Brett was asked by The Entrepreneurs Interactive Club at Imperial College London Business School to present on the subject of ‘building entrepreneurial teams’. On March the 19th Brett joined Allan Wallace of Octopus Ventures and Paul Dowling of Dreamstake to present on how to build world class start-up teams.
Jos White of Notion Capital has just started a new blog called ‘The Daring Journey’. The blog will describe what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and also life in general! He’ll be writing about both but it will be mainly focused on the converging worlds of technology, investing and being an entrepreneur.
You can see the blog at – http://www.thedaringjourney.com
I am occasionally asked about Seedcamp’s funding model and the real value add that Seedcamp brings to a start-up company. The question comes from entrepreneurs who haven’t yet experienced a Mini-Seedcamp or Seedcamp Week. When I answer this question, apart from the money, I normally talk about the calibre of the mentors, the access to the best and most successful entrepreneurs in Europe and the ability, through those mentors and entrepreneurs, to reach out to and get in touch with almost anybody in business in Europe. I also talk about the links that Seedcamp has with the US tech scene and suggest that the aspiring entrepreneur speak to one of the Seedcamp alumni to get a firsthand account of the value that Seedcamp brings.
When I am asked that question in the future, I will simply point to this web page http://bit.ly/w0EEb5 .
Check this out! Which other accelerator/incubator/investor has the capacity to pull off a Road Trip like this?
– Kicking off in New York from Saturday 18th until Wednesday 22nd
– Staying in Boston from Thursday to Saturday 25th
– In San Francisco and the Bay Area from the 25th until the 6th of March
– Visiting Seattle on March 7
– Flying to San Diego and Los Angeles on March 8 and 9,
– Wrapping things up in Austin at SXSW until March 13th.
There are three goals for this trip:
The Seedcamp Roadies have already visited the offices of Union Square Ventures, ETSY, Tumblr, Highland Capital 
Partners and they have only just touched down in the land of the brave! As a tech entrepreneur, being able to go on a Road Trip like this, is WAY BEYOND PRICELESS! If this was a ticketed event you could sell out to US based entrepreneurs in minutes – God only knows what they would pay for this type of access?
Just imagine if you could spend almost a month with a bunch of fellow entrepreneurs meeting some of the best tech teams in the world, some of the best entrepreneurs in the world, some of the best VCs in the world and having a blast while doing it. Duuuuh!
Knowing most of the Seedcamp Roadies, I am sure that goal number three – the fun and friends bit – is in the bag. I can’t wait to hear about the learning, inspiration and, best of all, the deals that were done!
Here is the seedcamp.tumblr.com blog which has the daily updates of the trip.
Sign up for the next Seedcamp in Tel Aviv http://www.seedcamp.com/events/seedcamp-tel-aviv
The vacations seems like a very distant memory as we hit the ground running at Forsyth Towers in January – unbelievably we are already almost 6 weeks into the new year! We completed 2 assignments in January for our favourite e-invoicing SaaS company Tradeshift . We have now built out their sales leadership team in the Netherlands, Germany, France and the UK (2). We also completed a Venture Partner assignment for Connect Ventures, it’s great news when another VC enters the European ecosystem!
Our Seedcamp portfolio companies are going from strength to strength. Brainient raised $1.8M from Atlas Venture and Credo Ventures. GrabCAD raised a $4M Series A led by Matrix and David Skok will join the board of directors. Congratulations to Robot Media, the company received its second consecutive Publishing Innovation Award at Digital Book World New York.
Brett has been invited to present “An evening with Forsyth Group” at London Business School, talking broadly about the Hi Growth Technology Ecosystem. We hope to have a video of the evening to share.
Ajit Joakar of Futuretext top predictions/trends for 2012:
Live blogging casts, Transhumanism, SOPA, the rebirth of SMS and more…
1) What if you called a bandwidth crunch and no one came? AKA have you ever seen a bandwidth crunch in Boise Idaho?
2) The decline, fall and potential rebirth of SMS in a world dominated by Smart phones
3) Will we see a compromise on SOPA?
