Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

Video-Interview on Inter(net)view this week

Guillaume Le Dieu de Ville was kind enough to interview me and my partner, Ivan Communod, on Skype video this week. We talk about how we met, our background, about our new company vpod.tv and about video-blogging in general. I’ve only added a link to the video, so that you check Guillaume’s site to watch it.

Olivier Attia (CEO, Scanbuy) has started to blog

I taped him in Athens in Octobre 2005... and somehow had never made his video public. I went to University almost 20 years ago with him (was it 1988 ?). Olivier is the founder of Scanbuy, an interesting company in the mobile commerce space. He was named one of the 25 break-out companies by Fortune magazine as well…

He has started to blog recently. check him out on Attia Online.

I'm in Netizen #3 this month

DSC09929, originally uploaded by rsepulveda.

Funny, although I'm mentionned a couple of times in the article about the Nokia 7710 blog I created a long time ago, my name is not associated with my picture, nor with my hands to the right (yep they're mine, holding one Nokia in each hand :)

Thanks Chryde for the article (I think we did it over IM on MSN about 6 weeks ago, or was it by skype?).

Skype on mobile phones

Just found this little tool from Eqo that allows you to get SkypeIM on your phone, and even Skype voIP (?) on your phone ?

Too bad the registration process is a bit cumbersome (they ask a lot of details, send you 2 SMS + wap links)… and I couldn’t get it to work on my Nokia N70. My Nokia N90 (that has my unlimited 3G data plan) is not yet supported. Had anyone managed to get it to work ?

(I actually also have the same problem with Wayfnder, the GPS package: it can’t find my internt link.. although the browser finds it with no problem ???).

Kissing is good

Via my web wandering tonight, an amusing anecdote. Apply it to what you do every day...

“During the space race back in the 1960’s, NASA was faced with a major problem. The astronaut needed a pen that would write in the vacuum of space. NASA went to work. At a cost of $1.5 million they developed the “Astronaut Pen”. Some of you may remember. It enjoyed minor success on the commercial market.

The Russians were faced with the same dilemma.
Well, they used a pencil.”

Keep it simple, stupid"

Our friend Billaut is becoming a web phenomenon with his videoblog

Just this week, his usual audience EXPLODED. Why… because he uploaded a little video (seen over 50,000 times by now) of the French Google Earth killer, developped by the French IGN… And he was also mentionned as one of the top 15 influential bloggers in France by Le Monde newspaper. Funky.

Another proud vpod.tv alpha user; I have to say that indeed the BillautShow is fun to watch.

This blog is 2 years old

Forgot to get myself a cake this week, for the 2 year anniversary of this blog on the 5th of April.

Wondering... what kept me really busy this week ? ;)

So, stats: Posts: 1406  | Comments: 2184  | TrackBacks: 331  | Authors: 1
Total number of page views: 235143


Anyways... who cares :) ? In the past 6 months I've introduced video to this blog, some funny shows, some shot with my phone, some analysis, some comments, some useful stuff, a lots of insignificant stuff, and I've also decided to keep blogging in writing in English, and on video in whatever language I choose.

You can buy me a book on amazon (right column). Thanks :)

William the Conqueror: the Sequel

in 1066, when Edward the confessor died, the French crossed the Channel, and claimed the land of England for themselves, and crowned William of Normany, king of England as William the I, following the bloody Battle of Hastings.

940 years later, almost to the day, Michel de Guilhermier, crossed the Channel and merges Photoways and Photobox, to create the #1 online photo printing service in Europe. The rest is not yet in history books, but respectively on the blogs of the Chairman of the board, the CEO, and about everywhere else

ps: for the detail-savvy folks out there, please note that the INDEX ventures is one of the VCs behind this week’s consolidation in photo princting (photoways), online DVD rental (Videoisland), P2P file sharing (allpeers.com)… Somehow it makes me think about an ecosystem…

Consolidation in the video sector

Interesting news this week. #1 French online-DVD player glowria.fr announced it had raised 4M € in a series-C (or D?). Part of that money was used to buy the #3 player in the French market, and glowria.fr now claims to be the #1 player in continental Europe with 70% marketshare in France. Great.

Great because in the meantime, the 2 largest players in the UK, Videoisland and lovefilm, have just decided to join forces and create a 400,000 subscriber strong company. Clearly a great move for both of them (I guess they were competing like crazy with marketing dollars, and had customer switch all the time). That makes them the #1 predator for glowria.fr on the continent.

A combined European player would then be on the acquisition radar for Netflix, the category leader in the world, with over 4 million subscribers. The press release indeed says:

"The new company plans to exploit synergies on marketing, technology, distribution and operations to grow profits faster and accelerate expansion across Continental Europe. The merged group believes it will be better positioned to exploit these opportunities and be more competitive against US rivals such as Amazon, Blockbuster and potentially Netflix."

Congrats to Simon Calver on becoming the new combined CEO. Time to move our thoughts therefore to the new battle: video-on-demand...

Disclosure: my business partner and I own a small equity stake and stock options of glowria.fr

The T-shirt business case: my excel file

I published a little exercise last week on how to model a simple business plan for a T-shirt business. No replies to the solution. People, it's as as fun as Sudoku (tried that for the first time today, great stuff).

So here's my solution: Download tshirt_model.xls

Keep the questions coming.