We’re presenting Whisher at Innovate!Europe 2007, being held in Zaragoza, Spain. The event itself is not huge, and has not been written about much, but since it is a stone’s throw away from Barcelona base, we felt it was worth coming. I’ll be posting some pics and info a bit later on.
Day 2: Presentations, demos, networking and no coffee after 17:00
The day started off with an intro from Chris Shipley, and a few onstage demos.
One of the demos that caught my eye was a service called Smeet, which creates a virtual 3D space (in an isometric birds-eye view for your techies), for example, a bar, and places animated avatars which correspond to real users who login to the system. Each user also dials in to a conference number, and his audio can then be heard by others in proportion to their distance, i.e. there is a hearing range, and a speaking range. Thus, by moving your avatar close enough to a group, you will begin hearing their conversation, and even talk to the group if you get closer. Pretty cool stuff!
In the afternoon there was a discussion panel on angel and VC funding of startups, with some heavyweights present – Klaus Hommels from Benchmark, Simon Levene from Accel, Mark Tluszcz from Mangrove, Saul Klein from Index, and Oliver Jung from Adinvest. The moderator was supposed to be Loic Le Meur, but he didn’t show up, apparently due to political engagements back in France (my guess is he will be the next interior minister!), so Chris Shipley took the lead. Some interesting discussion was generated around when and how to take money, and from whom. One conclusion is that if you go for top VCs, you have to set your aims very high, not on a $10 or $20M exit, which can be fine if you take angel funding instead.
The event is OK for networking with others, but the catering disapeared around 17:00, and we were left with no coffee!