When the small teams are the only ones who can make the elephants run.

2011 is a very important year for our company, RCS-e is launching, and we are in a good position with 2 ready to market platforms, opening RCS-e and making RCS-e ubiquitous; both interoperated with most core and client vendors, and recognized with the RCS DevChallenge Award as the most innovative RCS solutons.

On the other hand, we are a small team, with limited funding, and facing what the carriers consider "your problem is your size". Obviously it is and egg-and-chicken issue, if customers or potential customers are delaying orders or keeping under NDA the initial references and the company is based in Spain, waiting for VC rounds is basically expect a miracle, and we also gave up trying to actively raise funding (but of course, new business angels or VC's are welcomed on board).

We understood that the "risk avoidance" way of thinking from decision takers is still present coming from decades of inertia, but the timing has changed. The established telecom giant vendors have failed to move the telco elephants but the elephants need to move in the new scenario where they have the OTT's as competitors.

Most of the alternative OTT's are also small team, working fast and with offerings tested and used everyday by zillions of individuals ... their technologies work, are proven to be scalable and their vision is accepted by the users. Of course, Skype is now a relatively big company, but what about WhatsApp? great messaging product by a small focused team.

If telcos need to make feasible their own alternative OTT vision, they need to rely on small companies: motivated teams to help them moving to the next stage. Reluctance to work with small companies means missing opportunities, stay stopped while things happens around you, and new scenarios and business communication models are apearing every day. We are eager to cooperate with telcos & the telco business need some fresh blood, take us in count and elephants will run faster than the Road Runner :-)

Created company profile at dotopen.com

We just created our profile in dotopen.com, a database/social network of companies, organization, ngo's, networking companies, start-ups related with mobility and communications.
Sometimes it is a bit hard to fullfill complete profiles, and in this case it takes some time but it worths. We like the profile, the info you can edit is complete, you can describe your product/service lines as projects and you can embed in the media tab your best slideshare ppt's or youtube demos.
We strongly advice start-ups to join dotopen.com and share info, we can find partners when sinergies are possible.
You can also "follow" other members activity (pure social media) and rate the companies, a good point to get some feedback :-)
And carriers, investors, journalist, don't be shy, join also and start the conversation :-)

Solaiemes, semi-finalist at Qprize Business Plan competition

Solaiemes has been selected as semi-finalist in the Europe/Israel region of the the global Qualcomm Ventures competition Qprize.
The competition rules set only early stage technology companies (< 1 M u$ in VC investment) could compete with their business plan to try to win convertible notes. The competition itself is a great chance to get awareness, as being shorlisted regional semifinalist means that the investment arm of one of the more innovative global companies as Qualcomm screened your business plan and consider feasible the entrepreneurs ideas and the how to convert them into a profitable business. We will be pitching in the regional semi-final next week, september, the 10th in London. Find here the list of Europe/Israel selected companies for the semi-final:

Our Experience at HIT Telecom

We attended last week the HIT Telecom event in Barcelona.
Firstly, we could not win the Mobile Innovation Award to the most innovative consumer application or service, we congratulate the winner, Multiplied Media :-).
We will keep trying with our other platforms in next Innovation Awards calls :-).
The HIT was a very interesting event and it is one of the key actions of Barcelona Council to become "the place" chosen for start-up's to be created or established in Europe when oversees companies initiate their expansion. This area is the @22 (the innovation district), we think it is a great idea and probably they will succeed becoming a reference in Europe where many cities wants to "own" the european Sillicon Valley.
As GSMA Mobile Innovation Finalist we are awarded with 1 year of space at @22, we hope we can fund the company to have presence there also soon.
Regarding the HIT Telecom, we pitched, watched the other finalist pitches, and the interesing pannels, with leaders of the industry and succesful entrepreneurship stories as spinvox.

If you are interested in the summaries of innovators pitches you can read about them here

Solaiemes finalist at Premio Vivero

Today we were named Finalist at Premio Vivero (Award) organized by Fundetec.
We congratulate the winner IncarSoft and the other 2 finalists (elected from 60 projects participating), Balzac.tv and e-Quantium.
This mention granted as a free of cost booth for next SIMO'09 (IT Exhibition in Spain).
The jury members come from public administration (Red.es) and Fundetec sponsors as Telefonica, HP, Intel etc.
The speeches during the ceremony (by Fundetec President, a member of Incarsoft and a Madrid Council representative) were clear about the key role of entrepreneurship and innovation to left behing current crisis. All the first revenues of each start-ups are generating real time new qualified employement, and both, government entities and powerful companies should trust the start-ups innovations in products and services.
We welcome the awards and mentions sponsorized by public organizations and private companies, and hope they will be more active in the role of "early adopter" of entrepreneurs innovation :-)

Solaiemes view about economic downturn

After reading carefully the opinion of important VC's (Sequoia and Altos Ventures) about economic downturn impacting start-ups vs new opportunities, we prepared a ppt to explain from our perspective, the start-up focused in technology perspective. We think perhaps now it is time for big companies with cut budgets to focus in innovation opportunities, and start-ups are the best choice for that :-)