Occasionally (read: rarely) I get so excited by meetings with Belgian entrepreneurs that our conversations lead me to become an ad-hoc advisor to their startups, most often in exchange for a tiny stake in the business. I list those shareholdings on my about.me page and Crunchbase profile.
Consider this a quick note, if only as a reminder to myself, that there have been some changes in recent months. To wit, I’ve divested most of my shares in Showpad (keep a close eye on those guys!) and sold the stake I still held in Oxynade. It’s not just divestments, though.
In recent weeks, I’ve grown very excited about what entrepreneurial duo extraordinaire David Dehaeck and Nathalie Haveman are busily building over at ARTPLUS.
It’s very early days, but they have a shot at radically changing the way digital media art (basically, any art you can see on a screen, or have 3D-printed) is collected, managed and traded.
More on their cloud-based solution for the ‘digital Renaissance 2.0’ later, but you should definitely sign up for the beta if you’re interested in the future of art.
And for the sake of being complete: I remain an advisor to Checkthis (who are absolutely killing it with the fun Frontback photo app and community), Maily (if you have young kids and a tablet computer, check them out) and Argus Labs (worth a look for those who really want in-depth analytics on mobile users).
Obviously, I will continue to be very mindful whenever I or anyone else ends up writing about a company on Tech.eu that competes in any way with any of the companies I have a vested interest in. Most of the time, those articles simply don’t get published because I don’t want it to cloud my judgment and I wish to steer clear of any serious conflict of interest allegations and be judged on the merits of our reporting only.
That’s all, folks!
Robin Wauters 