Are you one of the lucky fish? :)) Welcome on Minsh Alpha! So, what can you do once you are there?
Here is a small tutorial on how to use the first Minsh features:
1) Update your Twitter status: click on the bubble button on the top left of the ocean.
2) Reply to another fish: click on the “@” reply button on its bubble.
3) Look for another fish: enter the Twitter username you are looking for in the search box on the right of the page.
4) Go back to your fish: click on the home button!
5) As you well know, this is a private alpha, and there are many more features we intend to add to Minsh! Your feedback is very important to help us shape the next features! :))
Stay tuned ;-)
Posted by biberli
Posted by biberli
Posted by jonmaim
Hello Minsh friends and supporters!
How are you doing today? Over here, we’ve got some fantastic news for you:
We have lauuuuuuunched the private alpha release TODAY!
If you want to be part of the alpha tester community, it’s very simple: create a Twitter account (if you don’t have it yet) and start following the user named: @minshdotnet. We’ll then be able to breed a fish for you in Minsh!
We are so excited to launch our little ocean today, and our goal is to update Minsh very often with new features! So stay tuned! Follow this blog to hear about the latest updates and news!
We’re looking forward to hearing what you think about Minsh! Thank you again for your support, and stay with us: 2009 is gonna be exciting!
Let’s break the barriers and swim together! :-)
Posted by biberli
A few weeks ago, the Minsh team met with Justin Häne (@justinhane), a great journalist working at Swissinfo. Justin interviewed us about Minsh and we were more than happy to answer all his questions. The article is now out and the best part is: it is available in french, german, english, italian, spanish, japanese and arabic! A big hurray for Minsh! Now the fish and soon the stars! Thank you Justin for the great article!
Posted by biberli
We’re very happy to announce that we’ll be launching Minsh in closed alpha on the morning of April 30th (Switzerland time, it means it will be during night in San Francisco).
If you’re one of the lucky people who have been selected to first try it out, you’ll be able to use a very original Twitter client to tell the world “what are you minshing ?”
Don’t tell anybody (well… not too much), but here is a tip to be sure to be one of the first users to swim in the Minsh Ocean … follow @minshdotnet on Twitter … keep it secret, keep it safe ;-)
Posted by jonmaim
On monday March 31st 09, I’ve been sent off to Bern in order to present Minsh at innovate!Europe’s workshop. Innovate!Europe is a contest organized for european technology, media, and telecom startups. The winner in the end gets a spot to spend 3 months in Guidewire Group’s studio program in the silicon valley this summer!
The atmosphere in Bern was great, thanks to the analysts from the Guidewire Group: Chris Shipley, Carl Thompson, and Mike Sigal. You did a great job, guys, thank you for the comments! But also thanks to all the startupers that have pitched, given feedback, and discussed, including Amazee, Sobees, Arimaz, Mixin, Hyperweek, Gbanga, Doodle, and others. Thank you all for this great day!
Below, a few pictures (courtesy of Amazee Gregory) from the pitches and also some take-home messages about slides and pitches.
- Present your slides with 3 important points to remember, 3 things to think about, no more.
- It’s important to have a general overview of the product, but you have to drill down into some specific points to show how far it has been thought through.
- Team slide: show why these people are qualified to work this business.
- Never say there are no competitors. There are always competitors, even if not directly doing the exact same things as you.
- Show that you have a plan, not necessarily the details, but show that you know where you are going
- Think about what are the risks, including, but not only, the competition. Show how to mitigate them.
- Follow up at the end of the pitch: “we are looking for this and that”, and make a sexy statement at the end so that people you are looking for will come to you afterwards.
Matthias from Gbanga!
Pierre and his deskfriend :)
Paul or “Doodle guy” as we liked to call him ;)
Barbara and Minsh
Posted by biberli
Yesterday night, Sergio, Thierry and I, we went to the Web Monday @ Amazee office in the TechnoPark of Zurich. We met a lot of very cool internet people and the ambiance was great ! Dania gave us the opportunity to present Minsh, and a pre-alpha live demo still with some glitches though ;-) We received enthusiastic feedback that were really encouraging :))
Here are some cool online reactions:
Now all we need to do is to work out the alpha release !
Posted by jonmaim
It’s very helpful to have food supplies at hand in creative and debugging times. So, last week we went to buy some supplies for the team ! Mainly a lot of M&M’s, big chocolate easter bunnies, more chocolate, candies, … We thought that bringing some bread, nuts, almond, apples and orange juice would also help but maybe in a more healthy way ;-))
Speaking of food, we received also a nice box of chick cookies from Japan. Thank you Atsuko !
Posted by jonmaim
Posted by jonmaim
Coming back from the Silicon Valley, Jonathan and I have taken the time to stop at Boston, a beautiful city of red bricks and snow (it was February, indeed).
Thanks to Pascal Marmier, Thomas Bühler, and André Albrecht, a roundtable was organized at Swissnex Boston on February 26th:
virtual worlds and social networks: what’s next?
This roundtable gathered several very interesting people from web 2.0 and virtual worlds, who had the courage to wake up early in the cold morning to be at Swissnex at 8am. Thanks again!
Many important questions were discussed, for which there is unfortunately no right answer, but that will need to be adressed at some point.
- Is online anonymity going to completely disappear over the next years? With social networks today, more and more people speak the truth about themselves, but it is often not the case in virtual worlds.
- Are virtual worlds going to merge somehow with social networks ? Two applications, same market? Is not meeting new people the main goal of both media in the end?
- How are social networks going to make big money? Mmmmh… This one is a good one. I let you think about it :)
Posted by biberli
I think we have learned as much about networking the place in 1.5 weeks in the Valley than in 1 year in Switzerland. Ok, this week was really focused: meeting as many people as possible and getting as much feedback as possible on Minsh ! Here are some thoughts about the trip.
Things just happen.
It’s the land where things happen … or not ! And you know it very fast. For example, if you send an email, and you don’t get an answer 10 minutes later, there is a strong probability that you’ll never get one.
Randomness.
Everything is so concentrated: smart people, startups, … So, really surprising stuff happen like meeting Paul Graham randomly in the streets of Palo Alto near CoopaCafe. Or still in Palo Alto, passing by Mark Zuckerberg going to the Facebook cafeteria (which we actually tried, it’s very good). Next time, we’ll pitch him Minsh :))
Funding.
A couple of entrepreneurs that we have met have a primary job and develop their startup as a side-project. They all agree that in this tough times, money is very difficult to find (or at unattractive terms) for early-stage startups. So what’s needed ? Proven user traction (at least 50K users) and some revenue will help.
Communities.
Before leaving to the Valley, you should do your homework. Try to get some silicon valley contacts from your local contacts. Somehow you’ll feel that sharing the same language helps to connect. Also when you’re there getting in touch with national organizations is the best way to get contacts (Swissnex SF for swiss people is a great start, thank you Birgit ;-)
Posted by jonmaim
