Entrepreneurship education

HP buying of Autonomy sparks a public spat and raises questions

2011-10-05T05:49:00.003Z

What a cocktail in the story about the acquisition of Autonomy by HP? The key questions seem to be:
About valuation
Is HP over paying for Autonomy? Since there is no science with respect to valuation then surely the value is in the eye of the beholder and whether or not the Board recommends and the shareholders accept. At approx $11bn – this certainly places Autonomy as a huge success in terms of how two graduates and a business plan can turn a College Start-Up into a multi-billion dollar exit. An amusing side story is the comment made by a senior Chinese banker visiting Cambridge who commented that success in China is not measured so much by the value of one exit, but more by the number of companies one can afford to buy!! This is like saying that wealth is measured by the number of cattle one owns and perhaps the aggregate total of alimony being paid out too!!
Is it good for Cambridge that a local company is being sold to a US firm?
This is harder to answer. One remains optimistic that the total of 9.1% owned by Mike Lynch and his team will convert to local wealth that gets recycled into new ventures through increased business angel type activity. (Mike owns 8.1%). We might look forward to this after the teams have bought their toys and secured their families I guess. The research component will remain in Cambridge, because the sale of a software company means that, in essence, HP has paid for the talent and this, in the main, is unlikely to move to Silicon Valley.
Mike Lynch will now head up the software division of HP, reporting directly to Meg Whitman the new CEO of H.P. This means for the first time we have a Cambridge CEO of a strategic Division of a multinational. It is great credit to the Board and advisers of Autonomy, for being able to groom a world class CEO. So far Cambridge has imported all its “big hitters”. For me the really big news is that Mike Lynch and his start-up co-founder Richard Gaunt have proved that founding teams can go all the way. Too often we hear from venture capitalists that there comes a time when a founding team has to be replaced by “grown-ups”. Well, at last we have an exception to provide role model effects to future generations of entrepreneurs.
The very public spat between Mike Lynch and Larry Ellison of Oracle seems to have got out of hand, so is the deal really good for Autonomy?
The risk to Autonomy does not come from the public entertainment resulting from Larry Ellison’s statements and allegations, but actually from a deeper concern about whether any of the Silicon Valley giants can be good homes for Autonomy? There are several good reasons for HP ownership: - access to global markets, need for high margin business and the change in strategic direction towards software – especially in intelligent search. However, HP has had as many CEOs as the average Premiership Football Club, governance problems, sackings, failed acquisitions, etc.,etc., So one wonders if this Silicon Valley Giant actually has competent management? And Oracle’s leadership is not much more inspired. Perhaps HP has outsmarted Oracle in its purchase of Autonomy because it gains fresh software, insights and capabilities while Oracle might find itself with ageing software that is built on past needs and not on future growth prospects. So – Autonomy is likely to be good for HP and may well shake up Oracle.
The track record of the big Silicon Valley companies has been quite awesome in terms of their size and reach, especially when they are led by entrepreneurial founders and leaders. But there seems to come a time when the behaviour of the CEOs of these giant companies is more Silicon Alley (cats) than Silicon Valley.
I remain and have to remain optimistic about the future of Autonomy. I am more optimistic that the smart people there will eventually recycle through into new companies and we may get a new generation of serial entrepreneurs, something that has not happened for a very long time in Cambridge. The last wave being when Acorn sold to Olivetti which then sold its research to AT+T who eventually shut down the R+D in Cambridge! Many of the highly successful firms in Cambridge today were the alumni of that set of events.
Good karma!

Bank of England at 0.5% but unauthorised OD at 29.5% - Entrepreneurs beware

2010-03-05T15:09:00.007Z

As an educator and mentor to many small firms - I am regularly asked about the behaviour of banks towards entrepeneurs, small firms and those that are riding through tough times. Why do banks not lend, support, how come I get no assistance when I want to grow and so forth?

When I saw the news - that the Bank of England interest is at 0.5% and yet the unauthorised overdraft is at 29.5% - I did feel a sense of outrage. If you go over the limit you have to pay - and I suppose that is "fair enough" - except that the Bank's profit margin is huge. Then here is the rub - you can become "Unauthorised" at the discretion of the bank - it is further in - in the small print - so even if you cause no offence - if the local bank manager decides he no longer wants to support you he can pull the OD facility from you and stick you on the "unauthorised" schedule!! Haha!

Before we decide what to do next - look at the small print:

About 5 clicks in on a pdf document at Barclays is where I found the charges for those who go over drawn without prior authorisation. Here are some extracts. And the story is the same at a couple of other banks that I checked.

"..........to consider making our overdraft service
available to you before your account goes overdrawn or before
you exceed an agreed overdraft limit. Overdrafts provided in this
way are cheaper than unauthorised borrowing.
............The interest rate for unauthorised
borrowings, including those within the £30 buffer zone, is
charged at 29.5 per cent a year..........Additionally, if an item is returned unpaid due to there being
insufficient funds in your account, we will charge you an
Unpaid Fee of £35 for each such payment, which is our fee for
having considered whether to process such payment....."
So - there are some serious learning points:

Ensure you have a good financial director on your board, someone who knows the local networks of managers at local banks, good accountants etc., and can lobby on your behalf if needed. There are many other tips that migth be available and I am going to leave it to the wisdom of the crowds to populate the internet with ideas and suggestions...

Creating and sustaining big visions – is this the real answer to success?

2010-02-12T14:18:00.004Z

I have long felt that unless we get inspired by the notion of solving big problems or finding things that are meaningful to accomplish there is little to sustain a venture. Sure you can go in a tread through the daily grind of buying and selling, making and promoting or playing small games, but to what end?
One sentence in a book I found in an Ashram – I think – has done more to keep me focused than almost anything else I have come across and to paraphrase this sentence – it is “when the mind is full of little thoughts – where is the space for big ideas”?
It is in this context that I responded to a suggestion by David Carter – a colleague in the Chemical Engineering Department – who kindly also offered to talk to the theme of a need for big visions. As I rambled my way through his suggestion and developed my own view of how best to position this in the minds of nascent entrepreneurs – it seemed obvious! Invite the CEO of the most iconic company in the Cambridge cluster and ask for his views on the notion of big visions.
Fortunately – Warren East has agreed and so I look forward to his talk on Enterprise Tuesday on the 23rd Of February. He has agreed to talk about the vision as it was shaped in the early days of ARM – from a collection of a dozen engineers who had to survive the demise of Acorn Computers, through to the shaping of an ambition by an emergent team led by Robin Saxby to now – when ARM has decided to take on the “Elephant in the room” – Intel!!
I have met some of Warren’s colleagues who – rightly suggest that ARM is inside Intel already – as the latter are clients of ARM. Business strategy in recent times has led to Intel seeking to acquire ARM. meanwhile ARM is growing from strength to strength http://www.executiveinterviews.net/players/full/default.asp?order=UK03880b - see Warren's comments about the prospects from growth as a result of new products from Apple.

So – was the threat of being lost inside a major multinational – the threat of being squashed by the elephant the stimulus that ARM needed to restate their ambitions – to create the next big vision for growth of the business?
Warren will address some of these topics along with his own sources of inspiration – those that have given him his insights and confidence to take ARM to the next level.
Before we have Warren’s talk and opportunity to ask him tough questions – we have Professor John Mullins (the week before) giving us a reality check by asking if in our plans for new ventures we have a Plan B and helpfully telling us what that looks and feels like. He will base his talk on his new book – based on extensive Silicon Valley experience. He and his co-author Randy Komisar who is Partner at Silicon Valley's leading Venture Capital organisation - Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Incidentally Randy is also author of a best seller - The Monk and the Riddle.

John is a thought leader, a Prof at London Business School and a serial entrepreneur/investor. I am looking forward to his talk as I am engaged in building out an early stage business myself – having raised a second round of funding to cross the chasm from being a research based company to a fully fledged business looking for revenues and customers! Do we need a Plan B? http://faculty.london.edu/jmullins/175.htm

Grassroots Empowerment Network – An invitation to help make a difference

2010-01-29T06:51:00.003Z

I am a trustee of GEN, the Grassroots Empowerment Network, which is a small UK based non governmental organisation that supports villagers, mostly from the Meo community in Rajasthan, in taking charge of their own lives and the development of their communities. GEN works with a local partner ngo in India called End Poverty www.endpovertyindia.org . The GEN website tells you more about our work, our news and our activities: www.gen-initiative.org

The Meo people of India are an interesting group. Most live in the remoter corners of rural Haryana and Rajasthan, in villages that lack basic facilities such as clean water, power, access to good schools and health services. They have Rajput origins, and follow a form of Islam that until recently has incorporated many Hindu practices. Today external influences are pressing the Meos to pursue a more pure form of Islam.

I have been a trustee of the GEN since it started in 2003. I invited Sue Burke, the Chair of the GEN, and Moyna Aicken, another trustee, to come along to the Enterprisers networking session on 13th January at the University of Warwick. They braved the snow on a journey from London and talked to quite a few of you.

Getting involved with the GEN and End Poverty
All three of us were impressed at the level of interest shown by participating Enterprisers and have been thinking about ways in which we could build on that interest and engage with you more actively. Here are some ideas. Please let me have your thoughts and suggestions about them, or any other ideas you may have.

• Contribute to focus groups (London) to discuss and explore practical and sustainable ideas on rural development for the kind of villages where GEN and End Poverty work, bearing in mind the ‘empowerment’ philosophy we hold
• Come to a think tank session with trustees of GEN on creative ways of stepping up our fund raising capacity
• Help develop our project for an ‘Echoes of India ’ city walk (or walks) in London, Birmingham and elsewhere that will promote east – west understanding and publicise and raise funds for the GEN. We need help with creative research and investigations to generate the content, innovative ideas on different ways to take the idea forward, help with testing the concept in practice, help with getting others involved. It promises to be very interesting and potentially a lot of fun.
• Undertake a self funded but GEN- EP supported study visit to the villages supported by GEN and End Poverty on the Haryana / Rajasthan border and let us have your thoughts and feedback on the experience, particularly about overcoming the challenges the villagers face
• Take on a 1 – 3 month internship in the villages to assist End Poverty with its work with village development groups. Might include: – needs analysis, business development analysis, offering specific skill development possibilities to children, young people, women and girls. (You pay your fare, we cover your basic local expenses - food, accommodation, transport)
• Come to the GEN – EP stakeholder event in a rural area nearish to Delhi when we will meet villagers from the village development groups, visit the villages, hold joint planning sessions between GEN and EP on how to take our partnership forwards – 11th – 13th March. (Sorry it will have to be at your own expense)
• Help us – GEN, EP and another small Indian ngo, the Satya Jyoti Trust (www.satya-jyoti.com) , that is based in our area – to work through ways in which we could build on a small SJT women’s project that has already contributed garments to the international Fair Trade Fashion Event in Paris (September 2009). Can you help us to develop a business plan on: – how to expand on the initiative, involve more community based women, increase production, bring items to UK etc? You would have to spend some time in the area to do this.

We would like your ideas, great and small, on what would really appeal to you, and how you think you could make the kind of contribution that would make best use of your skills and expertise. I will pass anything you send me to Sue and other GEN trustees who will then continue the dialogue.

Nobel Prize winning science –creates a biotech industry, Enterprise Tuesday 19th January 2010

2010-01-13T08:01:00.002Z

Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) was founded in the dying days of 1989 to develop human therapeutic antibodies. The early stages were difficult; the underlying science was only half done, and the large pharmaceutical companies and most investors did not believe that antibodies were viable drugs, although now it is an industry with a turnover of more than $25 bn per annum. Sir Gregory Winter (a founder) and Dr Kevin Johnson (an early recruit) will piece together the founding, and the development of the science and business of CAT, including the early development of the blockbuster drug HumiraTM directed against rheumatoid arthritis."
The story behind CAT though is just as fascinating and as background here is my attempt to summarize.
The creation of the business and the biotech industry goes back to a major misunderstanding about intellectual property ownership and its exploitation.
One of the articles is about who is at the heart of the nobel prize (1984) winning science – Milstein or Kohler? (http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v4/n2/full/nri1265-c1.html) We certainly hear about this issue from many graduates and others who are anxious about how much of their new ideas they feel they can share openly. Ownership of the idea that then leads to a discovery or to a business that succeeds is close to the heart of individuals. And how this ownership of the discovery is subsequently commercialised is also an important debate for Universities, individual researchers, the venture capitalists and management teams.
The other part of the controversy is whether or not it was smart to publish and “give away” cell lines and the mice to those who might be competitors. This is a more serious argument and some think that the patenting regime can be stifling and restrictive to the ultimate benefits of society.
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v23/n9/full/nbt0905-1047.html
There are probably three major themes to this debate. First – whether all new knowledge generated through public funding actually belongs to society anyway – in which case it should be published for wider dissemination and this includes any commercial exploitation. The second line of argument has been that the way patenting and licensing is done – starts to become increasingly defensive and is a broken system and therefore acts against the best interests of what it is actually supposed to encourage. The third is simply that unless one has a system that can be understood the capital and resources from organisations that have the capability to commercialise the science will just not do so.
I am not knowledgeable enough to fully comment on this third aspect – but it seems to me that if the opportunity is big enough and the deals are there to be done, is the commercial exploitation not more to do with management and markets than about ring fencing the ownership of IP? In some industries now (e.g. internet) there is a greater push for open source and open innovation and in most technology clusters there is increasing collaborative working.
For those of us – who need to understand how or why this science is significant there is a layman’s description of the impact of monoclonal antibodies. http://www.dana.org/news/publications/detail.aspx?id=4278

Silicon Valley came to Cambridge - what were the ah ha moments for me?!

2009-11-25T10:07:00.007Z

There was a busy programme of events, masterclasses, workshops, networking, dinners and banter over the two and a half days of the visit by a dozen or so entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley. I attended a number of the formal sessions and the dinner at the Masters Lodge at Trinity College. Apart from the energy and buzz which is so typical of events that gather together entrepreneurs - especially those with credibility what else did I get?

A conference with entrepreneurs is soooo much more fun, educational, exciting, stimulating for opportunities and positive thinking - no one even mentioned the recession/credit crunch/difficulties or any such negative challenges. Was this because we mixed Silicon Valley with Silicon Fen? Maybe.

There were specifics - such as - where and when can you succeed as a small company innovating against a giant - "when you keep out of the spotlight of the big company". I like the use of such language rather than the dry business speak of professionals.

To partner with large companies as an entrepreneurial firm - find yourself an internal champion, get past the gatekeeper to the decision makers (never overestimate the clout of your contact)because decisions in large firms requires the buy-in of many stakeholders.

Before you think that partnering is key to your business strategy ask yourself - why can't you just Go For It?

To build internet businesses - some key tips:

Ensure that you build a fabulous user experience - just think of the simplicity of the google front page.

Ask is it scalable and try and establish that fact early in the business cycle.

Set yourself tight milestones and make sure you hit them.

There were two great sound bites that I took away

SMEs die of indigestion rather than starvation
Never become half pregnant

There was a lot to learn from the two days of oxygen filled events - so a big thank you to everyone that took part in all their different roles. There are an increasing number of pictures, videos, blogs, news items all over the internet. If you are hungry enough - please follow via svc2c.com

Pictures on http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=svc2c

Should entrepreneurs be cross with banks or bankers for the mess we have now?

2009-11-23T11:34:00.002Z

Should entrepreneurs be cross with banks or bankers for the mess we have now?
At a debate last week at the Cambridge Union – part of the Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge event- a few simple facts became obvious – well once we dealt with the noise in the information.
We need a banking system that works – full stop. We need it for making transactions happen. We need it for enabling the circular flow of money; enabling the provision of mortgages and lending for short and medium term.
The challenge of the Western capitalistic system seems to be that in order to provide these services – governments have instituted legislation, rules and bodies to regulate, largely it seems to me because the industry attracts people who are mesmerised by the making of money – for its own sake rather than because it is an end point of providing a service or product that adds value to society.
Usury was seen as evil until not so long ago – I wonder why!
So – while a healthy banking system is meant to help a money based economy go round, the way it is administered has lead to all manner of abuse and I do not need to rehearse these arguments here. The summary of the debate included the following issues: That by losing the plot – banks have taken much needed liquidity out of the market place so instead of having access to funds for investments, lending and generally provide for a positive role in the economy we have become distracted instead by issues of abuse and bonus payments. And it seems there is a relentless pressure from the bankers to insist they are worth it!
My only quarrel with the debaters would be that they talked about “Global meltdown” “entire economic systems” and so forth deluding themselves that only London and New York mattered...Well guys just in case you do not know where India and China are (as one of the debaters did not seem to know where Iceland was!!) you can find them on any good search engines.
In those countries entrepreneurs are somewhat relieved that although their banks are strict, cumbersome and lack in flexibility – at least they have banks they can go to. I think entrepreneurs in the present collapsed system have every reason to be cross with their bankers.

One of the fastest internet companies with cash and profits!

