Thank you to everyone who came to the first Lunch 2.0.nl last Friday at Hyves. We had a great turnout and I think we are at the start of something good. To see more, I am uploading some photos to Flickr, as have many others. Merieke Hensel videotaped the Hyves presentations.
PS My apologies to anyone who tried to email me at peter@lunch20.nl on Friday afternoon. The address is working now.
Every week I attend a get-together here in Amsterdam called OpenCoffee. The regular crowd includes people from Fleck, Wakoopa, IRL, and more. It’s a nice scene and everyone there has caught the entrepreneurial bug and is looking to develop web companies. However, one significant challenge that many face is getting their ideas built. This is not for lack of skill or drive but simply the fact that programmers are few and far between. Or rather, programmers in Amsterdam who are interested in joining start-ups for an equity stake are rare. This is a significant restriction on start-ups here, as it makes bootstrapping quite difficult.
There’s no easy easy solution to this problem but one way I can help is true try to broaden the entrepreneurial community to include more of the tech world here. To that effect I am starting the Dutch version of Lunch 2.0, a regular serious of social events at technology companies. We should have the first events finalized in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for more information.
Update, 2007-12-17: Lunch 2.0.nl is now live!