How to recognize me:

Two weeks ago I went to Berlin with CreativeClass. All we did there was have an amazing time and learn lots and lots of new stuff. The main reason we took this trip was to visit awesome companies in Berlin. It took me a while but finally I found the time to write THE list. Here we go:

• Earlybird: Funding, funding, funding.
• Jibr: New company, their product hasn’t even launched yet. They are coming up with a website builder. You can read here why they aren’t launching it as a freemium product. Paul talked about coming to Berlin and his previous products and the excitement of almost launching. 
• Make a StartUp: This is a company that helps you make your startup by providing co-offices, funding and lots and lots of guidance to help you.
• Gidsy: If you haven’t used Gidsy before: do it now! It gives you the opportunity to do activities in a city you wouldn’t have know about without Gidsy. (Really, take a look: they even launched in two belgian cities: Ghent and Hasselt). Edial, co-founder of this company, told us about how they get from having this awesome idea to the realization of Gidsy. They even got funded by Ashton Kutcher! 
• cloudControl: Platform as a Service as it should be. I’m going to write a seperate blogpost of this one ‘cause CreativeClass asked me, so I’m not going to tell too much here, but the one thing you need to know is that they’re trying to make the life of developers easier.
• Aupeo: Personal online radio. You should check it out. I saw the iPad application and it really had a nice interface. Holger Weiss, CEO of Aupeo said he even would like to see the interface more simplistic. I liked the way he talked about other startups in Berlin. He was really honest, also told us the downsides of trying to built your own company. 

What I liked the most about visiting all these companies was seeing how much they liked doing what they are doing. They all had a hard time getting to the point where they are now but they couldn’t be happier about their company.  

It really inspired me to stop thinking about all the points why I shouldn’t be doing what I like to do, but just try and go for it.