2009-11-15T08:05:00.004Z

Once again the audiences of Enterprise Tuesday at Cambridge were treated to some insights into entrepreneurship by asomeone who is very modest about his achievements. His initial take was that he just bumbled along for about 7 years from 1990 to 1997, living off his wife’s success – a former classmate from the Indian Institute of Management and now a successful top flight executive. He had tried many ideas, projects, consulting assignments and then started to follow a pattern that he saw all around him – that people seemed to open magazines from the back, spent time on the jobs pages before turning to the contents of the magazine.
So he and his nascent team and partner formulated a jobs based website, developed business models that were based on revenues of advertising from prospective employers. All this while bootstrapping the business out of bedrooms and garage spaces in Delhi (note – not in Silicon Valley!).
The company realised the basic proposition had to be that they had content – of jobs. So they took in all the newspaper advertisement – from 29 newspapers and uploaded the jobs onto the website – www.naukri.com
This was an initial big hit – huge numbers of visits and pretty soon it became apparent to employers that they had better use this channel as well. They now get over 200million unique page views per month. The company has become the hub of the Indian talent market and this has enabled the company to develop multiple streams of revenue; advertising being the mainstay.
When they reached $80,000 revenues with 9 staff, they started to receive visits from “smart MBAs” who had joined venture capital and were now riding the wave of hype around the dot com bubble. He was amazed and turned down offers of venture capital, all of which were placing his company at around $9m valuation. Sanjeev argued that had he taken the money and tried to invest it at the time – his balance sheet would have gone negative! He jokes – that they were somewhat paralyzed by the fear of “wasting the investors’ trust and cash”
Eventually – they took in money from ICICI and being cautious – he says with a wry smile – they put the cash into deposit accounts until they could figure out a really strong growth strategy. The injection of capital did give the confidence to go for growth. The initial test of strategy came when the sales director suggested that they grow the sales team as he had seen a direct correlation between increased sales people on the ground and increased sales. So – although they are a web company, they now have over 50 offices in India and neighbouring countries and around 1600 staff, most of who are in sales. They have 200 staff that develop technical solutions to meet the needs of the recruitment market.
This is a rapid growth business by any measure and the founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani is modest to say that the early days were action packed rather than strategic. It is only with the early success that the confidence grew to start to establish a firm strategy for growth, by diversifying the revenue streams, hiring people – based on generous reward structures and eventually by placing memorable advertisements on television to drive traffic to the web http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-89JndcGK4

The growth strategy was starting to build on gaining deeper insights into why people moved (at least in India) and one of the key reasons turns out to be disillusionment with the boss! This is what they used in their advertising and the character created became a household term for “nasty boss”!
What has Sanjeev learned from his business and entrepreneurial career?
If a problem has already been solved – don’t do it
Ensure that whatever business idea you come up with scalable – especially if you want to attract investors.
Talk and listen to customers – build deep insights
Focus – do one thing and do it well
Have the courage to take advantage of being a first mover. This can give you market leadership
Improve continuously – and do it quickly and keep it moving (something they call fail fast in silicon valley)
To build teams – be prepared to share your wealth
Retain a frugal mindset at all times – it helps if things get tough
Put yourself into ecosystems where you can get lucky! (Not sure if we should rely on luck for growth – but it sure helps if you get lucky!)
What has been the biggest mistake he has made – hiring for convenience rather than for quality!
Sanjeev runs a blog on http://www.sanjeevbikhchandani.com/
He has also kindly given us his investor presentation
http://www.infoedge.in/pdfs/corporate-presentation-august09.pdf

Once again the audiences of Enterprise Tuesday at Cambridge were treated to some insights into entrepreneurship by asomeone who is very modest about his achievements. His initial take was that he just bumbled along for about 7 years from 1990 to 1997, living off his wife’s success – a former classmate from the Indian Institute of Management and now a successful top flight executive. He had tried many ideas, projects, consulting assignments and then started to follow a pattern that he saw all around him – that people seemed to open magazines from the back, spent time on the jobs pages before turning to the contents of the magazine.
So he and his nascent team and partner formulated a jobs based website, developed business models that were based on revenues of advertising from prospective employers. All this while bootstrapping the business out of bedrooms and garage spaces in Delhi (note – not in Silicon Valley!).
The company realised the basic proposition had to be that they had content – of jobs. So they took in all the newspaper advertisement – from 29 newspapers and uploaded the jobs onto the website – www.naukri.com
This was an initial big hit – huge numbers of visits and pretty soon it became apparent to employers that they had better use this channel as well. They now get over 200million unique page views per month. The company has become the hub of the Indian talent market and this has enabled the company to develop multiple streams of revenue; advertising being the mainstay.
When they reached $80,000 revenues with 9 staff, they started to receive visits from “smart MBAs” who had joined venture capital and were now riding the wave of hype around the dot com bubble. He was amazed and turned down offers of venture capital, all of which were placing his company at around $9m valuation. Sanjeev argued that had he taken the money and tried to invest it at the time – his balance sheet would have gone negative! He jokes – that they were somewhat paralyzed by the fear of “wasting the investors’ trust and cash”
Eventually – they took in money from ICICI and being cautious – he says with a wry smile – they put the cash into deposit accounts until they could figure out a really strong growth strategy. The injection of capital did give the confidence to go for growth. The initial test of strategy came when the sales director suggested that they grow the sales team as he had seen a direct correlation between increased sales people on the ground and increased sales. So – although they are a web company, they now have over 50 offices in India and neighbouring countries and around 1600 staff, most of who are in sales. They have 200 staff that develop technical solutions to meet the needs of the recruitment market.
This is a rapid growth business by any measure and the founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani is modest to say that the early days were action packed rather than strategic. It is only with the early success that the confidence grew to start to establish a firm strategy for growth, by diversifying the revenue streams, hiring people – based on generous reward structures and eventually by placing memorable advertisements on television to drive traffic to the web http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-89JndcGK4

The growth strategy was starting to build on gaining deeper insights into why people moved (at least in India) and one of the key reasons turns out to be disillusionment with the boss! This is what they used in their advertising and the character created became a household term for “nasty boss”!
What has Sanjeev learned from his business and entrepreneurial career?
If a problem has already been solved – don’t do it
Ensure that whatever business idea you come up with scalable – especially if you want to attract investors.
Talk and listen to customers – build deep insights
Focus – do one thing and do it well
Have the courage to take advantage of being a first mover. This can give you market leadership
Improve continuously – and do it quickly and keep it moving (something they call fail fast in silicon valley)
To build teams – be prepared to share your wealth
Retain a frugal mindset at all times – it helps if things get tough
Put yourself into ecosystems where you can get lucky! (Not sure if we should rely on luck for growth – but it sure helps if you get lucky!)
What has been the biggest mistake he has made – hiring for convenience rather than for quality!
Sanjeev runs a blog on http://www.sanjeevbikhchandani.com/
He has also kindly given us his investor presentation
http://www.infoedge.in/pdfs/corporate-presentation-august09.pdf

Creating opportunities in technology - Experience from two Business Angels on Enterprise Tuesday

2009-11-06T11:38:00.009Z

Having just spoken with David Cleevely and Andy Richards about their talk(s) on Enterprise Tuesday on the 10th of November 2009, - they see about 2 - 3 ideas per week and have to try and filter out those that excite them enough to invest in. What are the criteria by which they do this and how can we learn to use their insights and knowledge to create, sort, filter and hopefully make winning decisions on?

They will use examples from their portfolio of experiences - which include huge successes, middling companies and the odd failed business to run thorugh a general framework we can use.

Here are some headlines:

o ideas are cheap (need to be great not just good)
o timing is crucial (things are in the air; by the time you have recognised them it may be too late; on the other hand those deep in the know may be too early)
o fashions hold more sway than they should (eg Web 2.0) - so watch for the Gartner hype cycles
o you need to stress test things by talking them through (preferably with lots of people). Would be entrepreneurs who hold cards close to their chest are to be suspected. (those who have done it a few times can be given more leeway)
o the proposal should break the established dogma
o there’s a trigger point (which if missed means no funding).

David and Andy are highly entertaining and animated presenters, they are on national and international platforms when it comes to their contributions to policy, entrepreneurship and corporate lives.

I can't wait to hear them and look forward to chairing the time keeping as I am sure the Q+A session will run and run!

Meeting customer needs – Learning from Kell Ryan

2009-11-01T21:06:00.004Z

The story behind the huge success of Ryanair – which has grown from a small Irish airline with 5000 passengers to an international carrier with 200+ planes, 900 routes, profits and with 58m+ passengers is a lesson to us all.
How have they done this?
A clear vision that is easy to articulate seems to be the starting point – A low cost airline! This vision is then applied with a mix of innovation and inventiveness on one side a hardnosed approach to cost control on the other. The benefit of this simplicity is that customers understand the offer very clearly.
The next point is to hire talented staff and get their buy-in with shared rewards (options schemes) and to train them into the way that the airline wants to run. The staff is mainly young – in their late 20s and they bring with them their energy. They are located in some 30 centres across Europe, so they incur no hotel costs, all returning home every night.
With this mix of vision and operational simplicity, the airline has met two of the most important needs of the customer – anon time airline that provides the lowest fares. There are no frills and everything beyond the basic service of a “bus with wings” is charged extra. This results in some 20% of the revenue coming from ancillary charges.
What else does the airline do to meet the needs of customers? Actually the focus is very clear – it is to bring down the cost of international travel – that is it. The response to any further questions on this matter are simply to see that most other airlines that try and provide full service offers do not make money and that the number of airlines that lose money is high. Ryanair is one of the few airlines in the world that makes money.
In addition to ensuring staff retention strategies, the airline has also taken steps to retain common sense and kept a continuous watch on costs. So staff helps to clean the aircraft, load the passengers and run the cabin services. Seats are locked in place to reduce maintenance charges. There are no sacred cows – so if something needs to be reduced, charged for or changed the airline will do it.
For example – they got rid of lemons from gin and tonic. This saved on time and cost and the passengers did not miss it. They have introduced on-line boarding now – so that takes away queues from airports and reduces costs further. The charge for luggage is now being copied by other airlines.
The management and the teams stay focused on costs and ensuring they do everything they can to be the lowest cost airline. But having said that – their staff are not badly paid – so it is not in this where they make savings – recognising that cabin staff do need to be rewarded and to find the right quality of pilots also takes money.

One of the breakthroughs for the airline was the rapid growth of the internet. This has enabled the airline to innovate in all manner of ways from on-line sales, ancillary bookings of car hire, hotels etc., through to now online check-in. The senior team were creative in the way they arranged to buy the website developers. They had had two professional quotations, one from a Dublin firm and another from a London firm. Both were thought to be too expensive. So they turned to a group of 4 high school students (doing their A levels) and paid them in free tickets, some cash and subsequently for two of them - jobs in the company!
In summary – the business is run on a “keep it simple and straightforward” basis – where all the staff and the passengers know that the basic offer is to fly from point to point at the lowest cost. This simplicity has turned Europe into a single continent, connecting 500m+ people at affordable prices. Through this, people are taking weekend holidays, jobs and buying second homes.
Throughout the growth of the airline - one of the other qualities they have shown is the courage of their conviction. Without hesitation they absorbed the Southwestern airline model, pushed for second tier airports as way of cutting down on airport costs and ensuring better time keeping (keeping away from busy airports, went for 100% web based transactions, charged for luggage, have now gone for 100% web based check-in and so forth. They were bold to go with A level students to develop such an important part of their business.

In meeting the core need of their customers they have shown the focus on staff retention, inventiveness in reducing costs, focus on the core offer has kept them from being complacent and are important lessons for how one delivers strong marketing programmes.
This message of simplicity and boldness is a very powerful one in entrepreneurship and management and therefore I will keep away from the frequent times in which the airline courts controversy.

Rapid Growth Business Enterprise Tuesday 3rd November

2009-10-27T16:22:00.004Z

Sanjeev Bikchandani - Founder of InfoEdge and therefore founder of several internet companies in India will be speaking about growing rapidly.

He started as a typical "garage" company in India and now employs nearly 1600 people across more than 50 offices. The internet businesses range from the biggest - "naukri.com" - which is about recruitment through to real estate and other services.

We normally hear about internet businesses from Silicon Valley and rarely from a "developing country" but here is a case of working against red tape, limited pools of experienced internet teams, an ecosystem that is still new to internet savvy businesses, challenging infrastructure etc.,

InfoEdge became the first internet company to list on the Indian stock market. The company has taken venture capital from global players and has a wonderful compound growth rate with a cash positive balance sheet. For those who would like to drill a bit deeper before the talk please see a link to the investor presentations made a few weeks ago - http://www.infoedge.in/pdfs/corporate-presentation-august09.pdf

Sanjeev is a charismatic, high energy entrepreneur who will talk about the key aspects of growing a business rapidly. Not wishing to steal his show - the talk will include how and when to be first to market - but that too in one that is emerging and therefore how to know if it is really big (with unmet problems to solve) and how to put together a team that can help to deliver on the vision and plans. There are more points he will make - but for now that is enough to whet our appetites.

By the way Sanjeev is flying over at his own cost and that makes him a sponsor as well! I am looking forward to the talk and the ensuing Q+A

Young headmaster - this is enterprise

2009-10-27T16:20:00.003Z

Young Babar Ali - has taken to heart the idea of making a difference and the inspiration is that he is a young teenager who has decided to help in his community. I am going to let the video speak for itself!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8299780.stm

From deep science to a cool product

2009-10-23T04:16:00.001Z

Prof Henning Sirringhaus from the Cavendish Labs at Cambridge, Martin Jackson of Plastic Logic and Bill Earner of Amadeus Capital Partners talked to a packed audience of around 400 graduates and members of the business community on how and why they have taken a tough 10 year+ journey to commercialise deep science.
From what I could gather, it started with the scientists looking at how to take the technical attributes of passing light through plastic and the convenience of plastic (it is light and flexible) to see if a product could be developed. One of the driving forces of the innovation that followed seems to be about solving the problem of convenience for people on the move.
People who need to read books, documents, articles, newspapers and myriad other content have two choices at the moment. Carrying heavy quantities of documents or trying to read on laptops – where due to the intensity of the way the screen is backlit – in the end it gets tiring. The inventors, investors and management of the project saw this as a global unmet need.
Curiously so have Sony, Kindle and others who are all rushing to market with eReaders. After the iphone this product line is likely to be the next big thing in the “boys toys” category and will likely revolutionise our reading behaviours as prices come plummeting downward in the years ahead.
So – the journey of plastic electronics as it has been labelled – started a long time ago and the team made a choice to enter the market with an eReader – due to be launched at a major event in January 2010. Hopefully they are just in time when compared to other products that are coming out this winter – before the Christmas of 2009.
The team has bigger plans for their patents and inventions, but the story is not so much about technology as it is about faith, belief, entrepreneurial risk and talented people.
The early conversations between Henning, Sir Richard Friend and Dr Hermann Hauser were formative and influential. All three eminent being physicists. Hermann being the serial entrepreneur and venture capitalists has the experience and instinct to know when to back something. It is also his vision for the next big product – and the potential to create an industry that has helped to raise over $250m dollars, research grants and subsidies for setting up a factory in Dresden. With that strong vision and business credibility, the team also has its “scientific rock stars” – some early exposure to doing business in emerging technologies and gradually a build up of a strong commercial and manufacturing team. It is probably this combination that has allowed Plastic Logic to go further than might be expected for a company that has been in “start-up” mode for over 10 years.
Over the 10 years Plastic Logic has tried a variety of business models, including trying to license the technology, but found that because it was unproven, the big manufacturers were unwilling to take it on. As a result of this market feedback, the team decided to set up its own factory and were fortunate in finding support from the government in Saxony - keen to attract a cutting edge science based company. So – the focus is on scaling up from a laboratory project about the light emitting properties of plastic to a real product that consumers can buy! This is a huge transition and requires major shifts in the talent pool from scientists through project managers, sales teams, factory skills, etc.,
How does a team sustain its motivation to go through all the various change points from a scientific breakthrough in 1998/99 to the prospect of a product launch into a growing market in 2010?
The basic answer seems to be about the excitement of creating an industry through the launch of a product. In essence – where the scale and scope of the opportunity far outweighs any sense of barriers or risk! The opportunity is seen to be vast and the team wants to be in a leadership position!
My main takeaway thought was the comment that Henning made – when the whole enterprise started he asked himself – should he focus on publishing and staying “Pure” or should he devote any time to the venturing process. At the time he was an unestablished young academic. He chose to do both! Now he is a young professor, inventor and initiator of a company that could well turn out to be at the forefront of plastic electronics. As Prof Andy Hopper said last year and on the video (see www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/resources) you can have your cake and eat it!

Understanding the needs of the market – Learning from Ryanair

2009-10-18T08:39:00.001Z

Tuesday on October 27th 2009. See www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk

Kell Ryan, the recently retired marketing Director of Ryanair has kindly agreed to speak to the audience of Enterprise Tuesday on the 27th of October 2009. Kell is a highly experienced marketing professional, having worked in the airline industry for many years before joining the team at Ryanair.

Ryanair has been a great success as a low cost carrier. It has brought benefits to many people beyond price reduction. People can take short term jobs in other countries; get short week end breaks, host hen nights and parties in all manner of cities, bringing tourism wealth from those who have to those who can benefit! If we want to learn to think about marketing, customers needs and having the courage to make new rules in the market place – we need to look at how one of the more successful companies does it.

Kell Ryan has agreed to tell us about the early days of Ryanair marketing, their innovations and how they value both acquiring and retaining customers through meeting the key needs of customers. Importance of customer retention, Impact of the Internet, Ancillary revenue /activity, Innovation on costs, Business model, Simplicity of Operations, Branding /Marketing and that Price is King !

Kell is charming and you will learn from him the hard nosed lessons you need to take away about how to be innovative with marketing. These lessons will generalise to other industry sectors. I can’t wait to hear from him. I hold the Otto Monsted Guest Professorship at Aarhus School of Business in Denmark and it is only possible for me to even consider such a post and to deliver on it through the growth and development of Ryanair.

