Oli Barrett reports on his latest mission to acquaint UK business talent with the tech giants of Silicon Valley.
I hadn’t come across the phrase ‘doing a Ballmer’ before. The expression, used to denote a wild rant in the style of the Microsoft chief executive, was whispered to me just before entrepreneur Simon Campbell began his pitch to a roomful of venture capitalists.
Before I had the chance to take my seat, the ViaPost founder was screaming and shouting. “Yesss! Come on! Woohoo! Say it with me! I-Love-This-Company.”
I was in Silicon Valley – epicentre of technological innovation, birth place of giants – with 20 of the leading British and Irish web companies on WebMission 2009. Campbell’s opening cry, although tongue in cheek, reflects the extent to which some of us more cynical Brits can find ourselves being wooed by the charms of America’s West Coast. And to coin a joke written before I was born, some of the behaviour on display was very wooed indeed.
It was over coffee in London with James Lawn, of analytics firm Polecat, that I first had the idea for WebMission. Why not take the cream of our online innovators to the US for a week? Perhaps we were tired of discovering that people who harped on about “the way they do things over there” had never actually been over there.
Perhaps I knew that even I, who networks far more than can be healthy, know that it can be really tough, not to mention lonely, when travelling on business alone. There is a buzz in numbers, which tends to attract opportunity. And when asked if they would like to meet some of our best and brightest, nine out of the 10 US venture capitalists we approached said: “Yes.”
The ultimate sounding board
Our adventure began in the Clubhouse Lounge of Virgin Atlantic, where our hosts fielded their head of innovation and director of technology to say good morning. Standing alongside David Cruickshank, from online accountancy software specialist BusinessIT Online, and Charlie Osmond of Fresh Networks, it struck me that you can have a different kind of conversation on a trip than you could ever enjoy at home.
For Andrew Yates, chief executive of Artesian Solutions, the opportunity to bond with fellow entrepreneurs was one of the highlights. He describes WebMission as “the ultimate sounding board, where the great insights are only eclipsed by the relationships and connections made in a whirlwind week”, adding that “they’re already bearing fruit”.
Sunday saw us visiting one of the most magnificent penthouses I’ve ever seen. There I was sipping a Bloody Mary with Jim Buckmaster, chief executive of Craigslist, towering over me, while Mark Prisk, shadow enterprise minister, was discussing some of the latest deals with someone from advisory firm GP Bullhound. PR guru Susan Best was our host, having invited close to 200 people to her place for brunch.
Many of our WebMission wanderers wondered whether, even before the week had begun, this welcome would prove unbeatable. They obviously hadn’t heard about the house that Michael Birch, founder of Bebo, had just bought, nicknamed Birch Castle, where we were all invited on the following Wednesday night.
At law firm Orrick, the board table could have been fashioned from a piece of the Ark. Around it we sat, and discovered first hand the nuts and bolts of doing business in the US. “Write shorter emails,” shouted Julia French of Covered Communications.
“Hire a local,” said UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) dealmaker Alex van Someren. “People like to deal with people as similar to themselves as possible.”
There was no time to ask if this maxim extended to people on massive weight loss programmes – the huge lunch had just arrived.
Later that day, we arrived at the Plug and Play Tech Center, where we began to glimpse for the first time what really makes Silicon Valley tick. It houses over 200 technology firms, complete with stunning canteen, meeting rooms and resident entrepreneurs, each with at least a couple of major successes under their belt.
The connectivity was embodied by charismatic founder Saeed Amidi, who told us of introducing one startup to his ‘golfing buddy’, who promptly invested $5m. As Amidi flicked through our brochure of visiting companies, he nodded approvingly, leaving the room twice to summon colleagues to meet us.
Speaking with me afterwards, he made it clear that he would consider investing personally in several of our number. These Brits, it seemed as word spread, are more than just a pretty accent.
Making the right connections
If you want to get a cheap laugh on the technology scene in Britain, you can use the phrase ‘death by PowerPoint’, mention The Daily Mail, or be rude about the support government gives to business. If UKTI proved that they do one thing very well, it is putting good people in touch with each other.
Whether over drinks at the Consul General’s residence or by email before, during and after the trip, the UKTI team worked hard to increase the success of our visit. Without their support, alongside organisations like the Technology Strategy Board and G2I, schemes like WebMission would not take place. I was impressed.
Lest you fear that caps were being placed too firmly in hand as our intrepid travellers worshipped at the feet of the dotcom gods, let me reassure you. There was little danger of leading lights being hidden under bushels. Our hosts were left in no doubt that Britain and Ireland are producing some of the hottest companies in the world today.
“It was good to discuss with Valley VCs why the UK has companies that still lead in several areas of technology and service innovation,” says Paul Welham, chief executive of text-to-speech firm Cereproc.
