Devstrom

Devstrom goes Silicon Valley

elgard — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:45:54 +0000

Devstrom was selected as one of the 18 companies to participate in the “Go Silicon Valley” initiative, organized by the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. From April on part of the Devstrom team will move to Sunnyvale, California, to drive business forward.

Trends in the mobile world 2020

elgard — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:46:36 +0000

We are back from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where we were proud to present our RCS widget to a great audience. Overall responses were quite good and with lots of feedback and ideas for new features in the back of our minds we are now working on towards making our widget the best.

Overall, one can say that it was a very interesting trip where one could really see an industry going through a massive change towards open innovation. However, only few presentations were made how the future could look like out of the box of what is already going on. So, I came across this very interesting presentation of mobile trends collected from various experts in the industry by Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org. Enjoy!

Mobile Trends 2020

View more presentations from rudydw.

Rich Communication Suite Challenge

sebastian — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:45:56 +0000

We are happy to announce that after a great trip to Telefònica’s headquarter in Madrid. Devstrom’s unified communication widget was shortlisted in the PC client category. Tomorrow will be the announcement of the winner. We are excited!

Rich Communication Suite Challenge

elgard — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:52:01 +0000

The GSM Association is setting up a developer contest for tomorrow’s rich communication clients. Driven to take our web phone to the next level we are participating in the contest and have already started our idea engines to come up with new cool features. About 29 companies have entered the contest of which 13 will be competing in the PC client category. The winner will be able to present at the Mobile World Congress, February 15-18th in Barcelona. Keep your fingers crossed!

Start-up weekend Vienna

elgard — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:08:16 +0000

Two weeks ago we had another exclusive excuse to get out of the office. Start-up vienna – a student led initiative to foster entrepreneurship – had organized a 72 hour event to present an idea to the rest of the world and use the weekend to create a first prototype. Advocated by companies such as Orange and Microsoft the event was very well organized and the spirit of free idea exchange among the people was the nurturing essence that gave the event an incredible momentum. It seemed as if once you have a good idea and a couple of supporters anything is possible. We used the weekend to get very good feedback on our product range and absorbed the momentum to refuel our karma. Impressed by what such an event could trigger, we wanted to become a part of it and so we are looking forward to organizing a start-up weekend in the Upper Astrian area together with the organizers of startvienna to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship further.

Young Entrepreneur’s Night

elgard — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:18:58 +0000

Last Wednesday the young entrepreneur’s association (Junge Wirtschaft) invited to a big reception followed by workshops for young entrepreneurs. We were happy to accept that invitation and enjoyed the great venue, catering and entertainment. Overall there was a good selection of workshops ranging from body language and communication to tips & trick on how to set up new businesses in Eastern Europe and in the U.S.. The latter was given by a representative of Palmers – a high-class Austrian lingerie producer and retailer. It was interesting to follow the presentation on how to build a brand appealing to females of different age groups. To our surpise the design of the store and the models in the shopping window were one of the most important factors to pay attention to. For example: What do the models in the shopping window communicate? Are they above or below the female customer, are they arrogant, modern, conservative or “just there”? Things you would never think about as an IT company but interesting to know. Another special “effect” in that workshop was the accompanying graphical support of the presentation in the form of the latest advertising compaigns of Palmers, which we we sure, was a perfect means to keep the attention of all male participants .

Devstrom at A1 Innovation Days

elgard — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:17:30 +0000

Weekends are always a good opportunity to get out of the office and see something new. This weekend Devstrom’s team headed to Vienna to A1 innovation days to officially launch our web phone widget that was developed in cooperation with A1. A1 is the leading mobile carrier network in Austria and organises a high-class innovation event each year (www.a1innovations.at). Last year it was the event where the idea for a unified communication widget was born and this year we are excited to launch version 1.0. So after following very interesting sessions from Ericsson, Nokia and Vodafone we finally took the stage on Sunday afternoon and presented our web phone widget (luckily before everybody went off to play urban golf – a new Android application). Overall the presentation went very well and people (including us) were excited about the latest geo-presence feature (which we included Saturday night) that shows the exact address of of your online contacts, their presence and their mood message. To see the widget in action visit www.a1innovations.at/webphone and check out the screenshot:

Finally, thanks to all attendees for their feedback and interesting conversations. We are looking foward to the next innovation days! Click here to learn more about our unified communication widget.

