and why i loved every second of it original website i would like to announce that we have stopped accepting new startups into hackfwd three years three months and three days after we first began supporting europe s most passionate geeks . this also seems like a great opportunity to share the lessons that we have learned to date . i wish i could be pithy but there s a bigger story worth telling . if you ll indulge me i d love to share my thoughts about what we did right and what we did wrong . let me back up a moment . after i left xing i went traveling with my family for several months . the trip was long overdue ; after seven years of constant work i needed the time and space to really imagine my next steps . i arrived home with 15 new business ideas but i knew i couldn t pursue any of them in earnest until i sold most of my shares in xing . while traveling i had realized that i was both literally and figuratively still far too attached to that company . in order to give my next venture its due i needed to completely free up some headspace . but i didn t look for the highest bidder . when it comes to deal making i never do . instead i searched for people who had the most thoughtful answers to three simple questions what s best for our members what s best for our employees what s best for our shareholders we had several buyers offer up answers but dr. hubert burda and dr. paul bernhard kallen gave by far the most compelling ones . we shook hands over the deal in hubert s living room and i left his home entirely confident that my company was going to thrive . i grew xing to 250 million hubert and paul took it to over half a billion within four years . that s a thrill for me that is difficult to describe . that s when it hit me . for my next venture i wanted to help others get a chance to feel that same thrill . but i didn t want to support the business guys . i wanted to support the coders the developers the geeks . my favourite memories of xing were the times i spent meeting with them listening to them and learning from them . i truly believe that geeks are the artists of the 21st century . but in europe unlike in the us most startups are founded by the businessmen not the builders . this never made sense to me especially because the coders i knew were brimming with great ideas . the key was going to figure out the best way to help them unleash their potential . this time though i wanted to get it right from the start . in previous companies we d labored under countless redesigns . i was eager to try and avoid that so i hired my friends at ideo including tom andr a marcus nathan soren ferdi tim and philipp to help me structure my ideas validate them with geeks and kick start the company . we launched with a tweet and the news quickly spread to over 20 million people within two weeks . to quote my friend mike it was like a klingon warship decloaking out of nowhere . within months we earned a reputation for great entrepreneurs fantastic ideas and compelling results . but and there s always a but we knew we would ultimately be measured on a single metric the exit . so far we haven t had one . i ll come back to that in a second . three and a half years ago when we started there were hardly any accelerators of note in the world . in europe seedcamp was in its second year . in asia innovation works had yet to launch . and in the us y combinator was just starting to gain traction . today it s a very different landscape . there are literally thousands of accelerators ; so many that i often wonder if there are more accelerators than angels and more angels than there are entrepreneurs . we also have meaningful startup movements in virtually every country on the planet . from shanghai to bucharest from moscow to cape town from alaska to chile argentina to miami from riga to paris . the odds have changed . not to mention that many fortune 1000 companies are taking their cues from the startup world rather than the other way around . digital innovation is changing workflows collaboration and business practices all over the world . some are even building their own in house accelerators to streamline internal processes and see results faster . in the last 3 years ideas like rapid prototyping lean and agile approach hosting hackathons and failing faster are no longer buzzwords from startups but accepted business norms for even the largest global brands . things are different for vcs too . yuri s digital sky technologies dst and his team have tapped into another market segment very late stage investments and made it possible to keep big companies private that would have otherwise needed to go public for further funding . this not only involved massive d & e rounds but it also provided liquidity to early employees . many big name vcs have followed this approach establishing a precedent for huge debt and equity rounds that frequently give early employees liquidity . these traditional series a funds investing later stage coupled with a sharp rise in seed stage investing contribute to a significant series a gap . there are also far more startups that support startups . i m particularly impressed by naval at angelist.co who managed to organize and in many ways democratize a scattered market of companies looking for funding . even crowdfunding sites like kickstarter have helped fund new ventures and provided millions with a front row seat to the world of entrepreneurship . this helps explain why being an