André Ribeirinho is all about wine and he wants to share his passion with other people by providing an answer on the always returning question which wine to choose. You want to know how it works and how it integrates your offline-shopping experience, have a look on the demonstration which André provides in the video by bringing QR Codes on wine bottles! For more infos go also to www.adegga.com. André is also co-founder of the shift conference and put in a lot of energy in realizing this event.

Viktoria also interviewed other Portuguese startups:
Interview with Bruno Pedro about tarpipe.com
Interview with Leonardo Xavier about thestartracker.com
Interview with Sergio Veiga about 9idiots and stream19.com
Interview with Eddie Correia and Moses Mehraban about ChamaInc, Buzz and Filmz
Interview with Celso Pinto and Vitor Domingos about handivi.com

Viktoria has been doing a lot of great interviews with startup founders and other interesting projects throughout Europe. You can find all of them on Tiburon-Tv.

Inspired by the idea that one of the greatest gifts one generation can give to another is the wisdom it has gained from experience, the Wisdom project, produced in cooperation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, seeks to create a record of a group of people who have all made their mark on the world.

Photographed against the same white space, all of the subjects are removed from their context, which not only democratizes them, but also allows for a clear dialogue to exist between them. In an attempt to create a more profound, honest, and truly revealing portrait of these luminaries, the project encompasses their voices, their physical presence, and the written word. This comprehensive portrayal of such a profound and global group is an index of extraordinary perspectives

A organização promoveu uma acreditação para bloggers em que davam prioridade aos blogs escritos em línguas que não o Inglês ou o Francês (sim Maria João, as vantagens de escrever em Português). Candidatei-me e consegui um acreditação (quem disse que os blogs não servem para nada pode agora aproveitar para fazer um momento de reflexão).

A Le Web 3 é considerada uma das melhores conferências da área. É também uma das maiores da Europa e, por isso, sofre tanto de paixões como de ódios. Para mim isso é positivo e estou desejoso de ver por mim próprio.

O programa apresentado por Loic e Geraldine Le Meur:

O programa é super interessante e inclui algumas das pessoas mais conhecidas da Web actual como como o Michael Arrington (do TechCrunch, o Dan Farber da CNET News, o Om Malik do GigaOm e muitos mais.

Mas isso não é o mais interessante. Para mim uma conferência é boa por todas as pessoas que é possível conhecer durante os dias da conferência e a espectacular oportunidade de falar do Adegga com outras pessoas criativas e que trabalham na mesma área.

Confesso que sinto que há um certo je ne sais quoi no ambiente à volta da Le Web. Estou curioso para ver quão diferente será da reboot e da LIFT e para aprender como podemos fazer uma ainda melhor SHiFT. Pelo feedback que tenho recebido nos últimos anos parece-me que será uma óptima oportunidade.

Por último devo dizer que os preços dos bilhetes não são os mais baratos mas esta também não é uma conferência qualquer. A ver vamos. Se quiserem aproveitar a oportunidade o registo pode ser feito aqui.

À bientot!

Update: there’s a special 20% discount if you want to attend!

In a startup everyone should be aligned in the same direction!

Occasionally I also find some honest and relevant lists of things to do or not to do. Most are rubbish but some I can identify myself with. This list of Insights For Startup Founders is a great resource and I agree with it 100% so let me share it with you:

• 1. Seek transparency and understanding with your partners early. Issues get harder as time passes
• 2. Startup founders work long hours for a reason. There’s more work than there are people. If you’re seeking balance, seek it elsewhere.
• 3. Bad customers will drain you of passion. Really bad customers will drain you of both passion and profits. Unfortunately, most bad customers will degenerate into really bad customers if you don’t do something about it.
• 4. If you’re changing direction often, worry a little. If you’re changing people often, worry a lot.
• 5. It’s lonely at the top, but even lonelier at the bottom. In the early days of a startup, hardly anyone wants to talk to you (except some desperate vendors).
• 6. Eventually, your product will need to work and do something useful. No amount of marketing or strategy will get you around this.
• 7. At the end of each day, ask yourself: “Did the product get better for customers today?”. If you don’t have a good answer, stay up until you do.
• 8. Until you are profitable, time is working against you. Once you are profitable, time is on your side.
• 9. Learn to take calculated risks. The market rarely rewards safe bets.
• 10. To improve the quality of your output, improve the quality if your inputs. Read, converse and connect with the right people.
• 11. Force yourself to write, as it will force you to think.
• 12. At least once every year or so, your startup will almost die.
• 13. The problem you solve should be ugly. The solution you build should be beautiful.
• 14. Even the most successful startup ideas had 100 reasons not to pursue them. There is no perfect idea.
• 15. If the pain doesn’t kill you, it just hurts a lot.
• 16. You choose your destiny, because you choose your team.

Last but definitely not least: Be who you are. Do what you love. Join people you like.

Concordo em particular com o ponto de vista em resposta à influência do intervencionismo do Estado no co-financiamento para o arranque de novas empresas:

Esse é um paradoxo do empreendedorismo. É subverter o fundamento desse conceito: se nós damos dinheiro, não estamos a estimular essa pessoa a encontrar ela própria os recursos necessários para levar avante a sua ideia.

Sou contra o financiamento público das empresas (com excepção dos casos onde existam factores sociais relevantes). Em primeiro lugar porque o dinheiro só por si não resolve nada e a sua existência pode até fazer atrasar o desenvolvimento saudavel de uma ideia e ocultar outros problemas.

Em segundo lugar porque somos todos humanos e gostamos de conforto. Ser empreendedor e fazer sacrifícios ajuda-nos a ir mais longe, a trabalhar mais pelo que não temos. O dinheiro dá-nos conforto e tira-nos a garra.

Aliás esta questão aplica-se ao investimento em geral. Empreender é saber fazer omeletes sem ovos (coisa em que nós Portugueses somos muito bons). A partir do momento que há dinheiro para comprar ovos tudo tudo muda. Antes de qualquer investimento (do estado ou particular) é necessário que um empreendedor encontre formas de resolver os seus problemas. Isso obriga a pensar no modelo de negócio, na estratégia, nos recursos humanos, ou seja, no negócio.

Isso sim, só por si, traz sempre bons resultados.

Originally uploaded by JulianBleecker - More SHiFT photos on the SHiFT Flickr group

The name could not be better. As I was wondering around from room to room I could see shift happening. In the last 3 days I saw people meeting other people, talking to each other, having ideas (and sharing them!) but mainly enjoying themselves a lot in a very informal and cool environment.

Someone at the pizza party said that a conference is successful if there are a few peak moments and great ending. SHiFT certainly had all that as it easily seen on Twitter with all the positive feedback.

Working with a big team is never easy but I think the conference was an amazing event and everyone (team, participants, speakers) deserves a big thank you for making it happen. See you next year.

This was one of the top requested features so we’re very proud to announce that Adegga Mobile is up and running! Any web enabled phone (including the pictured iPhone) will allow you to check for wines on the go.

With Adegga Mobile you can check what other people think about a wine, check prices on other wine shops or read more about a specific wine producer. You can search for wines and producers but you can also easily browse by type, country or vintage.

This is the first version of Adegga Mobile and is currently “read only”. That said, we’ll be adding more useful features continuously like we always do on Adegga.com. If there’s something you think we should add please add your comment to our feature requests page.

We would love to hear your comments about the new Adegga Mobile!