Few days ago jury of the Dutch Innovation Awards , organized by Accenture, announced 50 Dutch and Belgian finalists out of 200+ contest submissions. Holland and Belgium aren’t exactly in Central Europe but what the heck, let’s give’em a chance at smart-up.eu!

Some of the nominees handpicked for you and me by Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck:

Game Overlord - Game developers

Habbo Hotel - Virtual hangout for teens

eBuddy - Web based IM with over 40 million users

I-wood - Banners on your idle mobile screen (Dutch)

LiveCastr - Livestream from your mobile

Movels - Read books on your mobile

Myngle - Learn languages online

Netlog - Pan European social network

I-Rex - Kindle lookalike

Open Projects - free open source 3D content creation suite

Paybymail - Payments via email (iDeal). (NOTE: Paypal is non existent in the Netherlands UPDATE: Paypal has almost 2 million Dutch customers in NL, can paybymail grab a piece of the market?)

Payter - Mobile payments via Near Field Communication

Rabo SMS Betalen - Per per TXT message no account needed

SellaBand - Crowdfund your favorite band

StartyourStation - build your own tv channel

Symbaloo - Before the iPhone was out they already had the icon interface. Easy startup page

ViralTracker - Tracking Viral Commercials

Wuzzon - Mobile content platform (Dutch)

Zilok - The Next Web startup 2008, online rental platform aka the eBay of rentals

You can see all nominees and vote for your favorite go to the Innovation Award website.

In case you don’t know it yet - the Balkans are hot. HOT! Boiling with innovation and entrepreuership. Beaches and vistas of Croatia are nice as well. But let’s pretend to put business before pleasure ;) So…

Croatia is a perfect outlet to the Balkans and I personally believe there are many interesting start-ups there. I guess that�??s why New Europe Events in co-operation with Initium association invites bold and ambitious entrepreneurs, professional managers and investors to participate in TMT.Ventures�??08 Zagreb conference, which will take place on October 28th in Zagreb, Croatia.

Central and Eastern Europe is a fertile environment for technology start-ups which incubate bold and innovative services. But that you already know that.

What you DON’T want to miss:

Adeo Ressi - founder of TheFunded.com, an online community of entrepreneurs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. Very interesting site and very controversial one. Adeo will speak on “Money for your dream, funding great projects, and building regional markets… The ultimate win-win-win“.

Adeo also serves as a Trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation, which inspires radical human achievements through competition. TheFunded.com is the seventh start-up that Adeo has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating. The last company, Game Trust, Inc., was acquired by Real Networks, Inc. (RNWK) at the end of 2007.

�??7 minutes�?? is a unique competition for innovative entrepreneurs and their projects from the space of telco, new media and new technologies. It is an express elevator up to the community of investors and experienced businesspeople with decision-making power whose recommendations and support are like rocket fuel for the projects aimed in the right direction.

�??7 minutes�?? is also a challenge for entrepreneurs trying to make an impression and deliver a convincing presentation in an extremely short period of 7 minutes. It is a test of self-confidence and charisma for the project-leaders standing in front of a demanding audience, their competition, world-class investors, bloggers and media people.

Apply here. If you dare… ;-)

Panel discussion:

“Success stories from the Balkans: turning dreams into business”

• It�??s good to know people who know people
• Teamwork saves time and money
• Inspire people, get their support
• The right strategy is always looking for the better strategy

Panelists:
Ilija Studen, activeCollab, Serbia
Marko Vojkovi�?, Adriatica.net, Croatia
Maja Jelisi�?, Mobitel, Croatia
Nenad Baki�?, Moj-Posao.net, Croatia
Stanislav Prusac, Polar Software, Croatia

…and of course the after party. Can’t do without it.

But that’s not all, folks. Stay tuned.

You’re invited on June 12th to TMT.Communities’08 Warsaw conference - New Europe’s most focused event on Web 2.0, social media and internet / mobile communities. It is organized in cooperation with Techcrunch UK & Ireland, who’s editor Mike Butcher will be speaking during the conference. We’re also having an Innowatorium & Techcrunch Meetup - an evening unformal event for tech startups, business angels and investors. If you’re interested in participating or in promoting your startup at Techcrunch.com - let me know.

By the way - Yours Truly is the chairman of the TMT.Communities conference. Take a look at the event agenda - looks interesting.

So creating products and services around internet & mobile communities presents great business and investment opportunities. Does it really? Or maybe Web 2.0 is �??merely�?? a social phenomenon attracting eyeballs but presenting not much value except for strategic investors intending to cross-sell their products?

