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Today has shown me why US business, and usually Californian business cleans up in tech.

Case Study 1 - in a bar, in a non-descript mall in San Bruno. On way to rest room (well, beer has to go somewhere), I meet a rack server clogging the hall with a ...   more »

Here is a stick, beat me with it later. Many pundits, charlatans and so-called-psychics make vague and untestable prognistications, and escape all consequences of their failure to be correct simply though passage of time. They are often helped by the tendancy of the human mind to be good at correlating things that happen with information, and very much less good at correlating things that fail to happen with anything at all. So, I’m inviting you to make a bookmark on this post, and set a diary reminder for about five years time. That way you can come back and tell me how badly I missed the mark with my forecasts. The things that I think are going to be really huge (as in: they will generate businesses worth over $1bn, at least 1 IPO at over $1bn or profits of over $200m a year) are:   more »

There is a basic principle in start-ups that if you do not reach approximately 2% of the market that you can address within the first two years you will slide back down into the snake pit. Momentum is everything. The critical factor is when you decide to start the clock. I have written on several occasions about the benefits of bootstrapping, and one of the largest benefits is that it gives you the control of the moment on which you start the investment clock, and, perhaps more importantly, you can get all of your mistakes out of the way before you start that clock ticking.   more »

“Everybody you meet in business is going to be nice”. Yeah, right! One of the best things about being in a start-up business is that most people are trying to achieve the same result, which makes for a friendly and constructive working environment. However, the sad truth in the world is that not everybody is there to help you. Rather like the Fox giving you a lift across the river in the children’s stories, some people are there to rip you off, make your life miserable, steal intellectual property, or just get one over on you. Sadly, fraud is a very real factor in business life. It is not my intention to make anybody about to launch himself or herself into a start-up become paranoid. All I’d really like to do is get off my chest some of the things which I have seen happen, and to give one solid piece of advice: If it looks too good to be true, just walk away, whatever you’ve already invested   more »

Most of my posts have been on general or technical business matters. This one is far more personal. If you react badly to middle aged men discussing their life thoughts, now would be good time to stop reading. However, if you are, like me, a little past 35 and wondering ...   more »

How much disruption can an industry stand?

The theme of GDC for me has been the confluence of forces of massive disruption, almost all of which are aimed at over turning the dominance of the current platform holders or channel owners. It looks like a very bad time to be ...   more »

I'm currently at GDC 2010 and realising that things have changed exactly as they should have done, given what I knew 6 years ago (when I was last actively developing a game).

It is at least 10x more:


Than ...   more »

I posted a new photo to Photos.


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I posted a new photo to Photos.


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I posted a new photo to Photos.


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I posted a new photo to Photos.


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I posted a new photo to Photos.


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Chillis are uncomfortable at first, but cause no real damage to human tissue in normal doses. After a few minutes they act to reduce pain as the body release massive doses of endorphins and anandamides in response to them. A few ...   more »

Quite often, you may have noticed, I will summarise a conference in a blog post. I’ve done it for SIME, ETRE, WebMission, Entrepreneur Country, and many more. This afternoon I met my nemesis. Simply put, AWA digital (www.awadigital.com) beat me to the punch by putting the whole thing online ...   more »

After a month or two off, one topic has risen to the top of my agenda sufficiently to be blogged about. I’ve been concerned for years now in how people use software to entertain themselves. Then, more recently, how software can be used to help people realise creative tasks at home that previously required professional tools and teams of people. Since around 1996, I have been personally concerned with how the internet enables communities to socialise and co-operate. During that time, I’ve enjoyed watching ‘serious business’ people look down their noses (sometimes figuratively, but surprisingly often, actually) at computers being used for creativity or entertainment. My views are clear “the only proper use for a computer is entertainment”. I’ve had to stretch that to include “the only proper uses for computer are entertainment and empowerment of everyone”. Still, it has proven hard to convince business people that they owe more to the fact that consumers love entertainment than they ever cared to acknowledge. OK, there have been pockets of prescience in the major software companies: Oracle (in the form of David Christopher for one), BT (with Dan Baillin), Sun (the inestimable Stewart Townsend), Microsoft (Claire O’Halloran then Bindi Karia both carry the new media torch elegantly), and in those places the social media / entertainment revolution has clearly found its voice. Elsewhere, not so much. Which is why I have been delighted to attend a short seminar this morning on Software as a Service sponsored by Spectrum. The speakers were really excellent, insightful and relevant. They all had a core theme (apart from, obviously, trying to sell us their solution...). That theme was: the real pressure on business software is coming from your employees’ and your customers’ experiences at home of consumer entertainment and social media. The speakers were Keynote Address: Dr. Steve Garnett, Chairman EMEA, Salesforce.com  Emerging Venture Perspective: Andrew McGregor, CEO, eCommera  Sector Update: Claudio Alvarez, Principal, GP Bullhound Client Perspective: Bernie Segal, European Head, Software as a Service, Infosys I won’t embarrass anyone with quotes, but will try to pick up on themes.   more »

