Talking about: Getting and Keeping Customers
Why we wanted him to speak: We met Ted when he ran a workshop for out Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge CEO Workshops last year. He takes a lot of those new-fangled Californian social media concepts and turns them into actionable ideas for real businesses. He really understands marketing. He is an awesome facilitator.
Background
Mark Prisk, Business Minister announced today that the new government would be shutting down the Business Link network. Real Business broke the news. Elsewhere, it was announced that the Regional Development Agencies, RDAs, would be axed.
Predictably, the RDAs and Business Links are up in arms. Lots of spokespeople have come out to insist they create value. Some business organisations, particularly in the north of England have joined in the shouting to keep the status quo.
The two reactions I have heard from the business community however, have been, ‘Great, about time too’, or, ‘What did they actually do?.’
We need to cut public sector spending. Usually the best thing a government to do to support business is to create a benign environment for entrepreneurs and then get the hell out of the way. Sadly, this seems to have been an approach that many an RDA has totally forgotten, seeing the creation of a regionally based support infrastructure as an end in itself. Goodbye to all that.
Do some of the grants distributed by the RDAs have a beneficial effect on some companies? Yes. Would they still have a beneficial effect if they were available and distributed nationally? Yes. Is it right that grants were distributed regionally which means that if there are two equally deserving companies in two different regions, only one would receive one? How about if one company was much better than the other but happened to be in a ‘hot’ region with more competition for grants? I don’t think so. How about you?
Frankly, there has been an absurd focus on supporting enterprise with government money in places that cannot absorb the investment. I know several Regional Venture funds that actively seek investments outside their own areas as they simply cannot find the deals to do for their funds in the way that they are structured. They find ways of investing in companies in other parts of the country and then set up an office in the region in question.The ECFs seem to be a much more imaginative, and potentially successful, mechanism to invest in scaleable businesses.
Reward successful entrepreneurs by looking at things like a favourable CGT and taper relief. Too much public money going into support entrepreneurship across the country is just misplaced. Spreading money wherever it is felt there isn’t enough about just creates a dependency culture. Entrepreneurship is about risk taking and winning. It is not necessarily compatible with a lets be fair for everyone ideal. We cannot create 9 Silicon Valley type environments across the UK, one in each region, just because each RDA want to be the next Silicon Glen, Fen, Corridor, Moor, Bog or whatever. For the best technology entrepreneurs in certain sectors, the best thing you can probably do is move to London, or go to Silicon Valley. No amount of money, public or private will change that.
The big question for me is what will replace these bodies and activities. I personally welcome the moves to streamline and rationalise an overly bureaucratic system. I will be more interested to see the detail of what is planned to replace. Bring it on.
I cannot imagine many people will be spending too much time worrying about the fate of Business Link and the RDAs at the BLN Growth Forum on 15th July. Those particular CEOs will be busy getting on with building great businesses in the real world. http://growthforum2010.thebln.com
Talking about: Building Great Teams
Why we wanted him to speak: Started in corporates and turned into big thinking entrepreneurial manager. Raised over $ 600 million funding for one company (Webvan). Great turnaround story at QXL Ricardo. Friendly, approachable, thoughtful, refreshing thinking. Seems to have left fans in all the companies he has worked in.
Background
Since 2007, Mark Zaleski is the Chairman of DVDPost. He is also a Venture Partner in BBV and a NED in CyberSports. Mark was Chairman and CEO of Dailymotion from 2007 to 2009. Under his leadership it became the world’s leading independent video-sharing site. From 2000, Mark was CEO for QXL ricardo plc. QXL was the best performing stock on LSE’s Main Market in both 2004 and 2005. It was sold for nearly £1 billion.
Prior to QXL, Mark was President of Webvan, where he and other officers raised nearly $600M. Mark is a Fellow of the IoD.
http://be.linkedin.com/in/markzaleski
For more information on the BLN Growth Forum, 15th July 2010, visit http://growthforum2010.thebln.com/session/
Talking about: Identifying and Targeting Large Markets
Why we wanted her to speak: Uber-smart, uber-connected. Straight-talking, forward-thinking, active and successful angel investor. Never thinks small. Loves data and what it is doing to the world. Brilliant chair.
Background
Sherry Coutu is an experienced executive, former CEO and angel investor who now serves on the boards of companies, charities and universities. The companies she serves range from fast growth private early stage to public and boards with turnover more than £ 1 bn. As an entrepreneur, Sherry established two businesses in the financial services industry. The first (acquired by Euromoney) has operations in more than 70 countries. The second (acquired by AMP) was floated in 2000 on London and Nasdaq and valued at more than $1 billion before being acquired.
Sherry loves working with great entrepreneurs solving problems that matter. Her current portfolio of interests include sitting on the Advisory Boards of Linkedin, Harvard Business School European Council, NESTA and Cancer Research UK. Her investments usually include ‘databases’, as a common theme. These range from movies (Lovefilm) to real-estate (Zoopla), energy consumption (Alertme), clean energy (New Energy Finance), water pressure (i20), investments (covester), professional contacts (Linkedin), builders (mybuilder), to how to get pregnant by monitoring trends in body temperature (CTC). Her latest ‘exit’ was New Energy Finance (acquired by Bloomberg).
