1. They are charged – The Buzz is huge
2. They showcase success stories by amazing people
3. Deals get done

So after 5 years of these events, with the most recent attracting 400 people, keynotes from BBC Dragons and successful entrepreneurs – what makes Entrepreneur Country different?

1. They are charged – The Buzz is huge

At the last event in the autumn of 2011 there were just about 400 delegates during the day and there was such a tremendous buzz in the corridors and main hall. It was always so hard to tear people away from their conversations during the break out sessions or breaks to get them back into the keynotes.

A surefire way of high engagement was seeing how so many people were quoting the speakers all day – taking the examples in the presentations and making them relevant to their own businesses and ideas.

Entrepreneur Country last autumn was trending across Twitter across London and had a huge series of parallel conversations driven by the content and speakers as it was live.

I think the best part of the day happened when I had a conversation with an entrepreneur who said “I cannot tell you how exciting it was to hear how these success stories actually relate so closely to me and my business. Hearing Will King (King of Shaves) talk about his approach was absolutely enlightening and I feel completely reinvigorated!”

I think the next event on Feb 21 is going to be the same – especially when you have the line up that is planned:Russ Shaw (ex Telefonica and Skype), Martha Lane Fox (LastMinute.com, Race Online, Lucky Voice), Paul Lindley (Ella’s Kitchen), Marcelle Spencer OBE (LocalGiving.com), Ashley Faull (BidUp TV, Discovery Channel), Linda Cheung (Cube Social), Caroline Rowland (New Moon) and Peter Cunningham (Input)

2. They showcase success stories by amazing people

The keynotes are people we know about, read about and look up to in the start-up world. Successful business builders and agents of social change who open up and share their stories in a way I don’t see happening elsewhere.

When Martyn Dawes speaking of his experience in building Coffee Nation – his trials and tribulations of a massively changing market, being a tiny company and facing the challenges of growth. These were so tangible and you could feel the audience drawn into the story and how he overcame challenges only to move onto overcoming the next, and the next.

At another previous event we had Edward Wray talking about Betfair and the struggles and near death experiences they had in the early days of raising capital. This was before their subsequent IPO which was a superb moment for the business – a true digital enabler in the gaming space led by a visionary team.

3. Deals get done

This is the part I love! Last year we heard about partnership deals, distribution deals and business changing deals that came out of the event. Investors love the event because they get to see the entrepreneurs in a way that is more real than a one hour pitch, they get to know the entrepreneurs through a more ‘real’ conversation which is less pitch and more proposition.

I was advising a company on investment and business development a couple of years ago. We were trying hard to get into Nokia and to show them what this company was doing and how they could be a transformation opportunity to consumer engagement for Nokia. Despite great access to the Nokia management team, getting onto their priority list was tricky. It was however at an Entrepreneur Country event that Nokia met our client and portfolio company and they managed to refocus priorities after that meeting, signed a deal and started working together – all of which was brilliant to helping the capital raise process where we subsequently closed two private investors off the back of the deal.

So, if you have not been or seen anything about the events Entrepreneur Country run, I think you should… Their next event is Feb 21 in London and all the information is here: Entrepreneur Country Forum: Turbo Charge your Business

I can think of at least a dozen such conversations just from the last quarter of 2011. I can also point to an equal number of examples where early stage companies had made the decision to outsource only then later had to reverse the decision and to in-house their technology.

So in my experience, yes… you do need a technologist as a key part of your founding team – assuming of course you are in the digital/online/technology world. There are, of course, many advantages in having an outsourced development team (either on or off-shore) but the actual ownership and delivery of the product needs to be owned in-house. I am not alone… I had a chuckle when I read Charlie Crystle’s blog (a Founder/CEO/Hacker) where he posted: “Two posts ago I lamented the news that a local startup might outsource their core dev.” So to the why…

1. It’s quicker, better and smarter
Having someone in the core founding team who can read and interpret code is key to swift delivery. A start-up needs to iterate quickly and take on the feedback from beta testers. Without having someone in the team who can really see ‘the matrix’ and understand how to make the quick changes slows the process down.

