OT: Why can't we be Cisco?
redherring.com
Great Britain's Silicon Fen is a long way from Silicon Valley, but the Brits are trying to bridge the gap. At recent conferences here in Cambridge, the heart of Silicon Fen, and in London, speaker after speaker told how the British want to copy the entrepreneurial spirit, passion, and persistence of Silicon Valley executives. It's perhaps one of the few ways in which the Brits wish to emulate Americans. But the speakers admitted that much must change before Britain can gain its entrepreneurial stripes.
For starters, the dress code is all wrong. British entrepreneurs and venture capitalists still favor jackets and ties, and -- horrors -- many sport gray hair.
Worse, British entrepreneurs "don't know how to brag," said Peter Cochrane, chief technologist with British Telecom (NYSE: BTY). "If an American makes a presentation about a new technology they've developed, you divide by three. But if a Brit makes the presentation, you multiply by ten."
Mr. Cochrane is doing his part to "close the cultural gap," as he puts it. He made his remarks at the Start-Up $1Bn conference, which he organized in order to transform the way the UK finances its innovators. The conference, held early this week in London, drew several hundred attendees, including VCs with access to not $1 billion, but $20 billion in funds.
Mr. Cochrane counts among his goals encouraging UK-based VCs to change their funding approach. Instead of taking a majority stake in a company and looking for an exit in three to five years, before a business reaches its full potential, he said he wants VCs in the UK to follow the American way of pumping more money into ventures, taking a smaller slice of equity, and providing guidance and resources.
He said he'd also like British entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas to VCs more effectively. Judging from the pitches made at the Start-Up $1Bn conference, this may be an insurmountable challenge. Many of the presenters delivered their pitches in mumbled monotones, without much confidence or focus. Even Mr. Cochrane admitted, "I'd give them a three out of ten."
CISCO UK
The third Cambridge Enterprise Conference at Queens' College seemed more like a group therapy session over Britain's inability to produce a Cisco Systems. After all, Cambridge is the center of high tech in the country, and several major U.S. companies, including Microsoft, have set up research and development facilities here.
Part of the problem seems to be a lack of leadership. That was a running theme, expressed most damningly by Mr. Gerald Avison, managing director of The Technology Partnership in Melbourn. Speaking at the Cambridge conference, Mr. Avison said, "It's all about confidence. Who knows where that lack of confidence came from -- maybe the collapse of the empire. We've got to reöstablish that confidence."
Perhaps aspiring British entrepreneurs should acquaint themselves with Imperialism, John Atkinson Hobson's excoriating assault on the economic drains of Empire. Or they could simply focus on the example of Mike Lynch, the founder and CEO of Autonomy (Nasdaq: AUTN). Rather than sell out early like many British entrepreneurs, Mr. Lynch took his software firm public, becoming a billionaire in the process.
Mr. Lynch appears to be such a rarity in Britain, though, that some think the British ultimately need to get better at money-grubbing.
"If you go to a dinner party in Britain and all you have is money, and nothing but money, you don't get that much respect," said George Yip, who lectures on marketing and strategy at Cambridge University's Judge Institute of Management Studies. "But in the U.S., even if you've written a critically acclaimed play, what everyone wants to know is how much money you made out of it."
Damn Yanks. |
