Anyone that knows us knows we like anyone that spends a lot of time getting really good at something. For some reason sales people, pitchmen, butchers and cyclists feature high on my list of professions that I enjoy seeing been done well.

Danny Macaskill, half-cyclist, half-superhuman,  has just produced a follow up video. Anything that combines a homecoming story, stunning scenery including God’s own country – the west coast of Scotland – and some nice music deserves a mention here. Way Back Home will enhance your life in 4 minutes.

Enjoy.

At first I thought it was just me but it really does seem that deals – exits and investments – are being done again. Corporate purchasers are back in action and their presence at our recent discussion dinners has provided as much interest for investors as companies themselves. While we only have two more events until the end of the year, we really hope to see you at what we think will be two of the strongest events of the year. Please book online or email me directly if you would like to be involved.

24^th November, Bangers Grill & Restaurant. Future of Media Business Models. https://thebln.com/event/15479/ Confirmed participants include CEO/founders or board level executives from Aframe, All3Media, Associated Northcliffe, Audioboo, Cognitive Match, Diagonal View, Erevena, Freemantle Media, Goetz Partners, iMeta Technologies Ltd, Incisive Media, Magicalia, myvideorights, Pearson, Playfire, Pure Grass Films, Saffron Digital, Silicon Valley Bank, Six to Start, The BLN, Tweetmeme, Videoplaza & Yudu.

9^th December, ecommerce. Ecommerce killing the High Street. https://thebln.com/event/15534/ The sheer amount of money being invested and made in ecommerce at the moment has meant that ecommerce has become more innovative as it has become more mainstream. Ecommerce has proven to be one of our most popular communities and this dinner will feature both acquisitive incumbents as well as revenue generating upstarts.

Blatancy: Last week we ran an Exit Workshop with some buyers in the mobile sector. I thought you, and your portfolio companies, might be interested in the concept of blatancy: http://bit.ly/BLATANCY

We would love to see you before the end of the year and if you haven’t attended a BLN event before, remember, we offer a no quibble money back guarantee – turn up, and if you feel you didn’t get value, we will refund your money. Simple.

Mark Littlewood

Director The BLN

T: +44 7760 171 929

Tw: @marklittlewood

• Day 10 of stinking colds, headaches, wheezing, coughs & sneezes. The downside of children. #
• Steve Purdham, We7 – Growth is multi-dimensional & damn hard work. http://bit.ly/We7Scale Scaling digital business. #
• RT @davidjwoodward Knife crime campaigner DJ Ironik stabbed in Highgate http://bit.ly/cb3o97 Rest of the story pretty much writes itself #
• Wow. Mean f'cast revenue growth of mobile companies @the_BLN discussion dinner Future of App Business Models is >120% #
• Mobile for the next billion – Movirtu raises $5.5 million Series A http://bit.ly/bAarpT #
• Judging some Silicon Valley comes to UK #SVC2C companies tonight. High standards & great stories behind the companies. #
• Crap! I was going to blow Robin Hood airport up but someone seems to have got there first. #iamspartacus #
• The parking situation at our office just jumped the shark. http://twitpic.com/3652l0 #
• حماقة! إغلاق مطار روبن هود. كنت قد حصلت في الأسبوع ، وقليلا للحصول على القرف الخاص معا ، أو ابن تهب السماء مطار عالية! #IAmSpartacus #
• I do like a bit of Professional Masterchef on a Friday afternoon. Very funny. http://bit.ly/aGrqaR #
• Does anyone have any views on a good type of cat flap to purchase for Mr Terry Tibbs? http://twitpic.com/36heij #

It was a true pleasure to attend this BLN event. In 2009 and 2010 I have attended quite a number of networking events in Europe and in APAC (these were the regions I was the head of sales for) and I must say that your event was one of the best ones. It is probably because you:

• selected a good crowd with enough common denominators
• made it clear from the beginning that we have an agenda: serious networking
• timetabled and conducted the whole thing with just the correct touch of führer attitude 😉
• picked a venue that was relaxing and favoured discussions

We are all big fans of anyone that does things to a high standard and the incredible chefs that have featured on Professional Masterchef over the past couple of months were amazing.

If you missed the series, don’t worry. Here are the highlights in four minutes. (May not contain actual food cooked).

Thank you – a very useful, well orchestrated and high quality conversation.  Much appreciated.  Felt challenged to contribute sufficiently to justify my presence, which is good.

Another great event, really enjoyable and super relevant and practical for me as well.

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/