Great content from Seedcamp 07

Last September, Seedcamp brought together some of Europe's top founders, investors and advisors to bring perspective and encouragement to the next generation of young entrepreneurs.

Check out some of the great content from some of the advisors who were there last year - just some of the folks you can hear from below include Niklas Zennstrom (Skype, Joost), Marc Samwer (Jamba), Toby Rowland (uDate, King.com), Nic Brisbourne (DJF Esprit investor in WAYN, buy.at), Martin Varsavky (FON), Mike Shaver (Mozilla) and Klaus Hommels (seed investor in Xing, Skype, Stardoll).


This year is going to be even better. So if you haven't applied or know someone who would benefit from hanging out in close proximity and getting advice from people like this point them to Seedcamp applications - they close August 10th.

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Closing in on Seedcamp Week 2007

from the Seedcamp blog:

So much has happened with Seedcamp in the last month, thanks to you all for your energy, enthusiasm and support.

Last Sunday night we accepted the last applications for Seedcamp Week 2007 - we were thrilled to have received 268 applications from over 40 countries. Seedcamp seems to have tapped a nerve from Uruguay to the Ukraine and we're excited to work with you all in the near future to figure out how we can best harness and continue the positive momentum.

This week is selection week. Our esteemed selection panel has been putting in serious energy into analyzing the applications and slimming that list down to a final set of interviews. By the end of the week we will have final list of 20 selected companies who'll be coming to London to spend the week of Sept 3-7 with us.

One of the things we've always said about Seedcamp, is that's its not just about the cash. Success is also about have the right context, making the right connections and gaining the right coverage.

Providing the right context
We've been inspired by the informal formats of unconferences and unevents like Barcamp and Opencoffee to try and create a style which is not just about people who've done it talking at people in an audience.

We want to provide conversation not speeches, so we have a mix of sessions where Seedcampers will hear directly from some real experts but then importantly be able to spend 1:1 time with those experts to get direct feedback on their businesses.

Seedcamp is an evolving project and this is only our first year, so we welcome any ideas and feedback you have on what topics are the most interesting to you. Please join the forums and let us know.

Making the right connections
Building a great business is partly about accessing the best and brightest talent - it can often be about knowing who to ask when you are stuck with really important questions.

We've said that being a part of Seedcamp should allow you to build a rolodex in a week it would take years to build otherwise.

So, to help teams making the best connections, we have lined up expert mentors across product design & development, marketing & pr, raising money, finding exits, negotiating big partnership, handling legals and accounting, team building. Hopefully, a lot of what teams need to sharpen their pitch and develop to be a successful business.

Joining our already impressive cast of characters during Seedcamp Week and beyond, some of the folks now include:

• Entreprenuerial founders including Niklas Zennstrom, Marc Samwer, Richard Moross, Martin Varsavsky, Toby Rowland, Tariq Krim, Michael Smith, Charlie Muirhead and Alex Straub
• Product Development & Design gurus like Matt Jones, Tom Coates, Leisa Reichelt, Ryan Carson, Max Polyakov and Skype product & operations stars like Carter Adamson, Rodrigo Madanes, Sten Tamkivi, Annemie Rensburg and Michael Jackson
• VC and individual investors like DFJ Esprit, Alexander Hoye and Mark Sonne Kharazmi
• Experts from companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, SUN, Amazon Web Services, eBay, Oracle, Sky, Albion, Flow Interactive, SparkPR and Blackberry

Gaining the right coverage
Rising above the noise is critical in building your business.

To help Seedcamp teams do this, we've already partnered with Techcrunch, FT.com and the NextWeb Conference. We're now thrilled to announce three new partnerships with:

• Ryan Carson's FOWA from Oct 3-5 in London
• O'Reillys Web2.0 Expo from Nov 5-8 in Berlin
  
• Loic Le Meur's LeWeb3 from Dec 11-12 in Paris
  

What's next for Seedcamp....
These are still early days for us. We're at the beginning of a long-term project which is focussed on building a better entrepreneurial environment in Europe for talented entrepreneurs who want to think big.

We've been thrilled by the response so far and the level of engagement from our fellow travelers on our blog, on our forums and on our ever growing public Facebook group. But most of all we've been thrilled to have as our fellow travelers everyone who has applied to Seedcamp and everyone who has become a supporter so far.

We have some exciting ideas for what's next and we really want to hear from you all about what you think we can do to best serve and encourage great talent in Europe.

But right now we're just so excited to move towards the next Act and meet the selected teams for Seedcamp Week 2007 and all the mentors in London from September 3-7th.

Big day for Seedcamp

from the Seedcamp blog:

We've been thrilled at the interest Seedcamp has generated in such a short time since we announced it a few weeks ago. In the spirit of the new web, we've had some great guest blogs , our forums are slowly getting more active and even our Facebook group is growing like crazy - we're just crossed 600 members :)

We want Seedcamp to really help stimulate a community and conversation around European startups - so please join in, online or physically at your local Opencoffee Club. So if you're an entrepreneur with an idea, a developer with a killer app - there's no excuse to feel alone anymore.

You have until midnight August 12th to submit your completed application, we've already had nearly 100 from all over Europe including France, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and the UK. We've also had applications from India, Israel, Russia, South Africa and Latin America - keep them coming.

