fresh Inhale offers an easy, natural and effective program to help you give up smoking; Laser Therapy.  Our soft laser releases Endorphins in the body for a painless, drug free result, with no side effects.  The treatment helps removes the physical cravings and dependence of nicotine.  Combined with advice from the therapist we can help deal with the change of habit / routine to maintain your new smoke free lifestyle.

Just finished a great team day in Rainmaking. As part of the day we set goals for the rest of 2010. These included:

- Launch min. 2 new companies in UK

- GreenWire (our new business for recycling of used electronics) to be launched in Germany and Scandinavia

- Min. 2 of the startups who have attended startupbootcamp should be on track to get funding

- Grow customer base by 25% in frokost.dk and get established in Aarhus

- Increase current number of treatments per month in Godt Syn by 1/3

- Have signed deals worth min. £ 100,000 for the new AdPod in Cyclepods

- Raise min. EUR 150,000 in donations through charity dinners in London and Copenhagen

- Raise min. EUR 150,000 in donations through BetterNow

Now it is all about execution.

/Carsten

As Rainmaking is co-hosting Startup Weekend throughout the Nordics, Startup Weekend found it interesting to interview Carsten Kølbek about Rainmaking’s involvement. Here is the result:

How have you got interested in Startup Weekend?
We have launched a European accelerator program called startupbootcamp. The critical factor for us is to attract the best European startup teams. When we met Clint Nilsen, one of the founders of startupweekend, we immediately saw this as a great vehicle for getting in contact with hundreds of entrepreneurs across Europe and that is the reason we are now sponsoring and co-arranging startupweekends in Vilnius, Kaunas, Stockholm, Lund, Copenhagen and Oslo.

What do you hope to get from Startup Weekend?
Personally, I hope to have a fun and rewarding weekend where I meet a lot of great people who are enthusiastic about entrepreneurship. From the perspective of Rainmaking, I hope we find one or two great teams who could be candidates for our startupbootcamp program this summer in Copenhagen.

Please, tell prospective participants about yourself and Rainmaking
I am the co-founder of Rainmaking, which is a “startup factory”. We have created 11 companies in 3½ years. Some have failed but fortunately we have also made our first two exits. Currently, our companies have an annual turnover of EUR 20 million. And we employ 60+ people.

Frokost.dk har i den forgangne uge været i medierne. Denne gang er det erhvervsbladet, 24-timer og P3, der alle har sat fokus på den seneste udvikling indenfor frokostordningen, og dens betydning for medarbejdertilfredsheden.

Mange virksomheder sparer i disse tider frokostordningen væk – en udvikling der ifølge Alexander Kjerulf, som er en af verdens førende eksperter i arbejdsglæde, både foringer motivationen og arbejdsglæden hos medarbejderne:

”Det er et rigtig, rigtig dårligt sted at vælge at spare, siger han og fortæller, at den fælles frokost betyder meget for såvel sammenhold, effektivitet og arbejdsglæde på en arbejdsplads” (Alexander Kjerulf, Erhvervsbladet, d. 26.2.2010)

Du kan læse hele artiklen her :http://www.erhvervsbladet.dk/ledelse/krisen-aeder-din-frokostordning

Læs 24-timers artikel her: http://www.24.dk/article.jsp?articleId=8222

For mere info om frokost.dk: http://www.frokost.dk/

Rainmaking has made a donation of 1.000 USD to an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The orphanage is run by Sister Asayech and a very competent local staff. We have visited the facilities ourselves, and experienced first hand how well they take care of the children. We weren’t there to donate money in the first place, but instead to learn about development projects in the third world as part of our preparation of www.betternow.org.

However, when you see a place like that, you just need to make a small contribution.

At a trip to Istanbul I experienced a truly inspiring service level at an averaged priced local hotel. This letter was lying on the bed when we arrived! Of course with that dedication to customer satisfaction I did not need to use the owner’s mobile number.

When we left, two from the staff followed us out to our taxi, and stayed and waved as you drove away! And it wasn’t because they did not have anything else to do. In fact they hosted a conference for a lot of important people – including their tourist minister – at the same time as we were leaving. They just had that event planned very well, and they stayed focused on EVERY customer, even insignificant guests like my girlfriend and I.

When you experience something like this you want to come back. And that is good business!

/Martin

The other day Martin Bjergegaard was talking to a MBA class at CBS, which turned out to an incredible 2 hour Q&A. Here is what the MBA class wrote about their meeting with Martin and the ideas behind Rainmaking:

http://blogs.cbs.dk/mba_diary/?p=330&cpage=1#comment-8030

Imagine if we can attract 25,000 people to follow and engage in www.startupbootcamp.dk and the ten selected startups,  which will go into the startupbootcamp program in June this year!

It would have significant value for the ten startups if they can use this communication platform to spread the word about their new ideas and products. People could provide valuable feedback througout the development phase; help with contacts and network; and even be the first real customers.

Our goal is therefore to attract 25,000 hangarounds in startupbootcamp. We have to work fast … and if you can help us it is highly appreciated.

Be our next hangaround – follow us on: twitter, facebook and LinkedIn

/Carsten

Rainmaking receives about 10-20 potential new projects per month from entrepreneurs around Europe. The entrepreneurs and their ideas vary in quality but there are some really quality stuff in between.

Unfortunately, some of the teams insist on signing Non Disclosure Agreements (NDA’s) before they will even tell a little bit about their ideas. I have 100% respect for this if they had a pharma or biotech product, which need to be protected with IP rights, however, in most cases we are talking about very simple ideas with no chance of IP protection.

These entrepreneurs simply think they have invented the most fantastic idea in the world and now they are so afraid that someone will steal the idea. In 99% of the cases my guess is that exactly this type of persons will never succeed as entrepreneurs and I find this attitude wrong for two reasons:

1) It will be hard to sell anything if you are not willing to talk about your product/idea! And sales should start as early as possible when you develop new products and services. It is in the close interaction with your supposed customer that you will end up developing something that can turn into a success.

2) It is (almost) all about execution and the team – and not about the idea. There is therefore no reason to be so afraid of discussing your idea with other. It only helps developing it.

In Rainmaking we are very open about discussing our ideas and our experience is that this has great value. Often we can kill an idea much earlier because people we interact with can tell us why this idea will not work. And in other cases we can develop a good idea into a great one in just a few days because we discuss it with great people who each add a few good things to sharpen the idea.

/Carsten