Later today my wife and I will fly to Seoul and then travel on to Daejeon for the wedding of Joop Dorresteijn. Just now I was checking the weather (cold, only 17 degrees Celsius…) and the Korean Won exchange rate and I was very surprised to see it’s exactly KRW 1111,11111 for 1 USD. Easy to remember!

Over the next weeks I will be giving a few talks about entrepreneurship, social media and the online casual games industry. Instead of only tweeting about them while at the event itself I decided to put the next ones on my blog as well.

On Monday October 25 I will be speaking at the STAR Management Week at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. The topic is entrepreneurship, so I will probably give a personal talk about my career so far, what drives me as an entrepreneur and how I look at the future. Other speakers that day include Dutch entrepreneurs Marlies Dekkers, Harald Swinkels, Igor Milder, Walter Peteri and Bob Ultee. In the afternoon I will give a lecture/workshop for Master students of the Chinese Economy & Business program of the Rotterdam School of Management and Leiden University.
Update 14 Oct.: The organization told me today that both events are completely sold out already, the entrepreneurial seminar was sold out in 6 days and the workshop in 5 days!

A week later, on Tuesday November 2, I will give a talk in Shanghai for the Benelux Chamber of Commerce. This time I plan to talk about my vision on the use of social media in the business world and how it will evolve over the next couple of years. I will show how I use social media tools to grow the businesses I am involved in and will give some tips on how others can do this as well for their company. Rogier Bikker who runs ad agency Energize in Shanghai will give the second talk that evening, about successful ways of using social media in your business. The location will be the Dutch Design Work Space and the evening will start at 7 PM.

That weekend I will fly to Indonesia to give a talk on Saturday November 6 during the SparxUp Awards 2010, the biggest and most significant tech start-up event in Indonesia. The awards night will start at 7 PM and my talk should start at 7:30 PM. Location: FX Lifestyle X’nter, free entrance. I will talk about Spil Games and especially how we managed to make games.co.id into the biggest online game portal in Indonesia, with currently about 9 million unique visitors per month.

Indonesia is an amazing market with a huge potential and Spil Games sees it as one of our key future markets, both for online games and mobile games. If you’re in the Internet or mobile industry in Indonesia and would like to talk to me, please get in touch at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com or leave a message in the comments.

I mentioned United Styles a few times on this blog and in other media already, but so far never revealed what the company will be doing. UnitedStyles.com is a website where a mother or a child (or the two of them together) can design kids personalized clothing and immediately see the result in 3D. United Styles will then produce the clothes you designed and mail them to you. The site is is in closed alpha at the moment, and very soon an email will go out to all the people that signed up on the mailing list with a sneak peak and with some more details about what we will do exactly.

The website will go into open beta by mid-November and we are now looking for girls in Shanghai that would like to help us with fittings and photo shoots. The next shoot will be on Saturday October 30, and we are specifically looking for girls around 98 cm, 122 cm and 140 cm. Are you interested or do you know anybody that would be interested? Please get in touch with Anna Haude at annahaude (at) gmail (com) com.

A couple of months ago I bought a Concept2 indoor rowing machine and I am using it regularly, especially when I don’t feel like running but still want to do an intensive work-out. It seems I am not the only one in Shanghai that likes to row, because a few days ago I came across the 1st Shanghai Indoor Rowing Charity Challenge. This race will be held on Saturday November 13, 2010 from 10 AM to 4 PM at the Shanghai Sharks Practice Facility, Bai Se Road No.1333 (???1333?).

There will both be individual and team races, the individual races are over 500 and 1000 meters and the relays are 4 * 500 meters and 10 * 3 minutes. You can sign up until November 8 at http://www.bohdi.com.cn/concept2challenge.html. All proceeds will go to the charity Roots & Shoots

I am not a big fan of the Chinese nationwide vacations, especially when I am staying at home and when most friends are off to some tropical beaches. The past several days we had the October National Holiday in China and I am glad it’s almost over. After I came back from TechCrunch Disrupt I was full of new ideas that I wanted to share, but because nobody was working I felt I couldn’t do much.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time, because I certainly enjoyed spending more time at home. It gave me the chance to play a lot with the kids, and we had tons of fun together. Elaine now runs around the house on her own and calls out for me when she knows I am working in my study. Scott is a naughty boy and just climbs up the 2 flights of stairs to my study (which he is not allowed to do) when his nanny doesn’t notice. I finally taught Scott how to ride his bike (with side wheels), I had tried it a few times before but after teaching him for 2 days he is finally confident enough to ride on his own. So confident that he now even rides around our living room, which was not really my intention!

