection criteria, visit the website: http://www.seedcamp.com/pages/apply_application_critera

Timeline

• Seedcamp is currently accepting applications: www.seedcamp.com
• Deadline is August 12, 2007
• Top 20 teams will be chosen and invited to Seedcamp Week in London
• Seedcamp Week takes place from September 3 – 7, 2007
• The top five teams will be chosen to receive €50,000 and continued support from the Seedcamp network

I would highly recommend it to any new Turkish internet venture.

Maybe We Turks Don't Have It So Bad When It Comes to Internet Pricing

I posted recently about my frustrations with very high access prices here in Turkey, accompanied with some data showing Turkey on top of the list.

Well, it turns out that the list is a relatively optimistic one.  A new report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe looks at the grim case in Kazakhstan (via ArsTechnica).

Most users (and only four percent of the country even has access) hook up through state-owned Kazakhtelecom, a company not concerned with competitive pricing for its services. An unlimited dial-up plan costs about €82 ($111) in a country where the average monthly wage is €292 ($399). As for DSL, an unlimited 1.5Mbps connection costs €2,458 ($3,355) a month, and doesn't even included the required ADSL modem. Want a 6Mbps cable connection? It'll cost you, to the tune of €16,144 ($22,032) a month. As the OSCE report drily notes, this is more than a thousand times the price of such a connection in Western Europe.

Beisel's Seven Areas to Watch and How They Relate Outside the US

David Beisel has a succinct post on seven trends he has identified as start-up opportunities.

1. The digitalization of transportation experience.
2. Internet’s facilitation of green lifestyle.
3. Influence and word-of-mouth marketing facilitated by online social software.
4. Fundamental shift demographics of internet usage.
5. Mobile consumption of information.
6. Wide proliferation of video.
7. Digital information becoming increasingly personalized with greater user control and choice.

While most of these trends can be identified as being universal with the internet, some are more relevant to the entrepreneur outside the U.S.  Trend number 5, mobile consumption of information is where the international entrepreneur is actually ahead of her American counterpart, and trend #2 is probably not going to be so relevant outside the U.S. for a while.

However, the rest of the list is very important, relevant and worth some thinking by the international entrepreneur.  And among those, I think the most critical is the shift in demographics.  We are now feeling that same shift very emphatically in Turkey, and I bet that it will form the basis for the next generation successful internet businesses here.

Facebook Buying Parakey

I have been emphasizing my belief that Facebook is distinct from other social networking services in that its DNA is that of a technology company.  In contrast, MySpace has always been a media company (now owned by a larger media company).

Facebook's acquisition of Parakey confirms this belief.

Turkey's Got the Most Expensive Broadband

OECD has just released its telecommunications report and here's a bit that should surprise no one living in Turkey.

As I watch the campaigns for the upcoming elections (which look to be critical in that the results will determine if the current polarization of the country will continue), I hear very little from the politicians in how they will focus on the added-value Turkey generates in its economy.  Information technology is a relatively small part of the Turkish economy, but knowing that the high price of telecommunications is largely due to taxes, it's discouraging to see that we are now at the bottom of the list.

Web Traffic Getting More Rational?

WSJ reports (via Paul) that the owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com domains just got sold to Answers.com for $100m.

The number is large enough to assure me that much analysis has gotten into it and that this is  not purely speculative.  It also makes me suspect that not enough players are doing that and it leaves the internet traffic market less efficient than it should be.

I wonder if securitization of domain name sets could be in the future.