Another busy OpenCoffee Club

Saul wasn't able to be there this morning so I promised I'd blog some impressions and observations.
The numbers of attendees has held up very well. I'd estimate at least 80 over the 2 hours.
Interesting to see that new networks are are starting to tap into the facility. The London Business School was well represented for the first time.
There were headhunters: - BYT (Agnes Greaves) and The Forsyth Group (Bretton Putter);
VCs: Nick Brisbourne of Esprit, Kevin Commoli of Accel, Danny Rimer of Index
Ad agencies, bloggers, experienced entrepreneurs and first timers.

Lots of serious looking meetings, presentations and demos were taking place.

Agnes has promised me that there are many more female entrepreneurs in London than are turning up at OpenCoffee so I've challenged her to get them there.

LOVEFiLM offers DVDs to Burn

LOVEFilm this week announced its "DVDs to burn" service. The first in the UK. In my judgement, at the current stage of mass adoption of the various technologies, this is the service film-loving consumers are going to enjoy.

LOVEFilm have been offering downloads (up to 2500 titles now, to buy or to rent or free) for a year but you have to watch on PC and 'lean forward' viewing is still a minority pastime.
The announcement co-incided with its national TV campaign following a very successful test in Scotland.

Simon Calver and the team have pulled together Video Island, ScreenSelect and LOVEFiLM into a powerful and comprehensive entertainment company.

Key facts

* Europe's leading online DVD rental and movie download company with nearly 500,000 active household subs.
* In the last 2 years, launched in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Germany
* c.20% of UK and 10% of Sweden total DVD rental market
* Top 3 Most Visited UK Site in Entertainment and Movies
* UK’s largest range - Over 65,000 titles
* World class partners with exclusive relationships
* Lowest-cost DVD rental platform in Europe
* Market leaders in digital film delivery with the largest movie download catalogue in Europe

Moo checks into the Habbo Hotel

Moo's latest parnership is with Habbo. Following hard on the heels of Bebo, Little Moo will be printing away those cute little cards with cute little Habbo folks on them.

A phenomenon! 120 attend The OpenCoffee Club

Have just got back from attending the first OpenCoffee Club.

Saul posted this idea last Friday 23rd Feb.

As far as I know he did nothing more than that. Well, at 10am there must have been 30 people waiting for the doors of Esprit to open. The staff were bemused, the Starbucks team confused (perhaps they thought Howard Shultz had sent us all) and then over-run. By 12.15 when I left, there had been 120 attendees and some 40 were still deep in conversation.

If entrepreneurship in London is not alive in London today, it never will be.
There were VCs, entrepreneurs, angels and press all networking and enjoying.

Saul's idea is to make this a completely self perpetuating 'club'. Anyone who wishes to will simply turn up between 10 and 12.
The quietest Starbucks in the UK becomes the busiest for these 2 hours.

Personally, I met 4 new companies and a number of old friends and acquaintances.
Hope to see you there one of these weeks.

Giving customers a real voice

Read any consumer facing Chairman or CEO annual report and you'll see the phrases: 'listening to customers' 'responding to and serving customers needs'..... or similar.
I once asked Andy Higginson, CFO of Tesco over a drink what the real driver of Tesco's success was. 'We genuinely and obsessively listen to customers and give them what they want'.
The Tesco listening takes lots of forms. Market research - sure. Polling in-store and out-of-store. Focus Groups. ...and of course the biggest voice of all, the ClubCard.

IMI - Instant Market Intelligence - was conceived of by Rob Keve back in 2004. TAG was an early investor and close friend of the business. My son-in-law, Jonathan Morris joined the business in 2005 and it has narrowed and concentrated its focus on a superb product (branded Fizzback) which enables real-time, actionable customer feedback via digital channels.
SMS via mobile phone is particularly effective for the growing list of clients who are using the Fizzback service. This enables consumers to feedback - in real time and ‘at the point of experience’ whilst the issues are still top of mind while using the service of the provider. The data is analysed and interpreted by Fizzback and presented to the management of the company in a variety of forms via a web interface.

We are announcing, this week an investment of Euro 4m by Advent in the business. This has enabled the technology to be developed further, to grow the team and will enable Fizzback to go to market confidently.

