“ Betting on HTML5 and not go native quickly enough was the biggest strategic mistake we have made. … We are going to make a lot of money on mobile. Already now, FB mobile ads are better performing than FB desktop ads.
— Mark Zuckerberg at #TCdisrupt
But: the much rumoured Facebook phone “just doesn’t make sense”. Talking about Instagram, Zuckerberg mentioned the world’s biggest photo sharing app just crossed 100 million users. And this is only the beginning.
Zuckerberg also parted side with Benjamin Franklin, who was once quoted, that ‘It’s better to be a pessimist and pleasantly surprised than an optimist and constantly disappointed’. Zuckerberg admitted, he would rather fly under the radar and come out of the gate with unexpected great products than having to measuring up to the hype.
Being in the public eye, often caused a love-or-hate coverage of Facebook with either an overly optimistic or pessimistic tone, but rarely depicting reality. Zuckerbergs job is therefore to manage the mood and internal perception within the company to keep the balance. “At the moment, a lot of people probably underestimate Facebook,” he said.
Zuckerberg might need to take to the stage more often. This first 30-minute appearance after the IPO translated into $6.785 billion in additional market valuation for his company. FB shares finished up 6.2 per cent at $22 in regular trading session on Friday, showing some newly gained Wall Street confidence in the company.
//CHURCHKEY CAN CO. IS THE BEST FLAT-TOP EVER// — This must have been a first even for TC Disrupt standards, but there was a live beer tasting happening at 10am in the morning. With a reason. The founders of ChurchKeyCan Co. took to the stage with CrunchFund’s MG Siegler (also an investor in the company) to talk about disrupting the beer business by bringing back the old-style flat-top beer cans from 50 years ago that you can only open with a ChurchKey.
The new founder darlings of the investor scene (TC words, not ours) include Entourage’s Adrian Grenier who over dinner with Ryan Soward decided that a quality beer experience - with the extra ChurchKey effort - was best suited to “pause and take time with other humans”.
So far, the beer is only available in Seattle and Portland but demand is high and the company is expanding quickly - but carefully to keep the quality high. A San Francisco launch is imminent, with Austin, Los Angeles and New York on the plan. We can already imaging artfully designed limited edition ChurchKey’s that fit the high quality retro-style steel cans. Cheers!
“LONDON CALLING!” — LONDON WEB SUMMIT A HUGE SUCCESS.
Clearly, this first London edition of the Web Summit Series - jointly hosted by TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher and Paddy Cosgrave of the Dublin Web Summit - was one of the best events we went to in the last couple of months. And, as Mike Butcher told us in an interview, it was all put together in about 5 weeks. This sold out, jam-packed day at London’s Brewery, saw a great mix of American and European start-ups, investors and tech talent join the stage. Travis Kalanick of Uber announced that “Everybody’s private driver” will arrive in London before the Olympics, Google’s Nikesh Arora introduced the just launched Google Campus and Morten Lund pitched his new business idea live to the audience.
//THE EUROPAS — VIDEO COVERAGE// London
DARETOASK.TV kicks off in London where we go behind the scenes of “The Europas”, which are basically the Oscars for the European Tech Scene, hosted by TechCrunch’s European Editor Mike Butcher.
And a truly European celebration it was: Whereas London-based PeerIndex took home the Grand Prix, Berliners lived up to the hype bringing home Founders of the Year (SoundCloud’s Alex Ljung & Eric Wahlforss), Angel of the Year (Christophe Maire), Mentor of the Year (David Nöel), Best Mobile App (Amen.) and several highly recommended nods (EyeEm, Readmill, 6Wunderkinder). The Nordics made a clear mark with 2 wins for Copenhagen (Podio and Endomondo), one for Stockholm (iZettle) and kicking-ass Helsinki (yes, the ‘angry’ Rovio). Busuu from Spain and Belgrade-based Nordeus added to the Eurovision while with Mixcloud, Lookk, Pusher, Conversocial and OneFineStay more awards went towards London’s Silicon Roundabout. Accel Partners were named VC of the Year and Seedcamp earned Best Startup Accelerator laurels.
So join us as we interview the winners, get insights on the emergence of startup clusters across Europe - and find out which movie role Mike Butcher would love to play.
//TECHCRUNCH DISRUPT NYC 2011// - SoundCloud’s Alex Ljung takes the stage with Steve Jang from SoundTracking (The Jang and Ljung Show) to talk about the effect of mobile on music and sound; Hollywood’s geek guru Ashton Kutcher gets interviewed by Charlie Rose and Startup Battlefield Winner Getaround get much attention with their red Tesla showcase. However, our favourite app from the Battlefield with instant benefit: Sonar. The app puts a super smart filter on top of Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook to discover the people around you that you really want to get to know — and the TC Disrupt event proved to be the perfect playground for the launch. Congratulations!