entrepreneur is finally an entirely legitimate career choice even in europe ; indeed in many ways working at a startup is the new mba . so if it s such an exciting and dynamic time to be an entrepreneur why am i stopping hackfwd as with any new venture there s a mix of smarts and serendipity at work at all times . sometimes the right smarts and most fortunate serendipity overlap but sometimes they don t. but as they say in silicon valley you either win or you learn . so here are my top ten insights from this experience that i ll take with me to my next venture what we got right 1 . geeks can be ceos . the assumption that coders are best left in the back room near the servers is not only erroneous it s a massive missed opportunity . as i once tweeted it s far easier to teach a geek about business than teach an mba to code . i ve always believed in my gut that hackfwd geeks would not only rise to the occasion to help truly lead their companies but also bring many previously underappreciated leadership skills to the table . both proved to be true ; i was proud to see how many ctos thrived under the presumption that they too also contribute at the level of the ceo when needed . 2 . european geeks are as talented as american ones . innovative thinking is not the natural birthright of us born coders alone in fact european geeks not only bring equal amounts of passion and genius to the table but they also bring determination that only a presumed underdog status can inspire . we re very proud that one of our hackboxes the team from to be honest formerly fantasy shopper were the first non americans to win the worldwide aws challenge from amazon this kind of recognition is critical to the future of european innovation that s also why we came up with a prize for european geeks under 18 to show their talents with hacknow.org . we ve got two winners already luiz from spain and marcin from poland . i sincerely hope that other organizations step in to contribute with their own version of hacknow annual prizes because it s enormously important that young european tech talent continues to get championed and celebrated on the global stage . 3 . mentorship is worth more than money . although we offered an extremely generous funding package we placed even more emphasis on giving each hackbox real access to luminaries from every startup discipline . in fact we had dedicated full time staff focused on product strategy marketing hr recruitment and finance so focussed expertise and support was always a click or a call away for any one of our hackboxes . no need for investment managers plus we brought in mentors who were truly world class in broader topics like brand distribution pr business etc. we covered literally every possible angle to ensure each hackfwd startup was as informed as they were inspired . many of our mentors also served as referrers indeed we had ambassadors in every european country always looking out for the best talent to refer to hackfwd . 4 . the need for in person inspiration . every quarter we hosted build conferences in mallorca later in berlin . the point was not only to expose each hackbox to amazing talks and face to face feedback on their progress but also allow them to learn from each other and benefit from the emotional support of their peers who were at a similar point of the startup journey . although it would have been easier and more cost effective to do everything online and remotely our build conferences were the critical human drumbeat to help both enlighten and empower our teams at regular intervals . but it wasn t just our geeks who loved the conferences pretty soon investors and press joined the fun . we enjoyed hosting participants from all sectors including ren obermann niklas zennstroem jason goldberg om malik etc. etc. and vcs like brains to ventures accel index t venture e.ventures htgf creathor dn capital atomico cfp balderton hpv battery ventures shortcut seedcamp profounders and sunstone . and we loved swapping stories with all the press in attendance including techcrunch wired gigaom the next web venturebeat focus spiegel gruenderszene deutsche startups silicon allee and the dld . 5 . the importance of intellectual generosity . we support innovation period . so it was important that any would be founder could access our content regardless of whether they were lucky enough to join hackfwd . we were pleased when our content became a meme delighted to see our amazing tools used widely impressed when our plain english contracts were praised flattered when we were copied by mozilla apple and microsoft and proud when our great talks were viewed over 200.000 times including some of my personal favourites below and they re all under creative commons license so please feel free to embed them in your own websites an incredible deep and difficult subject of brand strategy is explored in just fifteen minutes with andr a mallard.what does it take to lead in a stressful environment marco boerries gives us his passionate ideas.tom hulme outlines exactly how to implement positive design thinking into your producta look into building companies with employees that do more than just work hard . klaas kersting gives an impassioned talk about how to keep the assholes away from dominating your culture.just how do you pitch and build a relationship with techcrunch and other tech press mike butcher shares his tips.startups change fast and so do their business models . tom hulme explores.what