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/coutu
For more information on the BLN Growth Forum, 15th July 2010, visit http://growthforum2010.thebln.com/session/
Talking about: Identifying and Targeting Large Markets
Why we wanted him to speak: Has grown a global business and kept control of his sales channels from the outset. Has worked at AVEVA for over 25 years. Extraordinarily articulate, dedicated, long term thinker. Critical part to play in driving growth of a business to over £150,000,000 revenue.
Background
Richard Longdon received an engineering training in the defence industry then gained experience in the project management of high value engineering projects. He moved into sales and held a series of international sales and marketing positions.
He joined AVEVA in 1984 and shortly afterwards was made marketing manager for the process products. In January 1992 he relocated to Frankfurt where he was responsible for setting up and running the Group’s German office. He returned to the UK as part of the management buyout team in 1994, subsequently taking responsibility for the Group’s worldwide sales and marketing activities, before being appointed Managing Director in May 1999. He took over as Group Chief Executive in December 1999.
For more information on the BLN Growth Forum, 15th July 2010, visit http://growthforum2010.thebln.com/session/
Talking about: Building Great Teams
Why we wanted him to speak: Just sold Net-a-Porter to Richemont, instrumental in building global luxury brand, great speaker, lots of experience running venture backed businesses, made very successful transition from CFO to CEO.
Background
NET-A-PORTER.COM is the world’s leading fashion website, being the first e-tailer to demonstrate digital convergence in action, combining a fashion magazine with original weekly content emailed to a million women across the globe, with retail sales of the latest designer fashion offerings.
In 2009, NET-A-PORTER.COM launched theOutnet.com which has quickly established itself as the chic, go-to destination for the global, style-conscious shopper looking for the best designer brands at a great price.
Mark Sebba joined NET-A-PORTER.COM in 2003, to help take the business from successful start-up to a mature expanding business with a substantial infrastructure. Mark’s background is in finance both as an investment banker and as finance director of two venture capital funded businesses in new media.
In the last six years, sales have grown from £6 million to £120 million, employees from 40 to 600 covering two continents; space occupied has grown from 15,000 sq ft to nearly 300,000 sq ft and the company has just been acquired by Richemont International for £350 million.
For more information on the BLN Growth Forum, 15th July 2010, visit http://growthforum2010.thebln.com/session/
Talking about: Identifying and Targeting Big Markets
Why we wanted him to speak: Young, accomplished, energetic, ambitious, made and learned from plenty of mistakes, approachable, taken licensing route to build global youth brand, funny.
Biography
Al Gosling first discovered a passion for extreme sports at an early age, however never predicted it would become the basis of a global business. Initially, he sold board shorts to his mates whilst studying for exams at school but quickly moved into the fast paced world of TV, selling extreme sports programmes to broadcasters around the world. With this the idea for the Extreme Sports channel and Extreme brand began to take shape. The Extreme Sports Channel launched across Europe in 1999 and today broadcasts into millions of homes around the world.
From 2007 Al focused on becoming one of the world’s most innovative licensing companies growing the company by targeting areas with similar brand philosophy and values, bringing in deeply experienced industry specialist MDs, and developing products and services that offer consumers something new and different. Today, the Extreme Sports Company is an entrepreneur-led collection of licenses and companies with a unique brand driven by the Extreme Sports channel and Extreme.com which is currently in over 40 million homes in 58 countries and 14 languages.
When not in the office or in meetings you will find him either windsurfing, kite surfing, flying, off-piste skiing, ice climbing or sailing somewhere in the world.
http://www.extremeinternational.com
For more information on the BLN Growth Forum, 15th July 2010, visit http://growthforum2010.thebln.com/session/
Great news that Jana Eggers, the CEO and human dynamo behind Spreadshirt will be joining us at the BLN Growth Forum on July 15th to share her views and experiences on growing great teams. Spreadshirt, founded by Lukasz Gadowski in March 2001, now employs 300 people across the globe allows customers to create, buy and sell your own clothing. VC investors are Accel and Kennet Partners.
Jana Eggers, CEO Spreadshirt
“Jana joined Spreadshirt in November 2006 to grow the North American corporation and to help manage the global corporation. In August of 2007, Jana was named Spreadshirt’s global CEO.
Jana brought her passion for the customer and innovation to Spreadshirt, which has mixed well with the creative and dedicated global team. She’s excited to lead Spreadshirt’s three business units – direct to customer shopping, shop partner platform, and design competitions – serving different customers that together build a strong proposition for the market. She also likes the opportunity to express herself everyday wearing a Spreadshirt with her own message.
Jana came to Spreadshirt from Intuit where she founded the corporate Innovation Lab and ran the company’s fastest growing business unit, QuickBase – an online application platform. Prior to Intuit, Jana held executive and technical positions at American Airline’s Sabre, Lycos, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and several start-ups.
Jana’s work in innovation and leadership has been recognized with Mass High Tech’s Women to Watch award in 2004; Intuit’s CEO Excellent Award in 2005; and Hendrix College’s Odyssey Award for Professional and Leadership Development in 2007. She’s been featured in Business Week and Fortune magazines, and is a frequent invited speaker on technology, business, innovation, and leadership.” Company site.
Jana also writes the excellent Life on a shirt blog. http://www.lifeonashirt.com/
To register for the BLN Growth Forum, held on 15th July, visit: http://growthforum2010.thebln.com/
