Join us!
Partners
Female Heroes Interview: Christine Karman
Every week we will be publishing an interview with one of our female internet heroes. This is an opportunity for you to MEET interesting women, READ about their WORK, THINK about how they PLAY the internet industry and see how you MATCH them. Be inspired! This week we talk to Christine Karman.
“Losing everything you have is not an experience you want to go through” Christine recalls the demise of her internetbubble success Izecom, a software company she set up in 2002 and which went bankrupt because of a fraudulent investor. Yet it has made her more determined to succeed. “I have learned a lot in these ten years about being a technology entrepreneur. So I feel sooner or later, I will do it right.” An exception in the Netherlands, as a female software technology developer, entrepreneur and consultant, Christine Karman is now working on developing the new web 3.0 application. “I will sell it to google”.
-
How did you start out?
I studied astronomy and physics. My first job was in IT. From the start of my career I have been involved in innovative projects. It started in the early 80s, when the bank I was working for started to connect branch offices to the main office using computers: data communication. Being involved in a first of a kind project is much more interesting than doing something everyone is doing. So I have kept doing that. It is my experience that most of the time when you have a good idea, you do not have the chance to execute it. Then if you do, if it fails, you get the blame, but if it succeeds your boss gets the rewards. So whatever you do, you loose. So when I had an idea for an e-commerce product, I thought, if I get the blame anyway, I take the risk. So I started my own e-commerce company, got investment from a major insurance company here. But in ‘95 Europe was not ready for e-commerce, so we never got it to market. But then, once you have started your own company, it is very difficult to get back to a normal job. So I started Tryllian Solutions in 1998 and Izecom in 2002 . Then in September I decided to pick up an old idea. I am creating a product all by myself, I spent six months programming it. I will keep doing that, investing my time and money until I can show it to investors and start selling it.
-
Tell me about finding financing in the Netherlands for software products?
My experience from the last fifteen years is that Dutch investors are not willing to invest in product development. All companies that are successful in Holland are services companies. I think this is true at the European level as well. There are some exceptions, like, Zylom, a Dutch game company, but actually they did not get funding in Holland. Also, they were bought by RealNetworks. So that is actually an example of how European investors are not willing to invest in products.
From my experiences, it is not worthwhile to try to fund a private company in Holland because the amount of money you get is not enough to create the company and the product. Typically to create a product you need 5 million euro’s to create salesforce, to create support staff, a support environment, create the product, commercialise it and market it. The typical amount a Dutch investors would invest is € 50.000. The main difference between European and Silicon Valley investors is that Silicon Valley people have made money in technology companies. There are none of those investors here. It is hard to break that vicious circle.
Having said that, sometimes you do not need that much money. Nowadays, you see companies that are worth millions of dollars, but started out with not a lot of money. For example youtube that was sold for billions.
-
Who were your mentors/advisors?
I don’t hire consultants or advisors, I work by myself. I have 25 years of experience in software development. But I do have huge network. I spend a lot of my time maintaining that network and consulting it.
-
How do you see the future for the (internet) business you are in?
I think technology will become more and more important to us. Five years from now you will be in touch with everyone else, 24/7. So you no longer have to pick up a phone, or write an email, or start msn. I think in five years the devices apple is producing, the i- phone for example, will enable you to communicate with everyone, all the time; when you are driving, when you are talking to someone else. With audio or videotext you will be communicating with other people. That will be a very interesting experience.
-
What an experience that helped you succeed as a business-woman?
What I learned is that it is not so difficult to do things. But you just have to do it. If you want to start a company, you put a sign up with the name of the company and you are in business. The most important thing in starting, for the initial years, is to hire the right people to work with. They have to be good at what they do, they have to be intelligent and easy to work with.
-
Is the work/private balance an issue for you?
I have no work/life balance. I consider everything I do work and my work private. I mix private and work life continuously. I like that.
-
Are you a serial entrepreneur?
I would not call myself a serial entrepreneur. I have made money from companies, I have lost a lot of money from companies. I would only call myself a serial entrepreneur if I was very successful. I have started 4 or 5 companies. None of them has made me rich, none of them has been a true success.
But, the product I am working on right now will be very successful. We will sell it to google.
-
Who are your examples?
There are a couple of people. A very good friend of mine is Fred van den Bos, He is Dutch, but moved to Silicon valley ten years ago. He was CEO from VERITAS software which is now part of SYMANTEC. He is considered a succesful entrepreneur. He is also a very nice person. He is one of my rolemodels and advisors.
Someone else is Arthur van Hoff. He is also Dutch. He is one of the creators of the Java programme language. He founded Marimba, an internet bubble success.
-
Is there a difference between female and male entrepreneurs?
I don’t think there is a big difference how men and women work.
-
Do women “pitch” their company different than men?
I do think women are more confident, but men show their confidence more. The macho feeling, radiating self-confidence, that is very important to men, whereas women stimulate their environment by showing their uncertainty. I show a lot of uncertainty. When I am in a meeting, I will think aloud, stimulating people to give their opinion.
-
Any questions you would add?
Don’t let people tell you what to do. Have confidence. If you don’t have it, make yourself have it. Be optimistic. See the bright side. The best way to win a war is declaring the war you want to.
FACTBOX:
What do you know about web 2.0?Web 2.0 is just another step in the direction the net is going. It startedin the early 90's, and it will continue to go indefinitely, or until somethingelse will replace the net entirely. It's funny to see that a lot of things thatare considered to be "Web 2.0", were already available 15 years ago.Web 2.0 is blogging, but the web sites people were maintaining 13 years agowere very similar, in that they were updated at least once a day.My first website reflected what I was doing on an almost daily basis,so it really was a blog, the only difference with today being that now we havetools that allow just anyone to maintain a blog, whereas back then you had to beproficient in html and building web sites. We had "what's cool" and "what's hot"sections, very similar to today's blogrolls. I am currently designing softwarefor the Semantic Web, which is sometimes referred to as "Web 3.0".What do you know about web technology?A lot really. I maintain blogs, I use Twitter, I make websites,I know my way in the low levels of internet protocols. I don't thinkthere's a lot I don't know.How do people find you on the internet?Type my name in Google, the first 100 hits show you who I am.People find me on linkedin also. It's scary that whatever the internetknows about you will be visible until the end of days.How many people visit your website?About a hundred a day, on average.Are you part of an online community?There's a group of people that I know read my blog regularly.I am part of a number of communities, and I have been ever sinceI went online. I favor international communities, which meansmostly American communities.
comments
Leave a Reply
- br/>
Extras
-
