I recently attended the Enterprise Ireland Web 2.0 event hosted in the Helix, DCU. Thankfully the 200 yards I had to travel from the office meant I didn’t get caught in much traffic.

Very interesting speakers in particular; Jeff Clavier, the very entertaining Marc Canter and Judy Gibbons.

The event was strongly represented by venture capital people with some great advice for anyone trying to raise money for the next big web 2.0 show stopper. I’ve sumized some of my notes below:

• Have a sustained Differentiation i.e. the difference between your product and the next guy isn’t a feature they can have as part of there’s in a week or month.
• Build end user value. Ask yourself what is the value of your software to the end user or ROI for enterprise 2.0 applications.
• You need to build an image of trust.
• Show a steady 30- 35% monthly growth in sign ups, a huge frenzy of sign ups all at once is not always considered a good thing.
• A business plan is important but a VC will only be interested in your presentation and executive summary so make it stand out.
• Be sure when presenting your product to introduce yourself. Don’t just go off explaining how great your product is. They will want to know as much about you as they will about the product.
• They will also want to see what you’re personal ambitions are not just having a business road-map but a personal one as well. If you plan to sell early and get a quick few bucks and retire they more than likely won’t be interested.
• The management team is very important, a venture capital company are more likely to go with a smart person with a dumb idea than the other way around.
• Think Big
• It is often good to have a product where it is difficult for the customer to change horses because they feel tied to your product or service.
• Have a solid business model.

As a general rule these VC companies and people were looking for more B2C style web 2.0 ventures like facebook, delicious, flickr etc instead of the B2B apps i’d be interested in like basecamp, blinksale and salesforce but still most of it was very relevant and informative.

UPDATE:

Jeff has uploaded his slides from the event, highly recomended.

Social communities are popping up all over the web here is one that really takes it to a new level. The idea seems to be that they have leased out an island in Fiji for 3 years. They are creating a community where members can stay on the island for a few weeks some time in the 3 year period. Only 100 of the eventually 5000 will be on the island at one time. If you go early on in the 3 years you will be part of the team that builds the tribe infrastructure and may be living a bit rough. The idea being hopefully near the end you’d have beds and loads of other amenities. Personally i think I’d go for the beginning of the trip myself, the idea of building something like this definitely appeals to me.

They have over 4 thousand at the time of writing so it’ll be booked out pretty quickly. It looks like they are have a very up to date website encouraging the community to communicate all the time presumable to get a great enthusiasm about the whole project along with its own television station.

Timing doesn’t work out for me but in a few years something like this would be my idea of a great experience. Should be interesting to see if some copy cat adventures pop up.

Would this appeal to you over a standard sun holiday?