the snagsta blog

I just experienced first-hand one of the things Phil talked about in his TechCrunch pitch (by the way, the event write-up is now online!), when I tried to book a hotel earlier today.

I know, I know. Phil has said it already, but I want to do my own “cover version” because it just happened to me and besides, I am sure I have a better singing voice than he does.

I was browsing AsiaRooms, with TripAdvisor open in another tab for reference, but just got tied in knots trying to get to grips with making my decision based on the reviews. In Asia Rooms, I had back-to-back reviews that were as different as “The room itself was horrible…” and “Good hotel, with huge rooms…”.

And TripAdvisor didn’t help at all either, with their 6th best hotel in Manila displaying the review “Biggest Hotel Disappointment I’ve ever experienced!”.

Eventually I managed to find a hotel that seemed to have a fairly consistent set of reviews. Hooray!!

Of course, when I tried to book it, the rooms were all gone…

I’ll finish with an extremely tenuously-related list of interesting cover versions that you can see on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXbgSMT-0j4
London Bridge - such a great version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-8nkkOA_AM
Hey Ya - the original is great, but this is as good in an oh-so-different way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DctCyO-E3s
Living on a Prayer - not such a great original, but mad skills in this cover

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMB6YOWzQMY
Umbrella - surprised at how good Mandy Moore sounds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMmu41UQHAs
Boulevard of Broken Dreams - I just wish a bit more of a Japanese accent came through

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCplsXu1HRk
The Godfather Theme - not sure what Brando would make of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlbFJANujaU
Feeling Good - but are they?

PS So maybe I don’t have a better singing voice than Hofmeyr, but that’s okay. He needs a good voice to go with his rock-star looks…

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We chalked up a major milestone this week and replaced our blackboard pre-alpha site with the real thing. Chalk you can rub out but now we’re committed. We’ve only given access to a handful of people so far - we want to spend a week or two tarting ourselves up first. Because you’re worth it.

The other really exciting news is that we were selected ahead of several startups across Europe to present at Mike Butcher’s inaugural TechCrunch Pitch event last night. The event was hosted in St Anne’s Church in Soho - a misleadingly peaceful venue considering the somewhat hostile audience that included the likes of Doug Richard (ex Dragon’s Den) cast in the Simon Cowell role, London’s top VC’s (DFJ Esprit, Atlas Ventures, Balderton Capital, etc) and some other interesting people like the co-founder of Bebo, Paul Birch (who has incidentally shared his list of favourite business books with Snagsta).

Alex M and I met some really cool entrepreneurs and investors. It was a great night despite the fact that we didn’t win Mr. Butcher’s contest. That honour went to Raphael Arbuz’s fun site: WhatZatSong.

Jan Andresen from weblin, who travelled all the way from Hamburg, stood his ground impressively despite the roasting Doug gave him.

Evgeny Shadchnev has started a great community site for scientists called Kappa Prime.

We met Jay Adair whose business connects his two great passions: photography and motorbikes.

And also Alfie Dennen from moblog, an awesome site that puts mobile video & photos on the web in one easy step, who managed to capture our presentation (be warned the phone video is a little jumpy - but then so was I!).

Today’s list comes from Mike. Concerned by the fact that some start-ups struggle to get their point across, he set up this event to strip things back to basics and get startups to answer the following fundamental questions in just 10 slides (and only 5 minutes!):

1. Problem: what is the market pain, size and how are you measuring it?
   
2. Your solution: You have opportunity to be “the Google/eBay/Skype/iPhone etc of what”?
   
3. Business model (and potential for revenues)
   
4. Underlying magic: Technology / What you are trying to build: how much and for how long?
   
5. Marketing and sales: How will you get distribution?
   
6. Market: Drivers & dynamics / Your positioning and sustainable advantages
   
7. Competition
   
8. Team
   
9. Milestones so far and projections
   
10. Funding requirement & potential exit routes

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The sun doesn’t always shine here in old London town but when it does, this city sparkles. Today is one of those days.

