November 10th, 2008 by Steven van Wel
We attended the Amazon Web Services “Start-Up Tour” in Amsterdam last Thursday. I gave a 10-minute keynote presentation with slides, then a 10-minute Q&A with the audience on how Marvia uses AWS S3 for storage. Using AWS, we can get a real infrastructure setup without having to hire an operations team, go through capacity planning, purchase equipment, rent a rack in a colo, deal with power, bandwidth, security, etc.
October 21st, 2008 by Arnoud Haverlag
This weekend the Marvians officially move to the heart of Amsterdam, Planciusstraat 1hs at Prinseneiland. Our new HQ has of two floors. One we will use for office space and one as a boardroom/presentation facility/hang-out.
We will be leaving our old HQ at the Binderij in Almere after 2,5 years, because we thought it was time for a new inspirational location with growth opportunities. We say goodbye to our friends from Hetgasbedrijf, Premas and Sprintmedia, with who we shared our office building.
You will all be invited to the official “Office Warming” next month. Friends of the Marvians will receive a email with more details next week.
Hope to see you in Amsterdam and drink a beer or do business.
October 13th, 2008 by Arnoud Haverlag
Last week was awesome! With the Marvians we’ve visited the Future of Web Apps in London, hosted by Ryan Carson(ified). Together with our friends from hellomynameise we stayed in the beautiful Custom House Hotel, one minute away from Excel.
Arriving on Tuesday we had some time to settle in downtown London. After two nights of party with fellow startups and Amazon VP & CTO Werner Vogels, FOWA started at the Excel expo facilities with a two day conference program, including live Diggnation and special interview with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Facebook.
Not only did we see Stephan Fountain present an awsome rockstar keynote, including a slide with some dutch startups (like E and Marvia), but also internet goeroes and inspiring people like Kevin Rose (Digg), Julie Meyer (Ariadne Capital), Bret Taylor (Friendfeed), Ben Huh (ICanHasCheezburger) and many more spoke about the Future Of Web Apps.
September 30th, 2008 by Arnoud Haverlag
As a startup we fight to survive and try to build a respectful business. Carefully use your budget is one way to survive, especially in these times. Events like PICNIC can be very interesting for startups. Not only is it a good place to meet with investors, VC’s and customers, but it is also a way to get inspired by the powerful media people in the world. But we cannot afford tickets that cost €1,200.00,-.
The organization didn’t saw any reason to help startups to attend to their event. Even with 1,5 million euro government support (and a kick ass office at the Keizersgracht) they refused every plan to allow startups at PICNIC.
So, what did we do? We Jailbroke PICNIC. And the funny thing is, the ‘real’ attendees loved it! Lunch at PICNIC cost a fortune and wasn’t good at all! With a group of startups we offered them free beer and lunch. And they love us also because we are very cool of course!
September 25th, 2008 by Arnoud Haverlag
Last Thuesday Marvia and E hosted the AWS pre-PICNIC event. Over 70 people, mostly dutch startups, webbloggers, developers, investors, journalist and more were personally invited and attended our event. Simone Brunozzi, evangelist from Amazon Web Services, spoke about their services such as S3 and EC2.
As a host, we shared our experience with the attendees on the usage of AWS. But for E it also was a special event. They launched their private Beta and gave out the first invites for Hellomynameise. After just a week they already had 1500+ invite requests, because of some serious buzzing on the internet. Well done, guys!
We are ready for the next event; AWS Startup Tour in Amsterdam on the 6th of November. Be there!