Jason Ball's TechBytes

Technology & Venture Capital. Early stage venture capital news mixed with personal views and comments

September 15, 2009 • 8:24 pm 1

Entrepreneurial Leadership Speaker Series

Hussein Kanji has organized a venture capital and entrepreneurship lecture series starting in October, which will be held at London Business School. Current speakers announced are:

Robin Klein, The Accelerator Group, Thursday Oct 1
Stan Bowland, Icera, Thursday Nov 5
Stefan Glaenzer, Last.fm, Thursday Dec 3
Bernard Liautaud, Balderton, Thursday Feb 4
Jos White, MessageLabs, Thursday March 4
Herman Hauser, Amadeus, Thursday, May 6
Mike Hedger, KVS, Thursday June 3

Other speakers will be announced in the near future.

If you're interested in venture capital and entrepreneurship; then this is the series of speakers you need to get to…and it's FREE. It's a stellar lineup, and the price is right. Full details and bios available at the London Business School website or on Hussein's blog.

See you there.

Filed under: Europreneurship, Events, Conferences and Panels, Venture Capital

June 5, 2008 • 10:42 pm 4

First-time Entrepreneurs?

Library House's newsletter yesterday (free registration req'd) highlighted an article by David Storey in the FT- making the case that there is no correlation between an experienced entrepreneur/management team and a company's success.

Storey summarises this belief [that failure is accepted in the US, and that it is a source of learning] to dismantle it, arguing that knowledge gained from a failed business makes little difference to future business success, due to the unpredictability of starting a business. ‘The best analogy is with a lottery,’ Storey writes, ‘it is not possible to learn to win a lottery.’

Storey points to research in the UK and Germany which indicates that experienced founders are no more or less likely to succeed in starting a new business than novices. It goes against one of the basic tenants of venture capital investing – focusing on the experience of the management team

At first, I thought that was the stupidest thing I had read in a very long time.

However, after giving it some more thought, I actually agree:

I'm not too worried about entrepreneurs being young or old; experienced or novice. I *am* worried about very large markets where an investment can be the leader (or at least one of the top 3). I'm also worried about great products and real, unmet needs…

An entrepreneur's experience? I've never lost any sleep over that one.

Filed under: Europreneurship, Venture Capital

February 24, 2008 • 10:48 am 3

London Venture Capital Events

A comment was posted earlier in the week asking what events are relevant for new arrivals in London looking to get involved in the venture/start-up comunity. I was looking for the same in 2004 and posted a short list in 2005. Here’s a revised short list of VC-related events in and around London, no particular order:

Regular events:
Internet People (no link)
Open Coffee
City Zone
Chinwag
Mashup events
Mobile Monday
Geek Dinner
Second Chance Tuesday

Conferences:
FOWA
Symbian Smartphone show
Paid Content UK events
Library House events

Mike Butcher over at TechCrunch UK tends to post lists of upcoming events on a regular basis. Latest list here.

Any events I’ve left off, feel free to add them in the comments section.

Filed under: Europreneurship, Events, Conferences and Panels, Venture Capital

August 30, 2007 • 8:42 pm 2

Promoting Europreneurship- what’s next?

San FranBrightoncisco, Silicon Fen (Cambridge), Silicon Glen (Scotland), Silicon Isle (Ireland), Silicon Ditch (London)- whatever you call it, how do we make it better?

Saul has spearheaded seedcamp, we’re running our accelerator program for the 4th time, some universities have speaker programs, corporates are actively supporting start-ups (Microsoft, Oracle, Google) and there’s an ever-growing list of great events to attend (even first tuesday is back)- which is great, but it’s all top-down and by nature available to all of about three companies.

I ran across a few posts from Ireland over the weekend which were good food for thought: Conor’s post on David Heinemeier Hansson, a response over at Pinstripe and further comment at waveson.

Basically, what we seem to need are guys like David to start inspiring others to start writing amazing code- and then we’re really onto something…

What do you think- what’s next and what’s needed?

Filed under: Europreneurship, Events, Conferences and Panels

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