The key lesson that came out of our recent CEO Tales event, supported by Taylor Wessing and Goetz Partners was simple: scaling is hard work.
There were three sessions over the course of the evening and you can find them all from here:
- The first, led by Rupert Cook of Goetz Partners, considered how to exit a business for maximum value (a two part process in which part one is growing a valuable business). He also introduced the excellent concept of BLATANCY. More here.
- Steve Purdham, CEO and investor in We7 talked of his experiences at SurfControl and We7 and made the point that growth is multi-dimensional and very hard work. More here.
- David Soskin, (Cheapflights, MySupermarket, SwapIt. Howzat Media) spoke of being brave and most importantly getting over the fact that London is not SIliconValley. More here.
This was a theme that was particularly relevant last week as the government announced plans to turn the East end of London into Silicon Marsh. (While I think the plans are great news in general for digital entrepreneurs, any mention of Silicon Valley in the announcement seems to be ludicrously aspirational to my mind). This was picked up by Mike Butcher at Techcrunch who was kind enough to put some of my Night Nurse fuelled comments into this piece on Techcrunch over the weekend. http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/06/investors-back-techcity-concentration-of-startups-will-attract-capital/