THIS is the job offer from hell!

Sir Alan, pictured beside a picture of Ed Balls, says the job is not political

Five series of that entertaining TV stuff, donating your ‘fee’ (or was that just for that ad – the BBC are not known for paying too much unless you are Jonathan Ross)  to Great Ormond Street, and the winner gets to be – Gordon Brown’s monkey – for a maximum of 11 months.

The winner gets to choose what to do: continue to be a highly entertaining quiz show host that people love watching on the telly, OR, you get to bounce around the country talking to bankers doing some Dragons’ Den style bank lending thing that no one takes seriously but you do get to call yourself Lordallun.

I would far rather you continued on the Apprentice.

Otherwise you are being asked to do some ridiculous PR crap just for the sake of your enobblement and recognition as a national treasure. You already are. You have achieved great things. You are a role model. If you do that govt thing you risk becoming a laughing stock.

If, in an alternative world, you were offered the option of being a Lord in 12 month’s time without having to humiliate yourself, would it make the choice easier? David, Nick, have a word.

In case you missed it (all normal people and geeks with PCs and Blackberrys), Apple had a conference to announce all their usual stuff in their usual razamattaz way. Despite much hype Steve Jobs wasn’t lowered triumphally into the arena for his much heralded return athough I hope he is better soon – both for him and the legions of Apple ‘fanboys’.

I think this is the Apple logo

Despite breaking almost all of the rules of the new economy about openness etc, Apple makes brilliant products – even if they are overpriced. Their success comes from owning all elements of their product from hardware to software which makes it possible to control how they run much better – Microsoft has a much bigger issue making software that works on thousands of different types of PCs – the price they pay for dominating a global market.

It appears that the new version of the iPhone camera will ALMOST work like the Nokia phone I had 4 years ago except that it will have 3 Mp imaging not the 6Mp that I was used to. Who knows, Apple may even start delivering an iPhone that has some of the basic functions of other phones like video, cut and paste functions, search etc. Delighted to hear that I will be able to really sophisticated things like send picture messages. Why do I still love my iPhone…?

Lots of excitement from Apple enthusiasts. Appears that it has been reasonably well received by proper analysts. This report, from Merrill Lynch BoA considers Apple from a business perspective and is encouraged (although not overwhelmed) by what they hear. Interesting counterpoint to the usual zealous propoganda.

This is about the same level as Google achieved in all web searches sometime in 1999 – according to this estimate anyway.

Got an excited email this morning from a very low rent corporate finance house with news that the UK M&A market was opening citing E-Ink’s acquistion by PVI as irrefutable evidence. Unlikely that this analysis will win many customers.

As E Ink, US based, has had over $ 150 million of investment, and the company was sold for $ 215 million it might be a stretch to think that investors will get their confidence back overnight so it may be a little early to think that this transaction benchmarks the bottom.

Meanwhile, seems the business press cannot work out whether this will mean cheaper Kindles (Forbes) or more expensive e-readers (Wall Street Journal).

Interesting report on cloud computing market from Merrill Lynch. Cloud computing is an $8bn market set for massive and rapid growth over five years with significant economic advantages for early customers.

To view the full report, click here

Exec summary after this picture of some nice clouds

“Cloud computing-A multi-year tectonic and disruptive shift

We are in the midst of a tectonic shift from client-server to Cloud computing. Improvements in Internet bandwidth, computing, and memory, coupled with enabling technologies like virtualization, parallel processing and multi-core, make it feasible to run large computing tasks in a centralized ‘Cloud’. The long-term trend is driven by compelling economics, with cost advantages of 3-5x for business apps, and 5-10x for personal productivity apps. Companies most leveraged to the Cloud are CRM, MSFT, INTU, and RAX in software and GOOG and AMZN in Internet.

“Shift creates $100bn market; challengers and incumbents

Our analysis indicates that the Cloud could be a $100bn addressable market by 2013, driven by cost savings. Consumer Cloud buildout will be subsidized by $65bn in online advertising. Innovation in ERP, HR, e-mail and Office has slowed in the last decade with limited product differentiation. Cloud delivery is where innovation is headed. Incumbents like MSFT, ORCL and SAP have to reckon with slower product cycles as customers reckon with high cost implementations and upgrades and shift focus to the Cloud.

“Incumbents rising to the challenge; MSFT pushes with Azure

Microsoft has made the most headway since our last report with Azure in Oct 08. It continues to push ahead with its ‘software and services’ strategy and is positioning Azure as a platform for public multi-tenancy and private managed hosting. Amazon, Google, and Salesforce.com have a technology and service delivery lead. SAP has taken steps with BBD. Oracle has said little about the Cloud, but we expect it to be a major player. We expect incumbents to enter the Cloud through M&A to embrace innovation.

