Travelogue - October 2007
You find your allies and confidants in odd places - close to home [Cheltenham, Loughborough] and far away [Budapest, Oslo and Inverness].
Having been asked to speak at Dean Close - http://www.deanclose.co.uk/ in Cheltenham to the senior school, I thought about myself at that age [17], full of hope with no experience of the world. Real Life, Paul Flanagan's new company [Paul has been our Executive in Residence at Ariadne for 4 years covering the gaming sector] is a virtual world for 17 year olds enabling them to test drive different careers. I found all of my dinner companions obsessed with what they were going to do with their lives, and how this internship had turned out differently than they had thought, or whether they could be a trader, or an entrepreneur, or what was advertising all about, and whether the professions like doctors and lawyers would be the route. Real Life is going to be huge when it taps into this deep emotional reservoir - launching in early 2008. For those of you who still don't know what I'm talking about that, think of online business simulation games - like Marktstradt - which we played at INSEAD - teaching you how to do Marketing. If you are a corporate and would like to sponsor a part of Real Life, contact Paul on reallife@ariadnecapital.com
On the Dean's website, I found this quote in one of his addresses, and it could read like the manifesto of any entrepreneur:
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasm, the great venture and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
I couldn't agree more: Follow the Entrepreneur
- He/she has the market insight
- He/she is the value creator
- He/she is the hero
Continuing on to Oslo where I spoke at the Oslo Innovation Week - http://www.prosjekt-osloinnovationweek.oslo.kommune.no/english/programme/ - and sat next to the CEO of Telenor R&D, Hans Christian Haugli, I learned of the important role that Telenor has played in building out the Grameen Phone project which has had huge benefits for the developing world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grameenphone
Oslo had always been one of the leading cities for First Tuesday, and 8 years later, First Tuesday is still going strong in Oslo. We stopped by, and saw the City Hall packed with people, where weeks earlier the Nobel Prize had been given.
According to one of my colleagues in Oslo, Google's business in Norway alone is worth €50 m. Shibsted is the local giant; their media franchise is a €2 billion business, and they have been interestingly active in Spain historically as well as the Nordic regions. Watch Shipsted for some innovations in the coming months.
You can feel how much money Oslo and Norway have everywhere you go - not because people are ostentatious, but because they almost look for ways of spending the money. I stayed at a nice, but not super high-end hotel, and 4 times I was called in my room to ask if I wanted fresh towels. Because of the wealth, one does wonder why they would ever consider joining the EU. And also, why they aren't a stronger financial capital although I'm told that the Oslo Stock Exchange is growing in importance.
As is typical of a smaller nation, they are good at working internationally - hence Shibsted and Telenor's international success. Their oil and gas strengths are being turned into a lead in the cleantech space as well.
Earlier in October, I made my annual pilgrimage to ETRE - http://www.herringevents.com/etre07/index.html. This year it was in Budapest. Leanard Brody of NowPublic - http://www.nowpublic.com/ stole the show by opening up on Sunday afternoon with the most compelling vision of where the newspaper industry is going. NowPublic is building the Associated Public for the 21st century, and Brody has a better grip on news and newspapers than anyone I've ever heard.
I did my usual Meet the Money panel with other VC's [a version of Dragon's Den], and Morten Lund hosted the event's best dinner. http://mortenlund.wordpress.com/about/
I find I need to be with other entrepreneurs to keep my energy levels up, and to ensure that Ariadne is meeting the best entrepreneurs in the market.
So I trekked it out to Inverness where Horizon Scotland, a local organization, put on a conference for business people. Entrepreneurship is alive and well in the highlands.
Finally, stopped at Loughborough University on the 26th of October for the Enterprise Club's dinner where I met Graeme Radcliffe, the founder of NewsDesk, now running Pet Screen http://www.pet-screen.com/web/PETSCR/splash.htm - now fighting cancer for dogs. NEWSdesk (www.newsdesk.com) was the first dedicated Internet news network for high-tech journalists and analysts which was acquired in December 1998 by PR Newswire (the New York-based global news distribution subsidiary of United News & Media). A former journalist, Radcliffe launched NEWSdesk in 1993. The site was the first of its kind - and an early and classic illustration of internet community, content & commerce.
From Budapest, to Cheltenham, to Oslo, to Inverness and back to London, entrepreneurship is an unstoppable wave. When I get thoroughly depressed about the drug addict/junkie relationship this current government seems intent to continue to pursue, I say, "don't worry Julie - they have to stop an unstoppable wave of entrepreneurship, the forces of individual capitalism, and the internet's on-going opening up of opportunity." And then I sleep better.