The Next Women – Strategise 2010

The following is a guest writer post by Misae Richwoods for thenextwomen.com, the internet site for female internet heros.

Sun Microsystems headquarters sits in London’s city, a stone’s throw from the river Thames and eyesight of London Bridge. Although Sun were a pioneer in Workstation computers and brought to the world numerous gems like the Java and OpenOffice, Sun are also the owners of a system that has powered the web revolution – MySQL. Not only does MySQL run Google, the world’s biggest search engine, it also powers Yahoo!, its rival. YouTube, BBC News and Facebook are also users. It’s free, open source and has a reputation for being the fastest and most stable database you can use without paying the huge premiums that Oracle’s systems cost. In the words of Facebook COO, Owen Van Natta, “MySQL has been a revolution for young entrepreneurs”.

Small surprise then that Oracle bought up Sun Microsystems for the tidy sum of $7billion. The tech community waits with baited breath to learn the future of MySQL while the historians write another chapter. The MySQL saga to date has expanded the database market to a far wider customer base than ever, creating huge value. Web 2.0 as we know it quite simply would not exist without MySQL.

What’s all this got to do with The Next Women? Not only did Sun Microsystems generously host their 2010 Strategise event, they underlined with their own story the power of “blue ocean planning” – a focus technique taught to delegates. Mapping out industries to reveal contrarian opportunities shows where innovation can be applied to make a new business model.

In the world of databases, Oracle’s high end systems had been dominant for many years. Microsoft also have a fairly expensive system, MSSQL. MySQL went the opposite direction, focussing on low cost of ownership whilst still providing a quality product. In doing so they created massive value in customer eyes and opened up a new “blue ocean” of opportunity – the affordable web database. Everyone running a WordPress blog owes it’s low cost to MySQL’s innovation, along with countless web forums, e-commerce sites, chat rooms, CRM systems and email servers. In my own businesses we use over 20 MySQL instances, which have generated us hundreds of thousands of pounds. Without MySQL’s low cost entry point, it may never have been possible to get started.

Business is littered with examples of disruptive models that rewrote their industry by opening up a blue ocean, from Ryan Air rocking British Airways to The Body Shop shaking up PZ Cussons and Unilever. In an involving hands on strategy workshop delivered by Natalie Turner (@natalieturner1), gave an enlightening method of aligning our company’s growth strategy with innovation to exploit industry openings. Sure, we could all work harder and be better but that’s certainly not the reason I or the other female entrepreneurs present started our own companies. If working harder and being better at the same thing is what you excel at, being a highly skilled professional may be the most rewarding way for you to use your time. Those who succeed as an entrepreneur are those bringing pastures new to the world. The hard work for us is training the brain to spot the opportunity rather than being a chip off the old block!

On the day when Twitter lit up with talk of Apple’s iPad I was delighted find I was sitting next to someone who’d been a hero of mine for many years. A veritable Don King of fresh ideas, this woman brought waves of trend setters from Karen Kingston’s clutter clearing spirituality, through Patrick Holford’s eat your way to better emotions and into Seth Godin’s recent meatball sundae. Yes, it was none other than literary inspirer Judy Piatkus (@judypiatkus). Having sold off Piatkus books in 2007 (in advance of the trend toward ebooks eating into valuations), Judy is now using her proven record of trend spotting to help SMEs both as a consultant and workshop facilitator. Her undemanding manner and ample charm reveal the detached consideration she has towards trends – Judy’s take was that it’s been known for years that sooner or later a hardware manufacturer will get the ebook reader format right this and presents a massively dilutive force for publishers who’ll now need to support more formats than ever whilst contending with the issue of digital rights. Publishing now joins music, video and web design in the list of industries ravaged by technological innovation.

Funding is a topic near to the heart of many an idea. Most entrepreneurs think of an idea then look at how they can pay for it to be carried out and as the evening sessions kicked off Reshma Sohoni (@rsohoni) from Seedcamp gave the scoop on funding. I tweeted out a succession of points from this and judging by the reaction I got, it’s dear to many hearts so I’ll share a few again:

1. There are many different types of funding – grants, angels, VCs and loans – and all have different pros and cons

2. Remember whichever you take is going to be a long term relationship (think marriage!)

3. Bootstrap as long as you can. Every round of funding you take from investors will take away profits for both you and them with you standing to loose more
   
   
4. Companies are judged by the amount they are expected to achieve on exit. A big opportunity will be £500m+, medium from there down to £150m and a small opportunity anything under £150million
   
   
5. You may well need advisors to help you along the way. If you need to give an equity stake then think <2%

Next up, Maya Moufarek, Regional Marketing Manager EMEA, Google (@msmaya) who gave a tour de force of the internet using Google Trends. Did you know:

• There are 1.6 billion people accessing the internet via a PC?
  