4) Why Facebook will make an impact beyond advertising in 2012
5) Free.fr and the business model of unbundling the set top box: I have been tracking the rise of free.fr for some time .. and it could be truly disruptive. Gigaom explains the context and says that the set-top box could be a stealth weapon. Unbundling – decoupling the set-top box could be a powerful concept. It is also relatively easy for other providers/countries to also do the same i.e. decouple the set top box from the network and provide connectivity services by including Nano cells/femtocells etc
6) The perfect storm driving the uptake of Smart cities : Relating to my work on the advisory board of the Word Smart Capital Initiative – Amsterdam, in the recession, many local governments all over the world will adopt the idea of smart cities. Smart cities reflect ‘Internet of things’ in action. There are three drivers to Smart cities: the Smart home, the smart building and mobile devices. However, the biggest driver for Smart cities could well be Smart data and the enabling of people to ‘add intelligence’ to locations and objects –ex the tweeting cat door , the live blogging cat , Adruiono etc. This is a perfect storm of many elements: Cheap sensors , open source hardware and software, Sensors in mobile devices, networked homes and most importantly, Open data. For instance, the European Commission has launched an open data strategy and here in the UK, professor Nigel Shadbolt will lead an “Open Data Institute” with Tim Berners-Lee. This is the perfect storm driving Smart cities. See my presentation at the Oxford University on Apps for Smart cities
7) Tech policy issues impact mainstream computing because they effect both cloud computing and the Internet: Cloud computing is everywhere – but the technology is not the only issue now for CIOS. SOPA, the Patriot act and other regulations are now taking center stage. Privacy, identity and cybersecurity dominated tech policy headlines coming. The U.S. government’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace addressed key issues around creating an “identity ecosystem online.”, the eG8 showed that online innovation and freedom of expression still need strong defenders. We covered this in the policy bloggers network – Fostering trust in the Cloud in the face of law enforcement access to data and IGF – Nairobi : voices from the blogosphere and beyond
8) Social media ‘inside’ like ‘Intel inside’ – TV finally becomes a ‘social’ platform: Social media is fast becoming ‘embedded’ i.e. ‘Social media inside’ (just like Intel inside ). The value of Social media is not in itself but rather as a component of other services. This will have the greatest impact on TV this year. Already, we can login via facebook or twitter, we can logon using spotify on virgin (i.e. listen to spotify on virgin media) etc. Social media recommendations via TV, co-viewing apps (tablet apps used to watch with TV) etc all are becoming mainstream. A year ago. Western Europe suffered its first Q1 drop in TV sales ever and now Smartphones, tablets are edging out television sets on buyers list-Accenture. So, this year, TV will finally become a social platform – despite some resistance from the traditional TV purists.
9) Transhumanism: I have been interested in transhumanism like many in the technology industry specifically my latest book – Meditation in the age of facebook and twitter – this trend of ‘augmenting human capability through technology’ is being picked up by more mainstream companies – IBM says mind reading is no longer a science
It is always a great pleasure when one of our clients raises a big round of funding, or achieves a well deserved exit. Over the years we have placed executives and built teams for some great emerging technology companies like Netscape (IPO), DoubleClick (acquired by Google), RealNetworks (IPO), Scopus (acquired by Siebel) and more recently eSpotting (acquired by FindWhat), Zyb (acquired by Vodafone), Outerbay (acquired by HP), DWL (acquired by IBM) and this week Vistagy www.vistagy.com a leading global provider of industry-specific engineering software and services, was acquired by Siemens (http://bit.ly/t0zScG).
We first worked With Ed Bernarden, founder and VP International Business Development, in 2003 when we started building their European team. At the time Vistagy was an emerging technology PLM/PDM software company with one great product called Fibersim and a second under development. Over the past 8 years we have added seven key members to their European management team and the company now has 300 customers across the globe and over 4500 software users. The company is a strategic supplier to hundreds of the world’s leading manufacturers in the aerospace, wind energy, automotive, and other industries—including Bombardier Aerospace, General Motors, NASA, Ferrari F1, and Lotus Renault GP.
It has been an absolute pleasure working with Ed, Ralph and the rest of the team, we congratulate them on their continued success and we look forward to working with them in the future.
