Traveling Geeks

An Israeli’s Take on UK Startups

Ayelet Noff of Blonde 2.0 and contributor to TechCrunch Europe, The Next Web and Social Media.biz, talks about her experience on the Traveling Geeks tour to London as well as some of her favorite startups. Below, we’re chatting outside the TechCrunch Europa Awards event in London.

Wonga’s Short Term Loan Solution

Wonga’s CEO and Founder Errol Damelin talks to me about their short term lending solution.

Wonga, an Accel Partners funded company based in the UK, focuses on short term cash advances, which is also suitable for mobile. Over 100,000 loans have gone through their system already and it’s growing.

People are using Wonga today to solve short-term cashflow problems. One of the things that is making people adopt it so quickly is that it’s fast, easy, convenient and easy to use.

Within an hour, you can have short term cash in your hands and the whole application process only takes a few minutes. Tune in for more below.

Sam Opens Falafel Stand in Brick Lane

I ran into Sam El Abd in one of my favorite parts of London, Brick Lane.

We’re close in age and his background is IT, but like so many I know, got laid off because of the credit crunch.

He talked to him about his dream of opening a falafel Stand in Brick Lane, the first stall in the area’s well known curry mile. (think: best curries in London. They’re hot, but they’re amazing). Listen to his dream. He officially opened it last week.

In the MOO’d to be Creative? Richard Moross Has Some Fun Ideas for You #TG2009

While in London last week, I had the delightful opportunity to meet the founder and CEO of Moo.com. If you haven’t seen all the great things you can create with your images and Richard’s printing capabilities, you should click below to check out the options.

MOO PRODUCTS

Richard Moross of MOO.com

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UK Diary: Thursday – Ecoconsultancy At Shakespeare’s Globe – Why Innovate?

Thursday afternoon the Traveling Geeks are at The Swan, which is attached to the recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre on the Southbank.

The event is organized by Econsultancy , a digital marketing firm, and led by Ashley Friedlein, CEO and Co-Founder (See my photo above.)

There are about a hundred people gathered in a large room. I’m sitting at one of several tables, crowded with people and bottles of water, and we’re talking about innovation.

There are many people from large UK firms at the table, all talking about how they try to encourage innovation within their companies. It’s not easy.

I make several points about innovation. The most important one is that large companies want innovation badly but they can’t innovate. But they want to innovate because there is no end of consultants that tell them they will die if they don’t innovate.

Well, they will die anyway. There is a finite lifespan to large organizations and that’s just the way it is — innovation or not.

An organization is successful because it knows how to monetize a particular business process. Each organization is very bad at changing its culture of monetization. Much better to buy-in the innovation.

Afterwards, I talk with Mathys van Abbe, the founder of Moby Picture, a fast growing Dutch startup (and one of my current favorites.) “Why don’t corporations just concentrate on doing what they do better? They can’t innovate and they don’t need to.” I agree.

UK Diary: Thursday – A Visit To Accel Partners – UK Is Tough On Startups

Thursday morning the Traveling Geeks head to Accel Partners, one of the top European VC firms, to hear presentations from:

• Errol Damelin, founder and CEO of Wonga

• Kristian Segerstrale, founder and CEO of Playfish

• John Newton, founder, Chairman and CTO of Alfresco

• Joe Cohen, Founder and CEO of Seatwave

• Michael Smith , Founder and CEO of  MindCandy

• Celia Francis, CEO of WeeWorld

[Please see Susan Bratton: http://blogs.personallifemedia.com/dishymix/accel-partners-london-hosts-the-traveling-geeks-tg2009-who-is-coming-to-lunch-find-out/2009/07/07/ ]

Accel is still making investments, which is very rare among European VC firms (and Silicon Valley firms too).

I chat with John Newton, an American based in London and CEo of Alfresco, and also Joe Cohen from Seatwave, about the UK startup scene. Here are some highlights:

– It is much harder to found and run a startup in the UK.

– Government policies do not favor startups, there are unfavorable tax provisions for stock options. And the government doesn’t get the digital economy.

– It is hard to find the right people with the right skills in the UK and they cost more.