Take, as an example, a web company that had outsourced its tech development with no in-house technologist. Rather they built a product specification and agreed fees in equity and cash with a development team. The concept was a relatively simple mobile application service but one which when launched did not quite deliver. The solution, it was found, was that some of the nuances and uniqueness of the proposition fundamentals was not captured in the specification and the result was a massive and costly delay. The development team had become busy with other projects and had ‘delivered to the spec’. The start-up then found a technologist who understood and could fix the problem quite quickly and take the development further by managing the process from the inside.

2. It’s your baby, your IP and your product
A company that I know and whose proposition I really like had done a lot to progress the build of their technology platform to provide a 360 service to a growing market opportunity. As the development was fully outsourced, a parallel track of development was going on. On one side there was the commercial development which was rapidly shaping as the team were talking to potential clients and users. They were gaining insight and feedback – all good stuff which should have had the chance to be incorporated. Simultaneously the (outsourced) tech team were building to the original spec, unaware of the tweaks, changes and enhancements which should have been part of the build.

The crunch came when discussions were being had on the IP and new developments. To the surprise of the entrepreneur/founder, the technology company considered the IP they had developed to be theirs… Needless to say, this became an unworkable. After many months development the founders and the development team agreed to part ways and the technology build was restarted, this time in-house.

If you do outsource your development (even with your own technologist at the helm) make sure you know what IP is yours and what is someone else’s. Fixing this retrospectively is costly, painful and can be near-impossible. While technology is not always (easily or cheaply) patentable, owning the IP is still very important. Getting to market with someone else’s tech is like marketing someone else’s product.

3. Investors need a technologist in the cockpit
I have found that 9 times out of 10, if the technology person is not in the meeting, the investor wants to meet him/her. A lot of time is spent trying to understand the technology. “Who owns the process? Who is responsible for making it happen? What if it goes wrong?” When the answers are not “My CTO” but “the team in Bulgaria/India/Estonia etc” then the investor usually asks something like “so what are you asking me to invest in?”

Investors in technology businesses want to invest in the idea, the opportunity and the certainty that they have invested in a team that can deliver and be successful. They want to be able to look into the eyes of the tech and know that their investment is being looked after and to see that the founder and technologist are partners in delivering the vision.

Clearly there is a difference between early stage and later stage start-ups but the fundamentals are the same. Assuming that the company will grow to be successful, a CTO will eventually be needed at some point. The thing here is that techies and developers can be a little like artists. So often they all write their own code in their own way. Without the achitecht at the helm from the start there is all too often a rewrite when a CTO does get involved.

Whether the tech development happens in-house or not, the role of the chief technologist should be one of a mix between translator and visionary. The role of visionary is to partner with the ‘ideas person’ to take the idea concept from idea to execution. By understanding the vision, the solution and the opportunity it is the technologist who can then translate this into the 1′s and 0′s which are the code. As a translator to the development team it is the CTO who bridges the wild imagination and deliverable, executable development for a real product.

Someone needs to be able to own and live and die by the technology. There needs to be someone who can read the code, interpret the code and make the right decisions to deliver the product. When this person is not a key part of the founding team, the vision ownership is also that extra step removed from the core. When outsourced, then even further away.

Whether your CTO is full-time or not is not what I am trying to advocate but essentially someone who is your partner in the vision. someone who is able to parallel the commercial demands and developments with the understanding of the technological delivery.

If you are convinced, here are 4 other resources you may find relevant:

• Dr. Tony Karrer’s Blog – The Social CTO on Hiring a CTO for your start-up
• Naomi Kokubo’s post: What’s the best way to find a CTO for my startup?
• Eric Ries’s Blog – Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?
• Answers On Startups.com post: Does a start-up CTO have to be a coder?

Sinclair, Betamax, Iomega Zip, Minidisc and the list goes on…

More comments in the blog to come post the event

I am a recent convert to Apple and having gone Mac, don’t intend to ‘go back’. A son of an architect and interior designer, I could whole heartedly relate to Steve designing a font for Apple as a key USP without selling it at such. I can understand why he focused so much on the combined experience of the aesthetic of the physical and the function of the software. He understood how ‘mere mortals’ want quality to look and feel.

