MYBLOG by Ouriel

Good job Yaron

i was proud to walk in Paris metro the other day and this ad for the La defense jazz festival with my good friend Yaron Herman, an israeli pianist living in france (the opposite of me), showcased just above Herbie Hancock.

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Pissed off at Israeli Taxi Drivers

Don't know about you guys. But i can't stand Israel taxi drivers (except my cousin and a couple of nice guys, usually new in the business). I have taken hundreds of taxis in the world and the Israelis are the worst. I am talking here about the behavior of the drivers and their method for pricing.

For those who don't know in Israel you can pay a cab according to 2 methods. Either by the counter (like in all countries) or by fixed price for a certain distance. The fixed price can be set according to 2 methods: the official book price they all have on them, and negotiation.

In all cases Israeli taxi drivers will try to screw you.

If you don't ask WHEN you get in the cab, it is very likely they won't put the counter and will give you whatever price on the arrival. It happened to me twice. They will be even more likely to do that if they sense you are a stranger. (what they don't realize is that i am more israeli than an israeli with my french accent...) When they hear you foreign accent they immediately will ask you if you live here or not and since when, so they can screw you even more. If you ask for a fixed price, they will start to argue with you and then it all depends on your capacity of negotiation (we are not talking about elegant negotiation here).

If you ask for the counter, they will take the most complicated and longest way to take the most out of you. It happens to me 10 times out of 10. When i don't know the exact price i always ask counter and this is what i observed. Sometimes, this is even worse, if you ask for the counter, they will argue this is NOT possible and will tell you it only works by fixed price (according to their official book). This happened to me about a week ago. i could not believe it

I called his company to complain. they laughed at me.

So bottom line

- if you don't know ask for the counter
- do not hesitate to indicate the quickest road if you know it since common sense is not part of their brain
- Ask for the method of pricing immediately WHEN you get into the cab. After it might be too late
- spot in the cab the license number in case you wish to complain (very likely)

What i really want know is a third party organization we can really complain to and that will listen and that will punish abusive drivers' behaviours or their companies. I have created a Facebook group if you wish to share your anger. Maybe some legislation/regulation will come out of it with clear pricing policies (for airport for example...). I don't know. What i know is that the next cab driver that will try to play with me, won't regret it.

ps: i hesitated to share this video, but this is too funny not to (beware this is very tough), but sometimes i really want to speak to israeli cab drivers that way

ps 2: pray also that he does not put something like that on the radio

Technorati Tags: israeli israel taxi cabs

[iPhone tip] This is what you need to do if your iPhone can't connect to EDGE in roaming mode

I just lost 2 hours with a stupid problem and finally found the solution. So i prefer to save you the effort if you have the problem. When i travelled abroad my iPhone could not connect to Data via EDGE although working perfectly in my country of Origin and although the E symbol was appearing on my iPhone (meaning there is data connection). I tried everything including looking for fixes on the internet for 1.1.4 (my firmware). I nearly hesitated to reset my iPhone ...

I finally had the simplest idea: set my EDGE settings to the orginal operator i have in Israel. I think this can work for any country in roaming mode.

Just go to Settings> General>Network>EDGE and there fill the APN details with if necessary log and password (all details for all countries here). You need to set the APN of your original operator

It should work perfect

ps: i read on some forums that by resetting your network preferences you could also make it work. but did not for me

Technorati Tags: iphone edge connection 1.1.4

Facebook can now be translated in all languages... soon hebrew

Good news, Facebook announces that it can now be translated in the craziest languages (not only most spoken languages) in the world via the translations applications. Except hebrew. Do they have any idea how important Facebook is here?


Now native speakers can use our Translations application to translate Facebook into additional Asian languages (Malaysian, Vietnamese), African dialects (Zulu, Xhosa), regional varieties (British English, Canadian French) and even rarely spoken languages, such as Latin and Esperanto

Latin and Esperanto....Hebrew, must be very very very rare..

Net?

update: the welcome page of the application does mention hebrew but
there is no option to selection hebrew or Ivrit or something
equivalent. a bug i am forwarding to Facebook's team now

update 2: the problem comes from right to left writting which will be soon supported

Technorati Tags: israeli hebrew translation facebook

Nicolas Sarkozy is a sex symbol in Israel

There is a lot of negative press in France around Nicolas Sarkozy. Too much in my opinion. Actually there is always negative press in France when you try to change things and in France a lot of things need to be changed. However in Israel, some people think he's pretty sexy and make very strong declarations. Below a video collected by a friend of mine that is quite "refreshing". Maybe he would have stayed a little more had he seen it? :) See for yourself below.