– Government buys software from the large vendors, very little from startups, 85 per cent of government spending on IT goes to the top 8 US vendors.

– Large US companies headquartered in London tend to tie up much of the top local talent.

– Some UK startups are restructuring outside of the country to take advantage of more favorable tax and other conditions.

– London has a huge number of foreign nationals. You can run a foreign office from the UK by hiring any nationality, it reduces need for larger staffs in local regional offices.

– Risk taking in the UK is changing for the better.

What I’ll Use to Start My Next Two Industry Associations: GroupSpaces #TG2009

I’ve been on the founding board of two industry associations, the IAB and the ADM. We started the Internet Advertising Bureau in 1997 when venture funding was free flowing like champagne at an @PaulCarr rendezvous and though we felt some financial constraint, there were plenty of dues to be had to fund our site and manage the business.

Not so with the Association for Downloadable Media, which started in 2007, with very small coffers in an increasingly tight industry. Chris MacDonald, the Chairman and the executive team have had to manage every penny, with a lot of our costs going to dues management, voting infrastructure and other expenses that didn’t move the needle on our agenda to help podcasters monetize their content.

I wish we’d had GroupSpaces two years ago, instead of Avectra and the other very poor tools we’ve had to use to run our industry assocation. In London at a NESTA and Seedcamp “Speed Dating” event, I was introduced to David Langer, founder of GroupSpaces. The company focuses on helping clubs, societies, associations and other groups with the myriad tasks that suck time from people who typically volunteer. Here is a list of features:

Members Database – Mailing List Email Discussions – Forum Social Network – Polls

Events Manage Registrations Promote – Take Payments Schedule Times & Places

Website Create Pages – Share Files Public or members-only Integrate with your own site

Just having a payment feature combined with a mailing list is a big huzzah, and it seems like GroupSpaces has done an excellent job understanding the features of their target audience.

Yet another excellent Seedcamp company coming from the UK.

Seedcamp Background Info:

Twitter: @langer

Email: david@groupspaces.com

Website: http://www.groupspaces.com

Contact Phone: +44 (0)7762 222 381

Company Description
GroupSpaces is an Oxford-based startup providing easy-to-use online tools that take the pain out of managing clubs, societies, associations and other real-world groups.
Today, GroupSpaces has over 1,600 groups signed up with almost 160,000 members in total and has worked with over 60 blue-chip advertisers including IBM, BP, JPMorgan, Procter & Gamble and McKinsey.
GroupSpaces was founded in October 2007 and raised seed funding in January 2008. In April 2008, GroupSpaces was selected as one of 20 promising UK Web companies to visit Silicon Valley on the inaugural Web Mission, a week-long trade forum sponsored by UKTI, BT, TechCrunch and HSBC. In December 2008, the founders were selected by Spectator Business in less than a dozen “rising stars of the business world” aged under-25. In March 2009, GroupSpaces won the MIT Global Startup Workshop pitch competition.
GroupSpaces is planning its next funding round for later this year.
About David: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Langer

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Corporate Blogging Through the Ages – Skype then and now

This is a re-post from Techcrunch Europe.

My fellow Traveling Geeks companion, Robert Scoble (aka the Scobleizer) and Peter Parkes from Skype were interviewed by Renee Blodgett who is the CEO of Magic Sauce Media, Co-founder of The Traveling Geeks and Founder and Producer of We Blog the World. We set up shop on the streets of London directly in front of the hotel we stayed in, the Malmaison, which naturally picked up the sweet sounds of British school children playing in the background. The topic for Renee’s interview today: Corporate blogging through the ages. Park’s role at Skype is essentially to take care of every bit of Skype that touches the social web (blogging, twitter, etc.), so he has personally witnessed the changes of social media in the corporate world. During this chat he delves into the differences of social media’s role during Skype 2006 and Skype now.

In this second video I interview Peter, this time accompanied by Experience Manager for Skype, Neil Dodd. Dodd currently deals with everything user experience related for Skype for Windows. The two discuss specifically how Skype uses social media to receive feedback and also to help blow up their new product launches, such as Skype 4.1 for Windows, which was launched last week. Dodd tells us about the new features in Skype 4.1 for Windows and Peter reveals his Twitter identity!