Devstrom at Techcrunch50 2009

elgard — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:22:10 +0000

We are finally back from our trip to California where we had definitely an exciting time at TechCrunch50. Not just felt it, like the biggest event for start-ups, but also the diversity of people represented there created an enormous feedback space for us that is very valuable. So we learned a lot about new product features that we should build but also what would make people interested in our product at all. This is especially important when your start-up didn’t make it on stage and pitches its product at a DemoPit.

You will have to figure out how a variety of people could become interested in your product and what their “pain” is so that you can create a good product pitch that pick ups people where they are and creates excitement. I think this is one of the most valuable experiences you can ever make, once you have launched your product. Of course you had ideas how to market your product further before, but by collecting feedback from each product pitch you will get the rest of the 20 % percent that will make your product and the marketing perfect. I say also product because we were also quite suprised with which product features people came up, so there was definitely a lesson learned.

A lesson which we will use to redevelop Motoky further and bring it to the next stage. With Motoky being the “baby” in Devstrom’s product family one can argue whether it was actually worthile to present it in a DemoPit at that early stage. So far it is “just” an iPhone application with a far reach, however at Techcrunch50 there were start-ups on stage that presented rich portals and had received about 900 % more funding than we have. Well, I guess this is a tricky question, however especially as a small start-up from Europe there is no better opportunity to get direct feedback on your product.

Furthermore, you will also see how the American start-up scene is different from the rest of the world in terms of speed, routines and how it deals with the question about what happens to the founders along the process of growing your business. Here, another tricky question arises for founders: ” Do you want to grow your business with more cash coming from private funding and possess a little share of it OR do you prefer a sustainable growth for your company and possess almost all of it? What do you value more? ” I guess this question cannot be answered directly, however it is something you will have to think about.

Overall one can say we gained the following from our TechCrunch50 DemoPit:

the perfect way to pitch your product in 10 seconds after you have been doing it for 8 hours
pitching your product to ANY person
getting to know the Silicon valley start-up scene, which is in fact quite different to the European one
the perfect set up for your pit next time you’ll be around
contacts, contacts, contacts

Devstrom to Universe : Send Us – An iPhone Developer

sebastian — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:24:50 +0000

Since we have made it our mission to enhance existing communication channels we definitely want to be present on the latest devices! So we are looking for a freelance iPhone Developer. Here is the official job description:

You go all tingly when it comes to the latest iPhone stuff?
Apple and Macs are more to you than just a computer?
You would like to try the new features of iPhone 3.0?

Then you are exactly right to join our team. We are young start-up based in Linz, Austria with high ambitions. We are looking for a:

freelance iPhone Developer

to develop a messaging application. We have already implemented the backend so it comes to you to add the sharp front end to this application. The biggest junk of work will thereby be the integration of the newest iPhone Push Service on an existing web service.

Necessary iPhone Features:

Push Notifications
In App Purchase
Webservice Integration

The start should be asap because in IT things go fast and we want to be the first to launch such kind of an application. The estimated work is about 100 hours.

What we offer:

Free Coffee (made by a Jura coffee machine)
Free Cookies
Workplace (if required)
Billing on an hourly basis
A prospective fulltime position if you wow us with your skills and we stun you with our drive

If you are interested please drop an e-mail to Elgard : e.maier(at)devstrom.com

Stop talking – start doing!

sebastian — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:52:26 +0000

This is the ultimate motivational message for a young startup: “Stop talking – start doing!”. You will never aquire any customer or even see the reaction of potential customers if you are just talking hot air. It is funny at all, that IBM pulished those two videos that made us giggle.