How not to get divorced – lessons from serial entrepreneurs

2009-10-11T09:53:00.001Z

I was at a dinner at Downing College (Cambridge) where our after dinner speaker was Jody Chatterjee who has had a rich career in many different roles. His honesty about the roller coaster ride of an entrepreneur was engaging! Jody spoke at the end of a long day of thinking about entrepreneurship in large organisations that was being run for Haniel by Ashridge Management College. Haniel is a family owned 35,000 employee organisation from Germany, with a diversity of businesses.
The others contributors were Claudio Marinelli from Nokia, Dan Sandhu from ACIS and Rob Stewart from Stevenage Packaging.
Each painted a rich picture for us to think about.
They were pretty unanimous on the fact that entrepreneurs work with a passion to make things better or to make better things – that solve problems.
Entrepreneurial people are driven by seeking freedom and autonomy to make decisions. This is a dominant theme from the conversations. If entrepreneurial people involved did not have this freedom to act and to act quickly they would wilt.
Entrepreneurs are impatient to get things done; making them hard to live and work with, but the passion to make things better comes with the impatience to get it done. The impatience also comes over as being somewhat “crazy”. So they are seen as disruptive influences within the organisation!
Very low tolerance for internal politics – in the end is it possible to be an entrepreneurial employee in a large organisation to succeed without “political skills”?
On a very personal level – everyone acknowledged the role played by their family in supporting them. The short hand was framed in the evening as “find out how not to get divorced”. The point being – what is the purpose of entrepreneurial success if in the end it breaks up the things that in the long term are what matter – family?
In the past – in my consulting role when I have been mentoring people with their ambitions to start and to grow their businesses – the key question that has stopped people in their tracks about what they want to do – has been to ask – Do you have a “contract” with your family? Do they know you will put the house on the line, the level of risk you want to take, that you will behave in a totally obsessive ways for months, not sleep much, get irritable if things are not going the way you want, feel highs and lows of emotions and you will hardly be around either mentally, physically or emotionally? The family needs to understand this in order to be able to truly support you!
Entrepreneurs I have met who have managed to be realistic about the work load and the risks and been able to get the support of the family – whether this is their partner or their parents or siblings have been truly amazing because they have a kind of freedom that others who are trying to balance their entrepreneurial ambitions with family obligations simply do not have.
It is unlikely you will find the answers in books and videos, just talk openly to a friend with wisdom.

Enterprise Tuesday kicks off on October 20th

2009-10-01T05:18:00.005Z

This year the flagship course at Cambridge - Enterprise Tuesday which attracts over 1500 registrations and regular attendance of 300 - 400 is set to be a blockbuster! The main reasons is that we have made some radical changes to the format this year. In addition to the classic evenings of very high quality talks followed by networking we also have aligned with "Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge" and are part hosts to a debate at the Cambridge Union (on a Thursday!). We are also doing a networking only evening - having invited 20+ of the local successes - our Entrepreneurs in residence - to interact with the audience. This will be hosted in the magnificent setting of the Judge Business School over two floors.

There are also going to be "Live" rehearsals of elevator pitches and panel discussions on several evenings.

Beyond the format changes - the speaker line up - the headlines are as follows:

Plastic Logic founder Prof Henning Sirringhaus with his investment and management team members. This is a big current story as the research and the commercial ambition is to stimulate the start up - not just of a company - but also of an industry - in plastic electronics.

We then have Kell Ryan - to tell us about meeting customer needs. He recently retired from marketing position at Ryan Air (The name is no coincidence).

Sanjeev Bikchandani is coming over from India to talk about growing his business. It is one of the fastest growing internet companies around - and the biggest job site in India. He is a dynamic entrepreneur and is coming over just to do our talk!

David Cleevely and Andy Richards are highly successful Cambridge based Business angels and serial entrepreneurs. David is in wireless and telecoms while Andy is in biotechnology. Both are highly influential in the investment community and in their industries.

E T will be on a Thursday this year to make best connections to our regulars - and the guest line up includes the founders of LInkedIn, Twitter etc., The event has its own website - SVC2C.

Finally we hear from a panel of recent alumni of Enterprise Tuesday. People who have been inspired to get started with their own companies. They will share with us the why and the how on the evening. It is bound to be animated. The names are less famous - but the energy and the future prospects are fabulous.

Next term - we kick off with Prof Chris Winter who was co-founder of Cambridge Antibodies. He has done a number of other companies in biotech and is a hugely respected academic.

In order not to protract the blog - let me say that the last of the series is with Warren East from ARM - and I am hoping we will get as much of a public view as possible about the battle lines between ARM and Intel

ethics in entrepreneurship

2009-09-30T06:03:00.003Z

Two stories came my way recently and it made me think about what is or is not ethical in entrepreneurship.

One is somewhat trivial - the hissing and fizzing of pop stars about whether or not they support illegal downloads. What I liked within the article on Lily Allen's views is the statement by music critic John Dee that it seems the only thing that unites some pop stars into any kind of passionate debate is "the one that concerns their own personal fortune"

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/53938,news,lily-allen-quits-music-as-music-piracy-abuse-gets-nasty

So, what goes through my mind is ofcourse that as part of entrepreneurship education, especially for the next generation how does one position ethical attitudes and behaviours in the pursuit of entrepreneurial careers when the mainstream illustrations are about whether or not artists can make money from illegal downloads and how the music industry can survive.

These are important; reflecting changes to oligopolistic contracts between consumers and the industry. They are being shatered by fragmented responses based on emerging technology. Southwestern, Ryanair and Easyjet to name a few airlines have capitalised on breaking up monopoly behaviours in the airline industry. Firms that cannot or do not respond to such changes are eventually killed off. Meanwhile consumers have benefited from being able to travel around much more easily and in more affordable ways.

I am sure the music and film industry needs similar thinking and this is on its way. In other words it is time to be creative about solving a problem rather than trying to control it or complaining about it.

But to be honest - this debate does not fire me up very much although the underlying debate about how free - free markets are supposed to be is the more philosophical argument to have.

The story that does get me really angry is based on a very fundamental question posed by Aristotle back in 350 BC (approx - I was not there at the time) - Is a Doctor a maker of money or a healer of the sick? This question still has no real answer. I was reminded of the question by a story from one of my family who lost their son recently. A young man of late 30s early 40s went into hospital with Swine Flu symptoms and sadly died there. This was at the Apollo Hospital in Hyderabad. I do not have the full story due to the distressed condition of the family - but in essence the Hospital management refused to allow the body to be taken away in one of their vehicles, insisting that the family take away the dead son in their own car or hire a taxi. Whether this is due to swineflu panic, cost management, crass stupidity of the staff on duty at the time is all not clear. But one thing is for sure - Aristotle - if he were in India today and saw the conditions of healthcare for the poor and the profit centred hospitals for the rich - he would certainly have something to say.

As always values play such a strong role in entrepreneurship. What are your own positions on such topics?

WHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS A REAL OPTION – Learning from Plastic Logic

2009-09-24T14:25:00.006Z

Prof Henning Sirringhaus is a leading authority on organic semiconductors. Working within the Cambridge environment he and his business contacts saw the huge potential for the application of this deep science research to the possibility of creating a whole new industry based on the fact that plactics can carry current!

Henning is founder, director and continues to be a shareholder in Plastic Logic. Meanwhile the commercial team that was formed around it included Dr Hermann Hauser, serial entrepreneur, investor, physicist, eternal optimist and visionary. Bit by bit they formed a formidable team of scientists, technologists, commercial teams and through a series of dead ends, diversions and sometimes distractions they have raised over £250m in venture capital, got a factory underway in Dresden and are now launching their own product.

Plastic Logic might be the first company within a new industry? It is also potentially a huge success story based on over 20 years of research and earlier attempts at commercialisation of near to market technologies.

But who can tell – at this early stage if Plastic Logic will actually launch a new industry. Meanwhile we look to understand how and why the founders, investors and shareholders continue to have faith in a venture with long gestation periods. Most businesses operate on quarterly cycles and get impatient if there are no sales. What motivates this group of individuals and teams of technical, commercial and scientific talent to pursue Plastic Logic.
From the presentations and discussion by Henning Sirringhaus, Bill Earner (Amadeus Capital Partners) and Martin Jackson (Plastic Logic) we hope to find out more about:

Personal motivations; recognition of opportunities; the types of skills needed at different stages of the venture; risks and rewards. We also hope to learn about whether or not dilution of shares and ownership affects motivation of founders; how the funding cycles have gone and been managed and how teams have changed.

Based on this opening lecture we expect to set the scene for the remainder of the 11 lectures and networking events to bring you Enterprise Tuesday.

Here are some references for the business and academic communities:

Plasctic logic – press releases; home page www.plasticlogic.com www.plasticlogic.com/news
Plastic Logic demo www.youtube.com/watch?v=0znv3V-GsNk
Cavendish labs – Henning’s work www.phy.cam.ac.uk/people/sirringhaush.php
Amadeus capital partners www.amadeuscapital.com – investors in Plastic Logic

A Highly π-Stacked Organic Semiconductor for Thin Film Transistors Based on Fused Thiophenes
Xiao-Chang Li, Henning Sirringhaus, Francis Garnier, Andrew B. Holmes, Stephen C. Moratti, Neil Feeder, William Clegg, Simon J. Teat, and Richard H. Friend
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1998, 120 (9), pp 2206–2207 Publication Date (Web): February 24, 1998
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja9735968
Effects of Packing Structure on the Optoelectronic and Charge Transport Properties in Poly(9,9-di-n-octylfluorene-alt-benzothiadiazole) Carrie L. Donley, Jana Zaumseil, Jens W. Andreasen, Martin M. Nielsen, Henning Sirringhaus, Richard H. Friend, and Ji-Seon Kim
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2005, 127 (37), pp 12890–12899 Publication Date (Web): August 25, 2005
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja051891j
Surface Tension and Fluid Flow Driven Self-Assembly of Ordered ZnO Nanorod Films for High-Performance Field Effect Transistors
Baoquan Sun and Henning Sirringhaus
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2006, 128 (50), pp 16231–16237 Publication Date (Web): December 1, 2006
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja065242z
Binary Nanoparticle Superlattices in the Semiconductor−Semiconductor System: CdTe and CdSe
Zhuoying Chen, Jenny Moore, Guillaume Radtke, Henning Sirringhaus, and Stephen O'Brien
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2007, 129 (50), pp 15702–15709
Publication Date (Web): November 23, 2007
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja076698z

What is the best way to learn if you want to be an entrepreneur?

2009-09-06T10:23:00.005Z

I am presently working on several projects connected with entrepreneurship education and there is inevitably a menu of ways to "teach" or "organise learning".

But before we stray into detail - the most Frequently Asked question continues to be - "can you teach it?". My response so far has been that it is no different from teaching management, music, math or geography or any other subject - it ultimately comes down to people wanting to learn. So - if we get past this basic question then we get to "how" questions.

Learning by doing? Learning through simulations? Use of case studies? From mentors and coaches? In the calss room based strongly on theory? Videos? On-line models of learning? Action learning - i.e. through problem solving and applying the lessons? and so forth.

Going back to the question - in the title - I would welcome some intelligent thoughts and comments on the subject. We are getting ready for the Advanced Diploma in two weeks time - (see www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk); working on a review of education at Laurea University in Finland and thinking about scaling up entrepreneurship education on a global basis as a result of a major project for the World Economic Forum.

immigration is more important than math?!

2009-07-07T17:46:00.005Z

Now imagine this - that immigration has a greater impact on innovation than the teaching of math and science! Well this is a perspective taken by GigaOM and I have some sympathy with the view..because what it suggests is that people moving around the world freely taking their talent, hunger and abilities is hugely valuable to an economy. Perhaps a bit extreme as the writer of this blog only focuses on the needs of USA. So - it implies that Indians and Chinese teach the math and USA benefits from it!?

http://gigaom.com/2009/07/04/americas-secret-innovation-weapon-immigration/

To some extent the short term brain drain may well have to be tolerated (even if it seen as some kind of imperialism) so that in the longer term this tide of movement of the talent then starts to provide returns to the home country. There is evidence of this to some degree in teh shape of "brain circulation" - see for example teh Indian diaspora providing a huge stimulus to the INdian economy.

Why I like to think about such questions is that whenever I travel around mainland Europe I am struck by the almost complete lack of diversity in management, academia and naturally among policy makers. So few from other countries, other opnions and views, with the result that I see a Europe made up of a 1000 monocultures. The barriers have started to come up - for example the stupid attacks in Belfast by the Irish against the Romanians!! please forgive me for thinking that this was just a bit rich considering there are more Irish people outside Ireland! WHat if they were being beaten up?

So - the emergence of close minded protectionist barriers we see emergning around teh world is going to create a cramping of innovation, as entrepreneurs and especially entrpereneurially minded immigrants are prevented from free movement.

The USa wants to take a strategic view and ofcourse so will other coutnries. USA can probably do this because it is built on a history of immigation. For others - I think it will be really confusing by what they mean by strategic.

Time for liberals to apply themselves to this question..

comments here or via www.twitter.com/shaivyakarnam

Is money well spent on entrereneurship education

2009-06-23T05:11:00.004Z

UK Government provides millions for entrepreneurship education to schools, Further education programmes and to Higher Education. And I mean millions.

Broadly these funds go to secondary schools to ensure 5 days worth of entrpreneurship education (but political correctness means we have to call it "enterprise education" - whatever that is)

Those who have not gone to University but into more vocational education (FE) get very patchy support - mostly based on regional efforts, while in teh Higher Education sector there are two main sources of funding - one for commercialisation and one for transferable skills. Both of these manifest themselves ultimatley into entrepreneurship courses and activities of one kind or another.

There is ofcourse no co-ordination with the result that there is much redundancy, poor quality and uninformed courses. And there is some excellent work being done as well.

The UK has the luxury of actually having so much provision that we can even ask and challenge with such questions - whereas many of its European neighbours have nothing (relatively). So two questions arise:

How do we make things sharper and more effective so every Pound spent is more wisely spent and two does it matter if there is some redundancy - because at least there is something, while the neighbours still struggle with acknowledging the need.

Is this a serious matter and what shoudl we do about it?

Entrepreneur in different languages

2009-06-17T20:46:00.003Z

In Spanish: Emprendedor
In Finnish: Yrittäjä - More or less meaning someone who tries
By Carlos del Corral Product design and development manager
posted 1 hour ago
In German it's "Unternehmer" which, like in French, literally means "someone who undertakes to do something". It's a pity that the translation into English of "Undertaker" has a very different meaning !!
By Keith Haisman Interim Manager, Turnaround Director and Executive Coach
posted 45 minutes ago
And like the word manager has this term been hijacked!?

By the way for those of you who have placed comments I can't seem to figure out how to allow people to view the comments - although I have moderated and published them. There must a button I am missing! So - here are the definitions captured so far!

Oxford and Cambridge only two medieval Universities that have a strong provision of entrepreneurship education

2009-06-14T08:24:00.006Z

As Cambridge celebrates 800 years of progress, which together with Oxford is the only University which is ranked in single digits!

Year, University, Ranking(08) Country

1088 Bologna 192 = Italy
1096 Oxford 4 UK
1175 Modena 501+ Italy

1200 Sorbonne (Paris IV) 239= France
1209 Cambridge 3 UK
1218 Salamanca 401-500 Spain
1220 Montpellier III 501+ France
1222 Padua 296= Italy
1224 Naples – Frederico II 398= Italy
1229 Toulouse I 501+ France
1229 Toulouse II 501+ France
1240 Siena 401-500 Italy
1258 Paris I (Pantheon Sorbonne) 288 France
1272 Murcia 501+ Spain
1290 Coimbra 387= Portugal
1293 Madrid 306 Spain

Source: Times Higher Education List of the World’s Oldest Universities that are among the top ranking Institutions

How have these two medieval Institutions risen to the top to compete with modern Universities in the USA, which is where the bulk of the very top Universities are found?

Is it that they have secured more money, that they control publications, that English has become the dominant language or because they are secular in their research and inquiry?

For me the interesting fact is that it is only Oxford and Cambridge among the medieval institutions, selected for being among the oldest, that have a provision of entrepreneurship education for their undergrads and postgraduates. They both happen to be in the UK which has embraced commercialisation and skills for employability as strong values for their Universities - so they get funded to provide this.

The long term question may be about whether such education and the adoption of new values (entrepreneurship) will deflect from excellence or continue to enhance it. If you take the top Institutions around the world - they are all surrounded by technology entrepreneurship clusters. Hmm, raises a lot of questions!

Is there opportunity in getting rid of aging?

2009-06-13T14:29:00.005Z

The following is an extract from http://www.sens.org/index.php?pagename=sens_rab

Two thirds of all deaths worldwide, and about 90% of all deaths in the developed world, are from causes that only rarely kill young adults. These causes include Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes and most cancers. They are age-related because they are expressions of the later stages of aging, occurring when the molecular and cellular damage that has accumulated in the body throughout life exceeds the level that metabolism can tolerate. Moreover, before it kills them, aging imposes on most elderly people a long period of debilitation and disease. For these reasons, aging is unarguably the most prevalent medically-relevant phenomenon in the modern world and the primary ultimate target of biomedical research.

The implication is that as researchers get to grips with the vision of the SENS Foundation - there would be a stream of opportunities. And there are enough ethical issues to get us talking as well...