I am not sure you would hear that in France. I have not pushed it yet and the videos has been watch already close to 700 times..

By the way the annotations/bubbles on the video were made directly out of YouTube that released the new feature a few hours ago, shooting in PlyMedia's field an israeli startup

Technorati Tags: sarkozy funny carla bruni france israel

[podcast] Speech of Nicolas Sarkozy today in Jerusalem

I attended today the conference for entrepreneurs in Jerusalem in the presence of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It was a fantastic place for networking and met many friends i have not seen for a while. He spoke in French and i had the idea the record it in a podcast you can listen below (he spoke in French). He spoke very directly and clearly said that business relations between both countries are not enough.

I am not sure he is aware of my small contribution to this: TechCrunch France (one of the top french blogs i am writting) is written from Israel neither than Gemini and LightSpeed invested in 2 French startups (Wikio.com and Bahu.com) but i am sure there is something right about his observations. Too many entrepreneurs still think the US market is the gold mine. It is a crowded one, with a weak money. Europe is not so crowded with a strong Euro..Make the maths..

Laurence Parisot, president of the MEDEF (corporate organization in France) also delivered a great speech. She came with 100 french SMBs ( a first in the history of israel) that were impressed by the israeli creativity and dynamism. One quote to remember "In israel believing in Miracles is being realistic". Inspiring

Technorati Tags: sarkozy israel parisot jerusalem conference

Speaking at FACE paris this week. If you are around don't miss it

I will be speaking at Face conference (French/American entrepreneurs conference) in Paris end of this week. It is aimed at promoting entrepreneurial relations between both countries. Craig Newmark founder of Craiglist, Reid Hoffman founder of Linkedin, my friend top angel Jeff Clavier (Jeff Keyboard for buddies) and many others (including Christine Lagarde French Minister of Economy and Finance) will be participating there.

If you are planning to be there let me know

Technorati Tags: conference faceparis web tech events

Admitting of being wrong is a good thing

Very often i meet startups and do not "connect" with their services. This leads me to give an opinion on why this cannot be successful.I always try to justify it rationally (adding this is my opinion). Most of the time i think i can do that. the problem is that many times i am wrong. Of course i am not always wrong otherwise my employers would have fired me by now.... One of the thing i am trying to learn through my job as a VC is keeping track of the thing i was wrong about, understand why and improve the way i evaluate things and people.

Example

About a year ago, when i first heard of Dopplr, a travel sharing service, i thought this would never catch up because the service was based on a simple declaration of your trips. But then they introduced sharing with your friends and improved dramatically the user interface. In my last trip to Korea i updated my dopplr account and i got instant information of a good friend travelling there the same dates. I would have never known that otherwise. Dopplr proved to bring a strong added value. Now this will be part of my every trip. I admit i was wrong about Dopplr (but right in the way it was originally built).

I could give a long list of services i would have never bet on and that are now succeeding or starting to succeed (and a longer list of cases where i was right). I think it is important to admit you are wrong even if the exercise if painful. Put your ego aside, analyze your own biais, and correct it.

For example i have been saying for a couple of years there is no web2.0 bubble. I still think i am right and that most people that are trying to explain do not have solid backup (most of the time journalists). I could be wrong and a bubble will happen. I will then admit it, publicly but will try to understand why. And make sure next time i have a better evaluation.

Same thing goes with evaluating people. This is why a second chance is important.

Admitting you are wrong can only work on a dynamic basis. A one off is close to useless.

Execution is the key: tracking competition

Inspired by a great post by David Hornik, i wanted to share a bit about the experience i have talking with entrepreneurs and their way to understand and explain what competition is. Bottom line: most of the time this is the part i am frustrated with when i discover this is not a part of the business that is mastered well enough.

It is clear that your business should never be (only) guided by your competition's moves but by your own vision of the market and the way to answer a specific problem. But mastering your competition environment is a must specially when you try to convince investors: not only to demonstrate why what you do is unique, but also to show that you know perfectly what you are talking about. And honestly this is an easy part where you can showcase your skills (i would recommend not to talk about competition in a specific slide but all along your presentation)

I cannot count the number of meetings where entrerpreneurs mention that they do not have competition (usually not a good news by the way and if so you should explain very well why not). And when they do, often the list is very incomplete or poorly detailed. And this is really surprising to me because i think this is the easiest part of the job. There are so many easy and free ways to seamlessly find who is your competition that i cannot understand this is not done more often. Before i mention a few methods to find them let me first detail what i mean by competition.

