MyOwnDB @ Plugg

Wow… what a day!

Plugg really blew my socks off last Wednesday.
It was a wonderful event: over 300 people either with a start-up or with loads
of money, trying to find each other.
I had a great time.

Unfortunately, MyOwnDB didn’t make it until
the last three contestants, but then again, I don’t think we were up for it
yet. Just look at the companies that won!

Bragster

My personal favourite. They exist for some time now though, have
made business deals with celebrities as 50 cent and Eminem and are
represented in various European offices.

Viewdle

At first, I didn’t really understand what they were doing, but it
is a great concept. Again though, this is not a start-up like we are.
People in 3 countries, 7 PhDs hired full time, building on ex-KGB
technology, working for 3 years, … A nice interview with the COO
can be found at zoomz.

Zilok

Dubbed the eBay for online rental. Operational in 4 countries in 2
continents. Also won the peoples award.

Compare this to MyOwnDB: Unofficially founded
in November 2007 only, core product has one year of development behind it,
nothing spent on marketing yet, …

Anyway, it was a huge boost for us being selected to the last 20 already.
We’re very proud of that! Thank you Robin, for organising this great event.
This was the first public event on which MyOwnDB was presented.

For people who missed my 2 minute pitch, this is (more or less) what I said:

Thank you all for being here. And thanks to the jury for letting me in.

MyOwnDB is a joint venture between Zeropoint.IT, a managed software development
outsourcing company and Raphael
Bauduin, famous as the FOSDEM founder.

Together, we bring the concept of databases up to the next level. Some 10
years ago, we all made the switch to managed programming languages easily, but
in the world of databases, everything still happens old school. The *main*
focus is still on data storage, whereas *we* focus on data management. I’m
talking about custom data types, fine grained access level control,
localisation, online collaboration on your data, REST APIs, …

Up to today, MyOwnDB has been fully funded by owner investments. Our core
product has one year of full time development behind it and one year more is
planned within the current budget. (This all happens in Pakistan by the way).

With MyOwnDB, we are aiming for three revenue streams:

• paid user subscriptions on myowndb.com
• recurring license fees for large(r) local enterprise installations
• a worldwide MyOwnDB partner certification programme

Our business model is pretty “modern”: it’s based on abundance.
We want to reach out to the people (users and developers) as soon as
possible, converting a small percentage of them into paying customers.
The best way of reaching this goal is releasing the product under an Open
Source license.
This is planned for this summer, together with some kind of media campaign.
Without any marketing budget, we get 250 website visits per day and
convinced more than 1700 users to register for an account.
Of course, we want to increase this pace.
Extremely.

I see the opportunity. Do you?

You can always reach me on bart@myowndb.com.

Thank you.