Fizzback exits for $ 80m to Nice Systems http://bit.ly/nzw95K 
This is a great result for the people we know at Fizzback. Fizzback is one of the companies that could have gone on to be a significant European success, so the question that one has to ask is, why did they sell out now for $80m? As Robin Klein of TAG puts it “On the other hand, its a disappointment that a company which had begun to make a global impact in the world of Customer Experience Management, had captured some of the largest corporate clients worldwide, is not going solo ‘all the way’.” http://bit.ly/odzkvz . “The TAG philosophy has always been to support founders and to recognize that entrepreneurs’ own motivation must ultimately be the deciding factor in these types of decisions.”
It seems like the founders have executed brilliantly but have now decided that it’s time to call it a day.
Hopefully we will see a new group of angel investors Fizzing around that London scene in the coming months.
A few weeks ago, it came to the world’s attention that expectant parents can list their unborn children on their Facebook profiles. Whilst the more nostalgic amongst us might not be quite ready to throw our “We’re Expecting” notelets away, “Expected: Child” is undisputedly a quick way to get the message across to everyone in your network.
Facebook have suggested that this new addition is a reaction against the illegal profiles people have been creating for their children (users have to be over 13 before they are legally allowed to create a profile). Look no further than this extraordinary screenshot here http://bit.ly/pv9hUW to see the problems that can occur when the rules are ignored.
With this in mind, it seems that Facebook is trying to exercise control over already established social media behaviour. Despite their “over 13’s” policy, an estimated 5% of babies have a social media profile and almost half of British children between the ages of 9 and 12 have a Facebook profile. http://bbc.in/ppxbnn
Clearly social networking is appealing to a younger audience, and the more users Facebook accumulates, the more underage children who aren’t allowed to join feel like they are missing out. Now it seems that pregnant mothers don’t want their babies-to-be to be left out either. 
By allowing parents to create a profile for their baby, Facebook are acknowledging that their “over 13’s” policy is being ignored and that they are taking control of the reigns again.
In the world of social networking where relationships are announced, photos of intimate gatherings are uploaded, and status’ reveal the trials and tribulations of everyday life, is this latest addition to Facebook really a big deal? I think that for those of us who feel it is a step too far to put an unborn child on a social networking site, it is because one feels the innocence of the child is somehow compromised. The child is not in control of the pictures that are displayed on behalf of her, or who is in her network. If a baby can have an online existence before it has been born, in a way, her parents have already assigned it a character or personality, especially if the parents interact with other users comments on behalf of the child. At present, the expected child cannot have a full profile created by its parent, but their name, due date and scan picture can be added. It surely follows that from a very young age such a baby would be introduced to Facebook and the online profile and comments that existed before she did. In such scenarios as the absurd case of the “unborn child Facebook argument” linked to above, this could surely lead to some disturbing revelations.
As far as Facebook is concerned, it helps them to curb the creation of illegal profiles. It also gives them a chance to compete with the arrival of Google+ and its “family circles” by promoting the family unit. I expect that a big plus of the whole thing is that it enables Facebook to target advertising at expectant parents. The site has come under fire multiple times for using members’ personal information to make relevant adverts pop up whilst they are using the site, and it is more than likely that those who advertise their pregnancies on their profiles will be subjected to banner ads about nappies and strollers.
All in all, being able to put your unborn child’s profile on Facebook is not a big deal. Technology is moving so quickly thatassigning your unborn an online profile is arguably no great leap from putting all the details of your own life online. Facebook have seen the writing on the wall and know if they don’t do it, one of their competitors will. The money that can be made from targeted advertising is a massive incentive in itself, and if the targeted advertising works well for Facebook, I expect pet profiles won’t be far behind.
So, it’s official. We’ve entered the bubble. LinkedIn’s IPO has heralded in 4 or 5 years of serious exit opportunity, before it all comes crashing down around us again. The BIG challenge now is going to be hiring, then holding on to great people.
The Groupon IPO filing has had lots of airplay this week. Apart from everything else, this really impressed us:
The company now has more than 8,000 employees worldwide, up from 37 employees two years ago. Via CNN
Another Groupon titbit, if you do a search for Eric Lefkofsky on Google, the second automatically generated result is “eric lefkosky fraud”. FYI, Eric is the main shareholder with almost 22% of Groupon. Via CNN
Paul Kedrosky posted Eric’s quotes from his Ha-Lo days in “Then and Now”. If you try and access the original link, it seems to have disappeared though…
We will watch the Groupon IPO with interest.