Clients already using or trialling the service include: National Express, First Capital Connect, Bourne Leisure Group, one of the National Health Trusts and and many other major players in health, financial services and retail are in the process of signing up.

Fizzback offers a significantly improved way of brands obtaining unsolicited and valuable customer feedback. Its likely to make a big impact on those companies striving for greater customer loyalty and improved customer experience.

This biz moves me ..and could move you too!

About September last year, Frederic Court of Advent asked me to meet an interesting company. The business, called 'The Moving Service' was much more than initally met the eye. Mark Cunningham and Keith McNeilly who know the consumer data market inside out have been developing the idea for a while.
Moving home is one of the most traumatic events in people's lives.
The proposition is simple: moveme.com makes it easy - and saves money in the process.
These days one needs to write about 27 different letters informing service providers (banks, credit cards, utlities, local councils etc) of change of address. Moveme does all of that. You need to get a new residents parking permit, find and organise the removal company. Moveme does that too. Get your mail re-directed .... yes, that too. etc etc.
The databases sitting behind the planner which moveme provides are extensive and have taken many months and an intimate knowledge of the moving process to construct.

What a simple and brilliant idea - all free to the customer.

Its also refreshing to see a new web business whose business model and revenue sources are so clearly defined and so large. U-Switch is proof of just one of the streams.
There are 3.4m house moves made in the UK alone - each year.

Accelerator and Advent have been joined by Brent Hoberman in seeding moveme and a series A will be underway soon.

If you are planning to move house anytime soon, sign up at www.moveme.com and see what I'm excited about. Of course, the site is in beta and comments for improvements will be consumed with relish!

Building a Business for the long term

I have been meaning to do a post on Jonathan Klein and Getty Images for some time. Its unusual to have a a kid brother as a hero but what Jonathan has done with Getty is a great example to anyone setting out to build a sustainable, valuable and widely respected business.
He and Mark Getty started out 13 years ago with an idea to build a global, sustainable business for the long term. A rare ambition these days. Most seek an 'exit' within 5.

Jonathan was the youngest ever director of Hambros Bank and Mark was part of his team.
They had no idea what kind of business it would be but had some clear criteria. Global potential, large margins, owning core assets (preferably intellectual property).
They saw that the digital age would herald a fundamental change in the way that imagery would be stored and distributed and set about acquiring stock-photo libraries. Starting in London with Tony Stone Images in 1995, they made dozens of acquisitions, integrating and consolidating and digitising the images as they went.
Getty Images is what has resulted.
Jonathan moved the company to Seattle some 6 years ago following the acquisition of Photodisc in Seattle and the company's listing on Nasdaq. Today it is listed on the NYSE and is valued at over $3bn. The stock has been volatile but not the company's earnings which have increased steadily every year.
Today, gettyimages.com serves an average of 3.2 billion thumbnails, 7.3 million visits and 4 million unique users in addition to an average of 175 million page views each month. Nearly 100 percent of the company’s visual content is delivered digitally.

Financial Facts
NYSE ticker symbol:	GYI
Revenues (FY 2006):	$807.3 million
Earnings per share (FY 2006):	$2.10 (fully diluted)
Net income (FY 2006):	$129.5 million

So much for the dry facts, but this is a personal post. One about Jonathan and the kind of business he has built. His vision is clear. His communication of that vision internally and externally is equally so. With a string of awards and a company which is universally admired, he has done a remarkable job.

The recent acquisition activity marks a restatement of intent following a difficult period where the street had marked Getty down as 'ex growth' and the share price had taken a whack.

I expect to see more from Jonathan and Getty!

Saul joins Index

It was announced today that Saul Klein has joined Index as a venture partner. Saul and Danny Rimer go back a long way since his Firefly days (back in 1996). They share the enthusiasm for European technology start-ups and the belief that very strong ideas are coming out of this part of the world. There is a vibrant , active and professional set of VCs and experienced angels available to support European entrepreneurs.
In some respects, the outward looking, international and multi-lingual European entrepreneurs have advantages over their US counterparts and I'd expect more 'Skypes' to come out of Europe in the coming years.

