This morning my dad, my sister and I did our last run before the New York marathon, that will take place in 2 days (start Sunday morning at 9:40 AM). We all flew in on Wednesday night, Grace and I from China, my dad and sister from Europe.

Yesterday we started the day by getting our start number at the marathon fair, we decided to go there the moment it opened to beat the crowds. Probably a good idea, we only had to wait 20 minutes or so, it went very quickly. Then I spent a couple of hours working in my hotel room and in the afternoon we did some shopping together on 5th Avenue. We had a nice dinner in the Meatpacking District before going to bed early. Although I am so used to jet lags that it does not really bother me anymore, the 12 hour time difference between the NY and Shanghai is still a hard one during the night of the first day.

This morning I got up at 3 AM to work, so at least I would have some overlap with China. And at 7 AM my dad, my sister and I went for a run. We met at the Apple Store at 5h Avenue (that was renovated and will be reopened again, they were in the process of finalizing everything), and from there we ran up 5th until the Guggenheim, where we entered Central Park.

That’s also the point where the marathon enters, so we ran the last 4.2 km from there to the finish line. We were not the only ones, it was much more busy than usual. Every now and then groups of up to 100 runners passed by, all checking out the final stretch of Sunday’s big run.

The finish stretch was already completely finished, including the grand stands for the public. Standing there I realized I would be running there in 2 days, very cool! So far I am more focused on work and my mind was not really with the run yet, but after seeing the final stretch and the finish line I realize that the main reason I am here is for the run. I am looking forward to it and I feel ready for the race!

It’s not the first time I rant about this on my blog, but I hate it when hotels charge you extra for wifi. I normally avoid hotels that charge for wifi, but it seems all the top hotels in New York still do so. When in Europe I only stay in hotels that offer free wifi, I even call up the hotel in advance to check on this. Same in San Francisco or actually in most places that I travel to. The 3 or 4 star hotels generally provide wifi for free nowadays, especially in Asia or in the US, but less so in Europe. But many 5-star hotels still think they can get away with charging crazy amounts of money for Internet.

I am now staying at the Millenium Broadway hotel  in New York overlooking Times Square. A nice hotel with spacious rooms where I pay something like USD 400 per night (without breakfast or even a free newspaper). No problem, but then don’t charge me an additional USD 12.95 per day for wifi – per device!

When I stayed in the Marriott on Times Square 2 months ago the wifi also cost money, but at least there you could use up to 3 devices. And in the end they waived my wifi fees because there were some connection problems. But the Millenium charges me for every single device (I have 4 wifi devices with me, and Grace 3). I hate it. I don’t care about the money, but having to pay for this feels like robbery. Just charge me USD 30-50 more per night and give me unlimited wifi for all my devices, but don’t ask me to pay every 24 for hours for my computers, phones and tablets.

I don’t have much choice in NYC it seems, but because of this it is very unlikely I will stay at Millenium hotels in other parts of the world in the future. The luxury hotel chains don’t realize they lose a lot more money in the long run than they earn in the short run from charging wifi fees. Or maybe they earn less in the short run as well, they may have more guests when they would be customer friendly and offer free Internet. There are so many other business people like me that complain about this, but high-end hotels don’t seem to get the message yet. Dear hotels: This is the 21st century and Internet is a commodity now, just like water and electricity.

I plan to forward this post to the hotel as well, but of course don’t expect a reaction. 

Spil Games to expand resources and accelerate global business plan through significant capital investment.

2 November, 2011 — Hilversum, the Netherlands — Spil Games (www.spilgames.com), the global leader in online gaming with 140 million monthly unique visitors, announced today that North Bridge Growth Equity ( www.northbridge.com ), a U.S.-based growth equity firm that invests in technology-driven companies demonstrating dynamic growth, has made a minority investment in the company. The capital will be used to accelerate Spil Games’ key growth initiatives:

• Expanding its global user base through investing in best-in-class content (social, multi-player and single-player games) and further enhancing the user-experience
• Creating a premium, cross-platform gaming experience for its players to play their favorite games anytime, anywhere
• Enhancing the advertising value proposition through enabling advertisers to connect and engage with its audiences through a deep integration into the social layer of its gaming platforms

“North Bridge is a great partner for us. They understand our company and the growth opportunities within our industry. Their straight-forward, ambitious, pragmatic approach is a perfect match with our company culture,” said Peter Driessen, CEO and Co-Founder of Spil Games. “Together we are committed to scaling up our business and expanding our team with the best people in the industry.”
“Spil Games is an ideal partner for our investment model,” commented North Bridge Managing General Partner, Mike Pehl. “North Bridge is delighted to partner with such a strong management team and company. Spil Games has rapidly scaled a successful business model with leading market positions in a variety of geographies, including established and emerging markets. ”

Venture capital firm Van den Ende & Deitmers continues to support the company as a minority shareholder. Hubert Deitmers, Managing Partner of Van den Ende & Deitmers comments, “We are proud to see that Spil Games has developed into a global market leader and we are excited to be part of the next growth phase together with the great teams at Spil Games and North Bridge.”