Anyhow, creating and managing an active community throughout its lifecycle is a difficult challenge requiring a complex skillset. One has to deal with numerous business challenges and irritants for the (over?)sensitive users. Who�??s to tell which early-stage projects will succeed? Why are some great seed projects misjudged and offered no support? Why some promising VC-backed projects fail?

Let�??s discuss these issues on June 12th, 2008 during TMT.Communities conference in the Warsaw Stock Exchange HQ.

Did I mention that we’ll be watching Poland - Austria Euro 2008 football game? Well, we will.

I had a pleasure to meet Alex Osadzinski at New Connect Club event organized by Ewa’s firm and moderated by Yours Truly. After the club meeting (catch a glimpse) we had a dinner and the next day we gave Alex and his lovely wife a tour around Warsaw. After hanging out for some time I can tell you that this guy rules!

(FYI New Connect is an AIM-like unregulated market run by WSE.)

So Alex is an experienced operational exec, very technical, now a VC with Trinity Ventures in Sillicon Valley. Before joining Trinity 7 years ago he’s created over 230 billion USD (!) of aggregate public market cap, or acquisition price, for the 6 startups that he’s been at.

But let’s allow Alex to introduce himself:

I’m a lifelong geek and lover of technology with a passion for building, growing and managing teams and companies. I’ve been fortunate to have been at five startups that created great products, employment and economic value. I was sobered by the sixth startup that taught me that everyone has limits to what they can achieve. Now I enjoy helping and nurturing early-stage technology startups as a VC.

Alex works in Sillicon Valley but has a broader and multicultural perspective compared to the California locals thanks to his British experiences. He was born in London and worked in the UK for a long time. Since we were looking for a rolemodel for young Polish entreprenuers he was the perfect guy for the job. That’s why we invited him for New Connect Club event where he presented his viewpoint on global expansion of European tech companies and differences between business cultures here and there. You can see Alex’s presentation on slideshare or below. It was featured on the SlideShare homepage by their editorial team.

| View | Upload your own

But that’s not all I have to say about Alex. With every passing minute I learned more about him and it’s quite a story, I tell ya…

While we were walking through the streets of Warsaw Alex made a point that some parts of the town look like in Half Life 2. That’s kinda true. And now you know that he’s also a gamer. How many VCs would admit something like that?

Half Life 2 scenery

Warsaw 2008 scenery

Unlike many future-oriented, technology-loving geek-VCs Alex is also very concious about his geopolitical surroundings, his Polish ancestry and Poland’s history. Since his parents had their share of the WWII effort we visited the Warsaw Uprising Museum (high-tech and industrial in its design - kind of like in Ravenholm basement, but as Alex noticed no headcrabs).

When we were passing the Wellington real-size model it turned out Alex is also a pilot. Turns out that many VCs (in California) are pilots. Alex also confessed that while he’s not burning fuel over the Pacific coastline he tries to save the environment by driving a hybrid car, recycling garbage and using solar-generated power from his roof. Only in California man… ;-)

Around that time we were passing the Warsaw University buildings and we bumped into Creative Commons guys. They had a conference and Alex confessed to be an acquaintance of Lawrence Lessig, Stanford professor and founder of Creative Commons. That’s all I needed to know so we crashed CC guys party. Alex gave a 3 minute speech on his point of view… and we left. So much to see, so little time… ;-) I just hope that Alek Tarkowski, the moderator of the CC event isn’t too mad at me.

CC conference in Warsaw - tourist VCs are always welcome

It was a lot of fun.

And if that wasn’t enough I found a couple of shared interests (besides Valve games) with Alex - namely pigs and one of my favorite movies (lately) entitled “Idiocracy” by Mike Judge.

Man, what a great guy!

Two weeks ago there was an interesting conference held in Croatia.  Web.Start was the first conference in Southeastern Europe focused exclusively on Web application development and Web startups. This year, conference took place on May 8-9, 2008, at the Hypo EXPO XXI Centre in Zagreb, Croatia. The conference was being organized by the Croatian Association of software and online entrepreneurs Initium.

Looks like it was a hot event. And I’m not writing about it because my grand-grand… grandma used to live in Dubrovnik when it was a part of Austria-Hungary. Croatia is a nice place to visit, great people. I learned to dive there. There are some nice WWII plane bombs at the bottom of the sea near Makarska.

We speak a similar language, have a similar national anthem, have a similar national flag and I was always a fan of Croatian football. The victory over the Dutch in 1998 FIFA World Cup Finals was great.

