The Business Leaders Network (BLN) runs events – workshops, dinners and conferences – for entrepreneurs and investors engaged in building growth businesses. Founded in the month prior to the Lehman Bros crash, we have grown steadily over the past 18 months in a tough market environment. We now need some more people to help us!
The Role Building on our reputation and existing event programme, we are now looking to develop our event programme and membership model. We are looking for support, initially part-time, to help manage a busy office, take control of the development and delivery of specific events and to develop a membership programme.
We require an individual who is capable and eager to take ownership of tasks to ensure that not only are deadlines met, but with the highest quality results. With too much to be done every day, we can tailor the role to suit the right candidate’s skill set.
You will liaise with existing and prospective BLN members, as well as working with other professionals. You will be able to pick new things up quickly and be prepared to work in a small team. The role will also involve putting together event booklets and delegate material, as well as managing project plans.
Candidates are likely to have experience in some of the following: event management; conference production; membership management; investor relations; corporate finance; event marketing; web site management; blogging. This is a role for a candidate who is looking to work in a fast-paced and dynamic environment for 2 days per week, with the potential for additional work opportunities from home.
Core deliverables:
- Communicating regularly with clients & responding to enquiries
- Maintaining & updating current records
- Identifying potential future BLN members from a range of sources
- Helping to secure attendees for events
- Ensuring a high degree of accuracy in the production of BLN documents/reports
- Ad-hoc project flexibility
- Event management assistance
Hours We will be as flexible as possible in terms of working hours – we recognise that sometimes the best people for a role don’t have the luxury of a 9-5 lifestyle. The role could be particularly suitable for example for a parent who is looking to move back into the real world.
How to Apply: To apply please simply send your CV and a covering letter via email to darren@TheBLN.com. We will review all applicants and respond back to you. Successful applications will be called for interview shortly afterwards.
Just a quick heads up on the participants for tomorrow night’s CEO Tales event. Thanks to some superhuman feats of organisation by Taylor Wessing’s event team, we now have a few additional places available. Thanks Lucy!
One of the the things that everyone knows about economics is that a weak pound is bad for us when we take our holidays but is actually good for companies that export to the rest of the world. The weak Sterling means that UK companies get more £££s in their bank when the stuff they have sold in other countries is converted back into home currency.
We have had a staggeringly weak pound for the entirety of this recession – this is the Pound vs the Euro since 2007.
Strangely, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a UK trade deficit of £7.99bn in January (£7.01bn in December 2009). More here. This is about £1bn more than economists had predicted and was down to a drop in exports of £1.4 billion (to £19.5 billion) and a decline in imports of £0.5 billion (to £27.4 billion). This is the biggest monthly deficit since August 2008 – pre Lehman Brothers.
“Economists were expecting the deficit to shrink to £6.9 billion in January, according to a Dow Jones Newswires survey last week.” Wall Street Journal
Some ‘expert’ economic analysis:
“The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said there was no obvious reason for the wider trade deficit, although some have suggested that the particularly bad weather in January may have disrupted trade flows.” Sky News.
“It could be that the weakening of sterling is taking time to feed through – but that may be painting too much of a positive on a negative set of numbers.” Jeremy Stretch, senior market strategist, Rabobank
“It’s a pretty disappointing number,” Alan Clarke, analyst, BNP Paribas.
“There is no getting away from the fact that the January trade deficit is disappointing and also worrying for hopes that the economy can rebalance over the coming months. The total trade deficit widened to a 17-month high in January as exports fell appreciably and imports declined modestly. This suggests that net trade is set to be a drag on the economy in the first quarter of 2010 as it was in both the fourth and third quarters of 2009.” Howard Archer, chief UK economist, IHS Global Insight
Am I the only person that worries that the clever people who are called in to advise on the management of our financial system don’t even seem able to get close to explaining some of the most elementary numbers that are the constituent parts of the economy?
Internship Period: Ongoing and urgent requirement! Can run for 3-4 months depending on candidate.
The Business Leaders Network (BLN) is a national network for entrepreneurs and investors engaged in building growth businesses. We promote and arrange introductions for our members; we run a blog covering high growth business for the entrepreneurial community; we run events across the UK that promote interaction, investment and discussion between the individuals behind the UK’s most active investors, businesses and innovation clusters.
BLN is looking for a couple of bright and enthusiastic team players for intern roles. Roles will involve researching, planning and delivering projects in a number of interesting sectors. They all require individuals who are capable and eager to take ownership of tasks to ensure that not only are deadlines met, but you deliver the highest quality results.
You will spend the majority of your time researching, evaluating and engaging with fast growth companies but will also have the opportunity to work on the BLN event programmes. Successful applicants will have responsibility for creating and implementing multiple projects across sectors including ecommerce, SaaS, Cleantech, Digital Media, gaming etc. Other projects include developing a membership services offering, and working on a national entrepreneurship competition.
