Patrick de Laive

A short post here straight out of the new Apple Store on 5th Avenue. This is like one big candy shop .

I was looking for a device that could turn my Nano into a voice recorder, but unfortunately they don’t have it here and they even doubt if its available for the Nano

There is a lot to tell, but time is scarce here. So I’ll have to grab my bag, take a cab and get my ass over to Nextfest where we have an appointment with Mr Nextfest (forgot his name, ooops).

All other interesting stuff (ING, Philips, Soho Grand, Marquee) I’ll cover later.

Yesterday we had a final meeting with the travel group at Boris’ place. Boris and I invited some other friends and entrepreneurs of whom we though could have a laugh together (or possible business). It was a nice get together with all kinds of people. We had delegates from LeCool, twones, Live Solutions, Blueace, Uzy, Fleck, Probaton, eBay, La communidad, mollie, Paylogic, streamedge and more
It was nice and I was half hour late on my date with Carolina Sorry baby, x.

I’m leaving to New York and San Francisco today and I’m writing this post on schiphol airport, accompanied by a Bic Mac.
We’re going to the US with 9 Dutch entrepreneurs and we’re visiting several interesting companies there. You can read about the schedule here.
A few things we’re gonna do: visit Nextfest, Mozilla, eBay, have dinner with Marten Mickos, say hi to Michael Arrington, have breakfast with a delegate of Dutch entrepreneurs on the embassy, and a lot more.
I’m really looking forward to it and I’m sure the Americans will inspire us. I’ll try to blog every day, but as my email to blog function is not yet up and running it can be tough sometimes.

But as I’m in the states, you better take advantage of it. So, if you want an autograph of Marissa Meyer (GOOG) or you want a photo of me high fiving Bill Gates, just ask….
I’ll do me best

In the blogpost about friendvertising I was wondering when Hyves would start selling music on its platform (see last sentence). The answer is: as of yesterday Hyves Music is a fact. According to the Dutch newsservice nu.nl already more than 100 bands and artists signed up (which is a lot more than expected).

The new track of Erik E (not in stores yet) has been played 3238 times within a day, not bad

I think they have an edge here. A lot of bands and artists (famous or not -yet-) are looking for new ways to interact with their (potential) fans. The Hyves Music platform provides just that.

No business model for the music part yet, but I’ll get back to the huge possibilties here (and I’m sure my firends at hyves HQ thought of them as well).

Welcome Zecco,

There are a lot of complaints that there are too little initiatives from the Netherlands. It’s true, the Dutch (wannabee) web2 initiatives are mostly clones of popular American services. It took us a long time, but, hold your horses, as of now WE (in Holland it is: We Won and They Lost) have our innovative web2.0 startup, Zecco!

Zecco is the Web2.0 solution to online brokerages as e-trade, tradestation, and Alex (Dutch), but its potential can even harm big corporations heavily depending on their broker fees (see also my note on this topic in the post about ABN AMRO) like ABN AMRO, ING, Morgan Stanley, etc. Zecco offers a zero dollar trading fee for its customers. It offers a lot more and you can read about it on Net dot

But what they also try to do is to tap into the collective wisdom of its users on what they think the stock index will do. Of course that kind of information is available within the big banks, but there is no way trading on it. Zecco is creating a community and that community is able to learn from its users to become more intelligent. This aspect is widely discussed in The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecky. What they will have in the end is a very specific (and easy to monetize) database. I can imagen the first ‘gold account’ already!

One thing is for sure, they have a great team of founders and investors. With Marcel Boekhoorn (famed for the Bakker Bart and Telfort deal), Morton Lund and Soren Kenner (former Skype investors with a shitload of experience in the industry) and the young and eager founders Jeroen Veth (formerly known as mr. Vice President Merrill Lynch) and Dino van Es (he made his money with the Dutch option brokerage IWB) on board they have experience in the financial world as well as the internet business. Let’s hope they have good developers too!

If I were the CEO of a big bank I’d keep an eye on Zecco and buy them of the market as soon as they find their criticall mass.

I’ll try to get an interview one day or the other with one of the founders, because there are a lot of questions on the table and its a very interesting sector to track.

Good luck guys!

Back in town.

I had a great time in France! Can you imagine a week without a telephone (ok, ok, you cought me sending a text message to my girlfriend on this picture) and more important… Internet.

So although I had a great time, I’m also glad to be back on the office.