Spending summer in this place certainly has its advantages. The biggest problem for me is choosing where to go and what to do and with the limited amount of spare time I have right now.

Before I had Snagsta to play with, finding new things to do in London was always a bit of a hit or miss affair. I might read something in the Evening Standard or pick up Time Out Magazine but most of the time I’d rely on a recommendation from a friend or take a peak online and roll the dice.

Search engines are a great place to research things but only if you know what you are looking for.

A search for “good London restaurants” on Google for example, will return an impressive but baffling 963,000 results: that’s several hundred thousand different opinions from people you may, or may not agree with.

Review sites can also be equally frustrating to use as they often contain conflicting opinions. Trip Advisor often delivers vastly different opinions on the same hotel.

A bloke named Win Wenders once said, “The more opinions you have, the less you see”. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Now that Snagsta’s database is filling up with great lists, it’s much easier to discover new things via recommendations from friends and like-minded people.

I just searched for London pubs on Snagsta and the following list from friend and pub aficionado Andrew Rogoff magically appeared.

I now have some new places to check out on my way home tonight where I can enjoy some early evening summer sunshine and perhaps one or two beers. Oh happy day!

My favourite drinking spots in London

By Andrew Rogoff

1. The Lansdowne

This pub in Primrose Hill is laid back, unpretentious and attracts quite a cool crowd. The food’s nothing amazing but I’ll let it off.

2. The Ebury

This bar is just about the only decent place in Pimlico (where I live) so I absolutely love it for that reason.

3. The Mitre

Holland Park Avenue - if you’re sick of poky little pubs where you’re constantly jostled by other punters then this place is big enough to swing your elbows (unless it’s packed of course).

4. Builders Arms

Little pub off the King’s Road that has a good atmosphere and does pretty good food. Watch out for the toffs though.

5. Windsor Castle

Notting Hill. This is a great place to be on a hot summer’s night in London. The trouble is, too many people know that!

6. Troubadour

Earl’s Court. Very atmospheric live music venue with a great history.

7. The Engineer

Primrose Hill. Another great spot in Primrose Hill. The only thing is that the bar area is quite small. Great if you want to eat.

8. The Endurance

Probably the best pub in Soho.

9. Pigs Ear

Old Church Street, SW3. There’s something about this place that I really like - just can’t put my finger on it. Does great food too.

10. The Abingdon

Off High St Kensington. Great bar/restaurant - nice big sofa and excellent food.

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As many (many) people will tell you, I am (occasionally) a bit of a twat, no more so than when I have been sitting alone for too long in front of my computer, and it was after one of these prolonged periods of isolation that I decided to christen my faithful computer Della - an incredibly clever play on the fact that it (she) is a Dell machine.

It does feel sometimes that I am married to her, since we spend so much time together and she controls large aspects of my life. However, last week, I began to cheat on Della in the worst possible way.

I bought a MacBook.

I’m trying not to feel too guilty, but it is hard when I know I look so much better sitting with the MacBook than I ever would with poor old Della.

The fact of the matter is, I had to do it. Absolutely no choice in the matter because far too many of the kind of people we want Snagsta to attract are also using Macs, so we have to test very carefully on their behalf.

Now all I need to do is come up with an equally clever name for my second wife - Macy perhaps…

I leave you with a great list from Jeff Zweig, Web Guru extraordinaire:

Favorite ways to make Mac OS X suck less
Let’s face it. Windows really sucks and Mac OS X sucks, too, but not as much. This is my list of third party software add-ons that help make OS X suck even less!

1. Get Pathfinder
Significantly improves the lousy usability of Finder.

2. Get Google desktop
Much easier to use than Spotlight in its lame, native form plus it’s free.

3. Get Quicksilver
Outstanding and mega-powerful keyboard control, application launching and so much more for those of us who shun the mouse plus it’s free.

4. Get Parallels
Run Windows apps that can’t run in OS X

5. Get SuperDuper!
Best backup software ever!

6. Get WiFind
This tasty little app costs only 8 bucks and lets us know in advance whether available WiFi networks are secure or not and how strong their signals are.

