• RT @renderdan Cooking doesn't look any more miserable than this #masterchef #cheerup!! #
• Local papers are not always known for accurate, insightful reporting. This caption is up there. http://bit.ly/9QueT #
• Pleased @joe is joining our Future of Mobile Apps discussion dinner. All sold out now. http://bit.ly/cwtEno #
• +1! @davidsoskin Preparing talk on Scaling Digital Businesses for @The_BLN CEO tales. Guest list shows London's excellence as media centre. #
• I believe it is obligatory to tweet when you see The Social Network. Job done. Will not tweet unnecessary review. #
• Internet represents biggest sector in UK's fastest growing companies for first time. http://bit.ly/axjlZL #
• How to scale a Digital Business in London – get over the fact you aren't in Silicon Valley. http://bit.ly/ac9IH7 #

Thanks again for a great event last night, it was awesome to meet so

many fantastic people in one place.

The 5th BLN ecommerce discussion dinner in this highly popular series will feature both upcoming businesses as well as a few that are interested in acquisitions in the space.

This is a chance to meet other incredible people, share ideas on emerging business models, challenges and how we might support each other in our goals.

BLN discussion dinners are run under the Chatham House Rule and draw key participants in business ecosystems – incumbents, investors and growing entrepreneurial enterprises – together to meet and discuss important and pressing issues about the future of their industry in a relaxed, informal and fun atmosphere. Participants in previous events in this series have included founders/CEOs/senior executives from companies including Spreadshirt, LoveFilm, eBay, Waitrose, Figleaves, Graze.com, Tesco, House of Fraser, Glasses Direct, Viagogo, Isabella Oliver, Skimlinks, MedicAnimal, Net-a-Porter, I Want One of Those, MyDeco, and eCommera.

There are many opportunities to attend networking events but we like to think that The BLN events are both high quality and a little different. You can see feedback from previous attendees here.

We are delighted to be supported for this event by BDO, Silicon Valley Bank and Goetz Partners.

We are always interested in talking to founders, Chairs and CEOs who can contribute actively to the discussion and suggest others who may also benefit from such meetings.

Please note that by applying we CANNOT guarantee a place, although we do our best to accommodate relevant individuals. Our priority is always to ensure that our guests are relevant to the specific discussion/sector focus.

For further information, please contact us directly at: info@TheBLN.com

Thanks to Ben Goldsmith at Wheb Ventures for passing on this note from Jeremy Grantham, founder and Chairman of GMO, one of the world’s largest asset management firms. In the 1970s Jeremy created the world’s first index funds. He is a contrarian, renowned and respected for his accurate prediction of numerous bubbles. In his quarterly investment newsletter this summer he decided to include the following on the subject of climate change. Well worth a read if you want to strip some of the BS away from the global warming debate.

This is a place where science, money and politics will fighting a war for years to come.

1) The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, after at least several hundred thousand years of remaining within a constant range, started to rise with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. It has increased by almost 40% and is rising each year. This is certain and straightforward.

2) One of the properties of CO2 is that it creates a greenhouse effect and, all other things being equal, an increase in its concentration in the atmosphere causes the Earth’s temperature to rise. This is just physics. (The amount of other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as methane, has also risen steeply since industrialization, which has added to the impact of higher CO2 levels.)

As we have built our community across the UK a gratifying number of people have asked how they can engage in more of our activities, not only in their own regions but in other areas in which we operate. We really want to stay in touch with, and pick the brains of other people in our network. We see a huge value in keeping our community together but we need your support in doing so.

Over the summer, we will be launching a more formal (probably more expensive) Membership package, but we want those of you who wish to participate in multiple events across the year to do so without having to pay to attend each event.

Please note that we do not have a ‘corporate membership’ scheme yet. This scheme is aimed at individuals within organisations.

Company Executive Member – Aimed at CEO, Chair, CFO, Board Director level people in growth businesses.

• Entitles individual to attend all CEO Tales drinks event at no charge.
• Entitles CEO/Chairs to attend one BLN Discussion Dinner per year at no charge.
• Entitles CFOs to attend all CFO Breakfast Brainstorms per year at no charge.
• Entitles individuals to attend other paid for BLN events at discounted rates and get first sight of events.
• Membership of BLN LinkedIn Group.

• £ 250 plus VAT per annum

Individual Investor Member – Aimed at angels, venture and private equity investors.