Elaine and Scott know my birthday will come up in a few days and both learned to say “Happy Birthday To You” – although Elaine normally just says “Happy To You”. Scott can already sing Happy birthday to you as well (both in Chinese and English), and he is now in charge of choosing a birthday cake for me. I wonder what he will buy me.

Because the weather finally cooled off a bit (temperatures in the mid-20s right now), we put up a tent in the garden for the kids to play in. And two days ago Scott and I even spent the night there! Scott loved it so much that it took quite some time for him to fall asleep, he was excited to be in a tent and to listen to all the strange sounds. Because we went to bed at 9 PM already it also took me some time to fall asleep, and during the night I woke up frequently to make sure Scott was okay. It was very quiet outside actually, the only sound I heard was that of the crickets. And of course the birds woke us up just when it got light (after which I could not sleep anymore…). It was fun to sleep in a tent with Scott and it’s great for father-son bonding.

We also had a BBQ during the holiday, where we invited some friends to catch up, eat a lot of food and drink some wines and beer. Always fun to do, but it’s always difficult to figure out who is in town or not. This time – among others – Sam Flemming dropped by with his family (they just flew back to Shanghai from a short holiday), Jim Feldkamp with wife and son were there (he flew in from a sailing regatta in Xiamen), Alexandre Imperatori and fiancee also joined (Formula 3 driver, he flew in from Japan 2 hours before the BBQ – Scott loved his Porsche 911!), and also Joop Dorresteijn just made it (he flew back from Korea where he was preparing for his wedding). Several of the guests brought their kids, so it was also a big childrens party in our kids play room and in the garden. A great evening!

We had a couple of dinners during the week and also a brunch with the parents of Scott’s classmates. A fun get together at the Green Apple, where the kids could play and we could talk. An interesting group of parents by the way, with many of them C-level executives for multinational companies or running their own businesses. Tonight we’ll have a dinner with friends at South Beauty and then I plan to have a couple of drinks with Gary to catch up on the latest Tudou gossip. All in all not a bad week, but I look forward to going back to the office tomorrow (but not to having to work this weekend as well as compensation for the National Holiday…).

Last weekend I had the chance to visit the Jarvis Winery just outside Napa, one of the top wineries in the US. During the summer Will Jarvis (the son of the owners) had visited both Spil Games and Tudou, so I already heard a lot about the wines before my visit and I was really looking forward to seeing the winery operations.

On Sunday morning I drove over with some friends, it’s a scenic drive to the Jarvis vineyards that are located in the northeastern part of Napa Valley. Once you arrive at the gate to the winery you still don’t see much, just some small vineyards on the mountain slopes but no buildings at all. The reason is simple: the owners built a cave inside the mountain where all operations are located. Even the offices are inside the cave! This winery was the first in the US to tunnel a cave so big that all its operations would fit in there.

I was very honored that Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis (the owners of the winery) would give us a private tour of their cave facilities, it made the visit extra special for me. We met them at the reception at the entrance of the cave and from there we walked around through the whole underground tunnel system that Mr. Jarvis had designed and built. What I saw was very impressive, everything was designed with an eye for detail. There is even a stream and waterfall underground, something I had never seen before in any winery caves.

The wines are also made with attention to every detail. Mr. Jarvis told me for example that the barrels are made out of the very best French wood (they tested many different kinds) and are only used once, unlike most other wineries where they are used several times. This is one of the reasons why their wines are so unique, but of course it also increases the cost (if I remember correctly a barrel costs about USD 900 per piece). The tunnel system has a parabolic shape to make it more stable, and deeper inside the caves there are some huge rooms. One is used among others for their bi-yearly harvest ball and it’s probably big enough to put a few indoor tennis courts.

