We finally opened Bucharest Hubb for public! Since the 1st of February 2010 you can benefit from the first space open exclusively to online professionals and entrepreneurs in Romania. Bare in mind though that we are in “public beta”. There is still some fine tuning to do in order to offer an extraordinary membership experience. You are expected to sign up for membership at Bucharest Hubb by filling in the registration form on the club’s website. You will be contacted to set a time and date for your visit. You can also contact us for details and questions by email (contact[at]bucharesthubb.com) or phone (0727566986).

The big surprise of the launch is the prize that we offer for those who register as members until the 1st of March 2010. New members have the chance* of winning an Ipad, the last gadget signed by Apple.

If you are already thinking to become a member of the club here’s what you should do in order to get a chance of winning the Ipod:

1. Register for membership until the 28th of February, 23:59.

2. Pay your membership fee in advance for at least 3 months until the 28th of February, 23:59.

3. Publish a post on your blog about this contest with a link to this article. Or tweet about it with a link to this article. Or share about this contest on your facebook wall with a link to this article. You choose.

We will select the winner from all the members that qualify for the contest, on the 3rd of March 2010, at Seedmoney Wednesday Breakfast.

Hurry up and sign up for membership to enjoy the benefits of the club along with the chance of winning the Ipad!

*Notes:

Only one Ipad is offered as prize.

The winner will be selected randomly from all participants.

The winner will get the prize after Ipad becomes available for sale.

Participants have to send us a confirmation of the payment for the membership fee before the 28th of February, 23:59.

Participants have to send us a link to the Facebook wall post or Twiter post or blog post that mentions the contest and links to this post: http://www.seedmoney.ro/general/win-an-ipad-by-signing-up-for-bucharest-hubb-membership before the 28th of February, 23:59. Participants don’t need to perform all three actions specified above. One post is enough.

You can also post this 728×90 banner on your blog or website if you want to support Bucharest Hubb. Write at contact@bucharesthubb.com to ask for the full size version.

Aaron Patzer, the founder and CEO of Mint, shares a couple of financial stats correlated with the growth phases of his company.

After watching Aaron’s presentation, take a look at how long does it take to build a tech empire over here.

Your comments are welcome!

Mint CEO Aaron Patzer on Startups from Techcrunch on Vimeo.

Cristian Manafu announced today that he reached an agreement with Launch48 founders to organize this competition in Romania. So, Net Start-up becomes Launch48 and it will be hosted by Netcamp.

The objective of a Launch48 competition is to launch web applications in maximum 48 hours. Anyone can come to present his idea for 1 minute in front of an audience, in this case Netcamp. Then, the public chooses 3-4 ideas that will be put into practice during the next 48 hours, with development teams.

Cristi is very enthusiastic about this project and we are certain that the event will be another success with his signature. Evensys is providing most of the resources for the competition and Seedmoney is the first who offered to sponsor Launch48.

If you want to support this amazing initiative, Cristi is still looking for help with forming the development teams, jury, sponsorship and promoting the idea. If you own a blog or other social media account you are welcome to spread the news about Launch48. Find other details on Manafu’s blog.

Let’s make a great competition out of it!

Seedmoney invites online enthusiasts and entrepreneurs to a series of events called Seedmoney Wednesday Breakfast.

Starting this Wednesday, the 11th of November 2009, you can attend a two hour informal gathering over coffee and croissants at Orange Concept Store, Bucharest. Join us to:

- meet and approach the advisors;

- get inspired from real life stories;

- pitch advisors, investors and Seedmoney;

- exchange contacts, information and ideas with people in the same business as you.

See more details on the next week event here.

Or support this meeting by posting a badge like this on your blog/site:

Just copy the code below and paste it in your site, in the place you want to appear.

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.amiando.com/widgets/eventWidget.html?widgetUid=SPZGKLA4XIR6WFPBUX1N&fontColorTop=FFFFFF&fontColorBody=FFFFFF&width=180″></script>

This week, Razvan Tirboaca and Razvan Iacob reached an agreement with Cristian Manafu concerning his involvement in AdCaptcher as Advisor.