Is there a word for entrepreneur in languages other than French

2009-06-07T18:29:00.004Z

Over the past 6 months I have had an opportunity to travel to several countries and it seems to me that only French has a real word to capture the essence of what it is to be an innovator that brings an idea to market. English has largely borroed from the French - but has a word Enterpriser, there are similar words in Castallan (Spanish) but I would like to hear from others if their languages and cultures have a word directly translatable to "entrpreneur".

So the former President Bush got it completely wrong in one sense - the French to have a word for Entrepreneur - but do other languages and cultures?

What I found interesting in Jordan - during a recent visit is that in Arabic there is no such word - but there is one for failure - and it is not just descriptive - it is a really strong form of "insult"....

Maybe we don't need a word in other languages for "entrepreneur" - but it seems a shame...

Never trust overpaid fools but let us not confuse ethics with education

2009-06-02T05:19:00.003Z

“I hope we never again trust overpaid fools who think they know best thanks to bogus theories! This was the end line from a piece by Luke Johnson in the Financial Times on Friday 29th May in FT.com.

I completely agree that the world should not trust overpaid fools. It seems to me that while Luke Johnson makes a very valid point that entrepreneurs with a strong element of common sense and intuition as guiding principles over the jargon filled board rooms of corporate would not have made the catastrophic decisions that have led finally to companies like GM filing for bankruptcy, he over simplifies the story.
The costs of instinct, gut feel and down to earth decisions can also have a high price – it is not a perfect system. Investors always talk about the need to have a portfolio of say 10 or more companies, from which they hope one will bring in the big returns, acknowledge that four or five will remain as part of the living dead in the portfolio and accept the losses they may incur in the remainder of the portfolio. How come that intuition and common sense also lead to the endless churn of management teams as investors get fed up with their top teams and fire them in favour of yet more people coming in from their close network of people with common sense, intuition and it seems increasingly, a further requirement – dyslexia? (Most commonly trotted out as a disadvantage in articles on entrepreneurship).
Common sense and down to earth ability of entrepreneurs have also lead to high levels of success or failure in terms of the performance of millions of small businesses in the UK and indeed around the world.
Intuition and common sense are required in good measure in business, but they are not the only requirements. And it is true that highly educated individuals who have lost this ability are a burden, not just in business but also in society. Luke Johnson could have written about business ethics and societal values in his article more than about the virtues of untrained and uneducated entrepreneurs.
It is important to differentiate between formal know-what and informal know-how and indeed know-who in entrepreneurship. Often people confuse entrepreneurship education with a kind of business studies or business plan writing course. Formal understanding of business principles and theories that have stood the test of time are invaluable to the majority of people. In addition it is important to have a high level of self-awareness, social skills, and an ability to pitch a story, practical skills and to build a network of individuals who can help each other. Most, if not all of this is best learnt from practitioners and the role of Universities is to help put programmes and events in place that can provide the best of insights from formal and informal sources to enrich society with people who can make a difference. And while I agree completely with Luke Johnson that we never want to trust over paid fools again, let us not confuse education with ethical behaviours – which can be violated by both the overpaid fools and by entrepreneurs.

Why Entrepreneurship Education Is Important for Social Inclusion

2009-05-19T05:40:00.002Z

The most fundamental reason for thinking about entrepreneurship at the grass roots is to find
sustainable solutions to overcoming the injustices of poverty, which is evidenced by malnutrition, low life expectancy, indifferent educational attainment, poor access to water, inadequate healthcare and exclusion from the benefits of economic and technological progress. Witnessing progress all around while remaining poor can also create a feeling of hopelessness, dependency and low levels of self-esteem and aspiration. These are human conditions that can tear at the soul of a people. The arguments are well rehearsed and supported in many academic and policy documents, and they
are highlighted by the UN Millennium Development Goals. How can entrepreneurship education address these issues and create a wider participation in economic, social and health benefits?

We can draw a boundary around entrepreneurship education as comprising the following three components:

Personal development
Entrepreneurship education should build confidence, motivate progress, strengthen the
entrepreneurial mindset, foster a desire to achieve and inspire action.
Business development
Technical, financial literacy and skills to engage in self-employment, employment and in
entrepreneurship that can lead to self-improvement. This would include the expected
business and functional curricula.
Entrepreneurial skill development
Entrepreneurship education should provide training in social skills, networking, creative
problem solving, opportunity seeking, selling, interviewing, presentations, group leadership,
community co-operation, dealing with bureaucracy, local cultural norms and how they affect
business, etc.

There is a growing body of literature that entrepreneurial learning needs to focus as much on personal development and social skills as on business development. This would argue for a blended learning
experience where business knowledge and skills are combined with the best of tools and approaches taken from training events.

However, we need to draw on sound platforms of knowledge and understanding about
personal development. Otherwise we risk a fair accusation that we are merely running feel
good events without measurable, tangible outcomes and unrelated to any particular
understanding of human aspirations, behaviours and motivation.

Beyond the development of the individual we also need to work towards getting society and the “supply side” fit for enterprise. In seeking to create awareness and social acceptance of entrepreneurship, careful thought needs to be given to the role of media. Television and radio can present cases, news, information and engaging programmes to deliver a more positive message about enterprise and entrepreneurship. This is quite important to help overcome negativity that might exist in society and where low trust in free markets persist. In addition to mass media, NGOs and other grass roots agencies might be brought together to help engage people more directly through schools, community centres, village halls, church and other religious organizations.

On the supply side e.g. educational institutions, civic organizations, business
development agencies and NGOs education needs to cover the role of entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial finance, fair play, regulations, managing civic administration, banking rules and so forth. They need to understand and feel the emotional content of entrepreneurship. They also need role models of entrepreneurs as change agents in society, demystifying entrepreneurship for policy, civic administration and education.

If we understand the “what” we need to think about “who” delivers. The most credible educators posses the following characteristics:

•A grasp of arguments “about” entrepreneurship and “for” entrepreneurship.
•Understand that there is more than one way in which people learn and
that educators need to tap into individual motivations, circumstances and make sense of
the wider ecosystem in which individuals continue their enterprises.
•A grasp of the practice of enterprise, through the experience of more than
one type of venture. Especially, when being from the same cultural/economic background
they are able to relate to the nuances of context when imparting the education.
•They have social capital that permits them to link their students with people who can provide practical help.

Entrepreneurship education for the supply side

The supply side needs to discuss the role of entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial
finance, fair play, regulations, managing civic administration, banking rules and so forth. They
need to understand and feel the emotional content of entrepreneurs. They also need role models of entrepreneurs as change agents in society, demystifying entrepreneurship. They need to work towards creating higher levels of aspiration.

So what should we do to take the next steps in implementing entrepreneurship education for enhanced social inclusion?

Governments need to commit to long-term, sustained (5-10 years) funding. This is as important as the provision of health services, broader education. It can lead to people who are better equipped to participate in the economy.

Governments need to review legislation that holds back entrepreneurship. In many countries the
legislation (red tape) is so cumbersome that entrepreneurs prefer to operate in the informal sector
and so they remain outside the scope of effective assistance, outside formal banking support and
suffer many other disadvantages.

Stakeholders, such as not-for-profit organisations, large local and multinational companies, well established entrepreneurs and others need to come together in networks to create an ecosystem
in which entrepreneurship can flourish.

Multilateral Organizations such as the UN ought to create Web-based resources, knowledge-sharing
platforms and networks of educators. The world is full of teaching materials, but finding them is a challenge.

Governments and stakeholders need to provide resources (sponsorship) for access to worldclass
journals and publications so that educators and trainers can be encouraged to read what is
cutting edge and current. Many of these journals and publications are simply not available to
educators and trainers in poor countries and so they risk being stuck with old materials, ideas and
methods.

Educators, trainers and institutions should adapt their curricula, to ensure that it is relevant, cutting edge, fresh and dynamic. It is time to go beyond the “teaching of business plans”. Educators and trainers also need to be embedded in the context and provide access to resources, markets and opportunities, not just “training.”

Policy-makers, educators, entrepreneurs and sponsors need to come together in conferences on
a sufficiently large scale to raise standards, increase the volumes of participation and find appropriate local, regional and national solutions so that entrepreneurship education can have a positive impact at the grass roots.

Television must not be ignored as it has a major reach across society and can be influential in transmitting ideas and raising aspirations.

Finally, the vast majority of the working people in the world are self-employed or work in small organizations, but as yet their income levels are not sufficient to lift people above grinding poverty and hit the targets set under Millennium Development Goals. While economic and political reforms play an important role in setting the scene, people need the knowledge, skills and mindset to take advantage of opportunities. It is hoped that this contribution can help make a difference in this arena.

Seattle and Starbucks and lessons in innovation

2009-04-14T23:59:00.005Z

I am visiting Microsoft for an Innovation outreach summit - where about 11 of the world's largest companies are getting together - so a walk around PikePlace in downtown Seattle was going to be a sharp contrast to the next couple of days!

Here is an atmosphere of highly sophisticated (looking) retailers selling all manner of products which when you get them home you have to wonder - why you bought them. It is also home to the first ever Starbucks and so it is possible to envisage that from small acorns...and all that. It seems to be a matter of vision and intent as much as anything else. There is no rocket science to selling good coffee so to grow from a single shop to a global brand must simply be a matter of entrepreneurial imagination and folow through.

Now that they are as big as they - will they ever be able to do something like that again? Although I admire the company - I am not a great fan of the coffee!! Mainly because they seem to sell it in buckets rather than in cups or in quantities that one can manage - perhaps they learnt in old Dinosaur School of Waste.

Nearby there was coffee that was excellent in cup sizes you could manage and if you go anywhere else in the world you can get pretty much a "shot" and pay a price that is also pretty much a shot.

So here is the challenge - how do we keep pace with what customers want and need? Everything else as questions go seems to be noise!?

The most ostentatious display of power and debt

2009-04-01T19:40:00.007Z

Call me a grumpy old man - or it may be that it is April Fools Day - but what can one make of the fact that the American President - especially and 19 other leaders believe they have the right to the most ludicrous display of power.

3 CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler were asked to give up their private planes if they wanted a bail out from the US President! Well how come then that the US President travels in Air Force One, has a fleet of helicopters, cavalcades etc., etc., etc., in order to appeal to the rest of the world to help "rescue" the USA!

And are we really to believe that the advisors, senior leaders and others who got is so badly wrong in the past decade are the very ones who now have the "right" answers? Where is the intellectual debate regarding the problems and solutions? It is just so full of opinions and if we are to be dominated by the "chcago" school of economics I am nervous about how best to advice up and coming entrepreneurs about how to plan for the future?

With leaders more concerned with the display of their power and debt - jousting for positions and sound bites - it seems to me that the "man in the street" will have to learn how to be even more adaptable in the future. It is 200 years ago that Darwin was born and it seems to me that at least in economics - it is going to be the entrepreneurial (adaptable) that will survive.

Sure hard working leaders need security - so why do they not just turn up quietly, do the work and get back to their offices! I am really being a grump - but the idea that as tax payers we should see a kind of Roman Emperor entering the City just strikes me as a distraction from getting the work done!

There I have got it out of the system and hope that the leaders come up with something positive!

Professor Chris Abell speaks on Astex Therapeutics

2009-02-27T14:28:00.002Z

It would seem that in most countries and in many cultures – there is a clear separation between good science and business. It is almost heretical in the so-called traditional institutions for eminent Professors to engage in enterprise! Well – Cambridge, being among the top Institutions on a global basis has clearly demonstrated that such a schism in thinking is medieval!
The University of Cambridge is celebrating its 800th year birthday and the 200th year of Darwin – all in 2009! And within this context it is refreshing to see and hear a speech that flicks eminently between deep science – stuff that gets published and cited in journals of the highest standard and enterprise that results in raising some $100m venture capital while creating a pipeline of deals with the pharma industry worth over a $1 billion!
How did all this happen? First and foremost – have a big idea – even if it is not entirely clearly articulated or developed. Secondly – gather up the world’s leading scholar – stardust in academic terms. Talk to investors who understand your science and the big idea and set about helping you to shape the big idea into a proposal that can be made to happen.
So – is there luck in this? Maybe – if you think about timing and the economic environment. After all you have to have a bubble you can ride on to raise money relatively easily. But in reality so many great companies have been formed in a downturn – it would seem that a big idea and a great team are far greater influencers of success.
What did a scientist learn from “doing it”?
Starting small in a little office, and funds form Abingworth (venture capital) to fund a number of top quality post docs – got a “soft start” underway.
Started without any IP – and managed to get money for the idea and that the technology would develop and IP generated as a result of further good science in an enterprising environment
Interviewing in a fast growth business is hard and far more time consuming than you can imagine – and it is the scientist who has to engage in this along with other colleagues. It is such a crucial step.
The lab spaces get as cluttered as the University – it is the same mind set of scientists who are employed – but this makes people feel comfortable and “at home”.
Having people who are good economists around enables the company to see the cold winter approach in 2002 and so the burn rate was slowed to ensure that the company can survive any form of economic downturn.
Building the IP portfolio and publishing in top journal has been very satisfactory – giving the people and the company credibility in both environments.

Mike Lynch tells it like it is

2009-01-29T06:30:00.001Z

Mike Lynch – CEO of Autonomy comes with a very credible track record – especially for a technology entrepreneur in the UK (and Cambridge). He is one of the very few people I know that has taken a company from the bedroom to being a $500m sales company in software/high tech; done IPOs, acquired a US competitor and remained CEO. The usual story in the UK is that the founders are either fired by the investors in one of the funding rounds or make an exit to take up new careers as business angels, non execs and so forth. In a way the high tech founders are serial entrepreneurs and not global CEOs.
Mike talked about building the dream team – in fact he talked about how to do this and what the background grunt and grind is – to make such a thing happen. Here are just a few tips:
The need to set a cultural tone to the business – to ensure it remain entrepreneurial by having the vision and energy of the entrepreneurial founder on tap, visible and ensuring the sense of urgency, flexibility, hunger remains at the of the agenda on a daily basis.
To hire the best people- being elitist – because the marginal extra cost of hiring the best person is minimal to the cost of hiring a second best person.
Try and get people who are obsessive about what they do, with a passion for their professional skills. They may get hard to manage – but they will have a preference for action and ensuring their work is to a high standard.
The cultural tone needs to be one where people can admit mistakes , learn and get on. You need to avoid the “myth of properly” – i.e. people who say things like “if only we did things properly around here” – because there is no such thing as properly – only things that meet customer needs.
Ask yourself – who would want to work for entrepreneurs?! the initial pay is low, there is no job security, the journey will be a roller coaster ride..The only reason someone will work for an entrepreneur is because of the likely upside, the fun and because they have bought into a strong vision of the possibilities. On this point Mike also had advice for people applying to work with entrepreneurs who have a strong vision – when you do get invited to join – don’t ask where the coke machine is!!? Entrepreneurs want to hire self-starters, people who “get-it” and will make up their own rules and get things done – not people who need a lot of nursing from the founder.
On the other side to all this rock and roll – is the simple human factor – treat people fairly, reward them fairly, take care of them when they go through some personal life issues. And work hard to kill off politics in the organisation and the potential spread of cultural poison – negativity can hurt.
The implication for leaders is that they need to remain upbeat, energetic, have a sense o f fun and at times be willing to take tough decisions – quickly.
Mike had a lot more to say (about doing business) and he was videoed – and this video will be edited and placed on www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk in due course along with some of the other lectures that have gone onto to site (under resources)

Levi Roots to success with reggae reggae sauce

2009-01-22T16:13:00.007Z

Levi Roots first came to public prominence on BBC’s Dragons Den series 4 episode 1, when he blew the Dragons away by making his pitch for funding by singing and playing his guitar. Two of the so-called Dragons invested in him and his product and although they took a large slice of his company for a relatively small initial cash investment, the real value it seems came later in teh quality of advice, networks and publicity they were able to generate.
So now Levi owns a small share of a large bottle of sauce rather than all of a small bottle. The crucial thing about this reggae singing musician is that he is completely in tune with the harsh reality of capitalism! He seems comfortable with the idea of sharing, being open with his ideas and inclusive in the people who help him run the business. Although in reality it seems like all his 7 children and his 4 year old grandchild are involved, not to mention his mother and his grandmother who were both strong influences on him!
So what are the top 5 points we can learn from Levi?
You need to start out in life as a self-starter, energetic and being willing to have a go. If you are inhibited and wait for others to lead you all you can do is get into trouble or just plain do nothing.
As you search around and become alert to opportunities, you might find something about which you believe in passionately – this is the starting point of forming a dream that you can then set out to turn into a business.
You need to plan for the long term, because it is going to be tough and if your dream is to make a difference and make it big you will need to be persistent, patient and keep at it over the lkng haul of the roller coaster ride.
Get real advice – find a top quality lawyer, a good accountant and get a mentor who has been there and done it before. These are almost the first steps to any form of success.
Do what it takes to stand out from the crowd. There are a lot of people, lot of ideas and if you just do what everyone else does, you will disappear into the wallpaper. You have to really learn to communicate, have a truly excellent product or service and build a top quality team that gets noticed.
Beyond these high level lessons from Levi, oozing with self confidence and driven at the same time by a sense of spirituality and common sense in business, a key moment arose in his business when his mentors turned Levi Roots from being a product based company into a brand. Levi is charismatic and a great communicator, so his shareholders have advised him to go and give speeches, build the brand and leave the sauce making and selling to the others in the company.
He has certainly demonstrated a thorough capacity to learn and be open to learning, which is something I have seen in many other entrepreneurs. This flexibility of mind, openness and yet a dogged ability to see things through is what differentiates the bright ideas bod from the successful entrepreneur. Good luck Levi – we hope to see you back in Cambridge.

