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Perspectives on the wonderful world of tech

Warren East, CEO, ARM Holdings plc questions whether ARM is ‘Big’

July 5, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Warren East, CEO of ARM Holdings talks about ‘Big’ and what being ‘Big’ being means at the BLN Growth Forum 2011. By any reasonable measure, ARM Holdings is a decent sized UK technology company – arguably the only pure tech company in the FTSE 100.

100. ARM Holdings plc at a glance

ARM is one of the biggest companies in the UK.

Size is relative

Size is a relative thing though. Warren points out that ARM at market cap $11 billion is number 44 in the FSTE 100. Experian in number 43 on $6.3 billion dollars and has more profit than ARM but is has 15,000 employees. WM Morrison at number 45 has over 100,000 employees. By what measure do we measure ‘big’ and ‘small’? It is NOT just about numbers and revenue. We have some world leading companies in the UK, ARM Holdings being an example, being one. How do you measure ‘Big’?

  • Brand
  • Influence

UPDATE: July 20th 2011.

If you measure ‘big’ on the company you keep, this interview in Fortune with Frank Quattrone shows ARM Holdings in the same bracket as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Qualcomm and Salesforce.

“If you add all that up, those group of companies, which were the standard-bearers of the last generation, are down over 400 billion in market cap.  The companies on the rise, Apple, Amazon, Qualcomm, Facebook, ARM and Sales Force, are up about 435.” http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/21/frank-quattrone-vido-transcript-brainstorm/

6.1 billion ARMS in 2010

ARM is everywhere – and typically outperforms its peers by profit growth, margin etc. ARM Holdings market share by sector

ARM Holdings has a market share of about 28% of all chips in the markets it operates in. The key piece of the puzzle to become BIG for ARM Holdings is partnership and collaboration. they want to be a key piece of the chip jigsaw puzzle and use their brand to punch above their weight.

The ARM Holdings Business Model produces leverage

Here is the ARM Holdings family. ARM works very hard on its industry presence. ARM believes a slice of a very big pie is much better than owning a small pie.

ARM Business Model is to license and partner

Warren East notes that a lot of the success of a big business is down to luck. You cannot guarantee luck but you can do things to drive luck for the future.

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Charles Dunstone, Theodore Roosevelt & a message for entrepreneurs

July 5, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

BLN Growth Forum, 5th July 2011. Themes:

  • Making it big – targeting big markets and maintaining your lead.
  • Successful sales– making profitable sales a core goal. How to sell against market leaders.
  • Putting people first – creating a culture to attract and retain the people you need.
  • Growth strategies – maximising value from startup to IPO and beyond.

Speakers:

  • Jonathan Milner, Founder & CEO, Abcam
  • Warren East, CEO, ARM
  • Neil Gaydon, CEO, PACE plc
  • Stuart Miller, CEO, ByBox
  • Mo Bulbrook, Head of International, Cheapflights Media
  • Tim Weller, CEO, Incisive Media
  • Mary Turner, CEO, AlertMe
  • Martin Leuw, NED, IRIS Software Group
  • Mark Gerhard, CEO, Jagex Games Studio
  • Ariel Eckstein, Managing Director EMEA, LinkedIn
  • Peter Bauer, CEO, Mimecast
  • Nigel Payne, Director and Prev CEO, Sporting Bet plc
  • Andy Leaver, VP EMEA, Workday

Supporters:

For more information, the full agenda, all the stuff you need to know, and to reserve your place. http://growthforum2011.thebln.com/

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Delegate questions for the BLN Growth Forum

July 1, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

What is the one question you hope to answer by attending this forum?

