Blog

Perspectives on the wonderful world of tech

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-11-20

November 20, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Read more

Tips on building a successful culture & team building from Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge

November 18, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Some thoughts on the building a killer team session from the Silicon Valley comes the the UK held at the Judge Institute.

On Culture and Team

  • “There is no one answer to the question. Every road leads to ruin.”
  • Team has to be diverse – gender, interests, competencies, nationalities.
  • “If you ask average people the companies that they really admire, most come up with companies like  Dell, Apple, Virgin, Microsoft, Facebook, all have charismatic founders still in charge.
  • “Google made culture a part of their brand and used that to hire the people they wanted.”
  • “No one wants a football team made up of Rooneys.” Johan von Holstein (Icon Medialab, LetsBuyIt)
  • “Chemistry is important. If it doesn’t feel right I never hire them, regardless of the spec.”
  • “Got to get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus before you get going.”
  • “Culture eats strategy for lunch.”
  • “I have a, ‘No Asshole’ Rule. A golden rule for me.”
  • “I wouldn’t describe Zuckerberg or Evan Williams as impressive charismatic leaders in the conventional sense.” The European East Coast concept of a charismatic leaders is a great speaker who looks like he can do big ticket enterprise sales. The new generation of Silicon Valley leaders are a different type of leader. Zuckerberg for example is not comfortable speaking but is surrounded by people who follow his lead.
  • I don’t let startup CEOs use accounting software until they can do the accounting on paper. You cannot ignore the finance piece because you are weak at it. A leader needs to understand their weaknesses and work on ways to cover them off before they, hand them off.
  • (Joi Ito, Creative Commons, MIT MediaLab)
  • Hiring is stage and context specific. An early stage marketing person does a very different thing to one in a mature business. Often in a startup, the founder/CEO should take on the marketing strategy and evangelism piece.
  • Have found myself drawn towards friends. There is a better cultural fit and you enjoy spending time with them. They may not be the best person for a particular role but energy will be better.
  • “Company culture transcends national boundaries. It is about a philosophy and a way of working.”
  • “Culture comes from the founders in a startup. It is really important that people who come into the company buy into it and reinforce it.”
  • (Nick Heller, Google)

On failure, risk, honesty and standing out.

“Would you employ someone with a criminal record for drug trafficking?” Ben Rooney (Walls Street Journal).

“I used to be a DJ. I am also Timothy Leary’s Godson, so yeah.” Joi Ito

“Clearly the person is entrepreneurial and a risk-taker so they have that going for them. I have friends who made mistakes when they were young and I know how much they regret their mistakes and have turned their life around.”Nick Heller

“The risk of taking a job in an early stage business in Europe is huge. Europeans are much more unforgiving of perceived risk – failure, criminal records anything. This is a bad thing.”

How do you get good people to join your company?

“Go to conferences, network like crazy.” Joi Ito

“A people know A people so find as many A people as you can and start networking from them.” Johan von Holstein (Icon Medialab, LetsBuyIt)

Read more

Does Cambridge University & the Judge Institute want to show the world how antediluvian it can be?

November 18, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Interesting panel but, as an aside, the Judge Institute does not let people in the audience have access to WiFi unless they are registered students. This makes the Judge Institute look really stupid. Really, really stupid. How can they possibly host talks from some of the world’s most interesting technology businesses, hoping to imbue the entrepreneurs of Cambridge with a Silicon Valley spirit when they can’t even get their heads around the concept of making WiFi available?

This has not changed for four years. It makes the Judge Institute and Cambridge University look pathetic. Please change. The 21st century started 11 years ago.

 

Read more

Two years of door-to-door selling is worth four years of college.

November 18, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Anyone that knows me knows what a sucker I am for a great sales guy and how much I hate a bad one. If this guy, Kenny Brooks, turned up on my doorstep, I would not let him leave until he had agreed to work with me. Anyone that sharp, with that much energy, a sense of humour and fun would just make me want to get out of bed in the morning and do stuff, make stuff that he could sell.

A legendary pitchman already.

  • “Two years of door-to-door selling is worth four years of college.”
  • “Your house is bigger than my whole neighborhood.”
  • “Don’t panic, it’s organic.”

Our next events:

  • BLN CEO Tales, London, 8th December – Mimecast and Mobile Interactive Group CEOs on growing global platforms from UK
  • BLNMiM, London, 22nd March – Making money in mobile
  • Business of Software, Boston, MA, October 1-3rd 2012 – For people growing sustainable, profitable, software businesses.

 

Read more

The World is obsessed with Facebook. And quite rightly so.

November 16, 2011 by

The video below shows some fascinating and scary statistics about Facebook and illustrates why we’re obsessed with the social network. If you don’t have 2 minutes to watch the full thing, here is the essence of what you need to know:

71.2% of American internet users are on Facebook

More than 30% of Facebook’s user base is aged above 35 (not just for teenagers then)

57% of people talk more online than they do in real life (incredibly sad, but would love to know the methodology behind this data)

A very big thank you to Alex Trimpe for putting this together.

If you want to find out more about using Facebook’s massive potential, come and listen to Barry Houlihan (CEO, Mobile Interactive Group) who will be talking at the forthcoming BLN CEO Tales (8th December, London) and who has been working closely with Facebook over the past several months.

As ever, there is a small cost to attend this event, though if you don’t feel as if you got value we are more than happy to offer a refund.

Register for CEO Tales, 8th December, London. Guest speakers - Barry Houlihan, CEO, MIG; Peter Bauer, CEO, Mimecast in London, United Kingdom on Eventbrite

Read more

Sapient Nitro are hiring Idea Engineers with no critical faculties.

November 16, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

I you are an Idea Engineer (me neither) with absolutely no critical facilities, this may just be the perect role or you. Sapient Nitro are hiring.