  
• 1.6 billion people constitutes less than a quarter of the world’s population?
  
  
• That over 4 billion people have a mobile phone?

Clearly there’s a lot of room for growth left yet on the internet! Regarding the two points that seem to have stuck in Google throat lately, namely the rise of Social Media and Real Time Search, Maya said:

• 3 years ago, Social Media didn’t exist as a genre. Now it accounts for over 75% of what people do online
  
  
• “As far as I know” your Tweets and your website are treated separately.

Those of you who know I run London’s #140conf meetup, a conference founded by one of Twitter’s seed investors Jeff Pulver that looks at real time media, will have noted some note swapping going on afterwards between Maya and myself! Those of you interested in SEO should know that Maya works for Google Labs rather than directly on the search algorithm. There is a growing belief that frequent tweets can be useful in creating visibility and possibly influencing a site’s PageRank. Yet both Maya and my decade of experience in SEO are thinking that right now, Google is not using Tweeted links to boost websites up the rankings. However I’m certain that there are factors already being considered as to how tweets are ranked. Google’s deal with Twitter is non exclusive and the race is on between Google and Bing to see who can use this data in the most innovative way. If search, social or online marketing is something you need to work on, you can follow my tweets, hire me for a consultation or ask to come to one of my talks on the subject.

Finally there was a closing panel with Wendy Tan-White, Founder and CEO of Moonfruit, Natalie Turner, Founder and CEO of Entheo, Tom Harrow, Co-Founder of FindaBabysitter, Anna Sofat, Founder and CEO Addidi chaired by Simone Brummelhuis, founder of Thenextwomen.com. I’ll leave you with a few pearls of wisdom from their session:

• Hiring staff is difficult for every startup. Everyone one the panel was married to their business partner!
  
  
• The more professional skills you hold in house the easier it is for you in many levels. The panel varied with some being from IT, others from finance others from innovation and management backgrounds. All where united in that if they’d needed to buy in those skills it would’ve been harder to grow and harder to get funding
  
  
• Whilst PR has a place, network building and referrals are increasingly important, especially post Social Media.
  
  
• Social Media itself is transient – turning a viral message into a lasting community is still challenging as Moonfruit’s experience with it’s “Win a Macbook Twitter” campaign showed
  
  
• Social Media presents opportunities for well targeted messages – Natalie quoted LinkedIn mail as receiving over 30% response rate, something email hasn’t achieved for years.
  
  
• Make budgets alive is a secret to hitting targets, says Wendy Tan-White. If you know it’s going to be difficult to deliver a level of growth it’s an opportunity to engage your creativity!
  
  

A big thanks to everyone who made it such a successful day.

Tech Crunch Xmas Crunch

This article was a guest writer post by Misae Richwoods for thenextwomen.com. You can see part 1 and part 2 on their site. Below is the original copy:

Tech Crunch conferences always promise to be star studded gala affairs with the A-list of IT innovators coming together to share ideas across a diverse range of industries. This year’s Xmas Crunch was held at a suitably decadent location – Gilgamesh in Camden. Call me Miss Marple of the Fashion world if you will, I had sneaking suspicion I’d walked onto the set of Vogue advert. A chat with some of the staff confirmed my thoughts – Gilgamesh is home to many fashion shoots outside of the seasonal boom.

High fashion in tech today is the Real Time web. It’s been as revolutionary for many industries as the invention of nylon was for fashion. Yet with many online business models looking as laddered as long weekend's lingerie, being involved and informed on the changes reshaping the economy have never been more important. As Daniel Tenner of Woobius eloquently articulated of the threat 'we need to pay attention because who knows if the Google Wave will turn into a tsunami that sweeps away many businesses?'

Nick Halstead of tweetmeme.com got his visionary tweezers out and started to pluck out those emerging hairs that are starting to make the internet as we know it a mess. Google's famous Page Rank system enables it to weigh the internet into a hierarchy. However Page Rank has become increasingly well understood and exploited by others which now erodes its ability to deliver the best results. Think Demand Media, AOL and Mahalo, all of whose strategies degrade Page Rank’s strength.