Building the brand on core, unchanged principles and staying very loyal to his mission, Steve built not only Apple but an army of fans who watch every Apple Vodcast, buy every product and stick the Apple logo to their cars, wallets and bikes.

Crazy to the unconverted, these fans are just as much of the Apple success story as Steve. Without his fans, Steve would have been an odd eccentric with a misunderstood mission. Yet in his unconventional approach he realised his allies were his customers and he built his church.

Apple is not about technology. It is a technology company about enabling people to do things with technology. This is a fundamental difference and it is what sets Apple apart from its competitors. Steve Jobs understood consumer psychology and went on a mission to bring that understanding to a world of increasingly cool technology until finally his technology was the coolest around.

What happens now to Apple is only for time to tell, I question it’s ability to build the fan base but really hope they can maintain it. The release yesterday of the iPhone 4S and not the 5 just means now that the iPhone 5 will have to be flawless, Steve is not there to cover for them.

As Steve leaves behind his own family, Apple family and fans, I hope those who were close to him had their chances to say good bye and thank you. This is my way of thanking on of the men who has been a key inspiration to my own core belief… I believe that the most influential, interesting and effective people are those who take a different view on the world, do things differently. They are pushed by an inner need to put their own stamp on the world and in so doing create a strong pull for people to follow them. This applies to entrepreneurs who leave the ‘nine to five’ life to live in the sometimes lonely space of entrepreneurship, making their vision a reality. The people who look at their personal journey through spiritual eyes and bridge the ethereal and business worlds. The people who challenge the norms of personal identity through their own journey and inspire others to do the same… These are the people that inspire, challenge and excite the world around them. These people are my inspiration and role models.

In my work as a coach and support for entrepreneurs and business leaders, I strive to bring out a little of Steve Jobs. To shape their confidence around their beliefs, abilities and credibility so that they can attract and grow their own fan base.

CTV News has released a short time line of Steve’s milestones here and if you’ve not seen his very inspiring and moving 2005 Stanford University Commencement speech I’d highly recommend watching here and bookmarking it.

One of the most difficult things for start-ups is building, testing, sharpening and reinforcing their proposition. All too often the entrepreneurs get the concept, design the software and launch it without spending the time on the “Marketing”. This is most often because people believe marketing is for the reserves of the big corporates or the focus of the washy people who could not do the business or science degree at university. This could not be further from the truth however. Marketing, positioning and proposition is fundamental to being able to get a going concern to really go! Why is this?

Developing the proposition is about defining the success criteria, understanding what you are selling and shaping the pitch to the right audience. It is about taking a step back and thinking about what it is you would want someone to tell you about your own product. Come to think of it, how many brands, services or products do you think you could probably define better than their own adverts do? Probably quite a few. This is the focus of proposition shaping.

There are typically 5 things that start-ups get wrong when they start to go to market (for investors and/or commercial development) which mean that people scratch their heads before they reach for their wallet, we need to rectify those 5 problems and sharpen the proposition and align it to our buyers.

The 5 typical problems I keep seeing in misaligned propositions are:

1) Thinking big and forgetting the baby steps that get you there

• the real market opportunity is won one sale at a time are you constantly refining your sale or slapping it out there?
• go-to-market is about aligning your achievable market to your vision, are you building credibility?

2) Spread too broad and lack focus

• fix-all solutions are hard to buy or too good to be true, is your proposition tight?
• tight propositions mean new services can develop in parallel, are you giving too much away in solving too much?

3) Forget that your audience don’t know your product

• even high tech can be simplified beyond technology into enablement, can your mother understand the proposition?
• don’t assume your market knows the problem like you do, are you selling from a common starting point?

4) Defining the proposition as a nice to have not a solution

• too much emphasis is put on the extra benefits, are you selling lots of benefits or a solution to a specific problem?
• people feel the need to over validate with external information, are you forgetting the original “spark” that led to the solution and how you solve the problem?

5) Don’t align the message to the solution

• proposition pitches try to be catch all and complex people buy simple, are you selling a solution or a service?
• people are looking to solve a problem, does your product proposition enable champions and evangelists?

When one understands these 5 concepts you can work to counter them in a tight and refined proposition. This means you can task your sales team, enable your marketeers and impress your investors. A tight proposition is one that is about what you can do for your customers, how you can help them solve a problem they have and how they can rave about your amazingness.

