Today I attended the last event of the Stanford GSB entrepreneurweek (A great thing by the way. This should exist in Germany too):
“The Next Big Twitter Thing”: A special presentation of the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture Series

 The whole Kresge Auditorium was full:

Here are the speakers:

Tim Draper – a big Venture Capitalist (Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson ) in the Silicon Valley and a blogger. His partner Steve spoke yesterday at the ChurchillClub Event. On Tim’s blog entrepreneurs could get some insights about the life of a VC and what’s important and what’s bullshit. I prefered to read Guy Kawasakis blog on VC but I will give him a chance one page one (of 25 with 500 other blogs on my Netvibes). He also stated to have Tweet Experiences but I couldn’t find him.

Michael Moe – Blogger and author of “How to find the next Starbucks”

+  Founding Partner, ThinkPanmure, and Author (Finding the Next Starbucks: How to Identify and Invest in the Hot Stocks of Tomorrow)

and Tony Perkins – CEO of AlwaysOn. Also a blog which I read nearly daily.

From the homepage:
As part of the Entrepreneurship Week closing finale, find out what the hot entrepreneurial opportunities are today and tomorrow, as three of the most forward-looking and insightful thought leaders in Silicon Valley weigh in. They’ll debate, argue and discuss their way through an analysis of where technology is going and where to start placing your bets
 

Short summary, long version will follow tomorrow!!!

The next big things among other things is:

Definitely the overall No 1. with a current validation of $250 million – Twitter.com

In my opinion, spoken in Gartner HypeCycle words:

We are on the Peak of Inflated Expectations now. Let’s remember: 2 years ago, we all had a ”Second life”. I also wrote my thesis on virtual currency taxation - This was nearly the same Hype as it is with Twitter today. Also every VC or analyst  talked about virtual worlds at this time. Today, only view people are interestd in virtual worlds. But like always:Second Life was the first attempt of Virtual Reality online and many more will follow soon and will arise from the through of Disillusionmnt.

So this could be the way Twitter goes to. But it is not such a highly technical tool and very addictive. So the “Through of Disillusionment” could be short. Technical problems we already had last year and seems to be solved.

It is more for fun and to be a wannabe micro celebrity and there for it is great and good for wasting time while wating for the bus and do some viral marketing.

More information:

Facebook will make “Deals” to get money in. Hm, this could be perhaps an ad deal in the end!

Youtube and Hotmail are marketing tools for Google and Microsoft. They were not bought to make money but to save marketing costs.

The new generation is called “The instant messaging generation” (aka digital natives) – compared to some years ago 5 of 10 US Top webpages got replaced by Youtube and MySpace etc. (6 out of 10 in Germany)

They were several more things like Green Technologies

Social Learning will be great

Mobile and Video stuff

Off Topic:

Free Trade was preached – There was a fear of protection in the room. I share this. Also in Europe there is a new movement for higher market protection. This could also be in a way of supporting domestic companies via money gifts. So they could offer there products cheaper. This makes the downwards spiral also faster.

Tim Draper mentioned: We need more nuclear plants. For me, as a greenenergy, guy: No, you are wrong. We need more innovation pressure to make Green energy more competitive. We do not want more nuclear material for our children. Tim didn’t get the acid fallout rain from Tschernobyl on his house when he was a child. This could be discussed on a higher level and more differentiated, for sure.