Adcaptcher is a tool that provides advertising through captcha (you know, those words that you are required to copy every time you register somewhere on the web). Razvan & Razvan told us that Manafu knew about this project since the birth of the idea and the three kept in touch for the following developments. When Seedmoney launched the advisors list, the two founders saw the opportunity and decided to approach Cristi for the advisor role.

They reached an agreement in less then a week and the business share offered to Cristi Manafu was 2%. “We now have a gentlemen’s agreement but we are going to take care of the legal aspects very soon” told us Razvan Tirboaca, one of the founders.

Cristian Manafu agreed to participate in Seedmoney’s startup advisory project and, from what we know, he is the first to be involved in a web project as advisor. Cristi will contribute with advice to product development and communication.

We wish AdCaptcher succes!

Veevid, one of the projects that we decided  to invest in at the beginning of the year, was chosen amongst the 6 online businesses that will receive Seedcamp financing in 2009.

Emi Gal’s leadership and the amazing Brainient team convinced the jury of Seedcamp after a year-long process of selection.

We are proud and happy that this well-known competition chose a Romanian project to invest in and this confirms the continuously improving quality of Romanian online market.

It’s our hope that this will be inspiring for other extraordinary teams that are starting an online business and we will see a bigger Romanian presence in international startup competitions.

Congratulations Brainient and Emi Gal!

We believe that any online entrepreneur who is seeking to understand all aspects of his business and broaden his knowledge should attend the conference IT Stratups: How To on the 30th of September.
The legal and tax consultancy company Biris-Goran, several top IT players and investors wish to share their experiences and knowledge with entrepreneurs, private equity funds, consultants and other IT sector professionals.
It will be about business and legal issues, attracting business angels and venture capital and investing in Romanian IT ventures.
We hope to meet you there!

You can ask for an invitation at ddumitrescu[at]birisgoran.ro. Detailed description of the event on Seedmoney Facebook page.

Usually is more confortable to receive confirmation, but knowing what we do wrong is what it’s going to make us better. So we are asking the online entrepreneurs and those who aspire to become one of them to provide us with some DONT’s and STOP DOING’s.

Seedmoney was created for entrepreneurs and we want to know your opinion so that we can really make a contribution.

You can leave a comment here or you can join the other conversations we started on this topic:

Twitter

Facebook

Thank you all!

TWIP, real time collaboration, return on investment, Break Even, Development Plan…

Those were the words we expected to hear in the first SeedMoney meeting. However, it was not quite like we expected. Vlad seemed to be more interested in our professional background and our vision on TWIP – not in the financial estimation on our project. Regarding cash flow, we were asked only two question: “How much money do you need?” and “How soon can you break even ?”. No details, no charts, no profit and loss estimates. No bullshit.

Following that, we had a more technical meeting with two of Vlad’s collaborators. They challenged our concept, they gave us good ideas and suggested various approaches on how to achieve real-time collaboration. It was constructive feedback in an informal discusiion more than it was a job interview.
In less than 2 weeks, we were told we got the investment. It was a boost of our self-confidence, but the actual challenge of our start-up was only about to begin. Now we had the resources we needed at our disposal – we knew there was a lot of hard work ahead.

You need more than money to start-up a project. You need trust, enthusiasm, fresh ideas, networking and a lot of courage. SeedMoney invested all of the above in our initiative. A business cannot start by itself, it needs to be fed somehow, at least until you hit the market.

If right now you’re preparing your pitch for SeedMoney – think about the money, but don’t focus on that. Develop on how and why and when your idea is going to become your success. Don’t oversee the details, but don’t lose your vision either. These guys really care about that.

Work on your concept and learn to trust it. Learn to trust yourself. Be honest. We did and it worked out for us @ SeedMoney!

 
Cristian Andreica
Co-Founder Ninth Prime Technologies
Web: www.ninth-prime.com

The first step in our financing procedure is for you to send us a proposal of the “pitch elevator” type.

In order for us to form an opinion about your project, send us a 1 minute video presentation of the founder/founders (you can shoot it with a webcam), a presentation of maximum 10 slides of your product and a link to site/ project or prototype. You can send us the video by email or you can upload it on youtube.com, blip.tv etc. (with a password in order to make it more private).

We believe the future of the internet belongs to entrepreneurs and we are looking forward to your great online business proposals.