Keeping it affordable – how to get started in a recession

2008-11-25T17:02:00.003Z

Reshma Sohoni – CEO of Seedcamp gave a talk to students at Cambridge on Enterprise Tuesday. Her perspective was that on the whole startup costs had come down by a factor of 10 – especially in software ventures, because there was so much more open source available, many more tools, platforms and other forms of incubation.
For example – with infrastructure:
– Hosting - Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine, Cloud Computing in general
– Software, Design, Technology – Sun Startup, MSFT BizSpark, Open Source, Assembla.com, 99Designs, Creative Commons
– Office Space – Sun Startup, Silicon Roundabout (Moo), Work where you live
– Marketing – Learn SEO, Befriend the bloggers (Zemanta), Become an expert (Mobclix)
– Go virtual as long as possible and avoid office rent, furniture, and phone expenses
And a mindset that says – we need to control costs – be innovative and grow a business by being resourceful was the central message of Seedcamp.
So the examples included:
– Core team should include developers and business development
– Initial hires should be for equity + salary to cover rent and basic food
– Biz Dev and other advisors for equity not fees
– Product - Use your users to iterate and help build your product
– Rent instead of buy;
– Outsource what’s not core;
Her exception was with lawyers and accountants – which she she advocated getting good ones.

Tell tale signs of opportunity – surviving the economic winter

2008-11-18T16:19:00.002Z

When the world is in crisis – it is easy to talk yourself into a gloomy “do nothing” period of inactivity. But is this what entrepreneurs do?
At the moment the reality is that it is hard to find money to get going, customers willing to commit to purchasing anything, budgets that can be signed-off for pilot projects. We even risk current projects being cancelled and the aftermath of senior CEOs from “Bell weather” companies making statements that clearly suggest caution over enterprise!
So, when Dr Hermann Hauser says that the clear signs of a big opportunity is when you can see fast (big) growing markets, have a star team and possess defensible IP (or know how) can see the presence of money in the form of good quality venture capital within a supportive cluster – you look around at the moment and think - No Way!
But – Hermann has been involved in 62 start-ups – four of which have exceeded $1bn valuation – so apart from the macro indicators what else can an entrepreneur see that we can’t?
First – the entrepreneur can see High Quality people – with ideas and the ability to make things happen. Exceptional technology or exceptional ability to articulate a proposition.
Secondly – to ensure that the entrepreneur is in an ecosystem that is conducive to entrepreneurship – and in the case of tech entrepreneurship these would be Silicon Valley, Boston, Cambridge for example. Or if you were trading in spices – you would be on the spice route!! Andy Richards – a Cambridge biotech entrepreneur said that Cambridge was a low risk environment in which to do high risk ventures or as someone else put it les flaterringly – a cluster can be seen as a compost heap – where – when firms die the people are re-cycled!
Sometimes the cold business logic does not always deliver the right answers – for example AT+T were turned off mobile phones, IBM believed there would only ever by a market place for 4 computers and there have been many other gaffes over the decades! A particularly seismic event in technology transfer history is captured in the events that followed the publication of work on the monoclonal antibody. http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/2079/1/wit1.pdf . In the first instance those in decision making positions did not believe that this work should be patented and only later realized the potential of this work in industrial and commercial terms.
In summary we come to belief, passion and a deep understanding of the opportunity (not just the technology). These together with skills to find opportunities, resources and the ability to chip away at customers and markets may be exactly the qualities we need right now in an economic winter.

Going global means thinking global

2008-11-12T07:43:00.003Z

As an entrepreneur there are some choices to be made. First of all – do you want to build a global business or go for a more lifestyle business? Both are good – but the consequences of the next steps are very different. Lord Karan Bilimoria who has built Cobra Beer from an idea to a growing force in beer brands explained his philosophies, strategies and tactics in how he has built Cobra Beer so far.

Here are some of his thoughts:

Whatever size of business you plan or dream about – the first step is to make a decision to do it and to get on with it. When you are thinking about doing it – you will need emotional support from people around you, but more frequently you might hear the term NO than the term YES.
In reality no one thinks you stand a chance when you are young because you lack track record, credibility, finance and any sense of authority over any resources. “What did I know about brewing, branding or building a business when I graduated as a Lawyer from Cambridge?” What you need though is incredible levels of self-belief and faith in your idea and you only need to be able to turn a few key people in your favour and the others will follow. In my case I got the owner of Mysore Breweries and the brew-master to believe in my idea. I owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
When you have faith in your idea and belief – it does not matter when you start a business. "In my case I started during the last recession in the early 1990s. So I have been there and am convinced that in hard times there are opportunities which others do not or cannot see. So this is the time you can get underway. And it is in this situation that you have to be able to spot the right trends. In our case it was seeing the rapid growth of Indian restaurants in the UK – a trend line demonstrating that UK was becoming a nation of curryholics".
If we combine this understanding of where the market is going and use this information with imagination – in our case we focused hard on it (See Geoffrey Moore’s book on Crossing the Chasm) we can grow at a tremendous rate. We have grown from the early years of a single beer – albeit the best – to now having a product range of 35 items.
You also have to think global – right from the start. When we began ale was 99% of the market. Now it is barely 25% - the rest is Lager. So we are part of that global trend towards lagers. And within this we focused on a fast growing restaurant sector. We describe ourselves as a British company of Indian origin.
Raising money for a global business is complex, but there are so many sources of finance – starting ofcourse with your own money, creditors, debts of various kinds, private investors, grants, careful cash management, customers’ advance payments, bills of lading, venture capital and stock markets. You need to understand the breadth of options and get someone who can help you navigate these various sources with imagination.
Building an A-team. This is stated often by entrepreneurs. In essence the definition used here is to take on people better than you are at specified jobs – such as marketing, sales, finance and other functional specialisms. Although entrepreneurs love to be involved with all aspects of a business – their passion overcomes their own need to delegate – one of the early lessons is to let go to grow.
Marketing is crucial for a global business. In the early days it is important to use Guerilla marketing tactics. Use PR, low cost sponsorships, get samples out there into the market – let people try your services, products – until you establish credibility and enough good will. Then you need to get a strategy based on excellence of product/service; a clear understanding of why you set prices the way you do against competition; ensuring people can access you and your products and building excellent customer service.
Constant drive for restless innovation. Sometimes a core product may not suit all market segments and to get into global markets and grow aggressively the company needs to build in the capacity for constant innovation of products, processes, imagery, marketing, rewards. You need an open mind to succeed. The personal qualities of the senior team needs to be one of taking risks and having foresight and sometimes you ask yourself – why has no one done this before?!
But to know if things are working and to check that your company is being successful – you have to be able to measure everything. You need a transparent system for measurement so everyone can understand what is going on in the business and play their part in the success.

Understanding customers needs – The story of Viagogo

2008-11-03T07:57:00.003Z

As we run into a brick wall of uncertainty in the world of entrepreneurship – I can remember the last time there was a kind of melt down. It had been caused by dangerous over-speculation on the web. I had been told – it’s not cash flow and customers – it’s about the number of clicks and eyeballs!
Well – 8 years later only a handful of companies have made money out of clicks – Google being a star examplar. In the end they too have to be measured by cash flows. What a relief for common sense.
So in the lecture by Eric Baker from Viagogo – a product of Harvard, Stanford, McKinsey, Bain Capital and Silicon Valley it was such a relief that there was so much common sense and a starting point that acknowledged “no customers = no business”.
Viagogo is an on-line ticket exchange business and charges 25% for its service. It holds no inventory of any kind and gets the cash upfront from the transactions. In other words the business makes a good margin and generates cash in providing affordable ways for people to exchange tickets.
So what is the marketing story.
1. Eric has a great personal background in terms of the education he has received. He also gained experience of this kind of business as an employee of Stubhub in USA.
2. He assembled a fabulous board of advisors. Not only is this a source of advice and route to money, but it provides excellent “brand association” by demonstrating the quality of the company he keeps. This helps to open doors, creates an illusion of size and provides huge levels of credibility.
3. Identifying the new trends. More and more people go online to buy tickets rather than queue in shops and at the venue itself. So the credibility of being able to exchange tickets online is established by the new market trends and behaviors.
4. There are an increasing number of other online exchange sites – such as eBay, so the format is easier to explain to consumers.
5. In addition to getting alongside well respected Board members, Eric did early deals with Soccer Clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea to be recognized as an efficient and “official” place for fans to exchange tickets, basically thereby undermining the touts who hang around outside stadia.
6. Eric was clear that his business solves a real problem for people who want to buy tickets. They want secure, reliable service where they know they can sell unwanted tickets and on the other side people want to be sure they are buying the genuine article and not being sold a counterfeit.
7. Below this level of strategic thinking about marketing Viagogo has all the internal disciplines and tactical marketing tools it uses to generate awareness about itself. This includes getting feedback from customers and making sure you stay close to their needs, adjust and adapt your services and products as you grow.
So the big question is why and how an American came to relocate to the UK to start and grow this business? Eric loves sport, learnt about the way this business operates and spotted the gap in Europe. He relocated to London and the rest is becoming history! He has chosen to be a Global entrepreneur and is chasing global dreams.

Entrepreneurial Motivation by Dr Paul Webster and Prof Andy Hopper

2008-10-22T06:28:00.004Z

Professor Andy Hopper FRS and Dr Paul Webster of Ubisense gave an audience of 400+ at Cambridge University (21st October) a canter through why they started their company and what has kept them going through the roller coaster ride of a new venture.
Paul was introduced to Andy via a common connection and found himself in an environment which was open, flexible and encouraging of enterprise. So he referred to this as motivation through mentoring. The basic idea of the lab in Cambridge was to take an idea, deploy it around the lab and if it worked try to commercialise it. This approach resulted in several companies, the biggest of which was probably Virata.
Other motivations included what we might call “Motivation through motoring” – in other words having an aspiration to be less poor and to buy a nice car! But this came later when the lab that was sponsored by AT+T was suddenly closed and the choices were between taking another job and starting a company with an emerging technology in 3 dimensional location systems (GPS for indoor applications). Paul did not fancy the 9 to 5 routines so he got together with some others in the new venture.
A fortunate meeting took place, through which the team was able to arrange for an internship with a venture capital firm where they did their market research and started to build confidence in the idea, however there were some tough business questions. Was this a GPS system or an RFID system? And who else was doing something like this? So it was difficult to value the company and raise money. They then met Richard Green who had founded Ten Sails as an incubator for ideas in “space and time”. The results of the market research and finding a CEO restored their confidence and motivation to stay the course.
Other forms of motivation included the quality of team that had started to join the company. The Board, the management team and the business angel investors are all described as world class and aligned with the objectives of the .
Ubisense and the team there are part of the wider Cambridge ecosystem – a whole group of companies in wireless, GPS, telecoms etc., So they can measure their own progress and see IPO and trade exits from time to time. They are in good company and this reassures the team. They also compete with firms that are much better funded and have evolved technology that is far superior and this too makes them feel good. There is a sense of urgency to stay ahead of the game. The links with the University and a continous source of talent makes it all the more exciting.
For Paul then – his motivations were varied and included the desire/need to earn; but as can be seen it was not just about “toys” and “technology” but included a desire for affiliation with top people, a desire to be recognized and to achieve success.
Andy Hopper has been an academic researcher for many years and has supervised over 50 PhDs, earned a Fellowship of the Royal Society for his research and the high levels of citation of his work. So he is a hard core academic. Why does he get involved with business?
For Andy – while the University provides that pillar of security he where he has caught the bug for intellectual stimulation – whether nourished by the need for citations or personal ego – it is none the less a compelling pull to continue in academia. The University environment also provides for being kept up to date on international work, new ideas and one of the benefits of this in business is that it reduces surprises of anything that may be going on in a similar field.
As Andy said – In business you can’t get any real insights due to the need to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements and follow tight protocols. But in academia it is possible to learn about new developments due to a very different culture (and you only have to deal with egos!)of publications, peer review and conferences.
There are further debates that rage between academics and entrepreneurs about whether the knowledge is to be exploited for universal gain, national gain or personal gain and if as an academic you want to step into business you need to be comfortable with the arguments.
One of the motivations as an academic engaging in business is that you get to see the practical or tangible output of your research, but if you are at the leading edge and dealing with disruptive technology with uncertain outcomes and timescales it is really hard to raise money. You need to learn about how to do this and what motivates venture capitalists and how they work. You also need to figure out how not to lose your shirt! Without these insights if you do try and embark into business you will soon lose your motivations.
Andy is also motivated by having people around him that he regards as trusted parties, people with whom he can recombine from time to time to start companies, have and share new ideas and who can share in the pain and the pleasure of the roller coaster ride of new ventures. His own labs in Cambridge have become a hive of activity in cutting edge research and from which many postdocs/faculty and staff have moved into business or combined it with academia. He has tried to create an open, flexible and an aspirational climate so that people can thrive.
In the current climate Andy’s advice is to keep doors open and maintain contacts because when the economic conditions change it will be easier to get going sooner. And by way of example Andy highlighted how his lab at Cambridge is changing direction to a different big question:
What can technology do to address the big problems of going green? What will be good for the planet and what will regulators ask technology to deliver in the future? By seeking answers to these questions it may result in commercial opportunities as well.
In a few final words – If you want to mix academia with business remember – it is possible; but if you were focused only on academia or only on business – you might go further in each case. In other words although you can have your cake and eat it – the experience can be a tough one.

(These are notes derived from the lecture rather than notes of the lecture)

Surviving the economic downturn

2008-10-20T05:52:00.002Z

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to give a talk at a Masterclass to a conference for the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA). The timing of this conference was quite something. The news all round us at the conference was basically about the meltdown in the financial markets and the panel discussions of the CEOs of the big travel companies were a mixture of “the sky is falling” and “it will be all right on the night”. The graphs shown to conference by the economist were quite gloomy. Although they were shaped like hockey sticks and the only uncertainties being the speed of decline and the depth of the death valley curve! As always a useful economist left us not a lot wiser – but did give us something to talk about!
ABTA had asked for a talk on surviving the downturn and thinking back – this was a really wise move in the briefing I had been given, some months ago – long before the financial meltdown began. What it meant was that the Masterclass session was packed. Here are the key messages from the presentation and the discussions that followed:
In the first instance to survive a recession companies need to look at cost drivers – both external and internal. This must be done alongside a basic sales and marketing plan that ensures revenues. The rest of this note covers all three elements.
In the travel industry the external cost drivers are:
Fuel, exchange rate fluctuations, increased costs faced by suppliers (such as hoteliers, restaurants etc.,), cost of borrowing (overdraft charges etc.,) assuming credit is even available, cost of utilities and credit card charges going up for consumers.
There is little one can do about such external costs, but it is important to understand these and make an assessment about how this will impact on customers, suppliers and our own businesses.
The internal cost drivers also need to be fully understood. What are the main costs in the business? Is it staff, floor space, transaction costs? Often these costs are hidden away. So, now is a good time for a spring clean. Take a look at your bad habits in the business – the costs that are either the cause of sloppy management or lack of planning. For example not sending out the right information; pricing errors; not firming up bookings; missed telephone numbers; printing errors, and miscalculation of inventory. Beware of mistakes and of routines which are held in place by statements such as “we have always done it like that”! If the costs being incurred do not add value to the customers ask your self – should we continue to do this?
Once you have taken a good hard look at the cost drivers and try to bring them down faster than the sales curve in the forthcoming months you have a good chance to withstand the pressures that the recession might impose on you.
One of the hardest decisions that firms will have to make is about lay-offs. I am not a fan of this strategy because with lay-offs goes the knowledge in the company and I think owners of businesses must look at everything else first. I draw inspiration from the story of Southwest airlines that were faced with tough times and where all the staff came together in a kind of “Dunkirk spirit” took pay cuts and worked hard to come out a stronger business. In the end the ground realities will determine these decisions, but for me it is always a final choice, not a first one.
One of the keys to survival is not to make the M+S error – which is to miss the trends in the market place and to go into denial for so long that you rely on loyalty for survival rather than your own commercial and competitive competence!
Generating income
There are two fundamental actions. First and foremost take a look at your portfolio of existing customers. Surely they will continue to buy travel, even if at a reduced level. Are you in touch with them? Can you retain your share of their spend on travel? Don’t just mail shot a bland bit of brochure or information at them. Try to find ways to engage them in a form of dialogue. Find out about their future plans, think about how to adjust what you do and what you offer.
Get into a “research mode” to find out what is happening out there. After all if your staff is not very busy “taking bookings” – why not redirect their efforts towards finding out about the market place and perhaps generating bookings. Try and shift the mentality from order takers to order makers.
The second and slightly longer plan is to get more creative, with implications to re-organising the nature of the business you engage in. Try and get your staff and perhaps even the staff of some of the companies in your supply chain to brainstorm opportunities. Especially those who are customer facing. They often hear things from customers that get lost in the noise or are dropped because the company does not provide the particular solution. And for more senior colleagues – ask yourself – where are the customers right now and what are they doing? On a global level the numbers of people travelling has grown significantly – but not in Europe! So – how about looking further afield and bringing your expertise and experience to new markets (like Russia, China, India and elsewhere?)

Why should big companies be interested in entrepreneurship?