I am running workshops with entrepreneurs to test their propositions and help sharpen them with a focused strategy. Over a 3 hour session we:

1) benchmark for common mistakes
2) rebuild the proposition to be solution-centric
3) define the simplified messaging for enablement and championing

Do you want to run through your proposition or have a benchmarking session? Do get in touch.

For the sports-focused society that we are, I am surprised that there are not more high-paced businesses that make use of business coaches and mentors. I have come across very few people who admit to seeing the benefit of leveraging an outsider as a confidante, advisor and coach but rather the opposite “We are doing okay, why would we need one?”. Is okay enough or do we want to be brilliant?

I get the very real sense that in British business culture a business coach or advisor is a sign of weakness or failure and yet we would not expect any budding sports person to pursue a sporting career without a coach – how are they different? Sports requires agility, fitness, clear mind, focus, determination, vision and passion. Business requires the same, doesn’t it?

When I was competing in martial arts I had three coaches, one for my mental preparation, one for perfecting the practice of forms (Kata) and the third to focus on my sparring. I really benefited from their ability to help me think about the problems and where to find the opportunity in my opponent’s flaws. I could lean on them when I needed to and I felt supported by their stability and their perspective. While I was psyching up for the match or competition, they stayed calm and kept my focus. They knew my strengths and weaknesses and could help me train on improving between matches.

In business there are no matches, the battle is by day, minute and second. There is always a competitor looking for the same client, wanting to provide a better or cheaper product. The requirement to stay on top of ones game is relentless. There is more information sharing and data available and we are making decisions at breakneck speed. Business is now 24/7 and any successful or aspiring business person is always connected. Just like when I was warming up for the next sparring match.

In this environment, the need for perspective is great and yet the environment is not conducive… this is why businesses need coaches.

Today I ran a proposition and position workshop with a client over a three-hour session. The benefit of working with an advisor is that my client could take the step back and look at their business from where I am standing… on the outside. They had tried to do the work internally but they had not prioritised it, didn’t have the external perspective and had taken a long time to get not very far. This is not uncommon, rather the opposite!

Today we were all really fired up, inspired and extremely productive. Net-net: we transformed the proposition into one which is exciting and strong, they felt inspired by their business and they have a tool-set with which to go sell their kick-ass product. This is something that otherwise would have taken months to get to.

Obviously I would think that businesses need coaches and mentors given my profession as a coach and psychologist but I fell into this through looking for investment worthy businesses and kept coming across high-growth businesses that had not stopped to take a breath and as such were putting their own fires out. The most rewarding thing for me in coaching is seeing the clients eyes light up, their inspiration is at full tilt and they realise they probably do have the answers to the problems, it is the space and perspective they don’t always have and that is what I bring – along with some humour and external insight for validation.

A great business is fit, self-aware and agile. A mentor is someone who challenges, encourages and validates before the market gets to do that. A coach is someone who prepares for the fight and for the challenge. They provide the stability and insight by not being in the same boat rocking to the same waves or standing on the same burning platform.

If you feel like you are running a 200mph marathon and want to up your game, and see business as a mental and economic sport, have you thought about a mentor or coach as an investment rather than a weakness?

I have been preparing for the Google Think Local conference on the 4th October where I am hosting a panel of three who each have a specific and highly relevant experience of thinking about local business or leveraging online opportunities to make business possible local. Joining me are Brad Liebmann (founder of Geocast.com – local mobile advertising network), Peter Gandy (CCO of Rockpool Digital – a digital agency that build fully integrated mobile web and corp services with a local/mobile capability) and Hugh Chappell (former board NXD of Time Out, serial entrepreneur and a few locally oriented business investments currently). We will be discussing the 4 axes of local and how they help and hinder business in benefiting from being ‘digitally local’

Having advised some companies in the past which have been heavily focused on providing highly relevant localised information, services, advertising etc. it is an area I am rather fascinated about. I think that it is when one breaks the concept of local down into these axes one is able to make some decisions about how you want your business to be local. Too often I see ‘sexy’ location based applications that seem to fall short of the promise and usually it is because they lack the focus and rationale for my using them. I think this is really because the technologists making them get excited by the capabilities rather than the need and solving that need.

