Posts from Berlin

Roamline

Yesterday I traveled from Amsterdam to Berlin and ended my day in Paris. Three countries in one day. And I did it all with just one data only sim card in my phone.

I've been trying out a new data only service called Roamline while I've been in europe. It works great and allows you to roam from country to country in Europe, Canada, and the US with a fixed rate on data.

It works great, but it is not cheap. At .39euro per MB, I feel like its a luxury. It's much more cost effective to buy a sim card in each country. In Denmark, I was able toget a 1gig sim for 48krone which is something like $8US. So that would be .8cents per MB. In london, I paid 20pounds for 1gig of data so that is 3cents per MB. Roamline's cost of .39euro per MB is something like 50cents US per MB.

But what you get in return is convenience. I needed to be in three countries in one day, I wanted data to work on my phone from the moment I landed, and I did not want to be running around looking for a store to buy a local sim card.

Of course the other option is to just use your US phone service and get the biggest data roaming plan you can. With AT&T Mobile, you can get 800MB a month of international roaming for $120. That is 15cents per MB. But after that you pay some crazy number like $20 per MB (at least that's what the AT&T customer service person told me when I called a few weeks ago to inquire about this stuff).

If Roamline were about half the price, somewhere around $0.20per MB, I think it would be an awesome service. And operating in data only mode is not a big deal. I use skype and a sip client called Bria for voice and I use Kik for messaging. Everything else is data.

You'll need an unlocked iPhone or Android to swap out sims like this. But I don't buy locked phones and never have. I think the lock+subsidy is a bad deal and I don't like being told what I can and can't do on my phone.

In any case, I think Roamline is an interesting option for people who do a lot of international business travel in europe, canada, and the US. If they can lower the price by half, then I think its a great option.

#mobile

Disappearing Into The Fire - The Berlin Edition

In April of this year, I blogged about the Disappearing Into The Fire Workshop. This is a workshop put on by Jerry Colonna and Ann Mehl that seeks to provide CEO Coaching "at scale." What I mean by that is for most people CEO Coaching is a one on one experience, and a very good experience which I highly recommend. These workshops take the same approach but provide it to a room full of people at a single time. If you think you might want to get a CEO Coach but aren't sure what its like, this workshop is an excellent start.

I've talked to a number of entrepreneurs and CEOs who attended the first workshop in mid May in NYC and they all were very complimentary of it.

Jerry and Ann are taking the "show on the road" and doing the Disappearing Into The Fire Workshop in Berlin on Saturday September 10th. The details are here.

Berlin and NYC are like sister startup cities. They remind me of each other in many ways with Berlin a few years behind NYC in terms of its overall development. I'm super excited to see Jerry and Ann take this workshop to Europe and I think the choice of Berlin is a great one.

Too all entrepreneurs in Berlin and Europe, do yourself a favor and check it out.

#VC & Technology

Europe

I'm off to Europe today for a week of board meetings and vacation. It has become a bit of a tradition in our family to spend some time in europe every summer. Last summer we spent close to six weeks in europe in four countries. This summer it will be only one week in two countries.

USV now has a significant european portfolio. We have five companies in our portfolio that were started in europe and another four or five with significant operations in europe. Seven of our portfolio companies have job openings in London right now (a total of 20 job openings). There are fifteen job openings in Berlin (all with our portfolio company SoundCloud).

I've written about the Internet startup sector in Europe a fair bit. I'm bullish on the Internet startup sector all over the world but Europe is closer to NYC than most of the rest of the world, both in terms of how long it takes to get there and also in terms of culture, language, and a host of other things that matter in the relationship between entrepreneur and investor.

We don't have an office in Europe and we can't be on top of everything that is happening there. We are more reactive in our European investments than proactive. SoundCloud is a good example. I first met the team at LeWeb in 2008. We missed on the first VC round and didn't get involved until after we'd met with the team three or four times over a couple years.

Europe will likely never be a larger percentage of our portfolio than it is now (between 10-15% by names and dollars). But it is a place where interesting companies are getting started. And I'm eager to get over there and take the pulse of things.

I'll be blogging as usual. It might be lighter than usual. We'll see.

#Blogging On The Road#VC & Technology#Web/Tech