Because of the attention to detail and only going for the very best quality, the Jarvis wines are among the very best on the market. For example, where normal wineries sometimes have over 2000 vines per acre, Jarvis only has 566 in order to get the very best grapes. Quality is the only thing that counts, and that you can not only see in the whole underground operation, but you can also taste it during their wine tastings.

Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis invited us to a private wine tasting deep inside the caves with some of their very best wines. As regular readers of this blog know I love to drink good wines, so I looked forward to this tasting. I am no real expert (yet), but their wines were incredible. They mainly have reds (Cabernet, Merlot) but also a Chardonnay that totally blew me away. I love Californian Chardonnays and have tried quite a few over the years, but this was probably the best I had ever had.

After the wine tasting Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis invited us for lunch at the newly opened Morimoto in Napa. This restaurant is also highly recommended: we enjoyed our lunch on the terrace next to the Napa river and had among others some wonderful maki sushi. Before driving back to San Francisco we visited the Napa Conservatory that the Jarvis family started in 1995. A very nice theater in the middle of Napa, mainly used for Spanish opera and baroque ballet.

All in all a fantastic day in beautiful Napa Valley. Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis, in case you should read this, thank you very much for your hospitality, I enjoyed it very much.

The Jarvis Winery is located at 2970 Monticello Rd., Napa, CA 94558. Phone: 1-800-255-5280 Email: info@jarviswines.com. Winery tours incl. wine tasting only after appointment, you can book online here. Interested to buy some of the excellent Jarvis wines? Here you can order their products online.
Website: http://www.jarviswines.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jarviswines

I am writing this somewhere over the North Pacific, a couple of hundred kilometers south of Alaska on a Delta flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. I spent the past week in the Bay area for among others the Smartphone game summit and TechCrunch Disrupt. As during every trip to the Valley I was once again inspired by the entrepreneurs that I met and the whole entrepreneurial vibe that’s hanging around San Francisco. It seems like every second person I met either works for a start-up or is an investor (of course the nature of the conferences also helps).

It was a week in which I met a ton of new people and many of them I met through Twitter. I was tweeting a lot during parts of the TC Disrupt conference, and because of that I got in touch with others that saw my tweets. Twitter is invaluable during this kind of conferences, if you miss stuff on stage you can read it again (and with comments) in the back channel and especially during more controversial panels (e.g. super angels vs. VCs or the Women in Tech one that became a cat fight on stage) it was very entertaining as well. Difficult to imagine a conference without Twitter actually, it adds so much value to what’s happening on stage and you get to meet new cool people at the same time.

The conferences gave me a lot of inspiration, especially now that I am sitting on this long plane ride and I finally have some time to recap what I saw and heard. My main conclusion is that the future is mobile, not only in China but all over the world. Nothing new of course, but it’s interesting to see most tech people seem to have similar ideas. Touchscreens? Every device will have them 5 years from now. My kids now already don’t understand why my laptop doesn’t react to them touching the screen! Especially Eric Schmidt (CEO Google) was very inspiring to me, his vision of the mobile future is important because Google is (still) so powerful that it can show the way to get there.

But start-ups can also help to get there, especially the disruptive ones that presented their ideas during the conference. The eventual winner Qwiki is not my favorite, even though they certainly are disruptive and their presentation was amazing. But for me search is still synonym to getting an instant text or image result, not a mix of audio, video and text that you have to listen to. Time is of the essence when searching, I don’t want to listen to a 20 second multimedia bombardment. I hope for them I am wrong, and in that case they’ll probably quickly end up as part of the Google family. Others like Gunzoo (a fabric video ‘wall’) I liked a lot more, but for China’s relatively low Internet speeds this is still too early. Now that I think about it, this also seems to be a good candidate for Google (YouTube).