So the way I think, and advise my clients to think about local, it is on these four axes. How do they interact for your business? Which is the primary and which is the secondary? If your focus is on all of them, are you sure you can be relevant to your core user?

The four axes of Local:

1. Proximity

• Here
• There
• Somewhere

2. Time

• Past
• Present
• Future

3. Intention

• Information
• Commerce
• Share / Social

4. On & Off-line

• Online
• Offline
• Cross-over / hybrid / both

So what?

So what is interesting about the axes? Why are they interesting and important to consider?
Local bridges and combines these all in varied ways, bi-directionally. Local is a pure ecosystem play but it is a dynamic ecosystem, how does yours ebb and flow with location?

I think the convergence of two or more axes enables tighter targeting, greater detail information and stronger engagement – all key to ROI advertising and high value interactions. The real world is local, it is not only online or only offline, time and mind-set usually separate the two temporarily – local is a mindset that can enable businesses (big and small) to bridge these.

When looking at local I ask businesses:

• What does hyper-local mean to you in a commercial sense?
• Is local more a channel or a service for us?
• What are the challenges to big businesses in thinking / being / doing local?
• What services do you want to unlock with local that you cannot do generically?
• What is the single most important development in technology or online that enables local to become effective?
• What is the role of data and insight in hyper-local?
• Who is already doing what I want to do and what can I learn from them?
• What technology is available that I don’t have to build from scratch?

There is still a mentality about local being a potential cannibal to existing business models, I disagree, it is a channel not a threat. Local can be embraced, iterated and used very effectively. The great thing too is that it is young and undefined in that there are few people using it to its potential and big wins can be had with small step changes.

Are you thinking or doing Local? What is your view on the do’s and don’ts? I am always looking to know more about businesses that have embraced local or people who have a view. What is your take in the 4 axes of local and the questions to consider when going local?

The corporate dilemma seems so well encapsulated by John Maynard Keynes’ quote: “The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in the letting go of old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds”

In the work I am doing, talking to corporates, the directors, CEO’s and heads of digital know this on one level and yet struggle to let go of the old ones. Talking to them about adopting digital as a ‘new born’ seems to get a similar reaction to suggesting we jump out of a plane with a parachute… fear despite knowing it is possible and probably safe… The reaction is something like

• “How can we cross the chasm?”
• “What is our parachute?”
• “How do we reconcile starting at 20,000ft and landing at ground level?”

To me, the answer is relatively straight forward in some respects, of course it’s not an easy migration – “the opposite of a bird in the hand” – let go and go after the two in the bush, they may, over time be worth more than the one… and if you execute well (read: iterate and learn quickly) one in the bush may be a goose that lays the golden egg!

Look at the ecommerce and mobile trends recently… who were the leading ecommerce players when that started being possible? It was the upstarts who could adopt new business models and methods to do the same thing in new ways. In mobile, the most succesful companies are the new ones who have no legacy of consumer adoption but an insight into how to grab attention…

For corporates today with strong consumer bases, a strong brand and a need to evolve the choices are clear, adapt or die…

Adoption can be done in so many ways I believe and some are low-risk, brand enhancing and can transport the business models along a travellator next to the walking competition. Commercial partnering and innovation incubation are to me the corporate bets that need to be made. At Yahoo we tried to embrace the ‘entrepreneur within’ with our Hack Days which enabled the developers to build test and show off their own ideas, some of which could be included in the Yahoo offering… quite a few companies do this as a means of satisfying the creative developers but why not programatise it, build it into a business model framework?

If you don’t get on the travellator now it will only accelerate and you will have to run faster alongside it to catch up. This means more cost, more risk, more time and a greater chasm.

I firmly believe that in consumer-led sectors especially (i.e. retail banking, media publishing, music, film etc) the corporates who adopt, adapt and test will be the winners in the next 5-10 years.

