Interview: The business idea that came in a dream

Jürgen Horn emailed me a few weeks ago because he guessed (correctly) that I'd be interested in hearing about his entrepreneurial exploits and his move to Ireland.

Jürgen, who hails from Berlin, along with business partner with Mike Powell, from Ohio, USA started their first website - Lastminute-auction.com - in 2004 and have recently been featured on the BBC (video) and a local news station in the US.

Their second website - Criticker - is a movie recommendation engine and Jürgen also runs a very popular blog at - Random-good-stuff.com

Interested in getting more detail and finding out why they moved to Ireland I arranged to interview Jürgen and here's what he told me -

EirePreneur: Hi Jürgen, I'm interested to know what brought you to Ireland?

JH: Honestly there was no real reason. Just taking advantage of the fact we can do it. But basically the nature and the peace to work on our projects. And doing some photography here ... you know I do also photography -  www.jhofoto.de. And other reasons are cheap flights to the US. Shannon - NY is unbeatable with Aer Lingus. Mike is American and we travel very often to the US.

EirePreneur: I find it an interesting move for someone who works online all the time considering how bad our broadband is here, particularly in rural areas

JH: Well .. let me tell you .. I have moved very often in the last 5 years and this the first time a company promised us broadband to certain date and over here they kept the promise, no problem! But we have to admit that we are very surprised ... they even have broadband in Belmullet ..  we are in Killala. They don't even have cable TV but broadband. I think a lot has changed just in 3 months. Too bad Satellite is not an option, I wouldn't mind living in an even more rural area.

EirePreneur: So, how did you meet your American business partner and get started in your business?

JH: We met in Boston and he moved to Germany with me and while he was working for an US Software Company we had this idea to write that www.lastminute-auction.com script.  We just wanted to have it to ourselves but soon realized there are just way too many auctions meeting our criteria.

Mike wrote the script (I only do the marketing part) and yes up to 30,000 Auctions on Sunday just in Germany was more than expected and decided to make a website out of it. Mike lost his regular job a year ago and we were like .. yeah let's go for it and just do our own websites.. and www.criticker.com was born a year after

EirePreneur: And both websites together are your full time business?

JH: Yes, we both live from our websites. Just 2 years ago, I would have never guessed, that my life would change like that. All of our friends can't believe it either ... they kind of think we are crazy.

EirePreneur: The good part is the freedom, right? The flexibility of working when you want, where you want?

JH: Yeah, but I find myself working harder and longer than before and I am loving it. It makes me sick thinking about going to an office and work for a big company  ... they can just kick you out when they want too and you get nothing out of it. The Freedom is the best ..... not sure how long we will be staying here but so far we love it.

EirePreneur: Can you tell me more about your background?

JH: My background really has nothing to do with internet or marketing. I started to work for an insurance company, was an au pair in Cambridge, started with photography, moved to Germany, continued doing photography and now I work on our sites and if a photo assignment comes up I do that one too (which is great because it gets me out of the house).

EirePreneur: And how did the idea for your second website - Criticker - come about?

JH: Well, it's weird but Mike had a dream about his mother and she said in that dream that she wishes there would be website, so she doesn't have to watch bad movies anymore. I am not kidding! So Mike said that he has an idea of a new website in the morning.

EirePreneur: It's an intriguing concept - is it doing well? There's so much competition in that space it can't be easy to build an audience, is it?

JH: We barely make any money and it's online since March (all together we worked a year know on it).  But we've got 5000 registered users now and people have the feeling Criticker is an honest site and we are not trying to shove products in their faces

We don't see it in terms of being a competitive space - our algorithm is very solid and accurate. We can predict a users taste but plus 5 or minus 5 % points in most cases. Netflix is realizing that their ranking system is no good and launched a week ago (http://www.netflixprize.com) where you can get a million dollars from them. We actually think it's great because we might get some additional attention.

EirePreneur: Getting back to Lastminute-auction.com  - how do you make money on that site? It's a free service isn't it?

JH: Yes, it's free and we are affiliated with eBay

EirePreneur: So it's all commission based? But aren't you afraid eBay could offer the same service as your site?

JH: I have pretty good contacts with eBay Germany. I think they would not like to add a trashy bargain bin flavor to their site.

EirePreneur: What are the future plans for the business? Where do you see it going? Do you have other ideas in the pipeline or are you going to concentrate on what you're already doing?

JH: Criticker still needs a lof of work - more functions, a new look, etc. We could see criticker to branch out to music and books as well but that's probably not in the near future.

We just started a new project MrDealio.com - which compares prices but we are not depending on the XML Feeds companies give and so your price grabbing is more accurate. MrDealio only works for the US right now and needs even more work done on it than Criticker. We have tons of idea but we are just 2 people (MrDealio is a project with a friend of Mike) and can't realise all at the same time.

I also want to start an Ireland blog .. from the point of view of German :)

EirePreneur: Regarding your move to Ireland, how did you find it? How do you find property prices here?

JH: The move here was very expensive. Buying a house here and doing home exchange 3 out of the 12 months would be awesome. But we find property affodable - we already got an offer for a house, we just have to make sure first that we don't miss city life.

But right now we have to make some money. We have to work a whole your straight now without any other high expenses




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