I will not get into the discussion itself right now. However, for the moment, it’s good to know what the fuss between Nick Hanauer (speaker in this video) and Chris Anderson (TED curator) is actually all about.

Time for some news updates, this time partly regional, partly “wider picture” on the scene…

What are the odds to get an investment from Passion Capital?

With Stefan Glänzer as a founder, Passion Capital probably is one of the more “popular” VC investors in Europe right now. Among the portfolio are EyeEm and Readmill, two quite prominent Berlin startups, but also research network Mendeley and alternative content-monetization/donation/payment plattform Flattr, based in London and Malmö, respectively. So, if you want this “smart money” and shine in the portfolio, what are your chances to make it? According to an infographic in a recent article on Gründerszene, you might have a hard time: 1532 business plans were send in (I told you, they are popular!) and “only” 20 investments were made…

Job in the region: Product Manager at the MECC

The MECC is not only one of the most frequented exam locations for Maastricht University. Primarily, it is also one of the major exhibition halls for trade fairs in the region. Among those fairs, tefaf (The European Fine Arts Fair) is probably the most “famous” and well-established, as it lets to a massive influx of private jets into the otherwise unterutilized Maastricht-Aachen Airport each year. Anyways, the job offered is not strictly entrepreneurial, but as good opportunities in the region are rather few – I can say that from own experience – I would like to share it with you anyways.

Groupon with a profit?! How did that happen?

This lead to quite a wave of news and also major movements on the stock market: Groupon was profitable for the first time, during the last quarter. Unexpected? Certainly. Impressive? Somewhat less so, because the company is valued around $8.3 billion these days and the operationg profit was only $39.6 million – while the net income actually still was negative. I would imagine that our regional competitor/copycat SocialDeal must have achieved a significantly higher ROE much earlier – otherwise they probably wouldn’t have made it thisfar, as they did not have the kind of financing (as far as I know) that would have allowed them not to.

NRW-Startups Blog

Since I am a bit critical of some of the posts there, I did not add them to our blog roll yet… but it should be interesting for those interested in what’s going on east of the border (who understand a bit of German): Check out NRW-startups.de!

For example, I discovered a couple companies I did not know about yet via the “NRW-Startups” menu on the top…

By the way… In case you forgot to get your ticket, so far: Today is the last day to register for the MeWeek!

Magento gets a new fork: Mage+

This one is interesting for everyone interested in the “backend side” of e-commerce: The open source version of popular shopping software Magento, part of eBay since 2011, will get a new “fork”. (For the non-developers among the readers: This means that there is someone taking the current state of the code to develop it indepedently from now on.) Not surprisingly, ExcitingCommerce sees this as a further indication of problems for the open source efforts steered by eBay itself (Magento Community Edition).

Richard Branson speaks out against the Wietpas

I have not really heard anyone speaking out directly and unconditionally FOR the wietpas, except for the politicans that initiated it, but now there is a new prominent voice against it: Serial entrepreneur Sir Richard also does not like it. I doubt that this will impress Onno Hoes & Co. much though and so we will continue to hear the stories of how good of an idea it is – even though it quite obviously is not.

Student company events coming up in Maastricht

After Asana tea and the MeWeek (get your ticket until May 17th!) were promoted around the unversity last week, there is more “activity” coming up from entrepreneurial students coming up in the next week. Crispy Wallet presents a party on Tuesday at Il Cavo, while Ballerini Shoes will have their launch event on Wednesday – so, the week before the Maastricht Week of Entrepreneurship ’12 will already be quite “entrepreneurial”!

It’s already several months old, but worth a watch – if you don’t know it yet…

Rather for it’s “entertainment value” than for it’s content, but this episode is “something special”: Way-over-the-top criticism of the Samwer-empire. But that’s what you got to do, if you still want to get noticed bashing the same guys everyone was already bashing before, right?

Time for a new edition of brief news – this time exclusively ones that are related to Maastricht itself.

Maasterplan relaunch ahead

The Maastricht-local organization Maasterplan already has a some changes of direction behind itself, over the last few years. Now another one is just ahead. The website states that “this site is down for a major update  and will be online on Saturday”. Let’s get surprised what the new strategy and direction will be! (I already know, but I can not tell you… ^^)

Less than 2 weeks to the Maastricht Week of Entrepreneurship ’12

With only a short time to go till the start (on the 23rd), the MeWeek teams has made two interesting announcements, in regards to the content and speakers of the conference:

1. Tobias Jäger of Entrepreneur Academy will be speaking. While Tobias was already “appearing” in the program before, now it will be more prominently. I think that’s quite interesting – and good for the conference – because every additional Maastricht alumnus that  ”appears” there can potentially be an important role model.
2. Kerckhoffs Advocaten will hold a premium workshop “about the legal issues involved with starting your own business” on Friday the 25th at 17:00. I don’t exactly know what will be premium about it, but maybe it’s simply because there will be lawyers giving you advice, without emptying your pockets of money in no time… so, don’t miss it, if you want to start a (Dutch) business soon!

Part of the Spotz team moves on to Amsterdam to start BounceSpace

Before there was Spotz Maastricht, there was, for some time, BouneSpace Maastricht, as a co-working space in the football stadium of MVV. Now there is again a BounceSpace, this time in Amsterdam – while Spotz Maastricht remains firmely in place at Wilhelminasingel, just like before. How did it come to this? One blog post over at BounceSpace gives some indication: Jorn van Lieshout explains that he missed the “conceptual freedom” for himself at Spotz, motivating his move up north, together with another member of the team (Bo Janssis)… and I would’ve pretty much thought that “co-working space is co-working space”! Maybe, the real reason was that they simply like Amsterdam better and see more potential in that market, who knows…

Still quite some time to go until this years European Pirate Summit, but as (the most affordable) Early-Bird applications are only possible until the end of June, I would already like to put this on your agenda now. In the last year, the Pirate Summit was one seen as one of the best tech conferences in Germany, or even continental Europe. I did not attend, but…

What makes the Pirate Summit “special”?

First of all – and I’m not 100% sure that this will be the case again this year, but I think it’s likely that it will be – the event takes place open air.

Secondly, content-wise, there is a bold focus or statement for “non-copycat-ideas”. That’s basically what the pirate-idea is all about, in this case (and it does not have much to do with the political parties, in case you wondered):

The truly dareing entrepreneurs that are willing to try something really new, innovative and probably even quite risky. Maybe you can also extend it so far to say that it is a statement for taking “bootstrap risks”, rather than going for VC financing.

The idea is a bit hard to describe, I suppose, but here is something to give you an idea: The pitch of Vidar Andersen for Cologne (and Rotterdam)-based startup Gauss.

Impressed? Well, it was “good enough” to support them into making it to pitch at LeWeb…