Who would have thought it. I am in the capital city of a country that wants to build their own independent cloud that is not dependent on US technology. Welcome to Paris, France and the Microsoft BizSpark European Summit on growth and entrepreneurship.
Some thoughts from the Cloud Computing Panel
Great news for Admob whose $750million acquisition by Google has been approved by the Federal Trade Commission in the US today. This was being given significant review by the FTC who were concerned that if Google bought Admob they would have a virtual monopoly on the market. As Apple is launching their own mobile advertising service, this was seen as enough to prove that the market is bigger than they first thought.
According to the Mercury News,
‘Citing a move by Apple — the Cupertino maker of Mac computers and “i” devices — to start its own iAd service to put display ads into iPhone and iPad apps, the FTC concluded that Google’s AdMob purchase “is unlikely to harm competition in the emerging market for mobile advertising networks.”‘
Congratulations to Omar Hamoui, founder and Russell Buckley, Admob’s EMEA CEO and VP Alliances and the whole Admob team. Creating a market is no mean achievement.
We are delighted that Russell will be speaking about his experiences of Identifying and Targeting Big Markets at our BLN Growth Forum event on 15th July. More details here.
Not the usual sort of BLN blog post but an interesting question for one of our members and I am almost certain that someone can answer this fairly easily. This is a redacted note from one of the participants in our BDO CFO Breakfast Brainstorm yesterday. If anyone has knowledge or experience of how you set up the equivalent of a direct debit payment in other countries, please feel free to chip in! Thanks in advance.
Sad to see that John Shepherd-Barron has died aged 84 after a short illness.
Who?
John Shepherd-Barron invented the cash point machine in 1965. He did not patent the invention and didn’t make any money from the idea. Before cash points, banking was run as a service for banks, not customers. Getting the first one installed gives you an insight into the way business was done then,
“By chance, in 1965, I bumped into the chief general manager of Barclays Bank who was about to have lunch. I said, over a pink gin, ‘Give me 90 seconds’.”
It is hard to imagine in an age of internet banking and 24 hour customer ‘service’ how revolutionary this concept was at the time.
Not all cash point machines are convenient
The first person to withdraw money from a cash machine was Reg Varney from ‘On the Buses’. Now why doesn’t that get used in pub quizzes more often?
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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.
Investor Member – Aimed at angels, venture and private equity investors.
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.
SVB Financial is the UK arm of a commercial bank specializing in banking and lending to technology, life science and cleantech companies across all growth sectors. SVB banks approximately 60% of the technology companies in the US. SVB also banks venture capital and private equity firms.
Contact:
Good news for the UK web technology startup scene as Huddle announce the closing of their $10.2 million Series B for US expansion. Eden, their original seed investor participated in the round. Great news for the company and the team, including our old colleague Charlie Blake-Thomas.
We do wonder what this says, if anything, about the European venture capital scene. Huddle had lots of interest and were probably in a better position than most to choose between alternative investors. Clearly launching into the US would mean a US VC was an advantage to them.
We would love to hear Ali’s thoughts on the differences they saw between investors on each side of the Atlantic.
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We are delighted to see that Davor Hebel has led Fidelity Growth Partners Europe’s investment in InnoGames, a leading developer and publisher of free-to-play online games. Fidelity is the sole investor. InnoGames currently has almost 50 million registered players across the globe playing successful titles such as Tribal Wars, The West and Grepolis.
Wild West Saloon from some Innogames game or another
This investment has been made from FGPE’s new £100m fund which was announced in January 2010.