We are delighted to announce DFJ Esprit will be supporting the Internet of Things Forum, Cambridge, June 27th.

DFJ Esprit are an active investor in the Internet of Things having invested in companies such as Neul and GreenPeak Technologies with plenty of appetite for more. DFJ Esprit are one of the most active investors in the European venture capital scene and have featured in recent years, not just in the rankings of investors with the most exits (remember those?) and returns, but with the most new investments in European technology companies.

Simon Cook, Managing Partner, DFJ Esprit will also be participating in the panel discussion – ‘Where is the smart money going?‘

For more information about the Internet of Things Forum, Cambridge, June 27th, including details about how you could showcase your company to some of the smartest customers, partners and investors on planet IoT, see the dedicated website.

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I joked at our last CEO Tales that I was launching a crowd-funded project on Kickstarter for an ‘accelebator’ for ‘accelebators’. Accelebators of course, combine the best aspects of an accelerator programme with the best bits of an incubator programme to guarantee the creation and development of relentlessly-scalable, robustly value-creating startups that will takeover the world.

My vision did actually involve maybe some educational events for the people running the programmes etc. And probably some other stuff. People were enthusiastic about backing it.

Seems those good folk in Silicon Valley have stolen the idea and added a virtual aspect. I present to you, 1M/1M’s Incubator-In-A-Box. If you really want to run an accelerator, but can’t be bothered to do much, this is the solution for you.

From 1M/1M…

One Million by One Million (1M/1M) is a global virtual incubator that aims to nurture a million entrepreneurs to reach a million dollars each in annual revenue and beyond by 2020, thereby creating a trillion dollars in global GDP and ten million jobs.

What?

• Choose the scale at which you wish to start. You can incubate 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, or 200 entrepreneurs.
• Choose one or more locations (or global is fine too).
• 1M/1M will provide the base-level incubation to these entrepreneurs through the Premium Program. This includes online curriculum, mentoring / strategy consulting, introductions to customers, channel partners, investors, and access to the 1M/1M media and social media channels.
• Partner can add any amount of additional resources on top, including funding, real-estate, mentoring, network, legal services, accounting services, etc. First right of refusal for any investment opportunity, naturally, rests with the partner.
• 1M/1M will run contests and help partner recruit the entrepreneurs to bring into their custom portfolio.
• 1M/1M will also screen the best performers from the incubation portfolio for partner to invest further resources in, after a few months of incubation.

How Much?

• The 1M/1M Incubator-in-a-Box costs $1000/entrepreneur/year. So, if you incubate 50 entrepreneurs with us, that would cost $50k for a year.

• We do not take ANY equity, making us the most entrepreneur- (and investor- ) friendly incubator program on the planet. Most incubators take 5-10% equity. Angels come into a clean term sheet with minimum dilution.

My favourite line, “Choose the scale at which you wish to start. You can incubate 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, or 200 entrepreneurs.”

If Silicon Valley didn’t exist, we would have to make it up.

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If you are coming to IoT13 (and if not, why not? Just take a look at our programme and panellists!) then you’d be well advised to book your hotel options as soon as possible. Cambridge is particularly busy in late June with conferences and the University Graduation ceremony, and it’s not a city that is rich in good hotel deals.

Here’s our (not exactly impartial) set of recommendations for all budgets and links to what the good folks at TripAdvisor say

Budget:

The cheapest option would be to stay in Robinson College itself, which has a range of student rooms available. Basic but very, very close. Alternatively, quite a lot of colleges have rooms available for visitors, but the rule vary on whether you need to be connected with the university to book them.

Mid level/business hotels:

The Regent Hotel is small and affordable. Gets good reviews (and burnt down – and rebuilt – about 6 years ago, so its facilities are quite new)

The Best Western Gonville is rather short on charm but generally well run, clean, good service.

Cambridge City Hotel (ex Crowne Plaza). Bit dated, but big and very central location.

Bit of charm, more upmarket, more expensive

Doubletree is right by the river, and closest (10 min walk) to the actual conference venue.

Hotel du Vin is lovely and priced accordingly

Varsity has best roof garden in town and some stunning views from the rooms higher in the hotel.

Finally, an interesting alternative is a short stay apartment, such as this one which is very popular.

There we have it: hopefully there is enough variety here to meet all needs and budgets. Please note we don’t recommend sleeping on a punt – the ducks have a nasty habit of trying to come aboard at 1.30AM.

Is the team at Google the new Steve Jobs?

Well, the Google team at IO did one thing really, really well yesterday – getting people excited about new product announcements by focusing on making users feel awesome.

This is a good video encapsulating the 3 hour or so keynote at Google I/O yesterday. (#IO13). My Twitter feed seemed to be fairly evenly split between snark/cynicism and enthusiastic evangelism though there seemed to be a more balanced debate about the products, the implications for entrepreneurs building businesses in the technology ecosystem, possible future directions etc than there is during an Apple Keynote.

One thing struck me though. A lot of corporate launches, developer conferences etc these days have been widely ridiculed. Rightly so. Many of them seem to be competing for biggest waste of money to make your company/product look stupid ever – the Samsung S4 launch being an astonishing example.

The Google Keynote, despite being over 3 hours long, was compelling, slick and focused on end users. (What Kathy Sierra would call, making users awesome).

This is the thing that Steve Jobs always did and this was one was totally focused on that one thing…

“Technology should do the hard work so people can get one with doing the things that make them happiest in life.”

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We are delighted to announce SIGFOX as supporters of the Internet of Things Forum, Cambridge, June 27th.

SIGFOX – is the first cellular network operator dedicated exclusively to M2M and the IoT.

A unique technology for the most cost-effective and low throughput M2M communications on the market. SIGFOX has risen to meet an incredible challenge: transmitting the billions of data of the Internet of Things in a cost-effective, eco-responsible, efficient and reliable way. Their technology works for low throughput devices over very long distances, through buildings and is very low power.

For more information about the Internet of Things Forum, Cambridge, June 27th, including details about how you could showcase your company to some of the smartest customers, partners and investors on planet IoT, see the dedicated website.

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We are delighted to announce Taylor Wessing as supporters of the Internet of Things Forum, Cambridge, June 27th. 

Taylor Wessing – a team of the best European technology lawyers who advise both investors, corporates and entrepreneurial technology companies on a full range of legal and IP issues. Additionally, if you are an early stage technology business in the process of forming or taking an early stage seed investment, they have effectively open-sourced their knowledge and now have produced a resource for early stage companies where you can just go and get their company formation documents, IP assignments, NDAs, Term Sheets, Investment Agreements and all sorts of very useful legal stuff at the extraordinary price of: FREE!

As Taylor Wessing themselves say,

“These documents are made freely available in the hope that they will help to educate the entrepreneurial community and speed up the investment process, not to mention keep costs to a minimum. Alongside the documents themselves, there are explanatory notes on the investment agreement and the articles of association. There are three versions of the articles of association: preference and ordinary, EIS and ordinary and just ordinary.”

You can browse and download them here.

For more information about the Internet of Things Forum, Cambridge, June 27th, including details about how you could showcase your company to some of the smartest customers, partners and investors on planet IoT, see the dedicated website.

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