Atlas Advisors and Waller Capital Partners served as the financial advisors to Spil Games for the transaction.

About Spil Games — http://www.spilgames.com/

Spil Games’ mission is to unite the world in play through a localized global network of online social-gaming platforms tailored to girls, teens, and families. These platforms, localized in 19 languages, entertain 140 million unique visitors from around the world each month. In its current portfolio, Spil Games has a collection of more than 4,000 online games, which have been developed both in house and through partnerships with top-tier game developers. These casual, social games encourage players to connect and challenge themselves and each other while sharing their creativity. Additionally, Spil Games is present on mobile devices through browser-based and native application versions of the company’s targeted social-gaming platforms.

About North Bridge Growth Equity — http://www.northbridge.com/

North Bridge Growth Equity (NBGE) is a leading growth equity firm that invests in technology and technology-enabled companies demonstrating strong revenue and profitability momentum, large and dynamic addressable markets, and proven management teams. NBGE targets investments in companies with $15 million to $300 million of revenue, and is currently investing from the $545 million North Bridge Growth Equity Fund I. NBGE is co-located and affiliated with North Bridge Venture Partners (NBVP), a bi-coastal leader in early stage venture capital investing. Together, NBGE and NBVP have $3.2 billion of committed capital under management.

About Van den Ende & Deitmers – http://www.endeit.com/

Van den Ende & Deitmers is the venture capital firm of Endemol founder Joop van den Ende and former Endemol Executive Board member Hubert Deitmers. The firm invests in West European companies with substantial international growth potential, both early stage and later stage. The EUR 150 million fund focuses on content, platforms, e- commerce and related ict-services. Since its inception in 2006 the firm has invested in numerous companies, e.g.: television producer Eyeworks, online marketing research provider MetrixLab, online video advertising company Smartclip, photo album platform Albumprinter and many others.

I am writing this post from a plane between Beijing and Shanghai, after spending 2 busy days at TechCrunch Disrupt in Beijing. In terms of speakers and content it was one of the best conferences I ever attended, in my opinion much better than the regular TC Disrupt conferences in San Francisco and New York (there you see the same speakers every year, with several of them merely there because they are famous instead of having tech insights). What made the conference even better was that UnitedStyles was chosen as one of the companies that could participate in the start-up competition, the Startup Battlefield.

 

We had signed up in early September, spending a lot of time on the application process (incl. making a short video) trying to make it into Disrupt. And as usual when you really want something and put a lot of effort in it, it worked for us as well. 12 days before the start of Disrupt we were informed that we were among the 17 companies that were chosen to present on stage (in total 500 companies had applied, so not a bad result). From that moment on all hell broke lose in the UnitedStyles offices: because TechCrunch only informed all participants so late we assumed we would not be in, and the features we were supposed to launch on stage were not ready yet.

 

From that moment on the team worked almost every single day until deep in the night, with CTO and co-founder Joop Dorresteijn often not hitting his bed before the sun came up in the morning. It was hard work and it wasn’t always fun with a major deadline, but it really made UnitedStyles into an even better team. This was real team work, all working together to reach the same goal: launching at TechCrunch Disrupt and making a good impression on the judges and audience.

Xander and I also had to work on the presentation, which turned out to be harder than we thought. We only had 6 minutes and had to discuss all elements of our company, vision, business & marketing plan. Plus a live demo on stage – a live demo of something that was not even ready in alpha yet. Stressful days and nights followed, and I felt bad for the team sometimes, especially when the office was still full at midnight on a Saturday night. I seriously think that this kind of work ethos can only be found in China.

 

We were very fortunate that we had just hired a social media specialist, Lindsay. She had started the day before we heard about our TechCrunch participation and so she could immediately see what makes a start-up different from a multinational or a government organization (Lindsay had among others been an intern to Joe Biden before). While preparing for the presentation we realized it might be better to have a woman on stage to do the live demo, so she could design her own dress in front of the audience. So within 2 weeks of starting to work with us Lindsay ended up on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt!

 

On Sunday morning the core team (Xander, Joop, Lindsay and myself) was supposed to fly into Beijing, but due to have smog there the airport closed down. Xander, Joop and Lindsay were stuck in their plane at the gate, but Grace and I were taking a later plane and heard about it before we checked in. Because we had to be in Beijing at 4 pm for the tech rehearsal we decided to try our luck with the train. That worked and we took the first available bullet train.