2008-07-03T08:54:00.001Z

The usual answer to this question and it is a fair one – is that unless big companies are interested in being innovative and sustaining the entrepreneurial spirit they will get wiped out. There may well be some truth in this – because mature organizations get into a kind of stasis with their product lines, management systems and complacent marketing. Big companies are sometime wiped out by new entrants and innovative competition. There are many examples to make this point – with low cost airlines, the entry of firms like Google and Youtube taking advertising away from conventional television etc.,

However we should look at a much wider set of political and social trends that are driving an urgent need to better understand entrepreneurship and what it means to big companies. Actually why should we worry about big companies? First – they have scale, employ large numbers of people and can get products to market. We need them!

And what are the signals for them to understand?

Since 1990 – with the fall of the Berlin Wall –there has been a domino effect in terms of reforms, in China and India and then more and more countries – all of which has lead to a dramatic shift in favour of free market econmics. The old world of two forms of economy – planned socialist systems and capitalism have collapsed into one system (as put forward by Prof Willie Brown of University of Cambridge).

This insight is pretty fundamental to us understanding the implications for entrepreneurship. We doubled the population in the free market system – almost overnight, leading to huge migrations of people, money, ideas, supply chains. In effect people and work have both moved in all directions.

We have to rethink the way that business is done, who we are dealing with and how to operate new business models. These changes have lead to insights about “the world being flat” or finding markets “at the bottom of the pyramid”.

Unless business leaders understand these changes and the implications for business they will not be able to make the right choices for innovation and growth.

Leaders are now also faced by high energy costs –this is no longer a CSR agenda for soft tree hugging hippies – fuel costs means it is a topic for the more serious minded business leader.

Navigating through these seismic shifts in our political, social and economic landscape (not to mention technology) requires – more than ever – for people in Oraganisations to think and act in “entrepreneurial ways”.

What are these ways?

In essence these are:

To be proactive, innovative and risk taking on the one hand (Covin and Slevin’s work) and to be able to put in place mechanisms for exploring and discovering opportunities – while being able to critically evaluate ideas (after all we do need to make money!) and then to have the skills and human capital the execute the plans that emerge from being creative and innovative.

These reflections are the result of working more recently with a number of major corporations at a variety of levels and it has even challenged the way that one would normally delver such education, insights and stimulation. Not least writing blogs, doing telephone lectures – (kind of podcasts), being highly interactive in workshops and working on the so called softer sides of human development – because the “hard stuff” is now so easily available from the internet!

Please explore further and come back to me if you want – see for example www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk and www.transitions.co.uk

It is not luck that drives entrepreneurs – it is timing

2008-03-24T10:10:00.001Z

Getting a technology to market can take a long time. Ensuring its robustness, trialling it, researching markets, gathering resources are all long winded processes. By the time one can achieve this – it may be that a faster moving competitor enters the market and takes a dominant position. Or that by the time the technology comes to market the perceived need has moved on. Perhaps complimentary technologies of the relevant infrastructure is still many years away from making it all happen.

Under these various conditions of uncertainty – we come across the “window of opportunity”. When should we attempt to enter the market, when can we start to talk about our ideas? Who else is doing the same thing?

It would seem from the outside that entrepreneurial people have an uncanny knack for getting the timing right! On the whole they seem better able to make bets on when to enter a market or even when to get out – for example from holding shares in a company! They seem to be lucky, the chances are in their favour or they seem to have the ability to draw on serendipity!

Explanation of luck, chance and serendipity may all be correct in certain circumstances, but in reality all these are enhanced by people being alert to their environment, being among people who know what is going on, sharing tacit knowledge, market information and expert opinions.

As Gary Player (the golfer ) said:

The more I practise, the luckier I get,

He also said Persistence and common sense are more important than intelligence.

So be lucky – but don’t rely on it! You will need a great deal of depth and breadth of knowledge about the market place – much more than about your own product or technology. To understand market trends, customers’ hot buttons, convenience, reliability, cost advantages, existence of supply chains, the strengths and weaknesses of competition, the government regulations that might govern the markets you plan to enter, industry standards, safety criteria and much more.

This deep knowledge and ability to interpret the signals from the market has more to do with how you and your team build the business than with some element of luck. After all you are not betting on horses or playing a roulette table.

Sure there is luck that can go your way (or against you) because a competitor takes some action or there is an unexpected event – for example a disaster, but these are part of our understanding of risk and it’s management rather than a central part of a business plan!

Born or made entrepreneurs – It is not just in the genes!

2008-03-24T10:02:00.004Z

"I never thought I had it in me" is a phrase I hear so often towards the end of an entrepreneurship course at the several Universities in which I have had the good fortune to teach or present a seminar or in some way be in touch with graduates.

Why? Because it seems that the formal education system is so weighted in favour of assessed learning - where we want our students to know things rather than know themselves.

There are also rather too many models of heroic leadership that seem to convey the impossible or perhaps the impression that being an entrepreneur is for those with the right genes!

But, if we think about becoming an entrepreneur as a career choice, it is not for everyone. This is not because we have to be born into such a career, anymore than we are born into academia or management or the armed forces!

Entrepreneurs are both born and made. So the argument is not to ask if they are born or made. We can make both assertions because there is no empirical evidence either way and we can refute both claims for the same reason. So what can we discern about the key entrepreneurial characteristics that may be unique to some people?

Entrepreneurs typically show higher levels of risk tolerance and ability to cope with ambiguity. They are also alert to opportunities, in the sense that they are able to make connections between apparently unrelated events and turn that into a business. They are also incorrigibly optimistic, creative in finding resources and solutions to problems. They are also highly self confident in their ability and have a strong belief in their own motivations and abilities.

Some of these characteristics may well be what we are born with, but they are shared with people from all walks of life to a greater or lesser extent.

The counterpoint is that entrepreneurs are made and this is also true, because we see that to be successful as an entrepreneur we need to be in the right environment where we either formally learn how to do it or absorb it from our families and surroundings. We also need a strong motivator. Either we grab hold of an idea and this builds and builds inside us till we get “Pulled” into the career of an entrepreneur or something happens in our normal day to day life and we get “Pushed” into it.

Under these “made” circumstances we need creative skills, living on meagre resources, being part of a community where opportunities flow past and have the managerial know-how to make things happen.

Fun and satisfaction then keeps people at it!

Creativity and business in entrepreneurship education

2008-03-10T07:38:00.004Z

Over the past few years I have been involved with many events and activities that have tried to stimulate creativity and buzz among undergraduates in business. It seems to me thataprt from the whole ideas generation bit, unless these are tied down in later processes with howto then communicate the value of the idea, make sense of it, commercialise it either in a pure business sense or even as a not for profit sustainable project, then all we do is stimulate frustration!

So it has been great to help design a course at Reading University where we have taken students through a creative process, linked it to business lectures on marketing, finance, team working, legal implications and so forth and had them make presentations using props at an exhibition style event.

Ofcourse as University we look to see if they have learnt anything by asking them to write up plans and essyas and the like, Our business friends who come to judge the output look to see if the ideas are actually feasible in real life and are often moved by the passion of the student teams.

So - what should we measure as success?

Creativity: That students learn tools and techniques; they learn they are capable of being creative; how others "create"; group dynamics when the objective is uncertain...

Convergent thinking: How to shape a vague idea into a business proposition; what to establish as the critical success factors; gaps in knowldeg that need to be covered; the ability for the team work to agree; individual learning about the dynamics of converging a creatiev idea...

Business: when is an idea actually economically feasible; what numbers does one need to look at; at what point should one go pubicwith the idea; the tacit knowldge required in commercialising an idea; marketing and sales questions; cash flow and planning; team leadership...

Employers wonder about this too. They want to know of the students are more fit for purpose after University, what practical skills they might bring and how quickly they canhit the ground running as well as what the potential is for future personal growth and development that can then make a difference to the business itself.

There is much work to do in order to better understand entrpreneurship education, but one thing is clear - that the process of students' learning is so different when this approach is taken - because it is also fun, that something of a seed is planted. The release of energy and enthusiasm is evident - so that is clear and easy to see, even if not to measure!

Maybe entrepreneurship education methodologies should be looked at more carefully to see if they can be transported into other subjects at University.

Creativity and business

2008-03-10T07:36:00.001Z

Taking deep science to market – Plastic Logic

2008-02-28T08:06:00.003Z

Plastic Logic has grown out of the Cavendish Labs in Cambridge from the work of Professors Friend and Sirringhaus. The firm is at the cutting edge of technology, built on fundamental scientific inquiry (with papers in the top journals and high citation indexes). It presently employs 150 people and as a firm it has absorbed $50m for research and development (after the time in the academic labs of Cambridge) and now a further $100m to develop the factory (not counting any subsidies from the German Government for the factory in Dresden). All in all not a garage start-up by sexy ponytailed fast talking entrepreneurs, but a deep science based company.

For more information about the products and processes please look up the website for Plastic Logic. http://www.plasticlogic.com/process.php

From a talk on Enterprise Tuesday at Cambridge Unievrsity

First a few remarks from Prof Richard Friend:

“The proposition is that if we can use plastics like ink – but replace things that are useful like silicon, to provide silicon like functionality, then we can make a great revolution. We can get rid of icons like the huge factories and move to a manufacturing method where objects can be made cheaply…..”

This thinking got the first company underway – called Cambridge Display Technologies http://www.cdtltd.co.uk/ now owned by Sumitomo. The fundamental proposition is based on what are known as Polymer organic light emitting diodes (P-OLEDs). Even before CDT, the academic work was published in 1988 and there has been a stream of publications in leading journals in parallel with company development

The progress from scientific inquiry to commercialisation is a long journey and the challenges at the technical level included a search for stability of the product, scalable manufacturing processes, and finding enough performance from transistors so that the end product can do more jobs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYc4dnVs4RM

“From when basic science was being done – to how to translate this into a product that can be scaled up – when this happens you know that the most interesting things happen in an industrial setting….”

However the virtue of a University setting for research is that we can’t keep knowledge secret, but we can patent and get value, especially if you can get a portfolio of a wide enough interest. We filed a number of patents before we published. And have filed even more patents as a company. So – in 2000 we raised £1.75m (Amadeus, Dow Ventures, CRIL) and appointed a CEO – Stuart Evans – when it felt right to form a company

There are probably three major constructs that scientists need to understand; the differences between doing science; doing technology and doing business. Each is very different and this has an impact on the nature of people that get hired into the business.

As academics we should not be ashamed of moving things into business, but we should be candid, because the interaction between academia and industry can be very valuable. If we look at plastic electronics as an example most of the research and engineering run in parallel, where the interactions, inquiries and work run backwards and forwards. Hence the University environment also gets strengthened by such interaction.

When firms are being kind to us they recognise and say that we lead them into the future. And because managing is not always straightforward we need to recognise the ultimate limitations of the Universities ability in commercialisation. Hence we need to be nice to companies. There is a very positive benefit for both parties.

A few highlighted remarks from Stuart Evans – the founding CEO

If you are going to “make it happen” by taking a deep science project to market there are a number of decision points and critical success factors. Here is what we have learnt so far:

One of the most critical decisions is to decide when to go commercial, when it is no longer a project in the lab. This requires a sense of critical mass of events, evidence and belief in the product’s future. Of course from here the next decision is whether or not to start a company. In the case of plastic electronics, there was only one choice – a company had to be started.

From this key decision the next stages include finding a top name ambassador who also believes in you and your project. This person provides a strong signal to the investor and business community that there is something in the opportunity that draws others to it.

The founders need to then raise some money to get the very early stages of the business concept underway, file patents, get basic communication “out there”.

Then you do need a CEO – who will make things happen at a very practical level, like help to raise money, hire the right people, get facilities organised and start to get to customers and build commercial evidence for further investments and commercialisation.

From here on the CEO needs to find a way to attract a top team and the very early team at Plastic Logic were absolutely at the top of their game, not least Henning Sirringhaus who made it to a Professorship at Cambridge before he turned 40.

There were a number of decisive moments, when investors put in money, including some of the top Fortune 500 companies. One of the major lessons we learnt from that experience is that try and get more than one of them to invest because you can get a better balance in the relationships. In other words you will not become dependent on one set of relationships – which can leave you in a vulnerable position. The trick is to find a lead investor, whose reputation in the market place is gold plated. This lead investor will attract others to follow.

The questions and decisions about where and how to make money – in other words building the business model is perhaps one of the most complex, once you have got underway.

There is a kind of Moore’s Law to the way cash is used up in high and disruptive technology. We had to take the technology itself from say 5 working transistors from a pool of 8 to getting 2 million to work reliably – if we were to make anything useful. This is a huge leap from the lab to the market place and requires a lot of clever engineering, money and smart people. It also requires a huge level of faith.

This level of faith comes from knowing that if you get it right you can lead to new iconic products for the future. So for example with the invention of transistors came great products of the past – the Sony walkman is an example and with further miniaturisation has come mobile phones, the blackberry and other products. So although some of our sceptics say that Plastic Logic is on a hopeless journey our belief is that we are positioning ourselves to be an iconic company. Remember that Apple has transformed itself from being a PC company to a major player in music – through the creation of an iconic product – the ipod.

From our perspective you need great science to make great market opportunities. And this in turn means if you have a great product you can be transformational in your vision.

All this requires cash:

So we have raised cash in a number of rounds starting with the very early $1.75m; then a further $3m to hire research staff, then $17m to scale up operations; $30m for a prototype line and most recently $100m for a factory in Dresden.

Take home lessons so far:

Find customers very early on.
Proof of Concept is not a prototype
Watch out for the big prize
Keep innovating and inventing
Build teams within teams
Focus on industry structure
Search for low cost capital

FT has been generous – reports that we have the best chance of being a $1bn company from a University spinout

Avoiding big mistakes – Lessons from a leading investor

2008-02-28T07:52:00.004Z

There are very few investors in the UK with the kind of education and training that Dr Hermann Hauser has received. He completed a PhD in Physics at the Cavendish laboratories in Cambridge, the home of several nobel prize winners and source of inspiration to many generations of researchers. (add link to HH and Cavendish)

Following this training Hermann went directly into creating his first start-up – Acorn computers, described at the time as the first ever home computer, now called PCs. In other words he combined his insights in Physics with entrepreneurship. But as he then described at his keynote speech on Enterprise Tuesday, there was much to learn about doing business. Since then Hermann has personally invested in around 60 businesses and as co-founder of Amadeus Capital – probably the leading technology venture capital fund – he has influenced and shaped a further 60 or so investments.

Hermann was candid enough to talk about some of the mistakes he has experienced so that future entrepreneurs can avoid these. Actually making them seems rather easy, getting it right seems much harder! And Hermann has a stronger track record in getting it right than getting it wrong. Phew!

Here are the lessons he learnt.

Inventory. In a business that sells direct to consumers, especially if it is product based, you just have to understand when things will sell and get the volume of inventory right. At Acorn, it took a number of years to scale up production to the levels that were being demanded, but just as production levels were resolved, competition came in with products, timed their entry better and this left Acorn with unsold computers. With cash tied up in inventory – the firm had to be sold on and exit was achieved through a takeover by Olivetti.

Strategy. When you are taking a product that is new to the market, it is somewhat easy to go down blind alleys in terms of market strategy. In the case of Acorn, the team did not spot the growth of set top boxes and later with another firm they focused for too long on “switches” rather than on the chip they had designed to solve the switch problem. Getting the strategy right, together with understanding the business model and how revenues will flow is probably one of the most common challenges faced by early stage companies in the technology sector.

Not believing in yourself. As part of a growth plan – one of the ways of achieving scalability is to merge with a larger organization that has market access. But – if you do not choose your partner carefully you might find that in reality you could have done it better yourself. So a lack of self-belief might lead to the thoughts of mergers or trade exits that might come too early.

Relying more on debt than equity. In high tech when there is a great need for cash, some entrepeneurs are reluctant to part with equity and prefer to borrow. The essential difference is that if and when times get hard, banks can demand their money back. Not understanding the risk profile and using the wrong type of money to grow the business can be expensive to the business. The example provided was of a firm called Harlequin that racked up £30m of debt, rather than take in equity and eventually the bank called in the money and the firm had to be sold off for £1.00. The lenders were Natwest. (was this an early example of NatWest in the so-called sub-prime marketplace?!)

Market size estimates. Entrepreneurial over-optimism is central to self-belief and risk taking. But – thinking in terms of global market size and assuming small percentage market share is dangerous. The mistake is in not understanding market segments, customer needs and not having conversations with potential buyers.

Estimates of time to market. Although markets and customers may well have been identified, it always takes longer to persuade customers to buy! They have internal reasons to better understand how your products or services fit, issues of integration, finding budgets, trusting the suppliers and a host of other factors, all of which can delay decisions and actual spend. The delays eat into the cash available to the firm and if combined with other risks in the business can be one of the most agonizing reasons for failure – so near yet so far!

Understanding the window of opportunity. Timing. Markets and customers respond to needs and you need to get your timing right. For example – no good bringing a Christmas product out in January, or trying to launch a product solution when there is no infrastructure available to support it (service back up and so forth). Markets shift rapidly and the entry of substitutes or competitors can close a window of opportunity quite quickly. The team needs to remain alert.

Technology failure. Taking an idea from a laboratory to the market requires, proof of concept, prototypes, understanding methods of production, ease of use and scalability. At any stage in this cycle of events the technology can fail. To avoid this you will need the right type of people around you and this is yet another judgment call, to understand the critical success factors.