How you build brand and scale whilst keeping focusing on engineering/core skills – How to scale an international business. – How to get huge? – To meet fast growing technology companies looking for investment – How to build and motivate an engineering team. – Crossing the chasm techniques for getting from product launch to profitability.  – How do I know the right time to sell?  – How do we help ensure Cambridge continues to be a vital part of UK plc’s success? – Who will fund Series A – Are there better techniques for managing change associated with growth that I can learn from? – What is the state of business growth currently in this country – Are UK businesses thinking big enough or are they still selling out too early?  – I am keen top learn more on how to scale a nascent technology business in a competitive market – How can I get more value from my big name investor board that is not delivering the things I need? – Where are the best tech centres outside Silicon Valley for a US HQ? – Rapid growth of startups – Should I own my sales channels in Asia or partner with distributors? – To better understand what is needed to grow big rapidly! – How do I break through the £20m turnover ceiling profitably – Considering recent IPOs and M&A transactions, are we in yet another internet bubble? – Should I bother with anything tech-related outside the M25? – How best to grow our software business? – Should we employ local sales people in the US or transplant some of our US team? – How do I stimulate new and simple creativity into a sales team – How do you recruit and incentivise a world-class team – Who are the UK’s most promising growth companies? – Is the CEO’s vision for the business really that important when pitching for investment? – How to grow in a value maximising way, rather than just growing at the expense of the bottom line and long term shareholder value – Just interested in hearing new innovations – How can the business scale via partnerships or acquisitions? – How to grow the business – We are seeing substantial valuations for investment in social networking and similar companies – are investors’ feet still on the ground? – What new business and tech problems are keeping people awake at night? (and what are they doing to fix them) – How rural communities in Africa can benefit from innovation in technology. – What is the meaning of life? – Strategies for scaling through partnerships – Is the UK alive to Entrepreneurship or do we simply play lip service to The Media Dragon – How to help corporates work with and invest in entrepreneurs. – How to maximise sales to increase growth – In which way experienced entrepreneurs would like to interact and mentor very early stage entrepreneurs? – Best strategies for rapid growth – Are UK-based angels interested in the NI deal flow – How to grow – How can I manage potential acquirers efficiently? – What are the strategies for identifying and qualifying the most advantageous overseas partners. – Role of outsourcing in supporting growth – How to scale up in a niche market – At what stage should a Cambridge business leave the fold and expand internationally – How to find the most successful growth path for start up companies. – What implications might the European Sovereign debt crisis have for growth businesses in the UK? – Help with our scaling and consolidation activities and meeting more great execs – Which way is up? – What is the next big thing? – Are investors likely to remain so risk-adverse in respect of early stage businesses or is there likely to be a return of confidence? – Do I have to answer this? – AIM vs NASDAQ for growth tech business with c $12 million profit?

 

 

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BLN Growth Forum 2011, 5th July, Delegate List

June 29, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

BLN Growth Forum, 5th July, Delegate List

Most popular events in the Computer Software Industry

LinkedIn fame at last! Most popular events in the Computer Software Industry...

  • Groupon, CEO, Christopher Muhr
  • Playmob, Founder, Jude Ower
  • Aframe, CEO, David Peto
  • NextWomen.com, COO, Joana Picq
  • Wind Technologies, CEO, Ehsan Abdi

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No shit-kicking delegate list, BLN Growth Forum, 5th July 2011.

June 24, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

You should know us by now. We want quality people to come to our events and we are proud of our no shit-kickers approach to running a great event.

No Shit Kickers

That is why we have a no quibble money back guarantee. If you want to know who is coming to the BLN Growth Forum, 5th July 2011 look no further. We think we have about 5 places left though are working on sneaking a few more through the doors.

Latest attendee list.

Companies: Featurespace, Care.com, Inc., 10X Networks, Inc, The BLN, Silicon Valley Bank, Calibre One, Andromeda Capital, Indigo Vision, The FD Centre Ltd, Citi, Cortexica, ARM, Fidelity Growth Partners, UltraSoC, Merrill Lynch, Cognitive Match, FX Capital Group, Ocean Learning, Merchenta, Natural Talents, Amadeus Capital, Chameleon, Accel Partners, Acal Supply Chain, Stoneburn Software Services, Jagex Games Studio, NESTA, Index Ventures, The BLN, Phoebus Software Limited, Cap Strategy/Venturing, SocialGO plc, Grove Group, PneumaCare Limited, Sphere Medical, SEP, Vitruvian Partners, Money Dashboard, Sefaira, Postcode Anywhere (Europe) Ltd, Entrepreneur/Technologist, Octopus Ventures, Sentec, TLcom Capital Partners, Good Energies (UK) LLP

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People – we don’t need infrastructure, we need people people, people.

June 24, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

This article first appeared in the excellent Business Weekly but as I wrote it, it is reproduced here. While the emphasis of this note is on the East of England, I think the principle is the same in a lot of places. Too many people blame the wrong things for apparent lack of success in business. The main problem most businesses have is they don’t have enough people who talk to people.