That was a great experience, and I actually like traveling by Chinese fast trains a lot better than by plane. You can get to the station 10 minutes before departure instead of 1-2 hours, there is no hassle with checking in suitcases and all kinds of security measures, and the train ride itself is very comfortable. We booked first class seats and those were perfect. They were similar to first class plane seats and could turn into beds. Another nice thing is the view, you get to see a lot of the Chinese countryside if you travel by train. Because the bullet train tracks are normally about 10 meters above the ground you have an excellent view of rural China.

Service was great, food and drinks were served constantly and you got refills without asking for it. I worked for most of the 4 hour 50 minute trip (by plane it takes a bit less than 2 hours, if no delay), and got a good 3G connection for about 2 hours out of these. There was also wifi on the train, but I could not connect to it. I was in contact with the team in Shanghai over Skype and SMS, and was happy to learn that they eventually managed to leave after a 6 hour delay. We got into Beijing about the same thing as they did, so that worked well.

We then went straight to the TechCrunch Disrupt venue at the China National Convention Center for the tech rehearsal. I had informed the organization by email that we would not be able to make it on time, but luckily we could reschedule to later that afternoon. It was nice to be on stage and talk to the organizers. Then we went to the hotel and worked on our final presentation until late in the night.

On Monday we had our presentation at 3:30 PM, but because the program ran late we only came on stage around 5:30 PM. Xander did the main part of the talk, and that went quite well. The same for Lindsay who did the demo and showed how to design a dress and put a special print on it.

Generally we got a lot of positive feedback from people, both at the conference and online (the conference was streamed live through Tudou and Livestream). Traffic to UnitedStyles.com spiked after the presentation and an article on TechCrunch about us. And we got our first orders after the relaunch as well!

At night we were invited to the VIP dinner at a traditional Beijing restaurant, where we heard that the 5 finalists would be announced later that night. And indeed, around 11 PM we received the message that we made it to the final! That meant we had to do another presentation on Tuesday, so we (again) had some more work to do… The presentation was the next day at 12 PM, and we were lucky to be the first one on stage to present. We changed our presentation a bit, but the main content we left the same. Also this presentation went okay, and then we watched the other finalists present. There were some very polished presentations, but I did not like all of the ideas too much.

Long story short, we did not win the Disrupt cup and a cheque of USD 50,000. That was a pity, but we had not really expected it anyway (but of course we had wanted it!) and we were happy we made it until the real final. At least we knew we were in the top 1% of all participating companies, and that’s a big achievement as well.

It was a special experience to be part of the TC Disrupt Startup Battlefield and I am very happy we could participate. If you’re a startup and have the chance you should try to get it. It gives you a lot of exposure in the media and with VCs, and it’s always good to have a strict deadline to launch your product or new features of your product. Thanks team TechCrunch Beijing for this amazing conference!

Interesting to see how social media can push a simple story into mainstream news: after blogging (here post #1 and post #2) and tweeting about what happened to Elaine’s picture, the China Daily picked up the story. A journalist did some further research this week and to my big surprise the story appeared on today’s front page of the China Daily!

The full article in China’s leading nationwide English paper is here: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/china/2011-10/29/content_14000038.htm

Interesting is that the research results are different from what we expected. The company hired a freelancer who illegally used Elaine’s picture (he assumed she would be living thousands of miles away). He said he found the picture on a designers website, a website we had never used and certainly had never uploaded pictures to. The freelancer did not have permission to take pictures from the site, but did it anyway.

When we checked this website we found tens of professional pictures of Scott and Elaine, likely uploaded by the photo studio where we took the pictures. This part of the story was not included in the article, but it shows that you have to watch out with photo studios in China. We used one of the best studios and still it looks like they cheated us by uploading the pictures to a website used by designers. Let that be a warning to others using photo studios here.

To be continued? Not sure, if I had nothing else to do I might go after the photo studio, but I guess I have more important things to do. It’s certainly nice to see some justice done by this front page article.

Two weeks ago Grace was shocked when she found that a big Chinese manufacturer had used Elaine’s picture on the packaging of one of its Halloween costumes. We discussed what to do and decided to contact the company and ask them to change the packaging, otherwise we would start a court case.

The company at first tried to brush Grace off by asking for proof that Elaine was our daughter. But when she explained who she is and sent them a link to her verified Weibo account (where the case had already been discussed in detail) their tone changed immediately. They promised to change all the packaging in China before October 21.

So when we went to the opening night of the Carrefour Wine Fair yesterday we also checked out the Halloween customes there. Indeed the manufacturer had changed the packaging, but in a typical Chinese way: Instead of inserting a new cover, they had taken out all covers and cut out Elaine’s face!