Amount of money needed to get to market. There is a simple rule that for every $1 to invent it takes $3 to prove the product and $10 to take it to market. And not having enough money to go to market can kill a business quite early on. Underestimating the challenges, harsh market realities, skills and communication experience, trust building needed and operational effectiveness of getting to market can all contribute to runaway costs.

Overestimating the attractiveness of the new product. As founders of a business or at least as founders of the business idea – we can easily seduce ourselves of the merits of the product. In reality the product may not do “anything” for the customer. Another bland offering or just insufficient “wow” factor. If people are to buy – they will need the product to really solve a problem they have or have so much fun/enjoyment that they can be persuaded to buy.

Having the wrong people around you. Perhaps one of the most common errors in business and the hardest of all to get right. Much as been said about the importance of having the right people, but the challenges of finding the “right” people, recruiting them, rewarding, motivating, trusting and working together is not at all easy. Often we build relationships with the people around us and so there is a fine balance between being hard nosed about business decisions and thinking of people as a resource in the business with managing the emotional, moral and social aspects of working with people.

In summary – getting it wrong is easier than getting it right and so to avoid common pitfalls, try and get some experienced people around you. Read a lot and get training in the basics of business. Build your skills, knowledge and credibility.

shai vyakarnam: Fuelling an entrepreneurial economy needs talent - so is this Government mad?

2008-02-28T07:51:00.000Z

shai vyakarnam: Fuelling an entrepreneurial economy needs talent - so is this Government mad?

Gordon Brown Launches Global Entrepreneurship Week

2008-02-20T10:51:00.006Z

If there was any doubt about the continued enthusiasm of politicians to provide a strong signal in favour of entrpreneurship - you should take a look at Gordon Brown's speech on the link below.

http://unleashingideas.org/launch/video

It seems to me that Mr Brown is among the few politicians or country leaders that "gets-it" with respect to the potential for transformation that entrepeneurs have in their societies. If you were to follow the further links after watching the video - you will see how long and how widespread has been the movement to encourage and empower people to make a difference.

For those of us in enterprise development itis a great delight to see this social movement gainign pace. The celebration of endeavour and success, rathter than envy and scepticism. The tolerance of failure rather than mocking and ridicule. Long may it continue.

So - it still puzzles me that there are economic policies and legislation that constrain people! The threat of freeing the human spirit seems so powerful in some countries (and Institutions) that the country itself runs backwards.

For example - in Poland and indeed elsewhere, Uniervsity Professors are not allowed to have company directorships. Neither are they allowed ownership of intellectual property. The latter I can understand - because in the end IP needs to be vested to a legal entity that can have the rights to negotiation etc.,

But - why would countries - that can see the evidence of economic and human resource policies that are liberal - still continue with top down controls?

Much of continental Europe is held back by these kinds of backward policies, not to mention the continued nonsense of subsidised agriculatre that is holding back the WTO discussions on free and fair trade.

I hope this blog (and more importantly the message of "Mark your Mark") reaches those parts of the EU that normal people cannot reach!

For those of you who are able to influence policy to attain liberty, equality and fraternity - say something!

From student debt to millionaire – it can be done.

2008-02-17T20:40:00.000Z

Lord Karan Bilimoria studied Law at Cambridge, but this did not stop him from an entrepreneurial career. His interest was kindled when he was unable to drink the well known gassy lagers with Indian food! He noticed that English ale was not gassy and wondered why there was no lager without gas.

He pursued this interest with Mysore breweries in Bangalore. Cobra beer was born. As volumes grew, the brewing was moved from Bangalore to Bedford, to the Charles Wells breweries. Volumes have risen at 40% per annum and from being a niche entrant to an established brand in supermarkets and restaurants. The big vision for Cobra under present management is to become a $1billion company in terms of sales!

Karan has achieved this trajectory from having a student debt of about £20,000 to building a company worth £145 million in 18 years through a very clear focus. He is so consistent about his values and vision – to aspire and achieve against all odds.

The really interesting story is how he has managed to finance the growth of Cobra over the 18 years! His training as an accountant, prior to his law degree gave him the vocabulary, but his creativity in terms of finding solutions to funding are probably innate. He has used a variety of funding sources to retain his ownership and although he has taken in equity he still owns 50% of his company.

Personal finance;
Credit cards;
overdrafts;
Small firms loan guarantee scheme;
Bills of Exchange based on an unused over draft facility of one of his clients; Debtor finance – which means “selling your invoices” to the finance company who then advance you 80% of the money owed to you immediately and the rest after they have paid;
Convertible loans – to preference shares
And finally the use of a “payment in kind” Hedge Fund instrument http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f770c4c-427d-11db-8dc3-0000779e2340.html which I confess is a bit beyond me to fully comprehend!

What do we learn from Lord Karan Bilimoria. The so called “soft skills” are a major strength of the man. It is perhaps the acute awareness of these skills that enables him to leverage the relationships and trust to get the support of some of the smartest people. His personal motto is to go the extra mile; to take initiative, have integrity with what you want to do and continue to be original. It is also clear that he has passion for what he does.

In addition I would say – learn the language of business and finance! It is merely another language and no more complicated than any other discipline.

The common sense of entrepreneurial team building

2008-02-17T20:35:00.000Z

Louisa Fletcher is currently the founder and MD of Propertypriceadvice – an internet business. She is also hugely successful as a person in terms of wealth and clarity of thought. Louisa comments on property in the media. She also seems to have swallowed some high powered batteries. Louisa is also young and pretty, so she ticks many boxes. Louisa recently delivered an inspirational speech on Enterprise Tuesday at Cambridge.

But what has this young, dynamic woman got to say about the way she hires, and then builds people into her entrepreneurial businesses? Surely we need to hear from the greyer haired entrepreneur to really understand the issues? Not a bit of it. She is also very smart and articulate.

Here are some tips that she has picked up, used or learnt through her own career:

You need to be able to make a “Land Rover bonnet” speech at the spur of a moment, much as a military leader might have to do to send his troops to battle. In other words leaders need to have the skill to be able to inspire their colleagues when needed.

The leader also needs to try and instil a team ethic where everyone comes together, especially at moments of urgent need. Can individuals within a group see themselves as team members and pitch-in when required.

Leadership is also a quality where you need to be able to “do stuff”. In other words your qualities of leadership should not start to create a distance from the coal face, especially in early stage and growing businesses.

The challenges of inheriting a team from an earlier leader are quite different to hiring your own. You need to spend much more time to get inside the heads of the people, to understand where they are coming from and what makes them tick.

Although you have a single team, there are several individuals and each has a separate need and motivation. It is really necessary to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the team members and to ensure that you can draw on the best side of each person.

Sometimes – if the business is not going well – you may need to downsize and it is here that a leader can be seriously challenged. Not so much with the “firing part”, but with the retention of those who stay. Dealing with the sense of guilt of the “stayers” and motivating them to give of their best in a really bad situation. You end up splitting teams and destroying loyalties. Take advice and have a mentor handy to deal with the pressures. In these situations you need to show the “balance sheet”, be open and people will understand more easily the driving forces of your decisions.

The worst form of team building is spending 4 days in the Brecon beacons getting wet, hungry, cold and irritable. The best is to find out what makes people tick by asking them and then developing processes to meet those needs.

Fear and respect are sometimes used in management. So is trust. People seem to use these sentiments in different ways. But at the heart of a positive team experience, there must be some combination of trust and mutual respect!

In hiring future team members, Louisa only uses networks of people. This secures trusted individuals, probably with shared values. Rather than interviewing people she also has them do a day’s work or a short assignment – a sort of “try it before you buy it” approach.

Her phone is never off – especially for colleagues. Louisa likes to be “always available and accessible”. Perhaps she is young enough for this extreme measure! Often the calls are to seek her confirmation and reaffirm her trust in the team, rather than to make decisions.

At the tail end of her speech we heard a metaphor – managers need to be like a pane of glass. To stop the bad stuff reaching people who report to you but to allow the light to shine through.

As a self confessed control-freak Louisa has worked hard on gaining a better understanding of team building and leadership and she exemplifies the possibility of making a success of taking on a leadership role.

Do Finns take risks?

2008-02-12T08:24:00.000Z

Laurea University of Applied Sciences made a strategic choice to implement, develop and use Learning by Developing as an operational model in order to contribute to the growth of the region around Helsinki, as well as to provide tangible employability benefits to its population of 8000 students. The LbD model at Laurea is work in progress but a quick review of it indicated a number of useful lessons.

Learning by Developing (LbD) is an innovative operating model which requires students to undertake projects rooted in the world of work and acquire two sets of competences. The first being generic such as work/life knowledge and skills and the second are subject specific competences.

Whatever the definition of LbD, its overall “pedagogical” lessons, the vision and its values, its implementation, the practicalities, or even the sheer magnitude of challenges in getting it adopted by 500 faculty, the most striking feature of the programme is that it turns the intent of the Institution by 90 degrees.

From being concerned about tick boxes of grades and achievements, from form filling for the Government, from being concerned about teaching units, efficiency, resource utilisation and so forth to a deep concern about enabling students to learn what they need to learn so that they may succeed in their lives and careers. This University is being run as if students matter! A value set not unlike the seminal work of Schumacher in the 1970s whose book “small is Beautiful” was a turning point in liberating the spirit of individuals.

Do Finns take risks? Well at Laurea they seem to – but they do so with a very deep sense of values, based on trust that the students will rise to the challenge and take on the behaviours and aspirations that are being expected of them. It is very early days yet to see if this is going to work, but the evidence I saw is that when you believe in people they respond. So, maybe they do not take risks after all!!

Increasing your odds of success in social enterprise

2008-02-01T15:35:00.000Z

Duncan Goose of One Water – gave a talk to around 250 Cambridge students recently on Enterprise Tuesday. We wondered how he would bring his personal experiences together with a topic on increasing the odds? Would it be just a “Frank Sinatra” story of “I did it my way” – or would there be general lessons we could all take away?

Duncan was in marketing before his mid-life crisis. And yes – he bought a motorbike – but not a Harley Davidson. He bought a bike and went round the world!! Already this man stands apart from his peers. It was during this journey when the purpose and meaning for his life became apparent, especially when he reached Africa only to find that there were so many people without the most basic of human needs – water.

So he created One Water, established an entirely transparent accounting system and by seeking and receiving help he has started to sell bottled water. Why? Because the profits from the sales of water goes to installation of “play pumps” near or at schools. These pumps use child play-power – they are roundabouts and as children play on them they pump up water –approx one litre for every rotation!

http://www.onewater.org.uk/

The consequence of this? Children come to school. The water is also used for cooking, the benefits of local community and for growing vegetables. A wonderful circulation of benefits in the local ecosystem. The funding for these pumps comes largely from the profits, so the business model is actually sustainable. And Duncan tells us that his little company made more profits than Nestle’s brands of water! This is some achievement of goodwill over capitalism.

So – how does Duncan “increase the odds – when he is cash strapped, resource hungry and a young emerging business?

Lesson1: Start with a goal – a vision that is truly clear and simple to articulate. I can’t agree more with this. I am trustee of a charity and we came up with a goal for the area in which we work – we want it to become a “cataract free zone”. Nice and simple and like water – eyesight is a basic need that can easily be provided.

Lesson 2: Know how much you are prepared to lose in the pursuit of your vision. It is not about being a risk taker – but more about defining your risk limits. Are you prepared to lose your home or your family? What are your limits?

Lesson 3: Be prepared to be contrarian and have the self-belief that what you are doing is the right thing. Of course there is a fine balance between self-belief and stubborn error. You need to be balanced between being open to suggestion and having a strong resolve. Only you and perhaps a mentor can sort this out. You will need to break rules (not the law) of business. Being creative and imaginative is more powerful than taking competition head-on.

Lesson 4: One of the key attributes of entrepreneurship is the need for and ability to manage credibility. You need to appear bigger than you are as a business. You need to project yourself like a peacock! A fan of feathers to attract attention. This is not to say that you should be deceptive – but it is about your mentality – being and thinking like a big business that is starting up – rather than a timid little business that hopes one day to grow.

Lesson 5: If you are getting into social enterprise – one of the strongest values you need is that of Give more than you take. People should always feel that in the balance of relationship they are getting more from you. In such circumstances the goodwill extended to you will be enormous and the combined energy of each person giving to you will propel the organisation forward.

Lesson 6: Action speaks much louder than words. Maybe this is why Nike has its brand associated with the terms “just do it” But in the case of One Water – this action followed a very clearly laid out vision. Action by itself is just irritating!!

Lesson 7: As part of your preparation – you will need to get to know your markets, customers and industries. This sounds like such a common sense statement, yet entrepreneurs, firms and even larger businesses are very weak in this area. It is this “common sense” that is still being taught in ever more sophisticated ways by Business Schools.

Lesson 8: So long as you make a strong link between socially responsible behaviours, good causes and behave in accordance with your espoused values, it is possible for customers to reward you with profits. This is really in stark contract to the pursuit of profit when values can get compromised.

I shall leave it to you to absorb the 8 lessons from a social entrepreneur. We can only delight that anecdote and theory can sometimes merge!

Why I want to be a millionnaire

2008-01-17T14:45:00.001Z

I recently posted a question on my facebook account - asking if people wanted to become millionniares.

Here are some of the replies - you make upi your own mind whether money matters more than personal satisfaction:

· Yes, for mostly shallow and selfish reasons, but money follows as a consequence of building a successful business, not when wealth is the principal objective.
· It is an aim,though not a sole driver for me.Apart from enjoying the material side of life,I believe money should make it to the right hands to allow it to be used 'well'.Capitalism with a conscience, I think, can address a lot of the world's problems.
· Yes it does, however that doesn't mean that money is the center of my being, nor is it my main motivation in life. For me, freedom is being able to do what you want to do, when you want to - not being tied down fiscally.
· Yes in the sense that the financial security would be good, and by definition I'd have done something with my life, potentially having created an economic constribution to others and created something for the world. Ethically it may not stand so well...
· Sure does. I'd never say no to being a millionaire. Perhaps I wouldn't want to be a high profile muilti-millionaire. For me the advantages of being a millionaire outweigh those of not being one........
· Winston Churchill once said: "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it!" Being a millionare would mean that I have achieved at least one of my goals, and now have the means to achieve many others. This would be a good thing.
· Money is freedom so long as you have the will to make the choice to alter doing what you have to do to acquire enough money to allow you the freedom of choice to do other things.
· Yes, it does appeal to me very much. I feel having a level of financial security will allow me to do multiple things rather than just be on the treadmill to keep myself afloat.
· Sure does. I'd never say no to being a millionaire. Perhaps I wouldn't want to be a high profile muilti-millionaire. For me the advantages of being a millionaire outweigh those of not being one........

Happy to receieve comments

What investors look for - on Dragons Den

2007-12-30T21:24:00.000Z

Looking beyond the rough and tough entertainment of Dragons Den - here is what I took from the Christmas edition of the programme.

If you want to secure investment for a new idea or business and need to make a presentation to a group of Business Angels you will need to get yourself ready.

Going on TV is not the only way to raise money! See for example:

http://www.bbaa.org.uk/

But wherever you go look for money you will need to make sure:

Your pitch needs to work

Get your pitch - presentation - to be excellent. You need clarity; a charismatic presentation and ensure you build your credibility through the pitch. More on this through the rest of the notes.

Appearance - look professional. Make some effort at this

Your presentation needs to be evidence based, succint and your own demeanour needs to be such that the investors take a liking to you. Because no matter how good your idea - if they do not like you for what ever reason - they just won't invest. It is their money!

The content of your pitch

Make sure you have a grasp of your figures. It is no good denying your knowledge of numbers. It is not rocket science. If you do not understand them - make sure you get a good quality tutorial from someone well versed in finance - especially in raising money.

Ensure you have a grasp of who your customers are - not just the overall market place. Go read a book on marketing if you do not understand the importance of this. Perhaps Geoffrey Moore's book - Crossing the Chasm will help you. Book shops are full of useful materials. As indeed are local Business Schools, full of bright students who can get some market research done for you.

If you are in a buy and sell or a make and sell business - ensure you know what the costs, sales prices, profits and volumes all mean.

If you are in a service business - where you are selling time - see how best you can generate enough sales to realistically cover your time and all the various incidental costs.

During the meeting

Be clear

Listen to the questions - make sure you understand them

Answer carefully - not impulsively

Avoid arguing or begging

Try not to avoid answering the question or become evasive - it only gets harder to retain credibility

Be realistic

There are two ways of gaining immediate attention from an investor - real customer interest in sufficient numbers or of sufficient calibre - to make it realistic. This is a very clear way of reducing the percieved risk.

When it comes to getting a valuation on a new company - bear in mind that what ever money you ask for - you will have to give away some of your equity - the question is what proportion of your company will you give in exchange for the amount of money you are asking for:

High valuation

Great team - with previous experience of business and of working together (serial entrpreneurs).

A proven market - hard evidence - not just assertions.

A well researched developed product - with secured intellectual property (patents) - and a proven market. Better still if you have a fully functional prototyle or some early trial customers who are prepared to endorse you and your product.

Mid level valuations

One team member is solid - others not so convinving - perhaps part-time, not put their own money in or not technically convincing.

No hard evidence of the market place - relying on metaphors, instinct - but perhaps experience and some endorsements verify the potential. In other words we can see a "market" but perhaps not "customers".

Product has been developed to an extent, but needs resources to get it to prototype and get patents sorted out.