7. Get Firefox
THE browser of the civilized on any platform. Better than Safari for its huge range of free plug-ins and better cross-browser support than Safari.

8. Get Office 2008 for Mac
Anything is better than the Rosetta converted Office 2004 dog that runs on Intel Macs. We can only hope that the promised Office 2008 universal version will run properly on Intel.

9. Get Spot Inside
Essential add-on to the lame, native form of Spotlight and it’s free.

10. Get Laserlight
Another essential add-on to the weak native form of Spotlight and it’s free, too.

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We have repeatedly been told that we have to be prepared to follow Snagsta wherever it takes us. Very often the dream founders start out with is totally different from the website they end up with. This can happen for a variety of reasons:

1. Along the wide and varied path that is web development better ideas turn up out of nowhere

2. The founders’ idea is slightly off target (I think the diplomatic wording for this is ‘ahead of their time’)

3. The investors ’suggest’ a ‘new approach’ (as an aside: we’ve been given all the latitude we’ve wanted so far)

4. The users decide they have a much better idea for how the site should be used (this was certainly the case with Twitter (according to Biz Stone) and Bebo (as Michael Birch explains).

It appears flexibility is important.

And then you’ll walk into another meeting and someone will tell you what they look for in founders is an unwavering pig-headed determination to see their idea through against all odds.

But even the best ideas occasionally have to be abandoned. So the question is: how do you know when enough is enough?

And the answer is… predictably: you don’t.

The good news is you can’t be criticised because nobody knows. It’s luck (certainly if you take Taleb’s word or the FT’s)

The bad news is that this decision could either make you or lose you A LOT OF MONEY.

At Snagsta we’ve built our solution to this problem into the management team. Alex Moore is possibly one of the most stubborn people I know and I’m extremely flexible (some people call me indecisive… but I’m not so sure).

The point is that one should have some contingencies. And I am pleased to be able to demonstrate to our readers that we are ready. In the unlikely event that Snagsta needs to shift focus we have strategically also registered the domain www.shagsta.com.

Have a great weekend!

footnotes:
* pertinacious - don’t be embarrassed, I had to look that up too.

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We launched our private alpha (geek-speak for test site) yesterday so the mood under the arches is buoyant to say the least! Well, it was buoyant until we reviewed our bug register… 170 and growing! But all the major functionality is working well so we’re pretty amped!

I need to get back to squishing those pests so will hand you over to someone a lot smarter than me (not easy to find that sort of person I hear you say). Today’s list comes from the tail end of a recent interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the Sunday Times. And I can proudly say I have permission from Taleb to publish his words of wisdom. To give things a slightly different spin this week I have tried to add a comment beneath each of his tips that reflects its relevance to entrepreneurs and start-ups. When I couldn’t think of any, I have done something completely different and made sarcastic comments at the expense of myself and those around me.

1. Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

I think scepticism is one of driving motivations behind many entrepreneurs: a healthy scepticism for existing products and people’s predictions invokes the ‘challenger’ mindset. I have honed my scepticism on the small & aesthetic for long enough now…

2. Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.

HOW can you possibly fault a man who holds amongst his top 10 tips: ‘GO TO PARTIES’

3. It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.

There is ONE exception to this rule. Never tease a Venture Capitalist. Regardless of the size of his tie. Buy him a drink, complement his colour-co-ordinated cufflinks, but never tease him.

4. Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.

Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) once said: ‘If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” And so it is with Snagsta. When the time comes we’ll be wearing our best but at first ‘site’ it may appear as if we got dressed in a bit of a hurry… tucking in our shirt on the way out the door. Kind of my ’style’ I suppose, given I was once described as looking like an ‘unmade bed’…

5. Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.

I didn’t understand that but I am sure it’s deep.

6. Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.

There is an interesting debate on the correlation between success and past failure. In my industry the US is very pro-failure, whereas Europe is far more risk-adverse. Statistics suggest there is no correlation but I have hedged my bets by establishing a long track record of failure…

7. Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).