I had to laugh when I saw it. For me it’s fine, but I seriously wonder if anybody would still buy a product where part of the packaging had been cut out. Only in China…

We’ll check a few more stores over the next days. If the products there all have the same ‘solution’ we are okay. If not we have a lawyer lined up to sue the company. We told the law firm that they can keep all the money they get in compensation. We don’t want it and it will be a good motivation for them to win this case!

Last night the inaugural JP Morgan Corporate Challenge race took place in Shanghai, a 5.6 km race along the bank of the Huangpu river in Xuhui district. Spil Games Asia is a sportive company, so we participated with a team of 10 people in the run.

The event was a bit bigger than I had imagined, in total over 3000 runners showed up at the start! I am in pretty good shape right now because of the New York Marathon that I will run in 2 weeks, but I did not train for fast shorter distances, so I had no real expectations about running a good race.

My dad also ran the race and both of us managed to get to the very front of the pack at the starting grid. In China even the slow runners try to start from the front, so it’s important to fight for your position, otherwise you’ll lose valuable time right at the start already. Judging from their looks we were surrounded by other potentially fast runners but also by a lot of guys who had clearly never participated in a short race before (drinking cans of Red Bull right before the start is not a very smart strategy).

After the obligatory speeches the start was 4 minutes earlier than planned, not a bad thing if you’re in the middle of a crowd. As usual most people started running very fast right from the start, but because the first 300 meter were uphill (up a bridge) many of them were already exhausted by the time they reached the top. My dad and I took it easy and let quite some people pass on the first few hundred meters. I felt great and sped up when we reached the top of the bridge, but then I noticed that my dad was not following. So I slowed down to see where he was, and even ran backwards for a short while to see if something had happened. It turned out he was fine but my speed was just too fast for him right from the start.

He told me to just run my own race, and after thinking about if for a few seconds I decided to go for it. I immediately started passing a lot of people and started to get closer to the front of the pack. One guy was much faster than the rest and there was a big gap between him and the others after the first kilometer already. I felt good and settled at a speed of about 15 km/h, continuously passing people.

When we passed the second bridge I had about 15 people still ahead of me, but it was a bit hard to count them exactly because the field was now spread out. I decided not to speed up anymore, mainly because I didn’t wear my GPS watch and didn’t know how far we still had to run (I didn’t find kilometer markers either, maybe I missed them?). I kept on passing a few people and running still felt great. I thought I still had another 1.5 km ahead of me when I suddenly saw the 5 km sign. I couldn’t believe it, only 600 meters to the finish, I thought it was still much farther!

So I immediately started sprinting and passed another 2 people before finishing in 22:44 (according to the clock above the finish line). I thought I was within the top 10, but this morning I received the official results and saw that I was only number 11. Strangely my official finishing time was 22:51, different from the picture above taken right after I passed the finish line. Coincidentally, the number 9 of the race had an official time of 22:45, so I wonder if anything went wrong there. But whatever happened, I am happy with this result.

My dad also ran a great race, he passed the finish line in 24:23, only 1:30 behind me. He was 41st overall, an amazing result considering that he was the oldest runner! He also did not seem too tired, he saw it more as a training and did not overdo it.

My family had not expected us to be so quick, and Grace almost missed taking a picture of me. She was trying to take a picture of a boat when she suddenly saw me running in the final stretch to the finish already. Also the kids probably did not see me, but for them the whole atmosphere was interesting enough already.

After the run we picked up our goodie bags (t-shirt, Gatorade, banana) and then waited for the Spil Games Asia colleagues to come in. We found a nice bench in the hospitality area where we had pizza and beers with the colleagues and talked about the run.

Scott and Elaine enjoyed all the attention they got, they had a very nice time. When it got dark it got a bit cooler as well, so we took a group picture and then we went our separate ways. It was a cool event, maybe I’ll join again next year!

In September 2009 I had the opportunity to give the keynote speech for the opening of the Academic Year at my Alma Mater Maastricht University. At the beginning of this speech I talk about the fact that I still remembered the keynote during the opening of the Academic Year 18 years earlier when I started my studies (given by prime minister Ruud Lubbers), but the the text was not available anywhere online. I then said that I expected that if someone would try to find the text of my speech 18 years later, they would probably find it online. Well, until a few days ago that was not the case, but I just saw that Maastricht University uploaded part of their archive onto YouTube, including my talk.

Although the speech is a bit dated, I was surprised to see how many of the points that I mentioned are still the same today. The topic is New Leadership, where I put a lot of emphasis on using social media as a leader. Even the services that I mentioned 2 years ago are still the main ones that I think a (business) leader should use today: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I had never seen this footage, so it’s nice to find it back online.

If the embedded video above should not work or if you want to watch it in a larger window, here is the link to the original on YouTube.

The Opening of the Academic Year is a very traditional event, if you have never seen it is also nice to watch the arrival of the cortege (all the professors in traditional robes) before the official Opening here on YouTube (this one is from 2011).