Seedcamp is completely focussed on supporting the entrepreneur. So we're thrilled that we seemed to have tapped into something that seems relevant and valuable to you. In fact, one of the things which has excited me the most is that people are recognizing that although capital is key, Seedcamp is more about the contacts, coverage and connections successful applicants will receive both in the week of September 3-7 in London and in the 3 months afterwards.

With this in mind, I'm really excited today to announce the first wave of Seedcamp supporters, who are really stepping up to play a major role not just in Seedcamp 2007 but for the years ahead. These are all people and organizations who have played a critical role in putting European entrepreneurship on the map and I'm thrilled to have them on board.

The cast in order of appearance so far are: Index Ventures, Niklas Zennstrom and Mattias Ljungman's Atomico Investments , Atlas Venture, Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark Europe), TAG, Forsyth Group and Brown Rudnick. We are also thrilled to have FT.com and Techcrunch as media partners and the NextWeb Conference as an event partner.

We look forward to act two and announcing our new cast of characters in the coming weeks.

Nextweb in Amsterdam

I know I've been slow in posting but wanted to share the slides from the talk I gave a few weeks back in Amsterdam at the really enjoyable NextWeb conference.



The theme was about stimulating more great European entrepreneurship - something which is close to my heart and I've posted about at length before.

In the last few weeks we have seen more great news for European startups - including the great team at Last.fm's fabulous exit to CBS and also Joost attracting Mike Volpi, one of the killer executives from Silicon Valley, to come to London to build what promises to be a company ready to redefine TV.

Who says Europe isn't at the cutting edge?

Learn more about AdWords

Figuring out how to best use Google AdWords is a key job for any entrepreneur, so it's great to see businesses popping up trying to make it as easy as possible.

Toby Mason, one of the co-founders of Zootrain, has been kind enough to offer folks reading this blog and members of London's now thriving OpenCoffee Club a £100 off voucher to a Zootrain seminar.

If you haven't tried AdWords and want to know how this could be a great offer. Use voucher code skpub14 to qualify and thank Toby if you go along.

South Africa 5 years on

Given where it was coming from - years of apartheid - I always felt that you needed to cut South Africa some slack in terms of its development goals. Now, having just been there again it's really struck me how much has developed in even the last 5 years since I wrote this post.

Traffic used to be a word you barely ever heard in South Africa - such great roads and so few people who could afford cars but now Johannesburg is packed with cars. Buildings are going up everywhere, smart office buildings and business parks stretch from Sandton through Four Ways and up to Mid Rand - the economy and the stock markets are booming.


South Africa has always had extremely strong mining companies and in recent years SAB has become a global force in brewing. But there are several really strong businesses being grown from Joburg now, including two of Africa's largest cell phone operators - Vodacom and MTN - and several very strong banks including ABSA (recently acquired by Barclays for £3bn) and Standard Bank. Investec has been a phenomenal success story in the last 5 years as well.

There are great retail businesses like Truworths, Pick'n'Pay and Nandos has taken its brand of fast-casual food global. In technology great businesses have been built like Dimension Data, Thawte (bought by Verisign) and now Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu are making major waves in the open source community.

There has been a lot of talent which has left South Africa and been instrumental in building some great businesses Web businesses like Elon Musk (PayPal) and Roelof Botha (PayPal, YouTube). Douglas at Extate has started his business in the UK but has produced a South African version as well. Many have stayed (or left roots behind) and are building important projects and some great businesses. There is a thriving Internet scene in South Africa - in fact today marks Cape Town's first OpenCoffee Club meeting.

One of South Africa's hidden jewels is also Naspers. This is probably one of the most interesting media companies on the planet right now, not just because of how much they are dominating their home markets but mainly because of their strategy which drives a super imaginative and shrewd approach to investing in the Internet. This company most people have never heard of are quietly building a portfolio of some of the most incredible Internet assets in emerging markets including 36% of Tencent (QQ is a phenomenon) and a recent acquisition of 30% of Mail.ru.

China and Russia - as well as Africa - are markets experiencing hypergrowth. For all our railing on Africa, there are a million new cellphone customer signing up a week. Europe is often a strange, strange land to US companies and investing outside the mainstream in emerging markets is even scarier but going to places, off the beaten track, but where there is high growth is great strategy.


South Africa is hosting the World Cup in 2010 - not 5 years this time to wait, but its going to fascinating to see the growth between now and then and also perhaps the realization in the rest of the world that Africa, and South Africa, is more than just rugby, cricket, amazing nature and wildlife, but is starting to produce some economic world champions as well.

The falling price of failure

Josh Kopelman has written an excellent post on why it's cheaper and faster to fail in today's market and the positive effects this can have on innovation.

"Companies used to waste millions of dollars of VC money – and entrepreneurs used to waste years of their lives – working on a failed hypothesis. Now, the cycle is much shorter."

Like Josh, I remember the cost of doing business in the 90s when it really did cost a lot of money to build a web business: Sun (or even worse, Digital) hardware, Oracle software and sky-high marketing costs were all significant drain on the bottom-line.

There are some key concepts to grasp.

1. It's ok to fail - we are terrible at appreciating this in Europe where people are often so afraid of failure they end up not even trying
2. The cheaper it is to fail, the more ideas we can test
3. There's a big difference between an idea and a business
   

A few weeks ago in my long post about Y Europe can seed new stars I tried to make a similar point, which may have been lost but which I believe in very deeply:

Starting small doesn't mean that you're not going to need funding to hire and scale up if you have a real business to pursue, but what it does mean is that you can find out very quickly and cheaply if your idea has traction. There is a big difference between an idea (which is easy to discard) and a business that has taken on people, costs and commitments (which is very hard to discard both rationally and emotionally).