Low level valuations

The idea is no more than a good idea

The inventor/entrepreneur seems to have potential but is unproven - is a first time entrpereneur

The investor is likely to be taking a high level of risk with the early stage idea

The product has only just moved beynd a conceptual level

The investor feels they will have to do all the work to get the product underway because of the lack of experience of the entrepreneur

No valuation what so ever

The pitch was rubbish

The product is whacky

You argued

The market is completely unproven - no sight of customers

It looks like a lifestyle business that is better run from a bedroom or kitchen

What happened to Italy - where have all the entrepreneurs gone?

2007-12-30T20:52:00.000Z

I have been to Italy twice in two months. The first time this year was for a conference on entrepreneurship. The audience were tough! We had a small delegation from Cambridge made up of entrepreneurs, investors and IP lawyers. The idea was that we would provide some new information, inspiration and connections to make things happen.

I believe the audience was polite, listened to what we had to say, but I am not sure they wanted to believe any of what we said was possible! What we said was "you can do it if you want to"!! Well it took us a day to say this.

But - whatever the state of entrepreneurship policy, education or attitude - I love Italy! What I love most about it is the history, its past achievements and contributions to world progress. And oh yes - the food and wine!

It was with this second visit - the malaise of European entrepreneurship became frighteningly obvious! I will not get into the detail here - because that would be unkind to a country and a people I love. But there is a desperate need in Italy for the educated elite to get a grip on what they want to see happen to their country.

There is knowledge, sense of design and aesthetics. The people are smart, have great social skills. Maybe there is just too much complacency around.

What I would like to know is why is mainland Europe better as a historic tourist location than as a vibrant set of countries? Italy is just an example of what I see in other countries. And by the way this is possibly one of the reasons that UK still attracts more investment and attention from Indian businesses than the whole of mainland Europe. Remember the reaction to the Arcelor takeover?!

So - here is what I think does not help

Employment laws - you can't fire people if things go wrong
Tax laws - take too much off the entrepreneurs
Banks - are unconnected to the "SME" sector
The European Venture Capital industry - is not oriented to early stage businesses or high tech
There is an insufficient number of role models to inspire - individuals are not celebrated in the press - perhaps only those who break the law make it into the media!

Xenophobic attitude of politicians prevents high net worth, intellectuals from migrating to Europe. Clearly migration into Europe can become a major issue - if all the people who come are those who sell dodgy sun glasses on street corners.

But if mainland Europe want to progress at any where near the rate of progress of Silicon Valley - it will certainly have to look to being more open, encouraging diversity of attitudes, skills and probably teach English in all schools as a compulsory second language!

That is enough controversy for now!

Happy New Year

Fuelling an entrepreneurial economy needs talent - so is this Government mad?

2007-12-18T20:10:00.000Z

UK Government is thinking of tightening the UK visa tourist visa regime. A country that has beenopen and has stared to benefit from such opennes is thinking about joining Fortress Europe! Oh Dear!

The detail is in the text I have taken from the Beeb - but before you read this think about the following:

Prof Amartya Sen (Nobel Prize winner) was Master of Trinity College - about as Establishement as it can get - and he always had an Indian passport! Meanwhile UK welcomed Stelios and he started easyjet - so imagine if it might be even remotely possible for an English man to go start an airline in Greece or Cyprus?? Unlikely! More recently - in Cambridge - we have had people relocate from Spain, France, India and elsewhere because the atmosphere of openness and opportunity is welcoming.

By taking this action (if it eventually does) - and expecting a Minister to try and explain this to Indians in a visit in February - this is a real faux pas! It just sends out the wrong signal to the talented young people that is crucially needed by Britain.

In various demographic studies - there is clear evidence that there is going to be a workforce shortage over the next 3 - 4 decades in Europe and a surplus in India. To maintain good relations and benefit from this balancing economic need - Britain and India will have to act in mature ways. Visa and immigration rules on both sides will have to keep an eye on teh future.

Here is the announcement:

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070036227&ch=12/18/2007%208:37:00%20PM

Corporate entrepreneurship at Virgin comics

2007-12-13T10:17:00.000Z

Every so often - in the compnay of very senior managers from large organisations - you get the feeling that the term "entrepreneurship" or "entrepreneur" is a demon in their management jargon. This is a term that causes hostility and conversations that drift no where in particular. The term entrepreneur is regarded with some suspicion by managers.

But in reality as Prof Watson (Nottingham University) said - to make the distinction between entrepreneurship and management is to make a fatal distinction.
Entrepreneurs without management practices are as much a nightmare as are managers without an entrpreneurial spark within them.

Afterall how can you create new opportunities for organic growth, make mergers and acquisiions happen, develop new products and services without seeking to be innovative (i.e entrepreneurial).

Equally how can entrepreneurs - who might have great ideas and identify opporutnities make any of their dreams come alive without the disciplines of management?

So - the two skill sets need to sit alongside each other. And yesterday (12th December) I saw no better example than having run into Suresh Seetharaman of Virgin Comics. He and his colleagues have pulled together a remarkable team of creative people to develop new comics and animations by combining Indian and other legendary stories and bringing them to 21st century. When you look underneath the excitment of what they are creating - you can see that they have clearly closed the gap between "entrepreneurship and management" - they see no difference and thank goodness for such teams.

http://www.virgincomics.com/

I wish them well!

Entrepreneurship as a social movement

2007-12-11T18:01:00.000Z

There has been a seismic shift in many parts of the world where younger generations prefer to seek out enterprising opportunities rather than jobs for life. In many countries where ‘Generation Y’ is getting connected up on the new and rapidly growing social networks (e.g. ‘Facebook’; ‘MySpace’; ‘LinkedIn’, etc.), one can see aspirations changing in leaps and bounds.

In 1979 Mrs Thatcher started to demolish overweight, oversized organisations such as in shipping, steel, coal on the basis that Governments had no business to be in business. Although this caused social pain, out of this has come a new entrepreneurial class. Then (like it or not) came a climate in which free market economics started to win. But free enterprise is not always inclusive and, although economists talk of trickle down, this can sometimes be a really slow dribble.

In parallel with political and social reforms, we have also witnessed the growth of technology based businesses that have created excitement and buzz for young people everywhere. The ‘entrepreneurial generation’ want to become the next Narayanmurthy or Kiren Mazumdar rather than their employees.

As one of my family elders said, “Even educated people are going into business”. Research-based Institutions now have policies for Intellectual Property ownership. It is too early to assess the benefits but this is a really important first step as it signals to the research community that they too can be enterprising academics. An emerging story is the Simputer – the work of Professor Swami Manohar at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Entrepreneurship comes in many forms, when people bring the same set of skills, know-how and drive for creating a social or civic change. In other words, entrepreneurship goes beyond the notion of start-ups - something which (highly paid) blue chip managers have not yet fully understood. However, a few organisations (like Proctor and Gamble and Unilever) are talking about “open innovation” where R+D is now seen in a more boundary-less manner, requiring very different skill sets, systems and behaviours. These are early first steps towards being more entrepreneurial.

Entrepreneurship is complex, takes time, is not fully understood and better aimed at helping people unlock their own capability and drive. Sadly there are ill-informed misconceptions like entrepreneurs are born, risk takers, lucky or rely on serendipity. None of these can be proved in a systematic way! And if one subscribes to them there is not much point in having an educational system!

Instead, one needs a robust view of entrepreneurship development which focuses on five inter-related aspects:

(1) Raising awareness of inner motivation is the first step.
(2) This can lead to entrepreneurial intent which increases alertness to opportunity. This is tempered by a combination of;
(3) Business skills and know-how (necessary conditions of success) and balanced by
(4) Risk appetite
(5) Finally, the entrepreneur needs an opportunity which triggers a desire to succeed and outweighs the fear of failure.

In combining all these so-called soft factors, individuals emerge with a real sense of self-belief and confidence.

These qualities need an entrepreneurial ecosystem enabled by local, social networks for mentoring, investments, team members, legal and financial expertise and routes to clients and suppliers.

At the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL), where we base our work on these principles, we have seen results in terms of personal and business achievement. For a start, numbers have grown. In 2001, we attracted 30 – 40 people to our Enterprise Tuesday course. Now we get over 250 people per week. Another programme called ‘Ignite’ (aimed at aspiring entrepreneurs with solid tech-based business ideas) has expanded from 20 local delegates to over 50 from 14 countries in 2007. The evidence of a social movement is not only the macro data, but is front of us on a daily basis. And, we have the joy of seeing real changes taking place as a result of our work. For example;

Dr Paul Goldsmith, an alumnus of Ignite, started Daniolabs using zebra fish in neuroscience. The company has grown enough to achieve an exit for its investors. After participating in our 2005 Enterprisers programme, Stuart Mitchell turned down a highly paid job offer from HM Treasury to establish Fivez, a 5-aside football business working with disadvantaged children in Scotland. He has made a huge local difference and started up another business. Rachel Whitehouse, a former MBA student, took an entrepreneurship course and went on to lead an internal venture in the banking sector. She was hired for her entrepreneurial skills and confidence.

We can see the growing aspiration for enterprising careers and the growth in institutions, websites and people who are there to help and support. The spirit of enterprise is certainly spreading!

Indian Venture Capital is growing fast

2007-12-09T21:36:00.001Z

I have been asked to speak at the University of Bath on the topic of entrepreneurship in India. as part of the research (helpfully conducted by UK-India Business council) we found a recent update on the venture capital scene in India. It is strongly based on knowledge based industries and from "no-where" it is rising at great speed. I will leave it to you to click your way through the detail.

http://www.indiavca.org/IVCA%20Presentation_October2007.pdf

Meanwhile - this evidence points to the notion of entrepreneurship become much more of a social movement and is getting past the stage of being a politician's after dinner speech. More people want to start the sort of companies they work for - especially in India. The growth of inspirational role modes shows that technical education can lead to a propserous life style where one can "do well by doing good".

26th November - Dragons Den – Questions, Intuition and drilling into vague answers.

2007-11-26T22:51:00.001Z

Having watched tonight’s episode – I tried following the questions that were asked and some of the comments that were made. Maybe this will enable future entrepreneurs to ask themselves some of the questions and prepare themselves better – if not for TV – at least for investment propositions.

Feel free to add to these questions. What was clear was that the Dragons started with fairly obvious questions – and allowed their intuition, vast experience and detail undertsnading of certain sectors to drill deeper.

What they could not take was an exaggerated valuation from a former investment banker with an MBA!

Here is a headline question:

Does a frozen pitch lead to a loss of credibility?

Theatre Company

If I give you £50k what do I get back
Have you picked those figures from think air? Or what have you got confirmed bookings?
What will make the show stand out from the dozens of others? What is different from all the others you are doing?
Are you taking a show that you have developed at Center Parks and take it to the outside world….What is unique about it
How many Theatres would you play at? (Ans 80)
How much have you allocated in terms of marketing for 80 different locations (£25k)
Is this really enough?

The Graveyard is full of good shows that have not made money and I am afraid that you do not have a new business model – it looks like a failure

I thought your show idea was brilliant – but it can’t turn itself into a business – so I am out.

You have not persuaded me you can make any money so I am out

I do not think your show was that great – and also for the (poor) numbers I am out.

Super digger for children

What is to stop copy-cat dealers

Needs too much money to get it going and is easily copied. All Dragons are out.

Entrepreneurs are not allowed to take notes into the den – they must have all the facts in their heads.

£145k for 10% for Steri Spray

What are the markets? – Hospitals, gyms, schools, showers are fitted where duty of care is required.

Are you saying that LD affected water hits the shower – do you not still have a problem that the bacteria is still in the water – say in the tanks.

What progress have you made so far?

We need to get to a production ready state.
I have filed patents (in many countries)

What is the patent for?

The technology

How costly is it compared to other shower heads? So there is a £50 premium on your taps.

They see inventors have difficulty in pitching their ideas and this one is no different

How may do you expect to sell?

What margins do you expect to make on that?

On the gross and on the net??

With 77% GM – you would have a huge margin so,
Why did not you not work out that if you drop your margin – you could sell your hugely better product at the same price as existing and inferior products – it would be a no-brainer as an investment proposal.

What is unique?
Competition has a filter – holds back bacteria, costs £x and lasts only 3 weeks.
e.g. Hospitals there are 1.5million filtered taps out there in hospitals
At last – the real answer!

Ian I like it – your valuationis crazy (10%)

I will offer you £145k for 40% of business (Deborah and Theo)

Entrepreneur holds his ground by asking of anyone else was interested to co-invest.

Passion, evidence of market need/technology leadership and endeavour overcomes the lack of business experience

He gets his investment after the grilling.

Home Party business

Part plan is a growing sector

How unique is this – then ripped into.

Tournament with a Twist

Foot ball in a swamp – started in Finland….

How can anyone want to do it?
Are you taking the micky?
Looks fun, but I can’t see a return so I am out – as is everyone.

“Yes Super Baby”
10% for £175k

What you wear can stimulate your children.
Ex MBA, investment banker, management consultant – became a mother realised the need for functional fun clothes for young mothers.

Attach bits to clothes - colourful and fun
Have a patent and trademarks
Vision to create a brand for Yes Super Baby – sensory stimulation for babies

Can I look at your scarf?

What have you sold so far? Have you sold anything yet?
I have sold 136 products to parents (£1600)
You were an investment banker before - So how do you get your valuation?
I talked to an expert who values start-ups..
He has put in £50k; I have put in £45k
I cannot believe that someone with your background can be so naïve!
She has aliented James with an unrealistic valuation
This opportunity is as inviting as a holiday in Afganistan! Not for me – maybe for you!
I cannot believe you were a professional advising on valuations. I can’t treat you seriously as an ionvestee possibility.
(Blasted a banker for getting the valuation so wrong)

Who wears? Parents wearing
Parents hand over to nursery staff to create some level of continuity
(I do not believe it says Duncan)
The thing is that kids have a short attention span – not sure what is more ridiculous – the valuation or the design?

Valuation is ridiculous, concept is ridiculous and the product is ridiculous you should stop right away
Deborah – You stand and present very credibly. But what you present is not credible…
Concept is somewhat disturbing (I am not a child psychologist) to make the mother both the mother and the toy. It is an addition – to stimulate.
Not a healthy development
I think the idea is brilliant – I have three young kids – this stuff will sell.
I would have invested in this – I wish you had asked for the right amount and the right valuation. But I am not going to….
Dragons do not get any prior prep..

So – no questions – but the entrepreneur managed (quickly) to alienate all the Dragons with an over inflated valuation while presenting herself as a professional.

Food company – Caribbean ready meals

Samples of ready meals
Husband will take it from here
150 recipes from the Caribbean
No artificial colouring or other chemicals
We have super market deals
We need the money for relocating, new packaging etc.,

£100k for 20%

Who is the biggest customer –
We are in 34 stores in Asda?
Is your product in 34 stores in ASda

The other is Morrisons
14 stores now stock it

Who are the entrepreneurs?
Used to be a fashion model
From industry – the shop failed –shut it down
Husband – fashion designer - Not going to make enough money went into sales

In 8 months sold £ half million. Expect to sell £1.5m in the next few months.
Do you have repeat orders – in the pipeline for you to triple sales?
Do you have this information in the bag (no)
Where will the 3 times sales come from if these are not in the bag?
Can you tell me what you have with the clients?

Our product is produced in a factory – outsourced to a supplier.
Why do you want to own the factory. It will cost you a lot of money – why –
Want control

What is the real issue?
We have a distribution problem?

Why have you not gone to other suppliers?
Morrisons – the product has proved itself but they want a reliable supplier
Probably more issues to come to light

What does the company you have outsourced to charge you?

They charge us £1.30 – we sell at £1.60
How much do you pay for packaging? 18p packaging
Delivery – who pays for that – We do at 12p per pack
It costs for £1.60 and sell it for £1.60

Business is easy, buy for less and sell for more – you are not making in money!

The manufacturing deal they have signed up to – does not allow them to make any money

There is not one good reason to invest – other than the taste of the food
You have not shown you understand business

Awakening Italian Enterprise

2007-11-25T09:24:00.000Z

A small group of people familiar with entrepreneurship development in cambridge were invited to a day long semiar in Milan - by Il SOle 24 ore - the Financial Times of Italy. The participants from Italy included academics, managers of incubation centres, post docs, and doctoral students from science and technology..

They were certainly high calibre people at the cutting edge of their scientific disciplines.

But what happened to the spirit - the spirit of Italy that we see everywhere else? In football, sport, design, motor racing, the auto industry, design, fashion, food and so much else from Italy?

Is it that the scholarly culture of Italy is so far removed from the day to day of Italy or that Institutions have been set up to deliberatly extinguish the spirit of the people engaged in the pursuit of curiosity. One is of course tempted to think of the fate of Galileo or other "heretics" who challenged the orthodoxy of their period.

I want to know if there is a light burning in Italy and how it can be used to encourage the greater engagement of enterprise amongst such talented people?

Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge

2007-11-19T11:50:00.000Z

Last week we had a dozen or so top entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley come to Cambridge. It was a real eye opener - in terms of seeing what and how business is being done in Silicon Valley. All the talk was about web 2.0 and manyspeakers referred to "faith and belief" in terms of making money! So - the question is - how many of todays start-ups in this "space" willa ctually succeed and will investors do it all again - have they already forgotten the dot com bubble?

Whatever happens the revolution is here and exciting!

As an educator the question is - what should we be teaching future entrepreneurs about how to gerenate the ideas and evetually monetise the ideas in this virtual world?