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At this very hour I am supposed to be up in the sky, 30.000 feet, on my way to India, but I am not…  
"Can I have your visa please?" struck me by lightning. @#*%!
For almost three years now, my company Qelp has been working closely with one, subsequently two business partners in India. For some people it’s hard to believe that we work together successfully, while we have never met in person. We do meet in cyberspace, some weeks even on a daily basis including weekends. We email, we chat through GTalk, we conference call, development work is delivered through workflows in our software platform, on test and live servers, JIRA issues fired back and forth, invoices sent and paid. Week after week, month after month. For a range of reasons I never went to India to meet Kalpa, Rashmi, Rabiya, Ravi, Swetha and their colleagues in person. Today I was supposed to go there for the first time, for a full program of meetings in Mumbai and Pune until Thursday. It just did not occur to me anymore, that I would need a visa until (not) checking in. Stupid of course, embarrassing even ;-) Having worked so closely together, my brain apparently felt the Indian embassy in The Hague implicitly granted permission to finally meet these people in person. At Qelp I think we practise Thomas Friedman’s, The world is flat to a significant extent. Offshoring, software-as-a-service for our customers, teleworking, virtual teams, operating internationally. Yet, we still live in a bricks and mortar society - one that does require a visa every now and then, for quite different reasons. Travelling in the European region, to the US, various countries in North Africa and the Middle East does not require ordering a visa in advance. There is either an EU treaty in place, you fill out a form in the plane or pay some duties upon arrival.
Hold on friends, sorry about this, I’ll plan for a new trip.

Last week I had the privilege of participating in the Benelux Techtour: an event where  a selection of 24 “promising technology companies” from the Benelux meet with “60 senior representatives from VC funds, leading corporations and institutional investors”.
Being selected with my company Qelp as one of the 24 “winners”, I was invited to attend a great networking dinner at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. The COO of a tiny start-up from Luxembourg called Skype, explained us in his key-note speech how they became so successful. On Wednesday the Techtour left Amsterdam by boat for Utrecht and 8 selected technology companies including yours truly delivered a presentation to the investors. While I am not actively looking for venture capital right now, the event was an excellent networking opportunity to refresh some existing contacts and get some new buscards from investors, entrepreneurs, press and even a few potential customers. Compliments to Coen van Duiven and Ron Belt for putting this event together in their "spare" time. Coverage on the event can a.o. be found in Het Financieele Dagblad and De Telegraaf (both in Dutch).

While I was in London Friday and Saturday for a number of Qelp business meetings, I selected these days in particular to be able to join Andrew Snoad and Tony Bicknell in celebrating the 10^th anniversary of their firm Decision Tree Consulting (DTC). They invited all those who worked with DTC in the first 2 years of starting their company for a dinner tour on the Thames. Andrew refreshed my mind telling me that in fact I was their first large customer. I had them conduct a survey in 24 countries about the decision making process for videoconferencing equipment in multinational companies. I was working for Sony in those days, setting up their European business for videoconferencing systems and combatting with PictureTel who was the market leader. Sony had spotted videoconferencing as a potential mass market( it’s still a niche unfortunately), but had little experience in the telecoms market which is why I was brought in. DTC won the assignment for the survey while in competition with Anderson Consulting and Coopers who should have been able to leverage their international presence but didn’t.

Earlier that Friday I met for lunch with Osman Mardin, who supported me while I was conducting a tough financing round for ThreeFive Photonics in early 2003. Guess what? He reminded me that I was his launching customer after he left investment bank Robertson Stephens and started Sardis Capital, his current financing firm. Do I have a preference for selecting start-ups? Not necessarily –although I sympathize greatly with them- but if you award them the business you are more likely to get the undivided attention of the entrepreneur which can lead to more value for money. You don’t forget your first date, you don’t forget your first customer – it does create a special bond.

It’s more difficult in one country than another to do business. That’s the idea behind a study published last week by the World Bank, ranking 155 countries on a set of criteria including Starting a business, Hiring and firing, Getting credit, Protecting investors, Paying taxes and Trading across borders.
For 2006, the top 3 countries in terms of "ease of doing business" are New Zealand, Singapore and the United States. The only two European countries who made it to the Top 10 are Denmark (8) and the UK (9). The Netherlands is showing up at an embarrassing 24th place. Any politicians around looking for ammunition to make some business friendly, sweeping changes?

Five years after founding ThreeFive Photonics, it’s time to move on. It has been a roller coaster of ups and downs, but first and foremost a tremendously valuable experience in entrepreneurship. So much that I think I got addicted to it. Most of 2005 I have been working part time, to build a new company in parallel, Qelp Mobile Solutions, thereby leaving the semiconductor industry and going back to my mobile roots. For the past 2 months I had to get full time engaged again to work on a management buy-out for ThreeFive. Have not been able to complete the MBO before September 1 unfortunately. Good luck guys, I hope you will be successful in finishing the process quickly.

Getting venture capital for your company isn’t easy and it starts with getting the attention of a VC. Do you send him an email, an old fashion letter, a cold call, stalk around his office or better, an introduction through someone you know well? Venture capitalist Fred Wilson received his first Elevator Pitch Podcast: fitting nicely in today’s blogging, tagging and Podcasting buzz. For the techno entrepreneurs among us and early adopting VCs who know all about this stuff or better invest in it. Innovative clearly, but even more so another example of the continuous flood of new applications created by combining existing technologies. Apple has released a new version of iTunes that supports Podcasting, so get the elevator pitches out!

UPDATE: the new iTunes version 4.9 even seems ready for syncing with your mobile phone - if not the iPod enabled phones were still missing.