I missed a couple of things last week:

1. An appointment with Tim O’Reilly (He was in Brussels and invited Boris and me for a coffee and a chat about The Next Web Conference)

2. A dinner with Marten Mickos
3. My first blogcarnaval

Back in town, back in business

At the moment I’m on a holiday in the South of France. I’m with five friends from university and we’re staying in the house of one of their parents in St. Maxime. The view is really magnificent! (I’ll add pics later on).

There is no internet connection, so I can’t blog much

I’m back in the weekend.

If you’re in the neighbourhood (e.g. St Tropez) drop me an email at patrick at fleck dot com and we might end up having coffee at 55

The stock price of ABN AMRO rose the last days on behalf of rumors that the Bank of America would be interested to buy the Dutch bank. The stock price of ABN is lacking behind in comparison with other European banks and is therefore an interesting ‘cheap’ candidate for other big banks (with a high valuation). Traders are speculating that The Bank of America would be interested in buying ABN.

ABN has a market cap of $53 billion at this moment (Bank of America -$235 billion-).
But does it make any sense? If the Bank of America buys ABN, than they just have a bigger bank, they’ll continuing doing the same things, so little innovation can be expected here.
Everybody knows that in the near future more and more payments will go thru the Internet. Online sales keep rising on an astonishing rate! And of course the money ends up in people’s bank accounts, but the transfer rates are going to the PayPal’s of the future. And even the banks cash cow (stock exchanges) will face large competition in the near future (the rumor goes that the founders of Skype are determined to turn around the financial sector -just as they did with the music industry (Kazaa) and the telecom sector (Skype)). I’m wandering if banks are aware of all this (probably not, the sector is sleeping for years and years already). At least an acquisition of ABN by another bank doesn’t make much sense in this light.

I believe that banks need to innovate if they want keep their position.

Why would Vodafone be interested in ABN? Ask yourself these questions: How do you pay for a Mars-bar, or your coffee at Star Bucks, your new fake la fraise tees from the market, the parking lot, etc. ? Well, in most cases you’d probably answer or a. cash or b. credit card. But what to think of C. Your Mobile phone!

A lot of services can be paid for through your mobile phone bill. If I want to vote (by SMS) for my favorite Holland’s Next Top Model, I’ll receive an SMS with a ‘Thank you for voting’ message in it for which my phone bill will be credited an extra 90 cents (or more). Of this 90 cents almost half goes to the telecom provider! The ‘transaction’ costs of mobile payments are immensely high. The main reason the Telcos will give you is that they take on the financial risk of not paying customers. And to be honest, they are right. The Telco doesn’t know if you’re able (or willing) to pay your bill and they have problems with collecting the money.
So, it would make sense if your telephone bill is incorporated into your bank account. The costs of mobile payment would decrease to virtually zero and before you know it you’re paying everywhere with your Nokia F2.0. One way this could be done is if a Bank starts his own Telco (or vica versa), another way is if a Bank and a Telco merger (or one acquires the other).

Vodafone should consider an aqcuisition of the ABN (or any other banks that they can afford with a worldwide network). There are a lot of good reasons for both parties to join forces (I might dig deeper into this in a future post).
The combination of a bank and a telco (both already having millions of customers) is a very powerfull one, and mind my words…. it is the future.

Today, Boris and I had a meeting with Eckart Wintzen. He’s a famous entrepreneur in the Netherlands and after he sold several companies he’s helping young entrepreneurs with his network and advice.

He’s a really nice guy and as entrepreneur I respect him a lot.
We told him about Fleck and after a while it became a little bit quiet (the awkward silence when you don’t know if you should say something or if its better to extend the silence and wait untill the other party starts talking). I looked at Mr. Wintzen and he said…

“but, uuuhm, but you’re gonna need a massive serverpark!”

I replied with

“I HOPE so!”

I don’t believe he totally got it though…:)

It might be the generation gap…..

I just met the founders of LeCool (Rene and Andrew) based in Barcelona.

Le cool magazine is a free, weekly magazine presenting a selection of concerts, djs, exhibitions, odd movies and other cultural events and happenings. It is also a clever guide to the city’s most worthwhile bars, restaurants, shopping and other experiences, without being necessarily trendy – just really good.

It is an email subscription magazine, but formatted as if it were a traditional magazine
The Amsterdam version is just out and it is kinda cool.
Andrew told me that they have over 70.000 subscribers in 5 different places now. LeCool incorporated three years ago and is profitable. Actually, they are looking for some growth capital to develop the online part of their business and to expand to other cities throughout the world (they didn’t want to say what the Next LeCool city will be).

I’m keeping an eye on them.

Thanks for the coffee guys.

BTW they are looking for a funky office in the centre of Amsterdam, so if you know something…. amsterdam at lecool dot com