The 2nd day of TC Disrupt started off with a big bang, when AOL CEO Tim Armstrong came on stage with Mike Arrington and they confirmed the rumors that AOL had bought TechCrunch. Great for Mike and his writing staff, they worked very hard to get where they are and they deserve a good pay off (I hope all their bloggers have decent stock options). TechCrunch achieved a lot in just over 5 years. The first time I heard about the blog is when Mike Arrington wrote about Tudou (at that time still Toodou) in the summer of 2005. Now that would be a big thing for a start-up, but then hardly anybody knew TechCrunch yet. Strangely the article seems to have disappeared, but I assume it should still be somewhere in the Internet archives.

Next to listening to all the top speakers and panelists, we (Floris Jan Cuypers of Spil Games was also in SF) had a couple of meetings with gaming and other companies (a.o. we went to Facebook’s HQ, where you have to sign an NDA before even entering the building, just like at Google. I hope writing this doesn’t break their laws. FB is clearly not a start-up anymore…). We even got to see MC Hammer perform at the Google & SV Angels after party. Pretty cool, Hammertime still rocks and his dance moves are still there 2 decades later.

Another highlight was the visit to Singularity University at the NASA Ames Research Center. SU’s executive director Salim Ismail was also at TC Disrupt and he saw on Twitter that I was also at the conference. We had dinner a couple of months ago in SF so it was good to catch up again. He then invited Floris Jan and me to visit Singularity University. I should probably write a separate blog post about what Singularity is doing, because once again I was blown away by some of the stories I heard. They are literally changing the world with their ideas and projects. For some ideas on what they are working on, check out their Facebook page. Thanks for the invite Salim!

Another highlight of the week was the visit last weekend of one of the best wineries in Napa Valley, Jarvis Wines, where the owner and his wife gave us a private tour. I was very honored by this and plan to write a separate post on the visit over the next days. As I have probably mentioned on this blog in the past one of my goals is to one day have my own winery, so not only did I get to taste some of the best wines I ever had, but this was a very inspiring day as well.

By coincidence last night Seraph Group had a limited partner meeting in Palo Alto, so I was able to join that as well for the first time. Met some of the other LPs and several portfolio companies presented to us. I had seen many company presentation during TC Disrupt over the past days, but actually the ones I saw at Seraph were better than the ones presenting at TC Disrupt. I especially liked Wakemate, that uses a soft bracelet to measure and analyze your sleep patterns and wakes you up at the right time (similar to Lark that was presenting at TC Disrupt). Wakemate will launch in October and I plan to order a kit and try it out for myself. Tasting Room is another portfolio company that I liked a lot. They basically sell small boxes with 6 * 50ml bottles of different wines that you can taste. The wines that you like you can order right away in normal bottles. Tasting Room works with many of the big US wineries but only ships in the US. They also have an iPhone app where you can make tasting notes and with more background on the wines. A very cool idea implemented by a very experienced team. I wonder when someone will copy the model outside the US, it seems like a no brainer for entrepreneurial teams with wine industry experience.

I look back at an excellent week in one of my favorite places in the world. And like I said before on this blog, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I would end up here to do a new start-up

Every year the Silicon Alley Insider / Business Insider ranks the most valuable Internet start-ups. Tudou made the list for the 3rd year in a row, this year SAI put us at place 15 with a valuation of USD 1.5 billion. No comment on that valuation from me, SAI explains how they get to our valuation in their post. Like I said last year as well, the list is rather arbitrary (Spil Games is again missing from the list, they absolutely belong on here), but it’s nice to see how “outsiders” look at the company.

This year’s winner is of course Facebook, no surprises there. Online game company Zynga managed to get to #2, followed by Wikipedia, Skype, Craiglist and Twitter. Among Chinese companies Tudou is number 2, the first one is Taobao (the Ebay of China) at #12. Tudou competitor Youku made the list for the first time, they ended at #27 with a USD 500 million valuation.

Funny thing is that when I saw the post in my RSS feeds I was on a very short stop-over in Tokyo en route to San Francisco, and I just quickly glanced at the article without really reading it. I thought they had given Tudou the same USD 500 million valuation as last year and I also tweeted that and put a link on Facebook. When I landed in SF I received several comments and emails from people letting me know that I was 1 billion dollars off… 🙂