• Direct competition: companies/services doing exactly what you do (Gmail vs Yahoo mail)
• Indirect Competition: Companies solving exactly the same issue but with a different approach (buy a book on Amazon vs an audio book on Audible.com)
• Segmented competition: Companies in your space but operating in different geographical, demographic segments or industry vertical (Facebook for consumers vs Linkedin for pros or Google vs Vertical search engines)
• Potential competition: players that are not in your space but could come to it very quickly (ex Youtube coming to live streaming space)
  
• Attention Competition: companies totally different from your environment but that have a service that is capable of capturing your consumers' attention on their product instead of yours (eg blog ad networks and the variety of formats and ad widgets or startpages vs your traditional portal page).
• Finally, Investors' attention competition: Many entrepreneurs do not realize they are competition for VC money against all other projects out there, not just their direct/indirect competition. VCs want to bet on the best opportunities (and diversify their risk), so they will evaluate those by benchmarking risk and rewards regardless of the company's activity. Bear that in mind when you meet investors

So. How to find those bloody competitors? here are a few free tips to do those, that i use myself.

• Google: isn't it obvious? you'd be surprised by the number of entrepreneurs that did not even do that. Think about the core of your business, identify key "keywords" and run a search, you ll be amazed by what you can find...Power tip: use related page at the bottom of a very relevant link
• Delicious: the web filtered by smarter people than you. isn't it great? run a search in what people tag and bookmark, you can find jewels over there
• Blog search: just like google but for blogs. Use technorati, wikio, google blog search...
• Blog comments: wherever you spot a blog post talking about a competitor you spotted just run through the comments. Readers are way more knowledgeable that the blog writers themselves. 10 times out 10 i find useful competition information there. Do a test, you ll see it works
• Ask people: no comment. so obvious i wonder why people do not do it more often. You can use Question and Answers services like Yahoo Answers or just ask people in Real life (yes it works too)
• Comscore/Hitwise/Nielsen: those market research companies are tracking users behaviour on the web but are not free. They do have free resources
  
• Twitter/FriendFeed: yes Twitter, which is for me the best Q&A service ever, Just ask your friends. You need to have enough followers. Same Thing with FriendFeed that has search and agregates the digital lives and infos of people that matter to you.
  

Spotting them is not good enough: you should find out about them, what they do, how they do it, how the service works, how they make money, feedback from users (forums are usefull for that), who are their team and investors, possibly their financials (this one is tough). I find that there are 2 great non conventional ways to know very well your competition:

• attend events they speak at, they usually will tell a lot more than you'd expect about them.
• Meet with them: when i was young and naive i thought you never talked to your competitors. But this is wrong, you should. Very early, if for no better reasons because you guys are building a market together. Nothing replaces the feel of a direct contact.

My final point would be to say that understanding competition is not a one-off task for a VC presentation. It is a dynamic process that should obsessively be part of your on going task. FMCGs like Procter or Reckitt (i worked for 11 years ago) run thorough competitive analysis all the time on a regular basis. Again it should not guide your decisions, but you should feel you know you competition so well you can anticipate their own next move. So integrate as part of your outlook calendar or whatever tool that has your attention. Just to give you example: i have a special tab in netvibes that helps keeping me track of our portfolio's competitors activities and that monitors anything they say or is said on them in blogs using Wikio search RSS feature. I also keep track of anything being said on Twitter on our companies using Summize. I also use Alexa (although it is totally unreliable) and compete that have good widgets to keep track of everything.

Also attribute the responsibility of doing this to more than one person in your company. this should be part of the DNA of the company and everyone should feel responsible for understanding what your competition is doing better or worse than you at any level.

Note: this post is part of a category of post called "execution is the key" where i share my insights and own experience for basic strategic/tactical/operationnal tasks

Technorati Tags: competition, intelligence

President Nicolas Sarkozy comes to Israel

France will be well represented next week in Israel. President Nicolas Sarkozy is coming for a visit of State to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel. He will be accompanied by many personnalities and startups.

I will have the opportunity to meet him and a delegation of companies next Tuesday in Jerusalem.

For those who don t know: i am French but live in Israel. Lot of political encounters lately. More soon also. keep track

Technorati Tags: france israel nicolas sarkozy