It also gives me the perfect opportunity to share one of my favourite Simpsons videos.

What do we need to ensure the growth of world class technology companies in the East of England? writes Mark Littlewood of the Business Leaders Network.

When it comes to science and technology, the East of England is world class. The region’s entrepreneurs however are often accused of failure or lack of ambition when it comes to turning brilliant ideas into businesses.

Despite the huge commercial success of companies including ARM, Autonomy, JAGEX, Red Gate, Abcam and a handful of other elite businesses, the most common outcome for a technology company is early death or a trade sale. Why is this?

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Do we need Startup factories? Notes on NESTA’s round table on European acceleration programmes

June 21, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

In my mind there is no question that to help build a pipeline of grown ups, finish ups and speed ups, there needs to be a healthy pipeline of ambitious, healthy, well-connected startups.

Can ‘startup factories’ help provide that pipeline of businesses that will be taking the stage at the BLN Growth Forum’s of the future?

First, the bad news. In the nineties there were incubators. On the whole, they were a very bad ting and lots of people have got confused about the difference between incubators and accelerators.

At one point in 1999-2000 there were over 50 incubators active in London alone. I worked for one, (bEurope, which managed to create and fund a single business, Investis, which still runs very successfully today. bEurope, like many others, ran out of money as the business model depended on getting funding for each of the business that it incubated and the investor appetite for early stage investments evaporated in the dot com crash). On the whole, incubators were a bit of a disaster and the ones that had raised the most money had the hardest to fall, even if their founders were somewhat cushioned from the crash as they had managed to raise funds with management fees that provided some succour from the drop – remember Brainspark or Ant Factory anyone? There were a few reasons that they created so little value: many of them didn’t have a clue what they were doing or actually know what incubators should do; investor appetite for any sort of early stage investment disappeared; the best companies didn’t go to an incubator that was taking often significant equity for a range of services and space of variable quality.

So why are ‘startup factories’ or accelerators going to be different?

Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp, Jon Bradford, Springboard.

Startup factory bosses: Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp. Jon Bradford, Springboard. Running two of the leading European accelerator programmes in Europe

I think the principle reason that the next wave of accelerators have a much higher chance of success is that the market has changed – significantly – and incubators and accelerators use very different models.

It costs far less to start a web business (and most accelerators focus on web or at least digital businesses). The gospel of Saint Eric the Lean has been spread widely. A lot of the old bull shit about startups has gone (arguably replaced with the excrement from different bulls).

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Warren East, CEO of ARM Holdings, talks BIG.

June 20, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Great interview with Warren East, CEO of ARM Holdings with our media partner Business Weekly in advance of this year’s BLN Growth Forum. Warren will be talking about what, ‘BIG’ actually means. Really delighted he was able to spend some time sharing some of his thoughts in advance.

Some selected highlights below but read the full article at Business Weekly:

‘East is a keynote speaker at the BLN Growth Forum in Cambridge on July 5 and has some stimulating experiences to share with delegates. His take on ARM’s status in the global pantheon and how the company has leveraged its low points to ensure it hits the highs will inspire and surprise in equal measure.

‘He said: “‘Big’ can be measured in a number of different ways. ARM has tremendous influence on a global scale; it has the leading architecture in the world. In terms of volume of chips shipped we are neck and neck with Intel.

‘“But ARM on its own is tiny. Everyone thinks we are a massive organisation and at one level, taking account of the ARM community, we are. We can stretch the world over. But we are still less than 2,000 people and less than $3/4bn revenue.”

‘He said: “I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t proud of the fact we had matched Intel. But I am realistic. Intel’s marketing budget dwarfs our revenue. We have an alternative business model, great technology and a great team of people and it is by leveraging our alternative model that we can compete with Intel.”

‘“With the BLN Growth Forum in mind and the general issue of how big Cambridge companies may wish to get, I certainly think that executives should embrace the opportunity for growth. One of my sayings is that things get done by doing and failure to apply guarantees failure. There is nothing wrong in setting the bar higher so your people have something to attain to.

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Mimecast heading for IPO?

