Leaving Netvibes.
pierre | 07/03/2007
My encounter with Netvibes and its creator Tariq Krim in 2005 was a flash of lightning. I was astonished by the service, and loved the idea of having my own personalized portal.
Immediately connecting Netvibes with investors, I soon became co-CEO. I favored the entry of venture capital (Index Ventures and Accel Partners) to finance the development of the company, and assembled an experienced team around Tariq (Freddy Mini and his team in biz dev, Annabelle Malherbe in finance).
Building a distribution and monetization strategy was essential to me.
The year 2006 was fascinating.
From buzz to users
The buzz around the service in the blogs and in the media was impressive. Tariq presented the whole of his original vision for Netvibes and the evolution of the Internet in Web2 conferences around the world…a vision that seduced many, myself first.
Millions of Internet users went on the site discovering the service, and quite a number of them adopted it as their startpage.
Netvibes is particularly appreciated by bloggers and web 2.0 professionals, and attracts a significant portion of RSS readers' audience.
Web2 and distribution
We have a different vision of the evolution of Netvibes Universes, of presenting the service to users in an environment that is familiar for them.
It's of no use to expose these kind of details in public, but suffice to say that these disagreements are old and we were not be able to reconcile them. My previous experience as a co-founder and CEO of Kelkoo makes me think that these matters are critical.
Therefore, I decide to leave Netvibes and my co-CEO position (while remaining a shareholder).
My future is with Wikio, the alternative information engine that I co-founded last year with Laurent Binard.
Wikio is in V2 in France and Italy, V1 in US, Spain and Germany. We are preparing UK and V3.
anonymous
07/03/2007 - 10:55
Monetization
I always wonder how monetization can be possible with this kind of tool... Of course this a great tool, but on its own, it cannot bring money. For me, the only future could be the purchase of Netvibes by a big player... but as time runs out, the probability that this happens becomes lower and lower as most candidates for purchase already have their own tool.