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I’ve said before that it is all about the movement in machinima. So many machinima tools let us down badly when it comes to motion. Personally, I will forgive any amount of edge effects, texture defects and lighting issues if an engine will judge render motion in a realistic manner. It has been the holy grail of games engines. None, so far really come close to what I have been looking for, but two things recently have given me cause for hope. You might not be surprised about one of them, but the other will probably make you raise your eyebrow.   more »

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Sorry to the few people who were reading this. Had four months in the world of motion picture finance, and found no time what so ever to write. Also, as the company was NASDAQ listed, I felt it unwise to post anything publicly given the company was in a close ...   more »

I've moved on a little from start up software companies, though i retain my love for and passionate belief in the sector. I have made a huge network of wonderful people, many of whom I am ...   more »

resting

Taking a time out - recently started as CFO of a new company and will be back to the blog soon enough   more »

Now, more than ever, you need excellent vision to spot the opportunities in the market places.

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Oxford Venturefest, held at the Kassam Stadium provides the regional focus for start ups and VC investment, as well as providing a forum for VC information exchange, mentoring and learning. Over 1,100 registered attendees, dozens of little presentation booths and some large (but jam packed filled) seminar and lecture theatres made for a busy schedule from 7am to the evening dinner session. By way of context, it appears to me that the local start-up community draws heavily from engineering (motor business has concentrated design and metals engineering in the area), biomedicine (spawned from the University and the local hospitals), energy tech (with Didcot, Harwell, Culham and Aldermaston all nearby). On top of that, we have at last begun to see the rise of local internet based companies. Oxford’s innovation cluster is coming into the C21st. From this event, I’ve concentrated on two sessions that I think were at the heart of what was on offer: one for entrepreneurs wanting to sharpen their skills, and one on investors trying to get to grips with the success factors for current investment.   more »

When I left school in 1982 to up to Oxford, I wrote myself a note and put in inside a book that I was sure not to lose. That note was a list of names of people that I should not forget. So I had a look to see what ...   more »

If you think your investor is one of these, then either you or they are not suited to the relationship. It might even be both of you. You need to work out who it is, and be honest about it, quickly. The good news for you is that there are other investors if you have the time and network to go find them. The good news for them is that there are other investee companies that will better fit their investment needs.

Ecosystems need vultures, but you do not have to volunteer to be dinner for one.

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I had no idea how location awareness could change how I interact with technology until I installed Instamapper on my BlackBerry Curve 8900.

It runs seamlessly in the background, seems to have  a small impact on battery life and really works (see widget on side of this blog).

Now I ...   more »

There is no straight path to success.

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Merlin, Lord Errol really bought a smile to my face by asking us to google "home office bollocks" in his speach on digital identity and personal identity footprints in the digital arena. A clear and plain language summary of the issues involved in the Government operating in areas of digital identity. As an aside, I am open to offers for back issues of Keble College's paper based newspaper, The Brick, c. 1980 to 1987 which I helped publish and archive, as it may just be that Ed Balls, and Lord Adonis have forgotten what they did while at college. They were lucky enough to live there vulnerable teenage lives protected from CCTV and digital personas. How will this generation of up-coming young people now at college fare in 25 years? I suggest we adopt the principle of data prudency and "digital forgetting" as soon as possible. We all say things we regret online, and we all allow secrets to leak (for instance, in the location EXIF data on our photos), and we need to be properly educated as to the likely consequences and protected from the more dangerous predators. Yet the education and tools do not exist, and there is almost no one to help us do it.   more »

Tony Fish runs Mashup, which has quickly grown to be a solid addition to the technology travelling circus in the UK. Being Digital is a flagship for them.