What are the steps then? I think there is a process to moving from analogue to digital, my 5 Steps of Corporate Change to Adopting Digital

1. Recognise the need to shift into digital – don’t assume you can do it all
2. Analyse the start-up trends for relevance and potential overlap – Think outside the box (analyse from outside not inside) & Look for the elements that are the dots you can connect
3. Connect the dots for your customer offering (this is your IP)
4. Define the success criteria for digital – it won’t be the same as traditional business as usual!
5. Build a framework for partnering and internal innovation – test, measure, iterate, test – constant iteration

There are more than enough change management professionals and business coaches to help manage the internal backlash and resistance but there are not enough frameworks to lean on. I think now is the best time to look at Apple or Paddy Power and not Microsoft or William Hill as examples.

As both perfectly ‘normal’ and depressed people, they benefit from the relationship with a therapist to get perspective and support in evaluating their situations, the same exists for Corporates! Get an outside opinion, build the relationship with a trusted advisor – a business shrink & a partner who helps shine the light in the dark and helps you know what you know and shine the light to discover what you don’t know… this de-risking is invaluable.

Learn to start to let go of the old ideas, build the new ones and grow with them. The digital layer is ever-more social and ever-evolving. Now is the best time to ask the audience – get your customers to be part of your evolution.

Innovate with risk. Define new criteria of success and let go of the (dying) bird in the hand – there are plenty in the bush, waiting to be caught!

The corporate dilemma is one of perception and behaviour change – get the corporate shrink, adopt the 5 steps and evolve – resistance is futile.

Clearly I think that as Justin is far closer to the people who made Myspace the success it previouisly was – the music fans and celebrities themselves – he has a plan and can probably make it happen. Is there however, space in the online social world for a niche / vertical OSN to compete with Facebook?

I actually think the aquisition is a very interesting one, Justin’s got gravitas with a large fan base and if he can recreate the engagement on the site – there could be a very interesting swing back to Myspace as more and more of the younger Facebook users seem to be losing interest in Facebook since their parents are on there… and that is where I think there is an interesting play to be had! Bring Myspace back to its core with better functionality.

Time will tell but now JT joins the tech investor world Ashton Kutcher has become so well known for.

That was really interesting is that I thought my “Soft side of business plans” topic would possibly be too controversial because it deals with feelings, passion and story telling before the harder topics of numbers and facts. In fact the opposite happened… So much so that I was so pleasantly surprised that both Duncan and Travers referred to the element of the “story” the “passion” and the ability to engage your audience.

After the session it struck me that there is a perceived discord between how we really operate in business and how we say we do. On the past weekend working with Darren Shirlaw and Daniel Priestley we were building on frameworks that connect with people on a Thinking, Feeling, Knowing basis. Today we were talking about the energy in a team, the passion that people buy into as commercial partners or investors and in today’s session, the ability to lose the momentum in your team if you have a rotten apple in that team… None of these are “business” language and yet all around me I am seeing so much more reference to business in emotive language.

In realising this I came to think about our perceptions of business. Do we expect it to be formal, strict, conservative, boring, structured, process-driven and all that? Do we expect to leave our emotions at the door when we hang our winter coats? I think there is an element of discord in business reality and how we perceive it.

Thinking about where I have worked – at Vinci Park UK, Monster.com, Yahoo.com and now Ariadne, the times I and our team were most successful was when we worked as a team and had fun… Of course this is obvious but digging deeper and there is something interesting. When we put aside the expected barriers of rigid work formality and were able to come together in a deeply personal way, we became highly motivated to work and succeed as a team – there was more at steak than not succeeding at work – there was letting ourselves down.

I think there is something fundamental in the shift at work these days. I don’t know quite what it all is yet but when you combine the trends of massive social adoption online, the X and Y generations starting to get into working environments, the growth of SME and entrepreneurial ventures (and the decline of the corporate) then at that intersection are we at the place where in business/work terms we are shifting as we did in western culture – from ‘boys don’t cry’ to recognising EQ as value?

If there is an increasing use of emotional language and descriptors in business terms from banking to investment, then surely there is a deeper groundswell at the core of the businesses that are operating at an EQ level too? Does that mean that when they fail to engage investors and banks for funding they are still thinking they need to engage those conversations in the rigid and old-world stoic business models? Are they miscommunicating their passion and drive based on an old assumption of how to talk business – Businesses don’t cry, do they?

This leads me to think about the role of the story and story telling in building business success…