Webb Dialogues (6): Netanel Jacobsson | Maxthon
Cnet recently covered the new open source browser, Maxthon. Low and behold, Swedish native, Netanel Jacobsson is the company’s Senior Vice President, which we heard about through VentureCast. With about 60 million people having downloaded the browser since the 2003 launch, Maxthon has been used by roughly 14% of the Chinese Web population.
1. Can you share some information on yourself, your work etc…
My name is Netanel “Net” Jacobsson, was born in Malmo, Sweden 1968. I took my masters degree in Psychology at Lunds University and started my “professional career” at Ericson Mobile Communications (SonyEricsson) and Ericsson Radio Systems focusing on consumer behavior and usability. I then spend 2 years in London for a wireless start-up before I left for Israel in 2001.
Prior to joining Maxthon, I was responsible for international business development at AOL Desktop messaging subsidary - ICQ for a couple of years working with advertisers, media agencies, portals, online communites and consumer technology companies world wide.
I am now serve as a partner & SVP at Maxthon, responsible for turning Maxthon into a truly global brand mainly focusing on the non-Chinese market (although I am quite actively involved in our Chinese business from a strategic point of view).
Besides Maxthon, I am runnig Mashup Media Ltd, a busines develpment & new media advisory (www.mashupmedia.net ) working with leading media agencies and advertisers from US, UK and China, advisning them new media strategy, early stage consumer technology across all digital platforms and all marketing disciplines. My recent work in this field has been the involvement in the launch of Samsung Mobiles “Anyfilms” campaign and Nokia’s The Passenger. In addition I also serve as an advisor to VC’s and start-ups.
2. How did you end up as partner at Maxthon?
I was approaced by the Danish serial entrepreneur Morten Lund two years ago (early Skype investor) and asked to be the founding business partner for Maxthon - a Beijing-based fast growing browser with millions of users world wide, and take this small start-up to the next level. We actually got to know each other via Linkedin a couple of years ago regarding another matter…
3. As a representative for an open source company, how do you monetize an open source project and what are the alternatives?
Maxthon is an “open-source like” company. Not 100 % open-source in the true meaning of the word since we at the moment are building on IE techonology. However, we are very closed to be open-source since we a very big developer community worldwide, creating plugins, skins , helps out with de-bugging and promotions. Currently 80% of our revenues comes from search. We have partnerships with all the big search engines (like Firefox and others) and have them integrated into the search box and on the start page. We are also generating revenues from user donations and a few subscription services.Advertising is another alternative - but one has to be very careful of how that is implemented in a browser since you dont want to put people of and become intrusive. Having said that, there are ways of doing this the right way and we will be launching new services that taps into that revenue stream too.
4. What are the differences between developing a product in China towards a US market, apart from costs?
Oh , there are huge differences. Cultural, work-flow wise and ways of looking at the users. Although there are certainly challenges with developing in China - the benefits are bigger. We have assembled a very tight and good team and have the benefit of being able to recruit straight out of the leading techinical universities. Chinese developers are very skilled, devoted and fast. The development cycle is also more “organical” and the project management they way we are used to it, is not really their cup of tea…Their way of thinking about the User Interface is also quite different from the West. Another challenge is the geographical distance to the US and European markets i.e. developers are not always aware of what is going locally in the US and Europe. This means that one needs to be more pro-active in keeping developers aware of trends and popular services.
5. How do you expect the browser to be used in the future?
I think that the browser will turn into an information broker and a devlivery platform of new web services. Since more and more softwares and services are becoming web centric, the browser is gradually turning into an OS. And with the advent of tabbed browsing, there are many interesting ways of delivering “pre-installed” services in forms of tabs directly to the user. But the browser will not handle all what we do on the Net. Widgets might be more suitable for delivering certain types of information. However, I think that the gaming world will lead the way and show the direction of effective and more user friendly user-interfaces. There is a lot browser developers can learn from game developers and the emergence of virtual worlds. In the end, I think the browser will become more like big immersed world where we experience and control our “life” on the Net.
6. Finally, three blogs that you cannot live without?
www.lifehacker.com
http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/
http://kaiserkuo.typepad.com/ich_bin_ein_beijinger/ http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/index.html - is a new discovery I really like too[tags]Maxton, Net Jacobsson, browser, interview, web 2.0[/tags]
[tags]Maxton, Net Jacobsson, browser, interview, web 2.0[/tags]
Bloggar.se: Maxthon, entreprenörskap, Net Jacobsson, webb dialogues,
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3 Comments
- Netanel Jacobsson replied:
Hi, a small correction: Maxthon has actually passed 80 million download now..
March 20th, 2007 at 5:33 pm. Permalink.
- Jonas replied:
Great! Thanks for your time and answers!
March 20th, 2007 at 6:56 pm. Permalink.
- Short video interview with Maxthon’s Netanal Jacobsson replied:
[…] We had previously interviewed Netanal Jacobsson, and recently, a came across this vide interview by TechCrunch.fr blogger Ouriel: […]
April 25th, 2007 at 3:36 pm. Permalink.
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