Bit late for this advice given I am now inextricably linked to Alex M… he’s not really a loser but has exceptionally dodgy taste in music.

8. Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants… or (again) parties.

I’ve talked about this before. Ironically this list came from the business section of The Times… a Black Swan perhaps?

9. Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

The central theme in Taleb’s book (Black Swan): success has a lot to do with luck. Do whatever you can to put yourself in its way. Luck is less likely to visit you in your bedroom while you’re watching dvds…

10. Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

Given his instantaneous reply to my mail I know exactly how junior Taleb thinks I am. To those of you that I haven’t written back to recently… it’s because you’re so important.

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Last night was the grand finale of the excellent gateway2investment (g2i) programme I have been attending over the past few weeks.

Snagsta was invited to pitch to a group of 50 or so investors at a very swanky venue on the banks of the river Thames called the Deck. (Thanks to Kirsten for the link to such an excellent Funky Venues site).

I used to love presenting to live audiences but developed a weird phobia a couple of years back which really dented my confidence. Coming to terms with that was tough for me; it wasn’t something I ever had to deal with before. After some soul searching I did eventually get myself back on track by experimenting with different presentation styles.

I tried writing everything out in long hand and reading it but that proved too stiff and uncomfortable. Based on the advice of a friend (that reprobate Marcus Spurrell) I then tried memorising it instead. This kind of worked but it still felt a bit too scripted.

I needed to find a style that suited me but I just wasn’t getting it. Phil showed me an amazing clip of Steve Ballmer of Microsoft fame going mental on stage. Bizarrely that really helped.

It seems to me that presenting isn’t really about what you say. It has far more to do with delivering your message in a natural style that fits your personality. Running around the stage screaming al la Steve Ballmer wouldn’t have worked for me but it strangely suited him!

Yesterday I went back to using cards with a few trigger words to help me keep things structured but natural. Although far from word perfect, I was really happy with how it went. If you’d like to check it out you can see the presentation here:

The lesson for me was: be yourself. People are much more likely to connect with someone who is genuine; and it’s also a lot easier than trying to be something you’re not!

Lastly, as always, I will finish with a list. This one comes from the Snagsta site and is entitled “9 Ways to Stand Out As A Conference or Tradeshow Speaker” from marketing guru Rohit Bhargava:

1. Have a simple theme

Speaking is not that much different from messaging a product or brand. You need to go in having a theme for what you will be talking about and a central message you want to leave people with. Focusing on what this message should be to best help you get value out of your appearance (without overtly pitching or being too “salesy”) is a necessity.

2. Fly solo

You can be part of a panel, moderate a panel, or have your own session. If you can pull it off, I highly recommend trying to get your own session. If you can create something memorable and engaging, the value of that appearance can go straight to you without being shared. In perception also, speakers who have their own sessions tend to be looked at by other attendees as the biggest experts.

3. Ditch the bullets, go visual

Before my presentation at SNC, I reread Garr Reynolds great book on presentations called Presentation Zen. I highly recommend picking it up as it has many wonderful lessons on how to create a stronger presentation. Chief among them is to use strong visuals and as little text as possible. And definitely ditch the bullet points.

4. Make your point quickly

Whether you have your own session or are part of a panel, this point is important to remember. Much of the “conversation” on these panels consists of repetition. The less you fall into this trap, the more people will respect and listen to you when you do speak.

5. Ask and take questions

Taking questions while you talk is a great way to involve the audience, and even better is to ask questions to help tailor your presentation. When I started my presentation about talkability at SNC, I asked who already had a social network and who was considering starting one to get a sense of the room. It helped me to tailor my examples and discussion to what would be more useful for the audience.

6. Talk last

Timing is another important element in standing out as a speaker, particularly when you are in a session with others. Speaking last about a point gives you the chance to offer a unique and considered point of view, and also gives you the benefit of hearing other’s points of view first. This is not about having the last word, but about having a chance to distill other’s voices and your own into a short point of view people will remember.