Candidate Requirements:
Previous undergraduate work experience, preferably in contacting/interviewing people on the phone and performing research over the web
Professional attitude and ability to interact with senior-level executives (CEO, CFO, and VP) over the telephone, and in person
Strong follow-up and time management skills, as well as the ability to work on multiple projects at the same time
Self-motivated, “can-do” mentality and structured work habits
Fluent English (verbal and written)
Blogging experience an advantage
Competence with standard Office applicaitons, interest and engagement in social media and web
Ability to work as part of a small, focused team and have FUN.
How to Apply: please simply send your CV and a covering letter via email to darren@TheBLN.com. We will review and respond to all applicants. Successful applications will be called for interview shortly afterwards.
EU nationality or a valid residency and/or work permit is required prior to the internship.
Interesting blog by Ben Horowitz on when to take angel money and when to take VC alongside a bit of the history of venture capital. Ben’s firm, Andreessen Horowitz, is a fund that invests small amounts in lots of deals so it is no great surprise that he concludes that this is probably the ideal operating model.
Ben argues that most early venture deals were for hardware businesses selling into complex supply chains, and sophisticated and expensive requirements for people, land and manufacturing equipment.
This meant that the best investors would have some well defined attributes:
“Access to large amounts of money to fund the many complex activities
Access to very senior executives such as an experienced head of manufacturing
Access to early adopter customers
Intense, hands-on expert help from the very beginning of the company to avoid serious mistakes”
Venture firms that met those requirements tended to organise themselves in similar, economically rational, ways (and not one mention of maximising the management fee per partner):
“Raise a large amount of capital from institutional investors
Assemble a set of experienced partners who can provide hands-on expertise in building the product and then the company
Evaluate each deal very carefully with extensive due diligence and broad partner consensus
Employ strong governance to protect the large amount of capital deployed in each deal. This includes requisite board seats and complex deal terms including the ability to control subsequent financings
Manage own resources effectively by calculating the amount of capital/number of partners/maximum number of board seats per partner to derive the minimum amount of capital that must be invested in each deal”
Ben argues that this way of working is totally incompatible with the requirements of modern organisations that are far less reliant on capital at an early capital. (And here he may be right about certain types of web companies but the same rules still apply to hardware businesses). Organisations like the ones he describes above harm early stage businesses as:
As a result, for a modern startup, funding the initial product can be incompatible with the traditional venture capital model in the following ways:
“Lengthy diligence process. Venture capitalists take too long to decide whether or not they want to invest because they are set up to take large risks and have complex processes to evaluate those risks.
Too much capital. Venture capitalists need to put too much capital to work – often a VC will want to invest a minimum of $3M. If you only need 4 people to build the product and get it into market, this likely won’t make sense for your business.
Board seat. Venture capitalists often require a board seat and, for that matter, a board of directors be formed. If 100% of the company is building the product and the team knows how to do that, then a board of directors may be overkill. In addition, it may be too early to decide who you want to be on the board.”
Not surprisingly, Ben’s fund changes all those rules as it invests early, at a low level and doesn’t take board seats. Whether this approach is one that will show better ROI than current venture models is as yet unproven. His advice for deciding whether to accept VC money into an angel round is spot on though:
Don’t take VC money in an angel round unless the VC can…
“Be comfortable investing a small amount of money, e.g. $50,000.
Be able to make an investment decision quickly, e.g. in one or two meetings
Be able to invest without taking a board seat
Not require control of subsequent funding rounds
Not impose complex terms
If the VC wants to be in the angel round, but refuses to behave like an angel, then entrepreneur beware. Having a VC who behaves like a VC in the angel round can jeopardize subsequent financings.”
The last point is particularly important. An early investing VC that loses interest in the deal can be particularly damaging to the chances of a start up’s fund raising activity. As angels are getting more sophisticated, they may be reluctant to share the round in any case.
You don’t need to look far to find evidence that executives in large corporations might miss some of the nuances of emerging culture and the business opportunities that might ensue. I was amused to hear that OK GO in the recent negotiations surrounding the release of their latest album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, were told by their record company, Capitol, (a wholly owned EMI subsidiary), that their record label would have to control their activities on such sites as YouTube in order to promote the band effectively.
OK Go know a bit about using videos to promote themselves. In fact, OK Go are probably the most successful band on the video Internet. Their first video, A million ways, became the most viewed video of all time with over 10,000,000 downloads.
Here it Goes Again, featuring treadmills, has been viewed over 50,000,000 times. It was also the most blatantly ripped off video of recent years – Berocca anyone?
They have just released their latest video for, ‘This too shall pass’. (more…)
A quick update on our upcoming drinks event. We have 85 registered places, with capacity for 110 people max…
‘The 3rd BLN CEO Tales and Networking Drinks’ event will be held on the evening of 18th March from 6.00 pm at the recently opened offices of Taylor Wessing, 5 New Street Square, London, EC4A 3TW. Our subject for the evening, the Emerging VC Investment Landscape, and the speakers, seem to have piqued the interest of the venture community alongside some of the more established entrepreneurs in the market.