“Can’t be no problems, we’re thinking solutions.”

From Studi-Yo! Productions and now tagged alongside the CVent sales conference as ‘egregious video’. There is something about these videos that makes me very happy.

Read more

Congratulations to Mobile Interactive Group on acquisition by Velti

November 15, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Congratulations to founder/CEO Barry Houlihan, and the team at Mobile Interactive Group on their acquisition by Velti. A great exit and the start of a new chapter in the mobile growth story. The deal is worth up to $60million.

Mobile Interactive Group bought by Velti

Barry founded MIG in 2004 and has turned it into one of the fastest growing privately owned technology companies in UK and EMEA. The past year has seen many interesting developments for MIG, including significant partnerships with Facebook and Skype, as well as the acquisition of Zaypay, the mobile payments service provider and Digital Jigsaw, the digital technology agency.

Mobile Interactive Group has been one of the unsung stars of the European technology scene, respected by competitors and customers alike though it has not had the profile in the wider technology press that it deserves.  It has grown from a comparatively small angel investment into a  truly global mobile technology play. Their 300+ customers include Twitter, Facebook, M&S, O2, Vodafone, ITV, Skype, Sky, Barclaycard, Nokia and Samsung.

“MIG’s specialist disciplines include mobile technology and services provision; mobile billing, messaging andmCommerce; mobile advertising and marketing; multi channel digital solutions; the design and build of mobile sites and applications, and user experience design.” (Company website).

Velti is a publicly-held corporation based in Jersey, with over 800 employees worldwide. Velti began trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on January 28, 2011, under the symbol VELT. With a market cap of just over $500 million and their well established mGage platform, Velti offers MIG reach into new markets that would take a significant investment to acquire new customers.

Come and help Barry celebrate at our CEO Tales event, 6-9pm December 8th in London. Barry will be talking alongside Peter Bauer, CEO of Mimecast on growing a global technology platform from the UK.

  • BLN CEO Tales, London, 8th December – Mimecast and Mobile Interactive Group CEOs on growing global platforms from UK
  • BLNMiM, London, 22nd March – Making money in mobile
  • Business of Software, Boston, MA, October 1-3rd 2012 – For people growing sustainable, profitable, software businesses.

Read more

Trinamo

November 15, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Trinamo is a team of leading sales and marketing specialists. We have the expertise to help you win and keep more customers and grow the revenues from them. In short, we help you drive profitability—hard.

We make sales and marketing deliver. We don’t just tell you how; we roll up our sleeves and help you make it happen. We work from the inside, not remotely. We commit to targets and pursue these with vigor. We help you enhance the power of your sales and marketing teams to deliver the results you need.

Our experience has shown us that when it comes to optimised sales and marketing, every company needs something different. Companies need a solution that’s tailored for them; their scale, their maturity, their market, their solutions, their personality.

Contact

Simon Stevens – Partner

Email: simon.stevens@trinamo.com

Mobile: +44 7850 861 387

Direct: +44 207 801 6309

Learn more about Trinamo

Read more

Professor Clayton Christensen recognised as world’s top business thinker. He will measure his life in a different way.

November 15, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Congratulations to Professor Clayton Christensen who opened our recent Business of Software Conference who has just been named the world’s top business thinker. What makes Clayton particularly brilliant is the fact that he has spent a lot of his life thinking about management but has also spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how those same principles apply to his life.

If you have five minutes, watch the video of his acceptance speech by clicking on the picture below – it goes to the award site. Lots to think about and quite moving.

Professor Clayton Christensen

Professor Clayton Christensen's acceptance speech, The Thinkers 50

Better still, take some time when you won’t be interrupted and read Clayton’s brilliant piece, ‘How will you measure your life?’

“When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.

“My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general manager’s job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.

“On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions:

“First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?

“Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.”” ‘How will you measure your life?’

Read it. I would be very interested to hear how it changed the way you think. It will.

  • BLN Discussion Dinner, London, 7th December – Enterprise, SaaS and financial services
  • BLN CEO Tales, London, 8th December – Mimecast and Mobile Interactive Group CEOs on growing global platforms from UK
  • BLNMiM, London, 22nd March – Making money in mobile
  • Business of Software, Boston, MA, October 1-3rd 2012 – For people growing sustainable, profitable, software businesses.

Read more

Datasift founder/CEO takes role as CTO. Nice move.

November 14, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Nick Halstead is the entrepreneur behind Tweetmeme and Datasift. Today he announced that he will be standing down from the role of CEO, to be replaced by Rob Bailey who he has been working with for some time.

Congratulations Nick. More founders should do this the right way.

Nick Halstead, Robert Scoble

Nick Halstead, Robert Scoble

Not only for creating and playing a huge, huge role in building a company that is making sense of the vast amount on information that streams from the Twitter fire hose. Datasift simply would not exist without you. More than that though, by recognising what you love, and what you don’t, you are giving your baby an even greater chance of growing up. I have seen so many businesses with great potential prevented from reaching their potential because the founders insist they are always going to be the best people to be the CEO.

“The last four years have been without doubt the most challenging of my life. To have a vision and a desire to bring about that vision through technology has been filled with many thousands of tasks which I have at times frankly not enjoyed. I have written before that programmers hate ‘non-solving’ tasks – as programmers enjoy problem solving tasks and preferably complex and interesting tasks. Running a business is not like programming, it is a multitude of disciplines involving operations, sales, marketing, finance and HR, and most importantly it involves dealing with people. These skills IMHO in the most part are not skills that programmers have or wish to have (and I count myself as one of them).” Nick’s blog.

Recognising what you like and what you want takes guts, vision and courage. I wish you every success in a role that you clearly love. The world needs more founders like you.

Read more