7. Offer to connect

Adding a URL to the end of your presentation or mentioning one in a presentation is one way of offering to connect, but it is self serving. Instead of doing that, I mentioned during my presentation that I love to try out new social networks and would be willing to try any new ones from people in the audience if they sent me an invite. That alone resulted in more than a few follow up emails from people, invites to Linked In, followers on Twitter and several Facebook friend requests.

8. Stick around

The biggest mistake many speakers make is to run out of an event right after they present. We are all busy, and it’s tough to afford to take an entire day out to speak and attend an event. If you need to skip the event, my advice is to skip the part before you speak. Sticking around after you speak is invaluable to give people a chance to connect with you. And if you don’t do it, what’s the point of being at the event anyway?

9. Stay real

The last point on my list of tips for standing out as a speaker has to do with ego. I’ve got one just like most bloggers and speakers out there. The challenge is not to let it get in the way of dealing authentically with people. Everyone has something to offer and whether they are trying to sell you something or are in a position to help you, staying real will pay off in the long term. By the way, related to point #8, nothing helps you stay more real than actually staying to watch another session beside the one you spoke at.

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On Sunday, I got shouted at by my wife.

This happens occasionally, and just between you and me, it is usually my fault, though of course I would never admit to that within her hearing.

This time though, I place the blame firmly upon Snagsta.

You see, I had told my wife that I needed to spend a bit of time in the outhouse to do some testing on the site, but unfortunately when she came out five minutes later to see if I needed anything, I was watching an Eddie Izzard video clip. She was a bit miffed, but was slightly appeased when I managed to explain that I had followed a link from one of Alex M’s lists that had cropped up as part of my testing.

About fifteen minutes after that, she kindly brought out a snack, only to find me chuckling to myself whilst reading a page of Mitch Hedberg quotes. Again, I tried to explain that I had been checking the friends functionality and seen this list of Paul’s on the site and it was all part of the testing process. Even to my own ears, this sounded weak.

The final straw though, was when she came out about an hour later and found me on perezhilton.com. Now, I had literally just seen the site mentioned on a list of Nikki Davies’ and had clicked through to have a very quick look, but it was exactly the wrong moment and of course because of this, it looked like my morning’s “work” was watching videos, reading jokes and ogling celebrities.

I tried manfully to make her see that it was Alex, Paul and Nikki, and in a wider sense Snagsta, who were to blame, but she was having none of it.

Our nanny could only laugh as she saw me getting dragged into the house by my ear to spend some time with my son.

I’ll leave you with Nikki’s list of Best Celebrity Gossip Blogs, but remember this is not for work hours:

1. perezhilton.com
   Trashy, flashy and crass
2. pinkisthenewblog.com
   Personal and engaging
3. tmz.com
   At the cutting edge with breaking news and video clips
4. jossip.com
   New York focussed gossip site
5. pagesix.com
   The original, but no longer the best
6. hollywood.tv
   Video-based blog
7. hollywoodtuna.com
   Blog featuring the hottest female celebrities
8. defamer.com
   LA focussed gossip site

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I attended NESTA’s Innovation Edge conference this week. Despite the title apparently the only thing jaw-dropping about it was Gordon Brown (who was doing that thing with his chin so quickly even Rory Bremner would have been impressed).

As with all such events it’s a bit hit & miss and one has to make a cost-benefit call. Can an entrepreneur trying to launch his site afford to spend the day nodding sagely in agreement with keynote speakers, nancying around making small talk and drinking lukewarm coffee? Well, the answer is ‘sort of’. At my decisive best I elected to attend the more targeted afternoon sessions and so unfortunately missed Gordon Brown, Bob Geldof & Tim Berners-Lee. But I have it on good authority from the effervescent Meriem Aissaoui from Smarta that they were in fine form.

By the way, Smarta is a fantastic business resource and social networking site for entrepreneurs and small businesses that launches officially in November.