We currently have a great line up of confirmed investor attendees including: 4iP, Accel, Advent, Amadeus, Archangel, Aster Capital, Balderton, Cambridge Capital Group, Delta Partners, DFJ Esprit, DN Capital, Eden, Gresham Capital, Grow VC, Hotspur Capital, Index, NESTA, Pentech, Pond, SEP, Sofinnova, Solon Ventures, SVB & TLcom Capital Partners.
Featured speakers include: Aster (closed E70 million 2nd fund in January); Sofinnova (closed E260 million fund in February), and SVB who have been providing debt finance to venture backed companies in Europe since 2004. As well as an evening of peer networking with CEOs, this is an excellent opportunity to meet VC and PE investors.
Video Interviews: We are using this opportunity to run video interviews with some of our attendees to feature on our forthcoming BLN video channel. As well as being a great way to showcase some of the most interesting high growth businesses in the UK, we hope this will offer some of our attendees an opportunity to spread the news about their businesses to a wider audience. If you are interested in participating, please indicate your interest when you register to attend.
REGISTER: We have 30 remaining places and every event we have run so far in 2010 has sold out so we would encourage you to reserve your place quickly. You can find out a little more about our speakers and register here. On registration, please use the code ‘BLN241’if you would like to bring a guest, as your guest, at no charge.
Other events: Do take a look at our upcoming events. The next few months see a hectic schedule of activity and we have discussion dinners lined up around Exits, Advertising, Video, Future of Publishing, Cleantech, Gaming and mobile amongst others so there should be something for everyone…
We hope to see you on the night. With best regards,
Today’s EU competition inquiry into Google seeks to protect companies against Google. Consumers, not companies, should be the real beneficiary of such inquiries. The mantra of, ‘Do no evil’, and Google’s reputation for providing unbiased search results have brainwashed the population into believing that it is a source of absolute truth. They don’t know better and need to be protected.
It is very common for companies to complain about Google and their power over search queries. In the UK, about 90% of Internet searches are over Google and many of those searches are made by people looking to buy things. If a company moves from the first result for a search to a lower ranking, or even worse, off the first page of results it can have very significant implications for revenue and profit of the business affected. Google meanwhile goes to great lengths to obscure the exact algorithms that are used to decide the ranking of results as companies game the results.
This is an ongoing problem for both Google and the companies that wish to get found and will only get worse as more business is conducted online. Today, the European Commission announced it is looking into complaints about anti-competitive practice from Google after complaints by Foundem, ejustice.fr, Ciao. Obviously Google deny any wrong doing.
“Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners, this is not the case.” Julia Holtz, Google Senior Competition Lawyer.
From the consumer’s perspective however, not too many people will worry too much about whether, for example, MoneySupermarket or Confused.com provide the route to home insurance. These businesses are little more than search engine optimised websites that make money by providing leads for the same insurance companies that offer end users the same deal.
The bigger issue for me is that very few people know that Google’s search results are highly dependent on whether Google gets paid for a result. (And here I mean ‘normal people’, not geeks).
The mantra of, ‘Do no evil’, and Google’s reputation for providing unbiased search results have brainwashed the population into believing that it is a source of absolute truth.
If you do a search in Google because I want information on a consumer product, ‘Toshiba TG01′ for example, you are offered 10,200,000 results. Frankly however, only the first few count as if you can find what you want on page one, why go further?
There are 19 links from Google for ‘Toshiba TG01′ shown on my first screen of results, at least 15 are links that are there because they are sponsored, (top and right), or make money for Google directly (anything under the Shopping results for toshiba tg01link).
Google Results for Toshiba TG01
I don’t have any problem with people making money but I do think the results system should be more transparent. I have just asked 6 people in Starbucks to show me the ‘paid results’ on this screen.
One stated confidently that Google doesn’t charge to show results.
Three identified the sponsored links on the right hand side as paid for.
One identified the sponsored links at the top as paid for.
Only one thought that most of them were making money for Google in one way or another.
Interestingly, the most sophisticated of these respondents was happy for Google to make some money along the way and understood the rules of the game. The individual who didn’t think Google makes money from search said, ‘If that was true, I wouldn’t trust them’.
I recognise that this is not a proper survey, but it has made me think about how search could evolve.
I believe that if there was more transparency in the results – simple icons showing how the search engine is remunerated for results, consumers would be more trusting of the results. At the moment, it seems like Google is trading on its past reputation for honesty and openness that is just not deliverable in today’s far more sophisticated and complex web.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=59e784a2-5b79-4110-97ed-d21b015fb736)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b35a82ce-fee5-4a14-9881-27b9c23a13c0)