June 20, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

Is Mimecast heading for an IPO? Private companies often start reporting results publicly even when there is no requirement to do so and Mimecast’s announcement today looks like a classic reporting of great results to the market even though the market can’t invest – how frustrating for them but I bet it piques the interest of the brokers and buyers.

Mimecast logo

Mimecast reported another record year with 57 percent revenue growth and more than 1,000 new, proper, paying customers. Revenue for the business has grown to just under £21,000,000 for the year. During the same period, Mimecast’s global customer base grew from 2,700 to almost 4,000. The company also saw a surge in user numbers as the company’s average deal size rose, adding 340,000 users to the grid to reach a total of 906,000. The company expects to pass the million user mark in the second quarter of this fiscal year.

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BLN Growth Forum, 5th July 2011. Attendees.

June 16, 2011 by Mark T Littlewood

A Word cloud from Wordle currently confirmed attendees at the BLN Growth Forum, 5th July 2011.

BLN Growth Forum, 5th July 2011

Growth Forum 2011 Attendees

Confirmed companies include: Mimecast, Spirit Digital Media, Octopus Ventures, Jagex Games Studio, Silicon Valley Bank, Amadeus Capital, Accel Partners, Citi, Workday, Bailey Fisher, Sphere Medical, LinkedIn, Moneydashboard, BDO LLP, Groupon, PA Consulting Group, Sentec, The BLN, Featurespace, Cohen Partners, RackSpace, Aframe, Balderton Capital, Abcam plc, Sentec, Breathing Buildings, Wind Technologies, Good Energies (UK) LLP, 10X Networks, Inc, Red Gate, BDO LLP, The One Place Capital, NESTA, Andromeda Capital, Postcode Anywhere (Europe) Ltd, FirstCapital, The BLN, Cortexica, Mills & Reeve LLP, STL Technology Solutions Ltd, Index Ventures, Touchtype Online, MMC Ventures, PrismaStar, Basekit, Vitruvian Partners, UltraSoC, CFO4Growth Ltd, The BLN, La Playa, Jefferies, Jagex Games Studio, The BLN, Entrepreneur, Technologist, Incube8it, Alertme.com, NESTA, TLcom Capital Partners, IQ Capital Fund, GE Capital / HEC-Paris, Chelsea Apps factory, Innovise Plc, Chemist Direct, Cheapflights Media, TTP Venture Managers Ltd, The Daily Telegraph, Index Ventures, Stoneburn Software Services, PACE plc, Merchenta, Sportingbet plc, Indigo Vision, Silicon Valley Bank, Taylor Vinters, Phoebus Software Limited, Ocean Learning, Mimecast, Spirit Digital Media, Mills & Reeve LLP, Grove Group, Acal Supply Chain, Cogendo, Namaste, MMC Ventures, Real-Status, Cohen Corporate Finance, Sefaira, DFJ Esprit, Chesham Holdings Ltd, Fidelity Growth Partners, FX Capital Group, Cortexica, Blackmore Consulting, ByBox Holdings Ltd, STL Technology Solutions Ltd, BDO LLP, Augmentum Capital, Incisive Media, Wild Lion Media, Clifton Cowley, ARM, Mills & Reeve LLP, Albion Ventures.

BLN Growth Forum, 5th July 2011.

Themes:

  • Making it big – targeting big markets and maintaining your lead.
  • Successful sales– making profitable sales a core goal. How to sell against market leaders.
  • Putting people first – creating a culture to attract and retain the people you need.
  • Growth strategies – maximising value from startup to IPO and beyond.

Speakers:

  • Jonathan Milner, Founder & CEO, Abcam
  • Warren East, CEO, ARM
  • Neil Gaydon, CEO, PACE plc
  • Stuart Miller, CEO, ByBox
  • Mo Bulbrook, Head of International, Cheapflights Media
  • Tim Weller, CEO, Incisive Media
  • Mary Turner, CEO, AlertMe
  • Martin Leuw, NED, IRIS Software Group
  • Mark Gerhard, CEO, Jagex Games Studio
  • Ariel Eckstein, Managing Director EMEA, LinkedIn
  • Peter Bauer, CEO, Mimecast
  • Nigel Payne, Director and Prev CEO, Sporting Bet plc
  • Andy Leaver, VP EMEA, Workday

Supporters:

BLN Growth Forum, 5th July 2011

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