The first seminar I attended was called ‘Are online social networks the new cities?’ Unfortunately the topic was too high level to get the crux of matters the same way blog conversations do but at least it was fairly entertaining. Here’s an extract of the dialogue between the facilitator and Michael Birch (founder of Bebo):

Facilitator: So Michael – why did you move to San Francisco? Was it Silicon Valley?
Michael Birch: Because of my wife - she’s from San Francisco. There just happened to be a small thriving internet community there too.
Facilitator: Lucky she wasn’t in Utah. That would have been interesting.
Michael Birch: Probably not that interesting.

The second seminar, ‘Entrepreneurs v Investors: Can the relationship ever really work?’, was better. Saul Klein (The Accelerator Group) highlighted honesty, self-awareness and the ability to face issues sooner rather than later as critical ingredients for an effective relationship and Jon Moulton (Alchemy) provided a list of habits that help you spot Bad Managers & Entrepreneurs that I have paraphrased below:

1. They don’t know the numbers, don’t care about them
2. They don’t have any customer interaction
3. They are often arrogant and dismiss questions from their staff
4. They are little too focused on the material things (talk about pay & bonus schemes in the first meeting)
5. They don’t have a TO DO list – no signs of structured organisational skills
6. They don’t visit their businesses
7. They make stupid acquisitions (double or quits)
8. They isolate themselves
9. They work 9 to 5 – lacking passion for their business

Investors – if you’re reading this – it’s midnight and I’m still in the office testing the site. This post only took a few minutes. PS: did you get my email about a payrise?

Another interesting point from Jon was that good presenters aren’t necessarily good managers, but people always make this assumption. But on the contrary: good managers are very often good presenters.

The lesson I draw from this is: if you know you’re a crap manager take a course in presentation skills.

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If you are a regular reader of our blog you will know we usually quote other people’s genius and experiences in order to make us appear knowledgeable and adventurous: this week however, we thought we might throw caution to the wind and talk about something we did instead.

On Wednesday I completed an investment readiness programme named gateway2investment (g2i). g2i is put together by the London Development Agency and is delivered by a consortium of private sector companies. It offers participants advice and support to help make companies “investor ready”.

I found the course really helpful as it made me take another look at how we present Snagsta to investors.

I also got to meet lots of great entrepreneurs who are busy setting up all sorts of interesting businesses. Links to a few ideas I found particularly inspiring follow: Charlotte Vere at Big White Wall, Jason Devenney at Siondo, David Crane at debatewise and lastly blogger-to-be Ricky Doyle at Practice-IT.

I would thoroughly recommend the course to any London based startups.

Lastly, here’s a related list from the founder of Seesmic: Loic Le Meur’s advice to internet startups.

1. Think global as you create the business
It is very difficult because our natural tendency is to think local, to eat lunch and dinner with people around where we live and think in our own language. I lived in Paris most of my life and I was naturally addressing the French market first. Moving yourself and your family to a very international city like London, NY or San Francisco helps.

2. Create an original product: new and different
Digg or Twitter have created new social relationships and even though they have hundreds of copycats, they will remain the originals. The best way to succeed is definitely an original and great product.

3. Do not create a copycat, unless your goal is only to get acquired
Do not do copycats, even if you are in a remote market and even if it is tempting, unless you are just here to create a company and sell it quickly to the leader, which is a business model that some entrepreneurs have become masters about. Why not partner with the mothership and launch them where you are instead of copying ? Innovate, do not copy, life is too short for that.

4. Try to raise funds from world-class VCs
They will help you become world-class, but if you are not based in Silicon Valley you have a lower chance that they invest in your company. If you go for local VCs, always take the most international ones.

5. Hire people from all nationalities as much as possible
Americans hire Americans. French hire French. Spanish tend to hire Spanish people. Even if it is easier, you should hire as much as possible a team with as many cultures and languages as possible. Cultural cross pollination is a wonderful way to stoke creativity.

6. Register your domain names in the key countries you are interested in (and the large ones you are not interested in)
A common mistake made by most startups. Very difficult given how rare good domain names have become but you would absolutely try.