Now the hard bit ....of course, I declare my bias up front, but must add that Saul has extra-ordinary vision and his partnership with Index should be a powerful combination.
Read his thoughts on linking up with Index on his blog.

Is the PerplexCity Cube about to be found?

Will someone claim the £100,000 reward which has been offered?
The final clue of the Perplexcity season one is about to be issued.
According to the Independent who ran a double spread article on the phenomenon that is Perplexcity, ARGs and Mind Candy.
Sales of over £1m have been made of the puzzle cards which Mind Candy so brilliantly devised and enthusiasts will be looking forward to the second season and any new puzzles that come out of the Mind Candy imagineers.
If you're looking for some back issue cards, they are actively traded on eBay

Personally I am hoping the puzzles in the new season are going to be a little easier to crack. Give us a break Michael, some of us have day jobs!

Beboers get to Moo

The tens of millions of members of Bebo can now make Moo Minicards using their own uploaded imagery on Bebo.
I can quite see the many thousands of bands who create home pages and upload music finding the cards a really cool way of creating their 'business cards' for distribution at gigs and elsewhere.

The superb print interface which Moo have created is attracting a number of content and community sites to want to partner with them. ....and users absolutely love them.

The mini cards are a superb example of a high quality, personalised product created on the web ........watch out for some new Moo products before too long.

Astley Clarke named by Harpers as second most stylish website!

Calling it the "Net -a -Porter of the Jewellery world with a brilliantly edited collection of gems from contemporary designers", Harpers Bazaar has put Astley Clarke in great company.
Hard on the heels of TomFord.com and ahead of Handbag and Net-a-porter, this is a great accolade for an embryonic business.
Bec Clarke is steadily building Astley Clarke into a web brand with real character.
Congratulations, Becca.
BTW: You could do worse than visit the site before Valentines Day!! Great stuff for Men and Women.

Imagini sees the world in pictures

I have been working with Alex Willcock and his team for over a year now. Alex has invented what looks like a simple and obvious idea. [The best ones often are].
Imagini profiles consumers using something they call their visualDNA.
Demographics of all kinds - geo, psycho and lifestyle have been used extensively to segment and understand consumers. Behavioural, attitudinal and transactional analysis produce interesting results and refine targeting significantly.
Now, after more than a year of developement, Imagini has demonstrated that understanding consumers' emotional preferences can be done very effectively using imagery and a set of tools they have developed.
The applications for the technology are very exciting indeed. Visual content can be served which matches consumers, new insights can be delivered. Advertisers and marketers will no longer need to constructing mood boards and tear sheets using their instincts as to how particular cutural and age demographics are going to respond. They can now add empirical data to back up assumptions.
The consumer applications which Imagini is working on are engaging and fun. Take a look at the Beta site and my widget below to get a flavour.
I'd be surprised if they haven't built up a global database of millions of VisualDNA'a within the next 12 months.
The Wall Street Journal have picked up on Imagini in a major piece featured on 19th January.
MSN and Nectar have both run trials which have been very illuminating.
Great start guys.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Daylife is live!

Upendra and team have lifted some more covers off Daylife. They set out to build the world's best news analyser and aggregator complete with an awesome API enabling great applications to be built.
From a commercial point of view, Daylife seeks to be a page inventory machine for its partners. Generating thousands of news pages automatically with no need for human editors it is a no-cost means for sites of all shapes and sizes to extend their service and inventory by adding Daylife modules, pages, or using its API on their pages.
The first partner site, the Huffingtonpost.com, went live just before Xmas. Go to the front page of their site, and see the Newsranker module, powered by Daylife which contains a customisable, embeddable widget like this:


If you click on any bar, it takes you to full topic pages powered by Daylife.
Google Ad Network can give a publisher ADS, they cannot give a publisher INVENTORY – and that is where Daylife come in.

More features and more partners to come ...soon. Set an alert for Daylife.

Moo's expanding ...

MOO has grown rapidly since September launch. Now, with customers in over 100 countries and clients including Skype and Flickr (with many more on the horizon), the little team needs backup, so Moo's hiring a number of key positions.
If you're looking for something a bit different, or know someone who might be then please check out the job specs at http://www.moo.com/jobs/ or forward on to anyone who you think would be interested.