We have a great opportunity today to test more ideas, which we can do very quickly and cheaply, and start businesses which have a better chance of succeeding.

I really hope we can adopt these lessons and leverage the really exciting new funding cycle that Josh highlights in this very cool and excellent chart from Peter Fenton.

Let me know what you think.

Second London OpenCoffee Club keeps buzzing

Thanks to everyone who came along to our second OpenCoffee Club last Thursday. Once again we blew away Starbucks' daily numbers (we were over 6x their normal revenues).

We had another great turnout with an eclectic crowd of entrepreneurs, investors, developers and marketers, plus London's startup movers and shakers including Robert, Sam and Judith.

What really stood out for me this week was the feeling of people clustering into short meetings and really getting work done. OpenCoffee is deliberately during the day to encourage real professional networking rather than social networking - so the vibe of people getting things done and making connections is really excellent.

For entrepreneurs looking for feedback or advice on funding, again there was a great turnout from investors with Nic (Espirit), Avid (Accel), Greg & Danny (Index), Steve (DN Capital), Robin (TAG) and John (Folio) all coming along. New and very welcome this week were Adam (Arts Alliance) and Mark from Venrex who have invested in Smythsons and Astley Clarke.

There are some really interesting young entrepreneurs around London at the moment and this week Douglas (Extate), Ivailo (Zoomf), Immad (Revmap), Anthony (ParkatmyHouse), and Sumon (Jobably), Damien (New Bamboo) and Gareth (Technovate) were some of the folks around.

Two companies starting to generate significant buzz were there as well.

The first is an old timer: GNR, the folks behind .name are riding an enormous wave right now as Microsoft, AOL, Symantec, Digg & Netvibes pile into OpenID. The issue of digital identity is back to being front and centre again and Geir & Hakon are a great position.

The second is new: Imagini, which is currently one of the fastest growing UK web properties and who's Friend's service made the most popular story on Digg in the last 24 hours.

Next week sees more OpenCoffee including Palo Alto, Paris and Amsterdam. Sacramento, Dublin, Brighton and Zagreb are also on their way with conversations happening at the moment to look at setting things up in Hamburg, Tel Aviv and Stockholm.

OpenCoffee is easy to do - and whether there are 5 people or 50, it's all good - so make it happen locally wherever you are and push your local investors, entrepreneurs and developers to come along.

The wiki is on its way - it should debut next week. Please keep sending me feedback and comments so we can keep the momentum going.

OpenCoffee Club: structure vs free-form

People have been giving me some really fabulous feedback on OpenCoffee Club since the first meeting last Thursday. Phil Wilkinson has put up a really thoughtful post on his Crowdstorm blog.

Phil is a smart guy, who cares passionately about improving the scene here in Europe and he really gets the motivation behind OpenCoffee - in fact I couldn't have put it better myself:

"Imagine it more as a big open lounge where people come and go, talk to others in their industry, showcase demo’s of what they are working on, save the world, and ultimately maybe get some work done and run a few small meetings."

Phil also brings up some great points about the principles and spirit behind OpenCoffee Club which I wanted to comment on:

Let’s not treat it just another social networking event - if you don’t make it along, it’s not the end of the world - there’s one every week. You don’t have to go round speaking to everyone - sometimes it’s good to meet a few good people and a few in-depth discussions - the other people will probably be there next week!

>> Right on - the whole point is that OpenCoffee should feel like a public office for people interested in startups. One of the things I liked about last week was the lack of pressure because it's a regular occurrence in a regular place.

More demonstrations - let’s have more of these. We noticed one or two people going to one of the tables and just showing some new technology or even what they have been working on to-date. Definitely should be much more of this. You never know, it might stir some ideas for business partnerships with people or they may be able to match you with people who can help and enhance your offering. Plus, it’s much more fun!

>> Completely agree and I know there are other folks who want this as well. I think a good model is the one in NYC by my good friend, Scott Heiferman with his NYC Tech Meetups. I'm working on finding a good venue for this to tie into OpenCoffee (any offers let me know), but I also loved the informality last week of people just firing up their laptops and showing people what they're working on.

Never, ever, have name badges or colour coded tags: it’s not that type of event and never should be. It’s not even an event - it’s a place where internet people come and go for coffee, chat, and a cake.

>> Yes. Yes. Yes. I know a lot of peple have commented in our Meetup group that they'd like First Tuesday or FOWA like stickers - OpenCoffee is not this kind of an event, as Phil said it's a place and I like the idea that you have to find out what people do by actually (careful!) talking to them.

Filtering the people - which can be a bit controversial. Last week was perfect - a great blend of good people from our internet industry who could potentially add real value to someone else’s business or aspirations. Now, what I don’t want to see, and I’m sure everyone else feels the same, is a bunch of PR execs, recruiters & headhunters, or bob from the stationary department at big corp X coming along because they smell opportunity. If we want it to become the cult of e-cademy, then that’s the quickest way to go about it. Let’s just be polite but firm if they saunter on to our pad.