7. Protect your brand worldwide
Do not wait to sort out trademark in the key regions.

8. Make a site that is language ready day one, even if you launch in English
More non-English content is posted every day on the web than in English. It is ok if you localize when you have built the product, but at least make it very easy to do by separating the language text files of the interface. Obvious? Yes. Do not forget that many languages have words much longer than english words and they tend to break the interface, take Finnish or German and you will see what I mean.

9. Gather an international community since day 1
International starts the first day you launch the company. Having members from all around the World will give you different perspective and different uses of your own product. We have not even launched Seesmic yet but we have users from more than 20 countries who came and used it. We learnt each time.

10. Talk to the most active members of the community to help you understand their market and become evangelists there
These active members can be very powerful evangelists in the different countries, they can also help you get introductions to potential partners

11. Create an application that lets your community translate the site by themselves
The way Facebook translated its site in many languages using an application where members could do inline translation and then vote when there was a discussion on the best term to use. This was a brilliant way to come back with high quality and fast translation. It also helps you have languages you would have not even thought of launching. Do not forget what it takes to maintain them though.

12. Languages are not the same in all the countries they are spoken
French in France is different than French in Quebec so is Spanish different in Mexico and in Madrid. Words may not even be understood the same. email for example is “email” in French (it’s just as often the english word) and “courriel” in French canadian. Use “courriel” or “pourriel” (for spam) in France and some people will laugh at you. Same for “chat” which is “clavardage” in quebecois and just “chat” in France…

13. Do not think that Europe is the U.K.
Most US companies launch from the U.K. thinking they are launching in Europe. There are more than 20 languages in Europe, and the cultural differences between a Danish, an Italian and a Portuguese are huge. Succeeding in the U.K. does not mean you will succeed in the Netherlands.

14. Manage costs properly
Going international by creating your own office or dealing with a partner is expensive. Think about incorporating the company in a country you do not know, respecting social and work local laws, accounting, reporting… In some countries work is not flexible, if you had to close the office and fire your team it could cost you up to a year of payroll…

15. Never do a 50/50 deal with anyone
The famous “golden share” is very important. If you do 50/50 deal nobody has control and it leads to a mess most of the time. The best is of course to be in control of your own business.

16. Do key partnerships with large local players
A great way to go international is what LinkedIn has just done in France by partnering with the largest human resource organization, APEC. APEC’s established position on the market will guarantee LinkedIn initial volume and branding.

17. Never trust that if the partner is large your service will be a success
Partnering the the largest ISP or portal in a Country does not mean they will heavily promote you. You are likely to end up as the service #867 promoted on a page nobody watches. They would never do that to you? I experienced this many times… You would better partner with a small site in your space which will really feature your service than a large one where it will be lost like in a Christmas tree.

18. Create an international reseller program
Sharing a nice % of the business with your partners or resellers is a good way to get them motivated. Web hosting companies have been good at establishing worldwide presence by offering reseller programs, partner conferences, joint marketing, etc.

19. Kill your local copycats
Despite all your efforts, you will have copycats in many markets if your product is successful. Try to kill them first, if you are the leader you should have more traction and means

20. Buy your local copycats if you can’t kill them
Can’t kill them Buy the best ones to grow, if they are copycats they do not have that many exits possible, most of the time they were created for you to buy them. Think about making sure the team will stay in place and not only the founders…

21. Be very pragmatic
In some markets it could be a joint venture, in others it could be a partnership with a large player, and other places just creating your own team works

22. Do not apply any of this to Asia
I do not know the Asian market enough to judge what is happening there but it seems that most large US sites that launched in China pulled back or were not successful. The Japanese market has its own leaders, but I wont’ risk an opinion on an area I do not know enough, I would just be very cautious there.

23. Do not apply any of this to Russia
Everybody forgets the Russian Internet market, it is huge and growing fast, the leaders there are local and operated by russians. They even buy American startups - LiveJournal was bought from Six Apart by Sup.

24. This advice only applies to Internet startups
My experience extends only to Internet startups. Other young companies may find that much of this advice does not apply to them.

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