This morning my dad, my sister and I ran the New York Marathon, it was an incredible experience.

 

Because my dad and sister were staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and I was staying at Times Square, I first had to jog over there in the very early hours of the morning. The bus left at 5:45 from their hotel, so I left my hotel at 5 AM to make sure I would be on time. It was dark and almost freezing in the city, and the only people you saw were runners on their way to buses to the start at Staten Island.

 

The ride to the start was less than 30 minutes, so at 6:15 we entered the start area of the marathon. It was so cold that the grass was still frozen white at certain areas, but there was no place to sit inside. There were a few open tents, but the temperature there was just as low as outside. Because the start was only at 9:40 (and for Sonja only at 10:40) we decided to make the best of it, wear plastic overcoats over our running clothes and try to stay warm with free coffee and tea.

The atmosphere was very nice despite the cold and despite the long wait, but I was glad when we could enter our starting corral at 8:20 AM. My dad and I were in the same starting corral, so we had some energy food and drinks together and then took off all the additional clothing. You could put that in bags and pick it up after the race, but if you left it in the starting corral it would be giving to charity, so that’s what we did. Now somebody will receive some nice long running pants and a Tommy Hilfiger sweater.

We were almost at the back of the starting corral, but we did not mind too much because we did not plan to run a fast race. We just wanted to finish in a decent time, I hoped to finish between 3:40 and 3:50. My dad and I would run together, just like we did in the Macau marathon a couple of years ago.

After the start we went onto the Verrazano bridge right away, a nice climb to start the run. I enjoyed the view from there over the water with the Manhattan and New Jersey skyline in the background. After the Verrazano we ran through Brooklyn for quite some time. It was very busy along the streets in Brooklyn, thousands and thousands of spectators and bands everywhere. It was really cool to hear them cheer for you and it helped to motivate you to run even faster.

Our speed was quite good and for the first 25 kilometers we were running at a schedule of about 3:36. I felt great and could have run faster, but there were just too many people to be able to run at a faster pace. My dad hurt his achilles tendon at 15 km, but he only admit that to me 10 km later when I noticed that he was in pain. Things suddenly got worse at 30 km, when I suddenly heard him call my name behind me. I looked around and saw that he could hardly walk anymore, let alone run. He told me to continue on my own, which I was very reluctant to do. But looking at the way he walked I realized he would probably have to give up the race, so I then decided to run the remaining 12 kilometers alone.

Those were also the hardest kilometers, but not as hard as in previous marathons. I felt good during the whole run, there was not one moment that I wanted to stop or wanted to walk. My legs hurt of course, but in previous marathons I had a much harder time. One key difference is that I trained hard for this marathon, much harder than previous ones. Another big difference is that I drank Gatorade and water at almost every drink stop, and that I had energy gels to eat when I started to feel hungry.

The last part of the race was the nicest. Coming back from the Bronx to Manhattan and then turning into 5th Avenue through Harlem was a great part of the race. You know it is just another 6-7 kilometers and the crowds were 5 rows thick. Great bands along both sides made these kilometers (always the hardest of the race) much easier.

At 90th Street we turned into Central Park for the final stretch. Two more hills (and of course 2 more downhills), then a right at the Plaza Hotel onto Central Park South to Columbus Circle. From there we turned right into Central Park again and then the finish came in sight. I sped up the last 500 meters, I felt like I could have run much longer if I had needed to. My final time (net): 3:42:33. I am quite happy with that, I could have ran a couple of minutes faster if I had wanted to, but for me it was more about the experience than about the result.

One reason why I lost some time is because I tweeted several times during the race, not an easy thing to to do with a touchscreen keyboard! I also took about 50 pictures (although some of them were not sharp because of moving during running) with my iPhone, and I posted several on Facebook as well. I love Social Media!

 

After crossing the finish line I called Grace, who told me that my dad had actually started running again (she could see our progress online) and he came in only 9 minutes after me! I felt bad that I had not waited for him, I should have known that he never gives up. But at 30 km he looked so bad, that I could not imagine him even walking the rest of the course. But he did! However, it came at a price, because after the finish line the medical people immediately took him aside and checked him up. He could not walk anymore because of the severe pain, but after medical treatment he managed to get out of the park on his own and then into a taxi to the Waldorf-Astoria. From there he called me to tell his story. Dad, I am very proud of you and I hope you will recover soon.

My sister Sonja ran her first marathon and she did a great job as well. Her final finishing time was 4:51, well within her target of 5 hours. Excellent Sonja, especially considering the fact that you did not walk a single meter during the race. A good start of your marathon career!

 

I loved the New York Marathon and can imagine to run this one again. The atmosphere is amazing and the course very nice. However, the huge running crowd made it less enjoyable because you can’t really run your own speed. Even after 21 kilometers there were still too many people around you to run without thinking. So it’s not a marathon to run fast times, but it’s a marathon to enjoy. And that’s what I did today!

This morning after watching Groupon do its IPO on the NASDAQ (and being flabbergasted by the crazy valuation – but that’s a different story), my dad and I decided to check out the people who are against the excesses happening in the financial world.

After reading online about the Occupy Wall Street movement over the past 6 weeks I had a bit of sympathy for some of their points of view, but most of their demands and ideas are quite different from mine. I am not sure if I am part of the 99% that they claim to represent, but after today’s visit I have the feeling they only represent 1% of the population instead of 99%.

Maybe the movement has changed since they started on September 17, but when I went to their camp I was disappointed with what I saw there. Not intellectuals with interesting ideas, but mainly a bunch of hippies making music and holding up signs. Some still hailed from the flower power era it seemed, and others would have fit right into the 60s. The way they spread their messages about upcoming demonstrations, one person announcing something and the whole group repeating it, felt like something you would do in primary school. It’s probably functional, but I almost had to laugh when several people could not even correctly remember and repeat a single sentence.

To me they felt like a group of misfits, who find meaning in their lives by being part of a group that is against society. But these are not the people who will be able to change the world. I almost felt sorry for them: it was quite cold and windy in Zuccotti Park and the spirit of ‘changing the world’ seems to have long gone. Maybe I visited at the wrong moment, but in my opinion this group does not deserve the attention it gets in the press. They may have started the Occupy movement, but if this is the core of the organization I think the whole operation will be over sooner rather than later.

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!