LocalStream

2012-12-01

Yesterday, I had my exit interview at Nokia, and I have now joined the ranks of ex Nokia people. I look back with pleasure on a fantastic period at that company where I first worked on cool research projects in Nokia research and the last few years on Nokia’s places and search infrastructure. But more importantly, I am now looking forward towards a fresh start. Seven years in a company is a long time and it’s been nearly a decade since I ended my academic career to start a corporate career. Now I’m making another change: I’m becoming an entrepreneur.

I’m in the process of starting my own company, together with my Irish friend and colleague Mark MacMahon. We’ve been debating, pondering, discussing, etc. over the last few months and we decided on a company name: LocalStream and registered the domain name http://localstre.am and the @localstre twitter account.

LocalStream at this point is just a simple website that will act as a place holder until we roll out the real thing early 2013. LocalStream is going to be a new communication channel that is all about local. Rather than talking to your friends and family on Facebook, or your colleagues via LinkedIn, or your followers on Twitter, LocalStream will allow you to share with people in a specific area and create a local stream of information.

Currently we’re busy prototyping, writing business plans, etc. and you’ll find us hanging out in the trendy places near Rosenthalerplatz, the heart of Berlin’s Silicon Allee, that have ample supplies of comfy couches, wifi, and caffeinated beverages: the three ingredients that are essential to the life of a startup.