Feeds 2.0 was a personalized RSS aggregator launched in 2006 that utilized machine learning to rank news articles based on what it learned the user found interesting. While it gained significant publicity early on and won an award for its business plan, it struggled to secure funding from Greek and European/US venture capitalists. This led to challenges enhancing the product and maintaining operations over time. However, the founders believe failures provide valuable lessons and their machine learning technology could still be applied to new domains through collaboration with other entrepreneurs.

1. Personalized Web 2.0 RSS Aggregator N. Ampazis Assistant Professor / Founder

2. What is it? That's it? It is a Web based RSS Aggregator like, for example, Google Reader BUT Feeds 2.0 was launched way before Google Reader even existed (early 2006) RSS was in its infancy. Blogging boom and content syndication via RSS feeds was just becoming mainstream The most popular RSS reader at the time was Bloglines

3. NO! Feeds 2.0 is a personalized Web RSS Aggregator utilizes computational intelligence learning engine that ranks posts according to what users find interesting users can aggregate hundreds of feeds and still see the most interesting posts in the first couples of pages system learns what they like to read and what they don’t care much about. Personalized feeds are built just for the specific user, picking the most interesting articles that match her individual interests ...plus some very interesting features as by-products of learning technology such as automatic tagging , news clustering , etc (see demo later on)

4. RSS Growth (late 2005) Information Overload! Already difficult to find important news! Continuous Growth! Bloglines estimated a number of 1,121,655 feed sources that do “matter”!

5. Feeds 2.0 Timeline We realized quite early the upcoming problem of information overload inherent in RSS syndication Development started September 2004 and continued throughout 2005 In early 2006 Feeds 2.0 was demoed to Chris Shipley (organizer of DEMO conferences in USA) and was selected to be showcased and launched in May 2006 at Innovate!Europe2006 a LOT of publicity: TechCrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/05/19/europe-shows-its-stuff-innovate-2006/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/05/17/feeds-20-a-little-like-searchfox/ Information World Review: http://blog.iwr.co.uk/2006/06/feeds_20_an_int.html CNN's Business 2.0 magazine ("Where to find the world's hottest startups"): http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/09/technology/webaroundtheworld.biz2/index.htm Read/Write Web: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/personalized_news_market_overview.php … plus hundreds of other mentions in blogs, news sites, etc.

6. OK, publicity is fine but... WHERE IS THE MONEY???

7. Do you have a Business Plan for this? Yes Sir, we have! In July 2007 we were awarded the Best Business Plan prize for Feeds 2.0 at the 8th International Venture Capital Forum, Athens, Greece Winner was selected by the VCs that participated in the forum based on the following: Business idea - Innovative aspects Qualities of the management team Market potentials - Competitive advantage Expected returns Presentation - Integrity of business plan

8. Start-up FAQ: You have: a good idea for solving a real problem at the right time (no direct competitor!!!) a unique technology and know-how in order to implement it plus you've already attracted a lot of attention plus you've figured a way to make money out of this! ARE YOU GUYS (M)(B)ILLIONAIRS BY NOW???

9. NO :( Mainly because of: External factors (related to funding) Internal factors (...our own mistakes)

10. Funding and VCs VCs in Greece are not willing to invest as easily as they give top prizes (in fact we've never heard of them ever since the award of the prize!) VCs in Greece have trouble in understanding value in state-of-the-art technologies as soon as they appear. They do consider investing only in more mature techological products or in products that provide fast ROI with zero(!) risk (e.g. photovoltaic systems backed by National/EU funds, etc) European/USA VCs are not willing to invest in companies located abroad (especially in countries like Greece with very poor records in entrepreneurship) Lack of funding => Eventual lack of resources for product enhancement, maintenance, promotion, strategic alliances, etc

11. Own mistakes Spent a lot of time in travelling, meetings, etc trying to raise funding Broke “Release Early, Release Often” rule - stayed in private beta for too long Lost precious time (a whole year in fact – 2008) in a potential acquisition that shifted our focus from the Web to the mobile sector Unwillingness to relocate among members of the team Eventual loss of commitement and discouragement

12. All is lost then???

13. ON THE CONTRARY ! Usually “failures” provide more useful lessons than “success”. You tend to learn A LOT MORE on the why's and how's! Gain p recious experience in succesfully executing new tasks, e.g. from demoing to Chris Shipley or Michael Arrington or learning how to write a startup business plan, and pitching Saul Klein! Learn not to trust your intuition but devise optimal strategies for future entrepreneurial tasks

14. So, what's next? “ Failing” to convert a good technology to business is usually the rule and NOT the exception. YOU'LL GET IT RIGHT NEXT TIME! Technology is there, just needs to be “shifted” to a different domain. Open to collaboration with anyone interested in integrating our technology to the most “crazy” idea or product they have As for Feeds 2.0 as a service, happy to discuss any idea on how to keep it up and running and alive (e.g. sponsored hosting, go open source, etc)

15. THANK YOU! Questions?