It’s a pity Poland plays Croatia in Euro 2008 next month. Some say Germany will win the group and the real race is for the second place between Croatia and Poland. Pity.

Very mobile, well educated and trained, often workaholics, somewhat greedy and therefore effective in whealth creation and trade. They already invested quite a lot of their time in Western Europe, conquered America and then they came to Kiev. Very keen on beautiful local women. Who am I talking about? No, I’m not talking about VCs coming for TMT.Ventures’08 Kiev conference. I’m talking about Wikings known also as Normans or Varangians who established Kievan Rus’ in the 9th century and started the Rurik dynasty which ruled Russia until 1598.

Medieval Scandinavians had many of today’s VCs qualities. They were undertaking very risky projects using their reputation which often preceded them. Their investment vehicles (boats) used for value creation were very mobile and used for doing business around the world. Depending on the situation they either made business deals or resolved business differences in a more brutal manner using mercenaries (lawyers) and swords (pens). They very much appreciated charismatic managers able to lead small teams throughout expansion into large organizations capturing large markets. They were all about business.

Their managerial skills were developed in the 9th century under competition and pressure from older Western business cultures like Celts and Picts. They got some nice ROI results and quickly dominated in the region. Danish VCs established kingdom of York in England, Norwegian VCs started kingdom of Dublin in Ireland. Norman VC known as William the Conqueror conquered the English market in 1066. About the same time Leif Eriksson discovered America.

Kiev from the hilltop

When I was walking in the streets of ancient Kiev with blogger Alex Riabtsev I wasn’t quite aware of all this but he told me that the city was built on hills overlooking the Dnieper river. It kind of reminded me of San Francisco which is also built on hills and has some famous brigdes. And we all know that VCs like everything which looks like the Bay Area.

San Francisco from the hilltop

Present day VCs are re-discovering Ukraine which has been under Russian influence but now attempts to enter EU and utilize its intelectual potential using venture capital funds. There are some great startups over there and some of them are surfacing on the global market but the situation kind of reminds me of the 9th century. Back then local managers (Finnic and Slavic tribes) invited VCs (Varangians) to accelerate their companies’ growth and increase ROI. It proved to be the right decision and created (business) culture which lasts until now.

Are Western VCs going to make it big in Ukraine? Again? Sure unless…
Medieval VCs were so fond of the local ladies that the the Rurik dynasty after around 70 years turned completely Slavic. Since then there was nothing Norman about it. So VCs, watch out for those beauties. It is very easy to defocus. And I know what I’m talking about - I went out with Yegor to a club and didn’t want to leave. ;-)

So the future looks bright for the Ukrainian tech industry. I just hope that present day VCs don’t make a mistake of underestimating its potential. After all the Viking VCs made a quite spectacular error. Leif Eriksson discovered America around 1003 but he soon left. He had a Google or Skype of his times and decided to go back home. The rest is history.

Every decent conference has a networking after-party, a cocktail or a bar meet. If there is none the conference is 50% impaired. Demand one from your event organizer or demand your money back ;-)

I won’t brag about what should be done at networking parties. You know the drill. I’ll just indulge myself in posting some pictures of me and pretty businesswomen I’ve met. Notice how I look the same on every picture - that’s years of practice. Here you can see Yulya Filippovska accompanied by yours truly. Yulya is a bit secretive about her future plans but definately a quality professional.

Above you can see Rafal Stroinski and Inna Proshkina with yours truly. Inna Proshkina is an ex-marketing manager of invisibleCRM, an Ukrainian-originated company which rolled-out globaly and created significant traction with major business analytics firms such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC and others. Currently Inna is a founder and CEO of Go2Market, a trans-atlantic marketing consultancy firm. Check out Inna’s Linkedin recommendations. She’s all business.

Rafal Stroinski is a person deserving a separate blog post but I’ll try to squeeze him with businesswomen - I’m sure he won’t mind. We met in California in November 2006 and since then Rafal is a good businessfriend. Also a great networker, a Fullbright scholar at Stanford University, a renown academic teacher in Poland, an animator and active member of US-Polish Trade Council based in Sillicon Valley, and an active legal advisor in new technology deals with a track record of several important deals and M&A transactions. He holds a Ph.D. in law and an LLM degree from Harvard Legal School and is admitted in New York as Attorney and Counselor. The list goes on.

Ewa did a good job again validating the claim phrase under her company’s logo : “Watching trends with businessfriends, making deals and having meals”.

In the next episodes:

• Sightseeing Kiev with Alex Riabtsev of startup.in.ua
• Networking party - the-day-after

Stay tuned.