We're also now seeing publishers headed by Rupert Murdoch make moves against Google's use of their content. Whilst 25% of their traffic comes direct from Google, will it be internet suicide to close off Google's free use of publisher’s content? Technical means are already freely available to all publishers who want to limit indexing by search engines; the current legal posturing by Murdoch indicates it's not so much keeping Google out he's set his eyes on, it's much more about setting precedent as to how money flows through the net ecosystem.

Both these points show that Google's dominance of the internet as we know it, still has many challenges to contend with and that “the internet high street” of established search results may no longer be the source of all things profitable. Yet what Google had done well with the internet is what the real time web is still struggling with. How do we determine who is a reliable and trustworthy authority amongst the noise of our Twitter stream? I’m sure I speak for everyone with over 200 friends when I say I second Nick's opinion that using Twitter to stay on top of what's going on is at best a messy solution.

The future of publishing will therefore mean that curation will be a key development. Taking the latest information out of the background noise and presenting it will be built with the technologies emerging in semantics, location and authority. I don't think I'm being overstated when I say that the Twitter stream we have today is still very much a diamond in the rough. As the real time ecosystem develops better ways to polish it, we'll see it shine and reflect many facets. We'll also be unlocking its true value.

When will our little baby, the real time internet, start to grow up? Is it still busily throwing it toys about and having upset tummies or is it starting to crawl to its mummy?

Outside of publishing, other industries have been savaged by digital demands and few as much as the entertainment industry. David Maher of The Filter started to point out that whilst the music and movie industry's revenue streams seem to have eloped for a rather sordid affair with the internet, bosses are now getting far more clued up on technology and what can be done with it. David's thoughts are that real time internet adds massive value to live broadcast and he expects 2010 and 2011 to be when we start to see the West Coast giants launching some apps and engaging with the audience much more intimately. This notion of live value add to entertainment was also supported later by Ian Hogarth of Songkick and Tim Morgan of Mint Digital.

Tim Bradshaw, digital correspondent for The Financial Times, has a good finger on the pulse of what’s moving the financial markets. His thoughts can roughly be summed up as “No-one has floored a company’s share price by tweeting something like Steve Jobs has had a heart attack – yet. I can’t see that being that far off”. Sounds like baby is making noise!

The convergence of real time together with mobile communications is creating a wealth of innovation. Affect Labs who pitched at The Next Women’s Darwinian Business event in October were present and represent one of a growing number of start ups adding colour and depth to the eco-system. Karen Barber was as well put together as Gok Wan show while Mark Rock spoke of how Audioboo fitted in. Sophie Cox of WorldEka, Hermione Way of Techfluff.tv, Emily Marchant of The Funding Partnership and Poppy Dinsey of Globrix all brought the glamour stakes a little higher with some beautiful outfits, yet the award for Queen of Fashion for the night had to be graced upon Helen Brown who brought out a stunning little number that quite simple was nothing other than CatwalkGenius.com!

Helen’s pitch showcased her crowd funding innovation to help budding designers and style hungry fashionistas come together and create new fashion. In a nutshell, fashionistas back up and coming designers by buying shares in the production of new designs. When enough shares are sold to make production viable, the designer creates the garment and the backer gets a percentage of all sales relative to the number of shares in it they own. With the investment starting at just £11, it’s inclusive enough to cater for all whether you’re Miss Prada Purse or New Look. You pay through PayPal and should the designer fail to attract sufficient funding to make that garment a reality then your money gets returned or you can invest it into another project. I’ll certainly be looking forward to seeing CatwalkGenius.com’s events for new designers when I’m at London Fashion Week next year. By spreading the cost of production to all interested parties, CatwalkGenius solves the funding issue that holds so many talented young designers from bringing us gorgeous and unique new clothes. Couple that with its retail platform and the promise of what might be a bright future lingers on like brush of cashmere against the skin.

Thanks go to Mike Butcher and the team at Tech Crunch – who of course would be pulling their hair out if it wasn’t for those wonderful women, Rassami Hokljungberg and Petra Johansson, who kept the show running. Thanks also to Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu, of Bootlaw.com, for laying on such quality hospitality for everyone and Sun Start Up Essentials, UKTI and the Press Association for helping make the event happen together with everyone who came along and made the event so vibrant. Happy Xmas all!