• Entitles individual to attend all CEO Tales drinks event at no charge.
• Entitles individual to attend other paid for BLN events at discounted rates and get first sight of events.
• Membership of BLN LinkedIn Group.

• £ 350 plus VAT per annum

Company Investor Member – Aimed at venture and private equity investors.

• Entitles up to five individuals from member firm to attend all CEO Tales drinks event at no charge.
• Entitles up to 5 individuals in firm to attend other paid for BLN events at discounted rates and get first sight of events.
• Membership of BLN LinkedIn Group.

• £ 750 plus VAT per annum

Adviser Member – Aimed at individuals working as advisors to growth companies. (Includes corporate finance, search, PR, accounting, legal etc). This category of membership is strictly controlled and members may be restricted from attending certain events where a competing firm is sponsoring – we try to look after our customers.

• Entitles individual to attend all CEO Tales drinks event at no charge.
• Entitles individuals to attend other paid for BLN events at discounted rates and get first sight of events.
• Membership of BLN LinkedIn Group.

• £ 500 plus VAT per annum

The BLN Future of Digital Business Models Discussion Dinner, 24th November, 17.00 start, to be followed by round table discussion, cocktails, and dinner from 19:30. We want to ask the best entrepreneurial minds in the industry, ‘How can you make money from your industry? How do you place a value on content? What business models can best capitalise on the opportunity and What can you learn from pioneers in adjacent fields?’

Over the course of a Chatham House Rule discussion and 3 course dinner we would like to explore some of these issues with invited guests. We are inviting the CEOs and founders of some of them most dynamic and innovative businesses in the digital media sector in the UK to discuss the evolution of their industries and the part that they are playing in changing the industry they work in.

The Business Leaders Network (The BLN) is a national community of entrepreneurs, business leaders and institutional investors involved in building and working with growth businesses. We facilitate peer networking, discover future leaders and stimulate debate about the development of key growth sectors in the UK economy. We help organisations grow – by connecting corporates to sources of innovation, entrepreneurs to investors or partners and investors to high quality entrepreneurs.

BLN events are run across the UK and promote interaction, investment and discussion between the individuals behind the UK’s most active investors, businesses and innovation clusters.

Attendees: We expect approximately 12-16 company CEO’s or founders to be present at the dinner, along with 4-5 active investors.

There are many opportunities to attend networking events but we like to think that The BLN events are both high quality and a little different. You can see feedback from previous attendees here.

Places are limited so a prompt response is necessary to be considered for a place.

Also we are always interested in talking to founders, Chairs and CEOs who can contribute actively to the discussion.

For further information, please contact us directly at: info@TheBLN.com

It is not often that the UK gets to play host to founders of Silicon Valley companies including TESLA Motors, Zynga, LinkedIn, August Capital, the VP of Engineering at Facebook, Joi Ito and others. For this gathering to happen in Cambridge makes it all the more special as much of the focus on technology today is understandably in London.

Silicon Valley comes to the UK (SVC2UK) has now become an annual programme and this year welcomes, once again, an extraordinary line up of 20 pioneers in disruptive consumer internet and green technologies. You don’t have to be a Cambridge company to get involved but you have to come to one of the UK’s most distinctive technology clusters to get involved.

Valley-based  entrepreneurs will meet their UK and European counterparts to look at collaborating on business ventures. They will lead classes at Cambridge University examining cutting-edge technologies and business models, and they will meet with policymakers to look at how to expand the UK’s innovation capacity. The programme is supported by a number of businesses and has grown into an eagerly anticipated event, with thousands of students and entrepreneurs benefiting from the collective expertise of the group.

The events on 19th November are based at the Judge Institute and include discussions about venture capital, incubation, when to quit and move on, cloud, SaaS, Cleantech, what joining a startup is like and a host of other subjects including keynotes from some of the most topical names in Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

2010 Participants in Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge

Nick Beim, Matrix

• Since joining Matrix in 2001, Nick has invested primarily in Internet and software companies. Nick joined Matrix in 2001 after working in the high tech investment banking group at Goldman Sachs & Co. and the technology and media group at McKinsey & Co.

Jose Ferreira, CEO of Knewton LinkedIn

• Jose Ferreira founded Knewton in 2008. Previously, Jose served as an executive at Kaplan, where he led a company-wide re-engineering effort called “Project Footprint” that created the modern Kaplan course.