>> This is controversial. I have to say my view is no filtering - open means open, it's up to the people who come to do what Phil is and make sure we are making the most of it' Let's aim as Marc Eisenstadt for an"overwhelmingly positive can-do atmosphere, and the very high signal-to-noise ratio."

Journalists, VC’s, and Angels are more than welcome and we should help give them some fun and interesting stories, and opportunities. These guys often have a good perspective on the industry as a whole and are definitely worth talking to in the non-pitch sense. Remember, they’re here to take part too and get away from people trying to sell them things - at least for a few hours.

>> Of course they are welcome, we're helping to kick it off :) One of the big points for me with OpenCoffee is to make investment more transparent to entrepreneurs and exactly as Phil says, move away from the pitch to the conversation. Investors can give entrepreneurs really valuable feedback and hopefully in this environment this can happen in a pressure free way.

Phil also references Ben Metcalfe's views that we should look to sharing learning experience with the great talent in the US. I spent seven years working in the US from 1995-2002 at and with startups both big (Microsoft) and small (Firefly) - I learnt an enormous amount and still treasure and keep very active the relationships I developed.

We're so easily connected now I'd encourage anyone who's not experienced the buzz of a Silicon Valley start-up to get on a plane and spend a week out there meeting people. Keith Teare, someone who has experienced startups both in Europe (easynet) and the Valley (realnames, Techcrunch and edgeio) will be hosting an OpenCoffee Club especially for folks coming from outside the US looking to be plugged into the Valley.

In 10 days since OpenCoffee Club was announced we've had events in London and Dublin - there are also now events planned in Paris, Amsterdam, Cambridge, New York, Seattle and Boulder.

The enthusiasm is great and this completely in synch with vision of being able to go to any entrepreneurial hub and meeting other like-minded startup freaks - let's keep it rolling, and yes, the wiki is on it's way to connect us all up :)

Thanks for a great first OpenCoffee Club

Wow. Thanks to everyone who turned up today for London's first OpenCoffee Club - our friends at Starbucks were overwhelmed when more than 75 of you turned up. They told me they sold 6x more drinks this Thursday morning than usual, so we expect the red carpet treatment next week :)

If you missed it, no worries, its on at the same time and same place next week - 10-12 in Starbucks inside Esprit, which is at 178-182 Regent St - just sign up at Meetup or come along.

It was so cool to see such an diverse mix of entrepreneurs, developers, marketers, investors (VC and angel) and media all in the same informal space - not pitching, just sharing ideas.

There were some really promising entrepreneurs and businesses. Hopefully people made some good connections. I really hope that we can keep up the open atmosphere and help one another improve our businesses - feedback is so important, and in an informal setting can be even more powerful.

One of the coolest things for me was meeting Clementine and Rebecca, two 23 year-old entrepreneurs who had built their online business on less than a shoe-string and were just clearly really excited about what they were building.

There's some coverage of the event by Mike, Robin and the Guardian's Organgrinder.

Some of the comments from people who came along:

"it was an amazing crowd - entrepreneurs, VCs and journalists from London and surroundings. Result - awesome networking with very clued in people" (Hakon, entrepreneur)

"Excellent - v high signal/noise ratio, and everyone had a 'can-do' attitude which I love..." (Marc, entrepreneur and R&D supremo)

"Good chance too catch up with everyone and get acquainted with some new faces. I see a great future for these meetings, I mean where else do you get to demo your app to several great VCs over coffee. See you there next week!" (Damien, Ruby guru)

"There seems to be a real buzz around these type of events now. A lot of us now know each other and everyone's moving forward and getting real traction." (Peter, entrepreneur & developer)

"Great atmosphere and some great people. I got way more out of it than I thought I would - and that isn’t meant to sound like I went in with low expectations. I didn’t. I’m looking forward to the next one." (Nic, VC)

Mike and Michael also have some pictures.

I'm really interested to hear more feedback from people who came along and also how OpenCoffee went in Ireland today -- please let us know guys.

Looking forward to seeing folks next week - and seeing more OpenCoffee clubs popping up very soon.

First meeting of OpenCoffee Club

It's happening tomorrow in London from 10-12 in Starbucks inside Esprit, which is at 178-182 Regent St.

Thanks to everyone for your great comments and positive feedback so far.

There seems to be an interesting crowd coming along tomorrow from VCs & investors like Nic (Esprit Capital - not fashion), Avid (Accel), Robin (TAG) to entrepreneurs like Michael (Firebox, MindCandy), Phil (Crowdstorm, Kelkoo UK), Judith (Second Chance Tuesday), Richard & Damon (Zebtab), James (Studentbeans), Joel (Messagr) and the recently funded Walid (TrustedPlaces) as well as Sam Sethi, folks from Skype and top-notch developers.

We don't really know what to expect, but it's exciting that people are coming along and we'll have a chance to meet and chat about whatever is on people's minds.

Separately we have OpenCoffee Clubs popping up in Ireland and Croatia - plus I'm really excited to be working with Brad Feld (Mobius) who will be hosting a club in Colorado and helping me spread the word among the VC blogging community on his Feedburner network.

We'll be pulling together a wiki in the coming weeks - and already some great people have registered (www.opencoffee.info and www.opencoffee.biz), kindly offering to donate time and energy into helping to foster the community. I've registered opencoffeeclub.com and .org - so anyone who's interested in helping out and pulling OpenCoffee resources together, please let me know.

