Category: Events Page 2 of 10

Israel Mobile Summit

On 09/06/2014

In Apps, Education, Events, Games, Social, Thoughts

How long have I been waiting? It must be a good 5 years since I have last touched down at Ben Gurion Airport. Alas, no more. Tomorrow evening, it will be time again, and how timely it is, too. The Israel Mobile Week is on, and there is tons of super-interesting stuff happening. MoMo Tel Aviv – one of the most active and well-run Mobile Monday chapters – is in full swing, the Israel Mobile Summit, Droidcon Tel Aviv, the Microsoft Ventures Demo Day of its 4th Israeli cohort plus a few parties here and there of course…

I will have the immense honour of delivering one of the opening keynotes at the Israel Mobile Summit. Specifically, I will be speaking on “Capturing Users” – isn’t it all important how you find them (and keep them!)? Without users, you (or rather your business) is nothing. I have had the pleasure (and challenge) to try and have a crack at this challenge a few times in my professional life, and I am hoping to be able to share some of my hard-learned experiences with the audience on Tuesday (10 June 2014). The event will be on at the YesPlanet Rishon, a snazzy new cinema complex.

There will be talks from the leaders in mobile today, including:

Facebook
Wooga
Intel
AVG
Waze
Paypal
Amobee
Amazon
Deemedya (yes, my very good friend Doron Kagan will talk about his 100m+ game downloads; I can only imagine how that must feel)
AppAnnie
SingTel
HasOffers
Grow VC
Twilio
DragonPlay
Hunter & Bard (you should not miss Shira’s talk; she is one of the wisest women in marketing today!)

and many, many more!!!

Join us if you can! It will be worthwhile. And if you don’t think so, I’ll buy you a drink! Promise!

Finding Money / 4YFN Barcelona [Slides]

By Volker

On 28/02/2014

In Capital, Deals, Events, Slides

Back from another Mobile World Congress, which still seems to be growing. This year, the GSMA had introduced a smaller sibling to the main conference, which proved to be a lot more exciting (as far as I’m concerned at least), namely Four Years From Now (or better termed 4YFN) where I had had the immense pleasure of delivering a talk on “Finding Money”, which focussed on paths to finance your start-up. The slides, which I hope you will like, can be found here (for some reason I struggled to embed the deck this time).

MWC: Barcelona, here we come (again)

By Volker

On 17/02/2014

In Apps, Events

Barely a week to go and the masses shall descend unto the beautiful city of Barcelona for the annual gathering of mobile folks, which will, this year, be held for the second time at the slightly less cool "new" exhibition grounds. Alas, the organizers have realized that there is a lot to be had at the original grounds, i.e. the "true" fira and there are some uber-exciting events taking place there – and, yes, I have the great pleasure to be involved. So…

The GSMA is launching a new entrepreneurship conference this year, called "4 Years from Now" (with the very snazzy website http://4yfn.com – I’m jealous!). I will be giving a talk on "Finding Money" (OK, the official title they gave it is a little more technical but, as a hint, it is what I’ll show).

The eternal fan favourite WIPJam moved along, too. They are cooperating with the GSMA to bring a vastly expanded program stretching a full 3 days. And I will be facing the awesome challenge to moderate an Unpanel on "Games & Gamification".

Now, add to all this the overall buzz, etc.: why wouldn’t you come and join us? 😉

Apps for Good: Future Learning (or learning the future?)

By Volker

On 27/01/2014

In Android, Apps, Education, Events, Social

Here’s an initiative to whom a shout-out is long overdue: the good people from Apps for Good have been working with children in schools on making apps. They provide a framework through which children learn everything from concept and market research to design and execution. And some of them then go ahead and publish the results in the wide world of Google Play (check for instance the formidable team from Mount Grace School in Hertfordshire whose “Social Bank” app that helps you to achieve saving what you crave most. Go have a look and download it (here on Google Play); I assure you it is very far cry from Jurassic scenes rebuilt in shoe boxes…

I had the great pleasure to work with some of the teams as a voluntary “expert” and – assuming if you read this blog you, too, are active somewhere in mobile – should have a look at doing the same thing. Here’s why:

It’s tremendous fun. I consider Apps for Good sessions as an energizer to my day: to work with enthusiastic children and seeing them come into their own in a learning environment that allows them (and demands of them) to get out of their usual routines and create something from nowhere – and to then go and execute on it is nothing short of inspiring.
It’s the simplest and, let’s face it, cheapest way to invest in the future of not only those children but all of us: this is an area where children learn 21st century skills that are not (yet) embedded in national curricula around the world (there are some initiatives to change this of course, such as Ian Livingstone’s plans for the Livingstone School in London Hammersmith) but there is still a lot more to be done. And with one hour of your time here and there, you can help. If this is for you, apply here to become an expert.