You could trawl the Twitter feeds for #BDE as a hashtag, but it is a jumble... Charles Cohen of Probability Plc gave us a quick “don’t do list” for start ups: Don’t go public as it means you can’t ever tell jokes, make things up or speak ‘off script’ in public again. Being public means losing entrepreneurial control to a large extent, and agreeing to play by the market’s rules. Don’t do a ‘Barney deal’, which has lots of PR song and dance routines but never delivers and is never followed up. The clues are press releases, the word “synergy” and a lack of clear delivery timetables in the information. Don’t do deals to get investment. Deals should be for the business, investment for the investment. Mixing the two is almost always fatal, and you should have known that your investors know nothing about entrepreneurship. Don’t do commercial deals with huge companies when you are small, unless you are 100% certain that you have 200% of the resources needed to deliver to them. Large companies will suck you dry, taking 6 months to sign a deal and then demanding endless services and meetings (which satisfy their internal needs and give nothing to your startup) The right answer is to start small, deal small, deal ‘stupid’ and get the business tested and working before reaching higher. Raise small money first, test and refine and then look for investment. Even established news carriers are shying away from content or editorial policy: they are allowing it all to flow through (facts checked, we hope) and allowing the technology to give prominence to the stories which customers are actually asking to see. Again, the public decide what they want, and are not being told what they should see. (There is a really good business here in having a system that feeds up ‘requests’ from a mass audience for news on specific subjects, and then tailoring that news feed - drawn from hundreds of sources - to each recipient. You can have that idea for free. If you make it, you can buy me a beer or two.) I quite like my new internal model of social media as 200 million ropes dropped into a dark room until you feel someone pulling, then dropping down to join the party. Social media is made of strings that pull, not sticks that push. What the world has not yet got to grips with is the impact of the huge crowd of experts who can genuinely contribute value to reportage and editorial. I personally struggle with the problem that, when I read a story about a subject in which I am an expert, I realise that most journalists are rushed and – at best – partially accurate and partially informed. If that is true on subjects where I know things, surely all the other topics, on which I previously trusted the newspaper to inform me, are equally inaccurate? Would a crowdsourced reportage and editorial help us? Would it be no better (or worse) than Wikipedia? How would we get people to give the right amount of expertise at the time it was needed? Ultimately, crowds are moving in, and technology is helping them. How the traditional print media, broadcasters, and advertisers react to that is up to them. The game is not yet played out, and the solutions are not yet here, and may never stop evolving.   more »

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This is the best bit about exploring as an entrepreneur: finding a new beach after years of lonely prospecting and realising that you can make it available to paying customers

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I've been pitching to a lot of smaller investors, angels and funds over the last couple of years, so I thought it worth boiling down what I have learned about the process of "pitching on the day" to audiences of investors at events like SIME, ETRE, Essential MediaTech, London Business Angels, South West Business Angels, Cambridge Angels, and through Silicon Valley. I don't claim it is all 100% original (some of the core ideas were liberated from a course run by Chris Padfield at London Business Angels), but it has been tested to destruction by me personally and updated and simplified for the benefit of time stressed business owners and managers. Enjoy - and feel free to comment, adapt and amend with your own war stories of pitches that worked or were #epicfails. :-) A downloadable PDF is here ...   more »

fresh rain, new start

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This is the "20ft Salmon" outside Bucks of Woodside in Silicon Valley. A cafe which the UK entrepreneur and VC community desperately needs to emulate.

Fishing for ideas.

Fish where the fish are.

etc ....

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In step one, here, I spoke about the benefits of exposing ideas to potential investors as a way of gaining information and confidence at an early stage. This is not the same as approaching potential investors and asking for investment. But are quite different processes and should have quite different outputs, and for that reason alone should be kept quite separate. You may approach some of the same people, or you may approach completely different people, but it is absolutely certain that the time you go out asking for money you will need to be far better equipped, are better prepared, and armed with a very focused message. I've cobbled together another little table to help myself in this, and you may find it useful.   more »

One of the big divide is that you find in the management teams of start-up companies is between those who have ideas, those who assess ideas, and those who implement ideas. We could bore each other now for weeks talking about psychological profiles, Belbin tests, and the like. I don’t propose to do that here, as I am one of the people who spends more of their time having ideas, and finds it very tough to assess those ideas and put them into practice. Indeed, the times at which I’ve had the most success, have been those times where I have worked with people who are far better than I am at the other two stages. So, I have worked out a matrix of decisions that helps me to cull out good and bad ideas, making bad ideas better and good ideas commercial as it goes along. I've given an example in the piece that follows:   more »

For those of you following me on Twitter @davidjwbailey the fact I was just in California will come as no surprise. I thought it worth summarising what I learned, in general terms. I had the chance to speak to half a dozen seriously connected and insightful people in the Sililcon Valley community, and it all came down to 'C' Words:   more »