Looking forward to seeing people tomorrow and helping to grow the OpenCoffee movement.

Ben's presentation on VC Funding at FOWA

Ryan Carson and many others were real fans of Ben's presentation on VC funding at FOWA - even one of the Slideshare founders loved it :)

So thanks to Ben, here it is:



There's no doubt the process of getting funding (from anyone, let alone VCs) can be pretty complicated and nontransparent, but this is a great presentation which really cuts to the chase and explains the basics.

Fred Destin and Nic Brisbourne in the UK and Brad Feld, David Hornick and Fred Wilson in the US also do a great job on their blogs of making VC more accessible. There is also a new resource worth checking out calling Startupping.

Having been an entrepreneur who raised money from VCs at Firefly and Lovefilm and an angel investor backing entrepreneurs (Spotrunner, Daylife, Moo, Mindcandy etc) in both the US and Europe and now that I'm working with a VC firm, I completely agree with Ben's view that VC funding may not right for every business but where it makes sense it can make a big difference.

If you have any questions on funding, please post comments and if I know I'll answer and if not I'll try get you answers. If you're an entrepreneur in London come along to an OpenCoffee club or start one locally and try persuade your local VCs to come along and see what they're missing :)

OpenCoffee Club

What is it?
This is an attempt to establish recognized, open and regular meeting places where entrepreneurs can meet with investors (and anyone else who fancies coming along) in a totally informal setting.

The key is a regular place and a regular time - it's not important who comes along, some days it might be no one - just that people know if they want to meet, this is the time and this is the place.

We want to create some density for people -- a few places where people know they can meet or bump into others.

Something that can be replicated anywhere else at little or no cost -- though we do want to build a list of all the places (wiki to come) where entrepreneurs can meet and know people might be around for them to talk with.

Where and when is it?
The first one will be held every Thursday morning from 10-12 starting from March 1, 2007.

Click here to check out
The Regent St, London OpenCoffee Club Meetup!

I'll be there every week so if you want to drop by and chat - or just share the wifi - I'd love to see you.

I will be at the Starbucks inside Espirit which is at 178-182 Regent Street.


Who's invited?
Anyone. This is not about meeting me (or anyone else in particular), hopefully it's about giving people focussed times and places where they can hang out and connect with others -- not locked inside an office or at a private members club.

Why?
Well, one of the things I've heard repeatedly over the last few weeks is:

1. investors are inaccessible
   
2. entrepreneurs need regular physical space to meet, not just each other but also also network with investors and corporates

I totally agree with point 1-- we all get an enormous amount from informal contact.

What I don't agree with is the idea that the space should be permanent, owned or closed (private office or members club) -- I should be able to go to cities all over the world and know which places (and at what times) I'm most likely to meet other entrepreneurs.

There are thousands of public places with cheap wifi (check out Skype Zones or FON).

What can you do?
If you're an investor or entrepreneur, start and promote your own OpenCoffee Club location -- please let me know so we can maintain a list (again: wiki will follow soon).

If you're in London on a Thursday morning come along and hang out from 10-12 to Starbucks on Regent St.

Hope to see some of you next week, feel free to e-mail me [saul at klein dot name] or a leave comment if you fancy coming along.

Thanks are due...
To Ryan Carson and the team, who put on FOWA in London this week- they are really trying to inspire the startup developer culture and did a great job with their event bringing an excellent group of people together from across Europe. They even tempted some stars from the over the ocean to join us like Bradley Horowitz, Tara Hunt (who really opened my eyes to the ideas behind BarCamp) and Kevin Rose.

To Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher, who are doing a phenomenal job getting people in London and the UK talking about startups and at who's breakfast this morning this idea germinated. Robert Loch is also really bringing people in London together with his Internet People dinners.

To the very excellent Michael Arrington who introduced me to Reshma Sohoni at 3i who I know is going to start the second OpenCoffee Club on her side of London.

To the ever inspirational Scott Heiferman, one of the smartest brains on the web and the man behind Meetup.com - as well as game changing businesses like itraffic and fotolog.

To my very good friend Danny, who is letting me out the Starbucks is hidden upstairs inside Espirit, it pretty big, almost unused and it's been a secret meeting place for him for way too long :)

To my wife - our family's OpenCoffee Club pioneer.

Processing feedback on Y Europe

Thanks to everyone so far who has commented on last week's post on why Europe can seed great startups in the coming years.

There has been a really encouraging response so far: not only in the really thoughtful comments people have left but also in the e-mails that I've been sent.

I'm delighted that people feel this is an issue we need to be addressing and are keen to participate.

As suspected a few issues have kept on surfacing:

• crisis of confidence - fear of taking risks, fear of failure
  
• inferiority complex - the Silicon Valley shadow looms large and long
  
• lack of dense networks - for hiring, funding or just bouncing around ideas
  

A few things I want to be clear on so far:

• we don't have a name yet for what we'll be doing (thanks to Phil and Sam for suggestions, keep them coming)
• we're not planning an incubator (i'm really not convinced that's the right model) -- right now we're just starting a conversation and finding out what people need and want to help them succeed
  
• we do want to gather people together in the summer to get the ball rolling

There has been a lot of quality thinking on this issue for some time now (see a great post from last year by Gabor) and what's clear is that there is no silver bullet.