Turning Science into Product: Cambridge Consultants #TG2009

One of our stops on the tour of Cambridge innovation centers included a trip to Cambridge Consultants. This “consultancy” takes new discoveries in science and technology, helps with patents, and envisioning and creating products for companies around the world. The show and tell was intriguing and here are some of the devices showcased:

Holographic Radar

Conventional radar sensors scan the field of view by mechanically rotating a narrow-beam antenaa. You’ve seen them in a million movies. New active phased arrays still capture information from a small area of the wider view. Now, holographic radar covers a whole field of view using many beams simultaneously. This data requires Teraflops of processing, but what it lets you do is actually “see” through solid walls and track multiple moving items. This is an excellent application for SWAT teams to see humans inside buildings in a hostage situation.

This radar was actually created to help air transportation spot the new windpower generators, which look like other airplanes to traditional radar.

Here’s what the device looks like:

Holographic Radar Device

We also saw some wireless medical devices of the future incuding devices that connect to the web and record you taking medicine from an inhaler, activity monitors and prescription dosing tracking systems.  As we age and become more connected, there’s a burgeoning area of technology supporting proactive disease management.

Here are some examples of devices created for Cambridge Consultants’ clients:

Web Connected Medical Devices

Satellite Internet connectivity was another big area for CC. Iridium is their client and they are working on phones and plug in devices for remote locations that allow you to jack into the web.

Iridium Satellite Phone

When we launched @Home Network’s broadband cable modem service here in the Silicon Valley in the late 90’s, we used to create a “Home of the Future” every year in New York and invite our advertisers, the press and our partners in to see what a broadband connected home might be like. Everything we used to show is now in my house, from a celestial jukebox, to WiFi to computers in many rooms. The only thing still missing is the refridgerator that keeps a shopping list. Now at Cambridge Consultants, the focus is on energy management and conservation.

Energy Management Devices from Cambridge Consultants

Another company with whom we met that has a terrific range (see how British I’m sounding?) of home energy management systems is AlertMe.com by founder Pilgrim Beart. After six years working in Silicon Valley in the 1990’s for the likes of Atari and Chromatic Research (now AMD), in 1999 Pilgrim headed back to his home town of Cambridge. Here he founded two companies:activeRF Ltd., an early implementer of asset-location systems, using a variety of short range RF technologies and antenova Ltd., a manufacturer of innovative mass market antenna technology that provides WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity to mobiles and laptops. Now he’s on to saving energy with this terrific bundle of products:

AlertMe.com Home Energy Mangement Systems

Meeting with Cambridge Consultants on the tour helped me see another facet of the Cambridge infrastructure for bringing the innovation from the colleges (did you know there are 31 colleges that make up University of Cambridge and that Trinity, the college noted for science, computer science and technology has had more Nobel Prize winners than any other college in the world?) to the marketplace.

Cambridge is strong in the sciences and computer technology. They have a Angel and VC infrastructure. They have consulting companies to patent and develop products. But what they consistently said they are lacking is “commercialization” skills: PR, marketing and sales. If I didn’t have my own early stage company with Personal Life Media, I would love to move to Cambridge and set up a launch services business. After launching so many companies in Silicon Valley, it would be a delight to bring some of Cambridge’s innovation to market.

Here are two final pics of our time at CC. Thanks to Patrick, Gordon, Duncan, Alastair, Ray and Steven for their gracious hosting of the Traveling Geeks.

Geeks Hanging with Cambridge Consultants

Suz at Cambridge Consultants

Backstage Pass- Real Customer Service

Customer service takes dedication, and Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s list, takes this to a degree you won’t see many places. Every day, whether he’s at home in San Francisco or on the road in England, he attends to his half-time position as customer service rep for the institution he founded.

Each night, as we’ve been winding up or down the evening activities, Craig has bowed out at a reasonable hour to go online and attend to customer issues as they come up. Being +8 hours from San Francisco’s time zone has helped, but it’s still a remarkable thing to see this kind of dedication.

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