Laurence John UK Seed Technology VC » Cambridge

Changes to VC #1

Laurence — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:12:14 +0000

Nice post on why VC must change to support a new type of company… by True Ventures, Oleg – thanks for the tip

“….the emergence of extreme capital efficiency from new web infrastructures and evolving software architectures has also been critical to this shift. The bottom line is that the venture industry is out of alignment with the needs of early stage entrepreneurs, and it is early stage entrepreneurs who are vital to pulling the US (and rest of world) out of the current economic situation.”

What would be exciting is to see a bubbling up of more such “extreme capital efficiency from new web ventures”

Our Amadeus Seed Fund has 3 or 4 such ventures all currently in stealth mode, but we’d love to see & do more… they just scale so well.

Cambridge and the new economy. #1

Laurence — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:53:20 +0000

Cambridge and the new economy. #1
Umair Haque: writes….. “The centuries-old institutions of orthodox capitalism cannot support the transition to a hyperconnected global economy. They are increasingly unable to allocate capital efficiently, much less grow it productively. And so what we are seeing nothing less than the wholesale deconstruction of the global financial and economic system.

Who’s going to reconstruct it? We are. By bringing new DNA to a table packed with crony capitalists, CEOs more concerned about their cash-outs than the companies they captain, and agitpropagandists thinly disguised as so-called arbitrageurs.”

I have a question for Cambridge (London, Oxford & Edinburgh etc. will come later): Do we have any companies here who aspire to be these new hyper-connected companies, creating the so called new economy. Which are the best examples we have? Do we have the innovative software umph and talent to build them and if not to at least use the new tools?

Is hard IP as we are so appropriately proud in this town, enough – or is there a risk of becoming irrelevant or will the new economy help us scale our companies in a way we have never before been able to.

The call to arms above is the “We are” hands up if you are part of the “We”!

Cambridge needs some fizz

Laurence — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:27:30 +0000

Cambridge needs some fizz, and i like my bubbles techie!

Last night I was speaking with Sitar of Doughty Hansen (after a truly excellent Cambridge University Entrepreneurs and CUTEC event) about drinktank and how it was succeeding where other networking venues failed. Well it’s kinda the same in Cambridge since Library House gave up their networking events some years ago now… so it’s time for some effort. We have BLN, CXO, CHASE, CUTEC, CUE, CfEL etc etc which all do great things. However, we need more OR we need different.

Just take a trip to NYC and visit their tech Meetup events and see the buzz they create and you’ll get my drift. It’s all about doing and Demos..

Way back, there was a cambridge computer club from which an enormous variety of innovation and start-up activity flowed.. Cambridge needs some of this back and I’d like to be part of it. Over the course of the coming weeks lets bring some of the energy already present together and in time create a whole lot more.