Let me repeat, I'm still not sure the YCombinator model is right for where we are in Europe - it might be part of the solution. But now we're talking, I know we'll find the right approach (maybe approaches) that will work for us.

I still think better education, awareness and transparency of information on how companies are built, funded and exited is one of the biggest issues. If you want to find out more about funding and you're at FOWA, you should stop by and hear Ben Holmes' presentation on Tuesday.

We simply do not have enough experience in Europe yet of building great early stage businesses - but it's happening and there are more and more knowledgeable people around (entrepreneurs, investors, service providers etc) to ask questions and find answers.

So let's keep asking questions -- or start asking them at least -- and please keep the comments coming.

If you want to discuss this in person, I'll be at FOWA tomorrow and speaking on a panel at lunchtime on Wednesday wiht my friends Richard from Moo and Tariq from Netvibes. Looking forward to seeing you there or online.

Bio [June 09 semi-update]

SAUL KLEIN bio

Now based in London, Saul is a Partner at Index Ventures. He is also a Founding Partner of The Accelerator Group (TAG), as well as the founder of OpenCoffee Club and Seedcamp.

Saul joined Index as a Partner in February 2007, having worked with the Index team as a founder (Video Island), an exec (Skype) and as a co-investor (Moo, Mind Candy, Last.fm, Stardoll, Netlog). He now serves on the boards of MyHeritage, Glassesdirect, Songkick, Alertme and Lovefilm.

Until September 2007 he remained an advisor to Skype, where he had served as a member of the executive team from 2005 through the acqusition by eBay, running global marketing and eCommerce.

TAG is an active seed investor, which Saul runs with Robin, his father.

TAG works closely with top-tier investment partners across Europe and in the US to provide seed stage entrepreneurs with the active support, critical connections and access to capital they need to build ambitious global digital businesses. Some of TAG's investments include: bit.ly, Daylife, Moo, Wonga, Stardoll, Imagini, Zoopla, Fizzback, Dopplr, Fotonauts, OpenX, Slideshare, Zemanta, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck.

He also serves on the board of directors of bridges.org, a non-profit based in Washington DC and South Africa focused on shaping actionable global policy to drive the adoption of ICT in developing countries.

Saul has recently been honoured by the World Technology Network 2006 award for Marketing Communications, he also has written a regular column on New Media for The Guardian.

Before joining Skype, Saul was the Co-Founder & CEO of Lovefilm International (previously Video Island)

Lovefilm International (previously Video Island) manages Europe's largest online DVD rental services with over 1m subscribers in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany. Services are delivered directly through it's own brand Lovefilm as well as through a fully integrated platform for leading national brands such as Tesco and easyGroup.

Since its commercial launch in September 2003, Video Island has raised nearly $30m from top-tier venture capital firms Index Ventures, Balderton Capital and DFJ Esprit.

Prior to establishing TAG, Saul was Group Program Manager for Web Platform Services at Microsoft.

At Microsoft, Saul managed the strategy, service definition and roll-out for the Microsoft Passport which now has over 300m subscribers and is at the centre of their .net strategy, as well as driving the $250m acquisition of Link Exchange to accelerate Microsoft's entry into the small business web services market.

In addition, working with the COO, he was also responsible for leading Microsoft's company-wide privacy initiatives, including developing the role of Chief Privacy Officer. Saul managed Microsoft’s relationships with TrustE, Better Business Bureau, the US Federal Trade Commission, US Commerce Department and Online Privacy Alliance, as well as the leading the development of the Microsoft Privacy Wizard for small businesses and Microsoft's relationship with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on the implementation of the ground-breaking Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) technology standard. He is a founding member of TrustE and served on their Board of Directors.

From February 1996 to their acquisition by Microsoft in April 1998, Saul was SVP, Brand & Strategy at Firefly Network.

At Firefly, Saul had overall responsibility for managing marketing, business development and communications, growing Firefly into one of the Web's most recognized brands with over 3m members and 50 customers including Yahoo!, Barnes & Noble, Merrill Lynch, Ziff-Davis, Reuters and Launch.

Saul also oversaw the successful market release of three versions of Firefly’s award-winning advanced personalization software, as well leading Firefly's pioneering P3P and ICE Internet standards initiatives with Microsoft, Netscape, Oracle, Procter & Gamble and Mastercard. Advertising Age recognized him in 1996 as one of their Top 25 Digital Marketers.

Before joining Firefly, Saul was Director of Digital Communications at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide.

At Ogilvy & Mather, working closely with the CEO, Mindshare, the Chairman, Ogilvy EMEA and the CFO at Ogilvy, Saul established and managed their digital media and e-branding business, working to develop award-winning integrated branding, marketing & media strategies for Guinness, Ford, Unilever, Argos and IBM, as well as launching the UK’s first secure e-commerce platform in partnership with Barclays Bank, and managing Ogilvy & Mather's relationships with the MIT Media Lab, WPP.com and ICM.

From 1992 to 1994, Saul was at The Telegraph Group in London, where he was responsible for developing the group's electronic publishing strategy and co-founding The Electronic Telegraph, the world's first daily newspaper on the Internet as well as founding Fantasy Football, which added over 1m new readers to the marketing database in its first year of operation and was awarded the Grand Prix of Grand Prix for the best newspaper promotion of the last 30 years.

