The Apprentice is great entertainment and a little like reading a Red Top newspaper, The Sun, The Mirror – a life ruined in every story. The new series started this week and sure enough the nice Nicholas Brown with lots of academic qualifications was hounded out with “You have got an F for Fired!”. It is horrible how we all watch Continue Reading »
Michael Birch wins at Bebo with the $850million cash acquisition by AOL. Michael is a cool guy who hides his commercial drive behind his hippy looks but kept a close eye on how people arrived at Bebo and used the site. It is his fourth home run with a social network site. Bebo took the VC rocket booster of Balderton Capital, the people who were Benchmark UK. Around one year after Bebo started, Balderton invested $15million for 15.7% of the equity giving it a 9x return of $140million.
It looks easy but only the brave would have valued a near start-up at a pre-money valuation of $80million. Bebo must have had some fantastic Continue Reading »
Want to sell, take a look at Bid.tv and watch and listen to Peter Simon. I watched in awe as he shifted some wonderful memorabilia for Liverpool Football Club. He talked with love of the best team in the world and I almost put in a bid. You only realise how good he is by watching some of the other presenters. Get your free lesson most evenings between 19:00 and 22:00. Like so many people who make things look easy, Continue Reading »
The 2008 Budget announces that Anne Glover of Amadeus Capital Partners will “look into… the practicality of setting a goal for small and medium enterprises to win 30pc of all public sector business in the next five years”.
This is due to the crusading work by David Connell who has been the champion of importing the USA SBIR programme from the USA. Continue Reading »
My Cornish cousin is taking a family heirloom to be saved for the nation. It is a wonderful oil painting of what was then a new copper works in Cornwall, memories of a time when Cornwall was a famous cluster for tin and copper. Much better to mine a seam of rich ideas from a university than Continue Reading »
At the CUE training event, serial entrepreneur and angel, Jack Lang had us all reciting his mantra for the successful technology start-up and it is worth repeating it: “Global sustainable under-served market need”. Each word has a purpose. Global is USA, China and India; sustainable Continue Reading »
Cambridge Cluster company, OptySynx says that raising the angel round has been tough Continue Reading »
Who says there is no competition?
Netscapes closes down and joins the ranks of Wordstar, dBaseII and so many more. Happy days!
Eveyone in the Cambridge Cluster is always looking for a tiny part of a global market but marketing needs hard work. Marketing Minefield is a good resource and even mentions the business plan resource, Equity Fingerprint; much appreciated.