Kerry Haley, Vice President of Power and Process at Strategic Project Solutions LinkedIn

• In her role as Vice President, Power and Process at Strategic Project Solutions, Ms. Haley is responsible for all strategicrelationships and program development in the Power and Process sectors, assisting owners in the effective delivery of complex and critical construction projects.

Julie Hanna, Farris, Kiva LinkedIn

• Julie Hanna is Chair of the Board at Kiva, the world’s first peer-peer micro-lending website, Board Member at Socialtext, a leading Enterprise 2.0 social networking platform, Advisory Board Chair at Actuate Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTU) and former advisor to Web 2.0 start-up Plum

David Helliwell, Co-Founder at Pulse Energy

• Pulse Energy is led by its co-founder, David Helliwell, whose career has spanned 3 continents and has been focused on the energy sector since 1994.

Reid Hoffman, Executive Chairman and a co-founder of LinkedIn LinkedIn

• Reid Hoffman is Executive Chairman and a co-founder of LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice President of PayPal. In addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart, Kiva.org, and Mozilla Corporation.

David Hornik, General Partner, August Capital LinkedIn

• For more than a decade, David Hornik has worked with technology startups throughout the software sector. In 2000, David joined August Capital to invest broadly in information technology companies, with a focus on enterprise application and infrastructure software, as well as consumer facing software and services.

Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons LinkedIn

• Joichi Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons. He is a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage JSD:4819. Ito was named by BusinessWeek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web in 2008.

John Lilly, Venture Partner, Greylock Partners

• John is a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners, where he invests in early stage technology companies. He is also the chief executive officer of Mozilla, where he is responsible for guiding the product and organizational development efforts for the global organization behind the Firefox web browser.

Nancy Lublin, CEO & Chief Old Person, DoSomething.org LinkedIn

• Nancy Lublin is the CEO and Chief Old Person of DoSomething.org’s, that supports and awards grant money to young people who want to make a difference.

Mark Pincus, Founder, Zynga

• Mark Pincus is a social gaming pioneer and leading Internet entrepreneur, having founded and established four successful companies including Zynga, the world’s largest social games provider with over 230 million monthly active users.

Mike Schroepfer, Vice President of Engineering, Facebook LinkedIn

• Mike Schroepfer is the Vice President of Engineering at Facebook. Mike is responsible for harnessing the engineering organization’s culture of speed, creativity and exploration to build products, services and infrastructure that support the company’s users, developers and partners around the world.

Jigar Shah, CEO of Carbon War Room LinkedIn

• Jigar Shah is CEO of Carbon War Room, an organization that specializes in low-carbon solutions for businesses. He is an expert in renewable energy with a wide knowledge of both solar and wind power, and alternative fuels.

Ted Shelton, CEO of Open-First LinkedIn

• Ted Shelton, CEO, Open-First. Open-First is a consulting firm based in Palo Alto and London working with clients ranging such as Alcatel-Lucent, General Motors, and ThomsonReuters on innovation and market ecosystem projects.

Megan Smith, Vice President, New Business Development, and General Manager, Google.org

• Megan oversees teams that manage early-stage partnerships, explorations and technology licensing. She also leads the Google.org team, guiding strategy and developing new partnerships and internal projects with Google’s engineering and product teams.

Marc Tarpenning, Co-founder of Tesla Motors, Inc and NuvoMedia, Inc LinkedIn

• Marc Tarpenning is the co-founder of Tesla Motors. He is currently advising several startup companies and looking at other opportunities in the areas of sustainable transportation, energy storage, alternative power generation and related information systems.

Daniel Yates, CEO and Founder of OPOWER LinkedIn

• Daniel Yates is the CEO and Founder of OPOWER, an 85-person Smart Grid and Energy Efficiency software company. As the CEO, Dan is responsible for the vision, strategy, and leadership of OPOWER. In 2009, Dan was named a “Tech Titan” by Washingtonian magazine and was a finalist for the Ernst and Young 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Laurie Yoler, Managing Director at GrowthPoint Technology Partners

• As Managing Director at GrowthPoint Technology Partners, Ms. Yoler helps entrepreneurs to build strategic alliances, complete M&A transactions and raise capital.

We are pleased to be supporting the event for the second year. For a look at the programme, go to the main Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge website: www.SVc2C.com