The work they are doing is being recognised all over the place, expressed for instance by winning Google’s Global Impact Challenge.

Apps for Good delivers its programme in over 200 schools across the UK so far. If you are a school and want to participate, go here.

Capturing Users / StartUp Next Sofia [Slides]

By Volker

On 01/12/2013

In Events, Slides, Social, Thoughts

These are my slides from the talk “Capturing Users” I delivered on 30 Nov 2013 at the most excellent StartUp Next conference in Sofia (Bulgaria). For those who were there: the “missing slide” is now included… 😉

Capturing Users / Using social, engagement and mobile to drive acquisition and retention of users from Volker Hirsch

Momentum, a Mobile Accelerator in the Valley

By Volker

On 25/08/2013

In Deals, Events

Here’s something cool, a mobile accelerator run by people who actually know mobile, namely the good folks from Mobile Monday (disclosure: I am a co-founder of Mobile Monday Manchester). For those who don’t know (and I don’t expect many of the readers of this blog to being that ignorant… 😉 ): Mobile Monday has a global presence in over 140 cities across 50 different countries. As part of Mobile Monday, participants will get greater global exposure with leading brands to help foster business relationships and potentially commercial deals. It works, believe me!

This is a 12-week program (from 23 September – 6 December), run at RocketSpace in Silicon Valley with the aim to help accelerate mobile startups. They will select 8-10 startups from around the globe to participate in each class. If you are not based in the Bay Area, you’d have to cover your own housing and living though (which they say should amount to $2,500/month; also: you need to sort out your own visa should you need one though they’ll help you).

The program is designed for startup founders. It consists of weekly workshops and dinners lead by leaders of “global brands” who will help mentor and work closely with participating companies. You will have the opportunity to pitch their “dedicated” team of VCs and angels. The program will end with a Demo Day attended by industry leaders, VCs, and the press. So it’s pretty much the usual stuff. However, it being run by the MoMo folks, you can probably expect a rather good pick from the mobile world!

Here are the minimum criteria (and you will see from this that you actually have to have something already; this is an accelerator, not an incubator):

At least 2 people in the startup (two’s company…);
Shipping live product;
Angel funding or Participation of a startup program or Experience as a founder in a prior startup;
Pre-series A funding.

Each application will be scored on five criteria:

Team
Product
Market viability
Traction (clients, users, customers)
Fit for mobile industry

All Mobile Monday Accelerator events will be held in the San Francisco bay area. Office space at the RocketSpace Innovation Campus (San Francisco downtown) is provided free to all accelerator class participants. RocketSpace is home to Fortune 500s like, T-Mobile, GM, DoCoMo, Microsoft, ABInBev, LEGO and to 150+ startups including Spotify, Supercell and HasOffers (yup, that is straight from their sales pitch).

The program currently provides 50+ of the best in mobile mentors; Samsung, Sony, Twitter, Facebook, AOL, ESPN, Polariod, PayPal, Intuit, The Weather Channel, Hotel Tonight, Millenial Media and more… (yup, again from their pitch)

Each week, they’ll host a workshop in the San Francisco bay area at our offices or a partner’s office on the usual topics like:

Marketing
Negotiation
Monetization
Legal
Analytics and Tracking (if you still haven’t got this)
UI/UX Best Practices
Scaling (under the heading “luxury problems” but immensely important)
Selling to the Enterprise
M&A How to sell your startup (my guess is they won’t give guarantees though…)
Effective Pitching

If you want to get into this (and, hey, it is just about the time when the weather in certain areas get somewhat yucky), you can apply here. Good luck!

Mobile Gaming Whitepaper (and Event)

By Volker

On 15/08/2013

In Apps, Events, Games, Social, Thoughts

So I had recently the honour (and joy) to participate in a whitepaper on mobile gaming that the good folks of Video Games Intelligence commissioned as a backdrop for their Mobile Gaming Europe conference.

It is freely available here (though you need to register your details) and it is – needless to say – eminently worthwhile your attention… 😉

The conference itself will be on 20/21 November in London and is looking promising (even if you want to ignore my very own wisdoms). They assembled a speaker line-up that is the top of the crop in mobile games these days, including the head honchos from:

Super Cell (yup, the folks with the money)
King (the folks with the other bit of money)
Eidos (Ian Livingstone himself!)
Boss Alien (who did CSR Racing, one of the trailblazers in the F2P world)
Digital Legends
Fishlabs (the ones with the most awesome Galaxy on Fire)
DeNA
Facebook (the ones with the many users)
Digital Chocolate (the ones with the many years in the industry)
Bossa Studios (the ones with a BAFTA)
etc. etc. etc.

You get the gist: come along, join us, have fun and, perhaps, learn a little…