“$8bn revenues, the Cloud is inching towards a tipping point

Y2K deadline pressures tipped mainframe and legacy applications to client-server. Cloud computing has no such deadline impetus, but instead has benefited from economic pressure and cost savings. The Cloud market has still grown rapidly to roughly $8bn in subscription revenues, but well below the $90bn client-server apps market. Cloud software is not at a tipping point but could make progress and Cloud companies could grow faster than IT.

“We highlight the Cloud Dozen

Our new “Cloud Dozen” includes Akamai, Amazon, Cisco, EMC, Google, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Rackspace, Salesforce.com, Symantec, and VMware. These companies are expected to outpace broader IT spend (+3% vs. -8%) in 2009. Investors should review individual research on these companies before making investment decisions.”

• To reply to Stewart McGregor directly, click here or call +7850 553 523
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To view the full report, click here

Richard Green, CEO and founder of Ubisense talks about his ambitions to grow the next £ billion business in the UK.

www.wordle.net

I couldn’t help running a Wordle on the expense claims on the Guardian’s ‘MPs’ expenses in the news‘ spreadsheet. Appropriately, the first word is ‘curtains’ although presumably this refers to inappropriate expense claims for curtains rather than it being curtains for  inappropriate expense claims.

Now let them get back to the job they are paid to do which is run our country so brilliantly for us.

Also very happy that David Howarth, my MP in Cambridge does not claim a second home allowance.

“He says he prefers to travel to and from Cambridge every day because it “keeps him in touch” with his family and his constituents”. BBC website.

Good on you David Howarth – and he travels second class on the train. Almsot enough to make me vote Lib Dem.

When you put 20 CFOs – from venture backed to FTSE 250 companies – in a room and ask them their tips about fundraising, you might expect some interesting insight. When over half of those CFOs have raised money in the past 6 months – probably the worst time to raise money since the Stone Age apparently – you might want to listen extra carefully.

Why is this picture like a term sheet for most companies?

This is some of the collected output of our BLN CFO breakfast brainstorm, supported by BDO Stoy Hayward, this morning…

Three things I wish I knew before I started fund raising in today’s market .

• Who has actually got money?
• It will take longer than you can ever imagine
• Control the deal terms and participants as much as possible

• Who has actually got money?

Work out who has funds and an appetite to invest in your type of business. Some investors spend time talking to companies but do not have the capacity to invest – their funds are spent or reserved for follow on investments.

Ask investors questions that can help you understand their capacity to invest now: When was your last fund closed? When did you do your last new deal? How much did you invest in that round? Don’t waste time talking to investors who are in fund raising mode unless you want pitch practice. Investors are as bad as forecasting when their funds will close as sales people are at forecasting.

Another good source of information about the investors are actually active is to talk to some of the venture debt or debt providers.  (The former are doing more deals than the latter but both should be able to provide good insight into the equity investors that are doing deals at the moment).

• It will take longer than you can ever imagine

Plan ridiculously early – 1 year before requirement is not too soon – and do everything you can to take blocks out of the process.

It is never too early to start planning to raise money, educate potential investors about the market you are in, get your due diligence pack organised, get your heads of terms agreed by the board up front so you don’t need to start talking about this as you are in a process.

Plan for it to take more time than you can imagine it to take.

Add a bit more time.

It will take longer than this.

• Control the deal terms and participants as much as possible

Agree objectives and terms with board as much as possible beforehand. Present terms sheets to investors. Get internal valuations agreed to set precedent to for outside shareholders. Keep warring investors away from each other (yes, they do fall out). Keep enough interest in the deal for as long as possible from as many investors as possible to keep your options open.

Do all of the above without once losing concentration from the main issue – running and building your business.

Easy peasy! (Although it has to be said that these CFOs work in some awesome companies).

Any other top tips?

Interesting post from Harvard Business Publishing blog suggests Google is a one trick pony and will struggle to learn new tricks. It suggests Google will struggle to make the move from search advertising into other advertising markets like radio, tv and newspaper advertising. To be successful in other markets they will have to play by other people’s rules.

Principle reasons being that:

1. There is no control over advertising placement in these markets.
2. There are no obvious market making mechanisms in these markets that Google could Google-ize.
3. Existing players have entrenched interest in keeping status quo.

You can argue a counter-case on any of these points that suggests Google could be the one to capitalise. (IP radio and TV seem to offer the option of precise targeting and this is the way the industry is moving for example).

I think this misses the point about what Google is up to – for good or evil.

The most interesting thing about Google and Microsoft suggests to me that such cash rich behemoths have bigger ideas in other markets. The work they are doing on patient record management and in the healthcare sector in general is worth thinking about.

This is a MASSIVE industry with established incumbent players who seem to be asleep on the job whilst some relative whippersnappers are out to steal their lunch.

Most CEOs in established industries could have read ‘What Would Google Do?’ by now so they could have been warned…