All positions include stock options, liberal use of the office cappuccino machine and the chance to change the world;)

MORE ABOUT MOO

MOO is a new kind of printing business that creates products and services to help some of the biggest and most vibrant communities on the web take their virtual lives offline. Founded in April 2006, with investment from Index Ventures and Atlas Venture, MOO is headquartered in London, with partners in the UK, USA and Europe.

MOO’s first product: MiniCards, a reinvention of Victorian calling cards, are designed to help people share their virtual identities offline. MiniCards have already proven to be a global phenomenon, with orders for more than a million cards from people in over 100 countries in the first 3 months.

MOO’s partners currently include Flickr and Skype and have plans to launch new products with these and several new partners in 2007.

Find out more ... click: MOO

And check out how people are using their MiniCards in MOO's group page on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/groups/moo

A shooting Star!

Stardoll continues to make rapid progress. The latest Alexa rankings show Stardoll is ranked 483 on the Alexa traffic rankings - up 269 places in 3 months.
With 4.5m members globally, Stardoll has captured the imaginations of young girls in dozens of countries.
Some of the outfits that the girls are putting together show great flair and smart fashion brands will be looking to see what millions of teenagers are voting for.
A popular facility on the site is the ability to put together an album with your favourite celebrities dressed the way you'd like to see them. These albums are voted on each week and the winner is featured in the stardoll magazine.

AP continues to win plaudits ....

Agent Provocateur continues to win accolades around the world. The latest is Forbes magazines article about the top shops of 2006.
Forbes sites superb personal customer service as a key differentiator for Agent Provocateur.
This article follows the recent revelation that the famous Kylie video which helped bring AP to the world's fashion stage is the fourth most watched video ever - with something like 40m viewings. If you have never seen it ....watch it now!
The Kate Moss series - currently playing episode 2 - has a way to go yet before the viewings reach 40m.

eTails - a really good eCommerce read

Congratulations to Lysander Meath-Baker of Digivate for the interesting snippets he picks up and observations he adds from the world of eCommerce - in their eTails blog. The relentless rise of eCommerce sales and the new services being offered continues to make this an interesting space.
Digivate themselves continue to make strides as an eCommerce site builder and manager. They keep adding new accounts and their services which now include SEO,SEM and eMail campaigns - design and analysis - is powering their sales and profits.
Keep up the great work guys!

Koodos moves from stealth to Private Sale

Koodos, the Atlas backed company in the Accelerator stable has started to interact. Koodos aims to establish a platform to enable merchants to publish their overstocks and end-of-lines directly to a consumer facing eCommerce site.
The Koodos approach is to give merchants control of their selling prices so that they can optimise their yields and make prodcut available to consumers at an earlier point in their lifecycle than typically.
Drapers Record, the fashion industry's flagship wrote enthusiastically about Koodos and featured Miriam Lahage, Koodos CEO, prominently.
Miriam's background includes many years as senior merchandise director in the TJX group in the US - the world's largest retailer of 'off-price' merchandise, with sales of $14bn.
Whilst they build to critical mass, Koodos are launching 'private sales'. These are 'by invitation' sale events of limited quantities of highly desirable stuff at heavily discounted prices.
Tip: Be sure to register for these sales soon.

Spot Runner on CNBC - On The Money

Nick Grouf and Martin Sorrel talk about Spotrunner on CNBC.

If you're still not sure what Spotrunner is all about, watch this!

New York Times invests in Daylife

Upendra Shardanand and his team has been beavering away at building the world's greatest news gathering, analysing and organising site/platform.
Due for soft launch on Monday to a controlled group of users, the product has been well worth waiting for. There really is nothing like it!

Now the New York Times has joined an interesting collection of angels (of which TAG is the largest in terms of funds invested) which include: Craig Newmark of Craig's List, Mike Arrington, Dave Winer, Mika Salmi (congrats on the MTV role!) and John Borthwick
The announcement of the NYT investment broke in paidContent yesterday.
We first wrote about Daylife in August.