Selected Articles & Publications:

• "Google TV here we come" (Guardian, April 11, 2005)
• "Amazon gambles on the high street" (Guardian, March 28, 2005)
  
• "The real online desktop publishing revolution" (Guardian, November 30, 2004)
• "How to click with your customers" (Guardian, September 6, 2004)
• "Why camera phones will go mainstream" (Guardian, July 5, 2004)
• "Salvation for the record industry" (Guardian, June 7, 2004)
• "The privacy debate: this time it's personal" (Guardian, April 26, 2004)
• "Good news about the next boom" (Guardian, March 29, 2004)
• "A cheap way to change the world" (Guardian, February 23, 2004)
• "What if retailers ran their own papers?" (Guardian, January 19, 2004)
• "Customer Relationships: The Net's New Currency" (Industry Standard, Mar 06 2000)
• "Using P3P for E-commerce" (W3C Note, 29 November 1999)
• "Architecture is Policy", EFF, Microsoft, Ernst & Young White Paper on Privacy (Apr '99)
• US Patent 5872850: System for enabling information marketplace (Feb. 16, 1999)

Y Europe can seed growth of its new stars

Europe has so far under-delivered in terms of globally successful technology startups.

But we're starting to turn a corner in Europe as we start to leverage some of our emerging assets. We've always had great talent (especially in academia & research institutions), but now we also successful entrepreneurial role models, sophisticated early-stage financing and the ability to start and test businesses at low-cost as well.

We should stop worrying about why we're not Silicon Valley and start thinking about what we can do with the great advantages we have. So this is really a call to arms: for first-time European entrepreneurs to let us know what they need to improve their chances of global success and for serial entrepreneurs and investors to figure out how we can better support the best ideas and talent.

We have a real chance to improve how we find, develop and accelerate the growth of our best European ideas - we need to work together to figure it out.

London's emerging young entrepreneurial scene
This issue has really come into focus for me as I've started to spend time with some of the rare people who are coming straight out of university to start Internet businesses. Some are staying in the UK and some have headed off to Silicon Valley - but I've been really impressed by the appetite for building startups by this group drawn primarily from Oxford and Imperial universities.

For the London startup community, Imperial and its talent pool must be one of our best hidden secrets. It's rated 1st in Europe and 4th in the world for technology by the Times Higher Education Supplement. Imperial's Computer Science department has around 600 undergrads and 400 PhDs, so it's great to see some of these people begin to start companies. In fact the student body has created Imperial Entrepreneurs (disclosure: I'm one of the founding patrons) to help potential student entrepreneurs reach out to London's established entrepreneurial and venture community to kick start opportunities.

How they've been doing it in the New World
Here in the old world, this is new news but in the US of course this is an old story. Schools like Stanford, MIT and Berkeley have long been known for producing great teams who come straight out of school and start significant businesses.

In fact in the last five years, this phenomenon has spread beyond this technical trio to encompass even liberal arts schools like Harvard (Facebook) and the amazing alumni like Scott Banister and Max Levchin of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who have been behind great businesses in the last 10 years (LinkExchange, Ironport, Overture, PayPal and Slide).

Stanford with Google and Yahoo! to its name is the benchmark by which all other schools are measured. At Stanford, talented students not only have a faculty that encourages innovation, but of course they have Sand Hill Rd (and developed angel networks) on their doorstep for funding plus an MBA program and hundreds of technology businesses in the area to draw from for hiring.

These networks become self-perpetuating and are replicate anywhere. Silicon Valley is unlikely to ever be equaled as a magnet for innovation unless something very fundamental changes, but there is no reason why London in particular and Europe in general can't start to really compete in the creation of global success stories.

So how can Europe start to compete?

1. Availability of Talent
   
   Europe has incredible depth and breadth of talent. Skype is perhaps one of Europe's first global Internet success stories and it has exposed me to some of the most amazing developers and product people working in technology today -- these are people who are from Estonia, Denmark, Russia and Sweden.
   
   We think of these markets (like India) as being a source of cheap talent, but this misses the point entirely - this talent is world-class. Check out the stats on Topcoder and you'll see that Russia, Poland not just holding their own with the US but ahead in competitions - and Ukraine and Slovakia not far behind. Given the web was developed at CERN and some of the great successes of the open source market like Linux and mySQL were both born in Europe we shouldn't be surprised.
   
   Somehow we have persuaded ourselves in Europe that the US has all the talent, but if you look at the chart from Eurostat below you'll see that in 10 European countries including Lithuania, Ireland, Belgium and Switzerland have more science & technology graduates per head of population than in the US.
   
   Now of course you need more than just great engineers, mathematicians or biologists to make great disruptive companies but this mix and diversity of talent is actually something where London and many other major European cities are blessed. There are plenty of experienced commercial marketers, product managers and financial types around to help build out a business once it starts to take hold.
   
   Critically, we still don't have a deep pool of experienced startup talent in Europe, but one positive from the bubble of the late 90s is that it bloodied a generation of employees who know what it's like to ride the roller coaster of success and failure in a startup. Of course Silicon Valley and Boston has several generations of this kind of employee but tasting and learning from startup failure (as well as success) is something which Europe needs more time and experience to compete.
   
   Many would argue Europe also needs a major change of attitude (and possibly legislation) here. Failure or bankruptcy is not culturally accepted in Europe, but if we want to encourage the abundance of talent to start and join early-stage companies trying to change the world, we need to accept there will be many many more flops than hits.
   
