Webtropic

Yesterday I met Jason Calacanis. He was attending the Stream 2008 unconference in Athens,Greece  and the opportunity was ideal.
The meeting wasn’t by chance though. I learned about his coming through some Twitter friends and sent him an email asking for an interview.
He counter proposed that I should go to Stream and videotape the whole session he would be leading on Friday afternoon.
It didn’t take long for me to agree. I run there with my colleague Spyros, and recorded the whole session, plus an extra 10 minutes interview.

These are the two videos that follow. People interested in startups, especially now, under the heavy shadow of the looming financial crisis, should definitely watch the first one, where Jason relates his recent experiences from the Techcrunch50 event.In brief, the things covered are the following:

• Observations and conclusions from Techcrunch50

• zero cost startups and microfinancing
• zombie startups
• the end of servers
• venture investment in the form of hosting
• oversourcing of crowds
• countries that generate startups: US, Israel, Korea, Japan and China.
• risk aversion and role of negative press in Europe

The bullets might look a bit cryptic, but watch the video and you’ll understand.

The sound is a bit harsh in the first video as there is a lot of background noice (mostly coming from the air conditioning), but voices are audible.

The second is a bit more personal as Jason talks about his Greek roots and Mahalo.