   If we want European talent to stop feeling disheartened and start saying "I don't have to go to Silicon Valley to do this", we need to support failure and encourage people to take the risks you need to think and succeed big.
   
   
2. Sophisticated Funding
   
   A major part of supporting success or failure is funding. Library House have just conducted some very interesting research which breaks down venture capital investment into geographic clusters which takes an analysis of the US market beyond the national level. In this view, California and Boston are way ahead of the game but the UK is #3 worldwide in terms of investment.
   
   Funding is only one piece of the jigsaw. It's not just the access to capital, but it's access to investors who have ambitions to build big global businesses, not just local players.
   
   Ambitious entrepreneurs have been educated to believe that you need to have a US investor to build a global business, but there is certainly a much more developed and competitive market for backing European entrepreneurs today than there was even 5 years ago. When I started Video Island (now Lovefilm International) in 2002, there were very few Silicon Valley style, top-tier VCs ( Index and Benchmark) willing to back consumer Internet businesses but now there are several in the game (including Accel and Atlas). These established firms and very strong local players like Mangrove, Northzone (Scandinavia), Gemini (Israel), Wellington (Germany) and others, are all looking for and prepared to back teams that want to take on and change the world.
   
   There are also now a significant network of serial seed-investors and entrepreneurs - who are lending both their capital and experience to build and back European start-ups. These include Niklas Zennstrom (FON), Martin Varvasky (Netvibes), Stefan Glanzer (Last.fm), Pierre Chappaz (Netvibes, Wikio), the Samwers (Hitflip, Wunderloop), Simon Murdoch (Lovefilm, Viagogo), Klaus Hommels (Stardoll, OpenBC) and Brent Hoberman (WAYN, Moveme). At TAG alone, we have invested in around 10 European start-ups in the last four years.
   
   There has been quite an active discussion recently about the funding gap for European start-ups, but in funding terms, I don't think there has been a better time to get a start-up funded in Europe. Index has just closed a €350m fund.
   
   
3. Role Models & Ecosystem
   
   The same can be said for the availability of both companies and people are can provide role models to first time entrepreneurs about what can be done.
   
   Larry & Sergey at Google and Jerry & David at Yahoo! needed there to have been Jobs & Wozniak at Apple or Gates & Allen at Microsoft. In Europe, we are only just beginning to recognize that if Niklas & Janus can do it with Skype, then why not others?
   
   Why not indeed. There is nowhere near as many examples of people creating global technology businesses in Europe as in the US, but you just need a few examples. Skype was a watershed moment in how European entrepreneurs can think about their potential, both in terms of exit and global footprint (only around 20% of the business comes from the US).
   
   We now have several businesses born in Europe that have the potential to make a global impact and they are spread across the Continent: including last.fm (London), Netvibes (Paris), Habbo (Helsinki), FON (Madrid), Skype (Tallin & London) and Rebtel & Stardoll (Stockholm). We also have a generation of second and third time entrepreneurs who are not only helping to seed the next generation but are also now focussed on building their own new businesses.
   
   There is also now a growing ecosystem of support services -- lawyers, communication agencies and recruiters -- that have experience working with startups and helping them scale.
   
   
4. Globalization
   
   Perhaps one of the key factors that is swinging into Europe's favour is the changing dynamics of the Internet and globalization. Ten years ago, in fact even five, you could not consider building a global technology business without starting in the US but that is not true today.
   
   The Internet outside the US is bigger than the inside and that trend is only accelerating. Google, eBay and Yahoo all know this and the fact that YouTube is already over 65% international in less than two years from launch shows that the US in no longer an island.
   
   Against many important measures -- broadband penetration, % online advertising spend and mobile phone adoption -- the US is no longer the world's most important market. This is not for one minute to say that the US shouldn't part a major part of every ambitious startup's plans but if for example you want to be in the market with the largest share of online advertising as part of the marketing mix, you want to be in the UK.
   
   Skype again is a great case study of a business that did well to look East before it looked West. Today Asia is a major part of its community and several developing country markets like Poland, Brazil and Turkey are very significant as well. European companies are ideally placed to take advantages of these globalizing trends and not just because of their location.
   
   Location is important, but in this case, an attitude which is attuned to being open to other cultures is actually more important. No European market is big enough to sustain a single-market player, so no ambitious European technology business thinks either single geography or language. Where Netflix could create a major player by thinking US only, that is not an option for Lovefilm. If you start your business in Tel Aviv, Stockholm or Tallin you can bet you're thinking from day 1 about how you can take your products to a global market - if you start your business in Palo Alto, international is probably an after thought.
   
   
5. Start Up Costs
   
   Open source technologies have evolved to a level of maturity and popularity that if you are a talented developer with a great idea for an Internet application your only really significant costs are your time. Amazon's web services have even started to push bandwidth and storage into an area of affordability.
   
   The barriers are now incredibly low for creating software applications which you can get out onto the Web, expose to a global audience, get feedback and iterate.
   
   Starting small doesn't mean that you're not going to need funding to hire and scale up if you have a real business to pursue, but what it does mean is that you can find out very quickly and cheaply if your idea has traction. There is a big difference between an idea (which is easy to discard) and a business that has taken on people, costs and commitments (which is very hard to discard both rationally and emotionally).
   
   We have a great opportunity today to test more ideas, which we can do very quickly and cheaply, and start businesses which have a better chance of succeeding.