Working with entrepreneurs and world-class venture capital firms to create and build fast growing Internet services, eCommerce and Digital Media
businesses.
A week or so in France and I am reminded why customer service is the fundamental backbone of any consumer facing business. It simply does not exist here....
Perhaps its flying out here with Ryanair that sets you up so nicely.
Why is it that the customer is made to feel that he/she is imposing, disturbing or disrupting the way in which things usually work? Why is everything the customer's fault? Why does the French 'service provider' (they'd blanche to hear that expression) enjoy an argument so much?
All this makes me more determined than ever to re-inforce the guiding principles behind building great consumer brands - listen carefully to the customer - focus all energies on providing solutions and removing friction from processes. Genuinely try to delight the customer.
The lesson from Zappos (and others) must be pretty clear now. Customer service is a key differentiator in the competitive landscape in which we operate.
Fizzback - about whom I've written a few times in the past - is building a great business providing companies that really care about this stuff, smart efficient channels to accept feedback, interpret it and act on it. Uservoice is doing similarly - for on-line services. See previous post re Uservoice here. .. 'suggestion box for the web'.
Nature Delivered Ltd (trading as Graze) has just announced a funding round of £2m led by Octopus Ventures.
We wrote about Graze in February drawing attention to the truly innovative and potentially disruptive approach that Graham Bosher and his co-founders have taken to the distribution of food by post. Graham doesn't have deep food technology or distribution experience but he has leveraged his intimate knowledge of significant experience of designing, developing and running complex operations which give customers complete control and provides great customer service. This was acquired in his initial development of DVDs on tap and later LoveFilm.
The business is experiencing very rapid growth and strong loyalty to the service. Graze is naturally viral, with people showing others their Graze box at the office and handing out trial coupons. All web marketers strive for virality or a way to promote it. In this case (like with Moo) the product itself is naturally viral - in the real world. Of course, Graze are pouting petrol on the viral flames and encouraging the blaze.
Now delivering over 80,000 boxes a month, Graze has the backing it needs to build a serious business. William Reeve is taking the Chair and the shareholder register includes DFJ Esprit, Arts Alliance and ourselves.
Certainly one to watch in my view.
If you are in the UK and want to try the service quote this code QKX412R and get a free box. [from 20th to 24th July, 2009]
Another founder creating a potentially great business by thinking completely differently about an established way of doing things - and not being an insider in his industry - is Errol Damelin at Wonga.
One of the reasons I'm still hard at it is the extraordinary openness, generosity and collective goodwill that I keep coming across. I wrote about it in connection with the month I spent in San Francisco and feel the momentum of collaboration has come, in no small measure, to London too.
A recent incident illustrated this to me very clearly.
I was analysing some data in a spreadsheet and wondered whether I could display the records (which contained post code) on a map. After failing to find some free software on the web, I tweeted my problem and sure enough within hours came the offer from one Andrew Bredon of Dealchecker - (whom I had never met)- he had a script lying around which he refined and after a couple of goes - voila!
I spend a lot of my time simply connecting people with one another and I know many others who do the same. This is what makes our own eco-system grow and strengthen. Andrew's simple gesture - without any hint of quid pro quo - is another one of those small but important moments which make what we do so rewarding.
In my experience it takes at least 5 years to build a good business. There is just so much to do and some things just can't be rushed. So, will the fact that we are in part of the cycle where exits for tech start-ups are really hard to come by, be a positive thing for some good businesses in the making?
In boom times, it is difficult for founders and their backers to turn down some really juicy offers. Everyone's a winner? Not necessarily the company in question.
There certainly comes a time when new owners with greater resources, superior distribution or stronger brand can benefit the acquired business. However this often happens too early in the company's life.
Having to carry on independently may not have been the founder's or the VC's plan but could benefit the business significantly - the innovation is sustained, the focus shifts to revenue/earnings growth and cash conservation. This all breeds a strong and healthy culture for the business.
As much as we like exits, we do like building great businesses.
Skimlinks seem to have captured the imagination of the Affiliate and on-line Publishing worlds. Cynics would say that winning awards are no indication of future financial success. That is undoubtedly true. Skimlinks have clearly struck a chord however. At a time when publishers are struggling for ad revenue and are looking for additional revenue streams, the simplicity and ease of installation of their service is a real boon.
In the words of one of the thousands of comments one can read about Tweetdeck, one stands out for me. "Tweetdeck changed my entire Twitter experience." Lets face it, there are still many people on the planet who can't see what all the fuss is about. What is the point of Twitter? Who wants to know what you are doing right now? Tweetdeck goes some way to making sense of it all. Just like the browsers and then the search engines made sense of the web in that they helped to navigate and find what you wanted from the millions/billions of pages out there, so Tweetdeck is providing its users with a 'controllable' Twitter, a useful Twitter and an insightful one.
The user expereince has been awesome and provoked huge adoption and great stickiness but now, with the latest release, Iain and his team - Tom, Reza, Nicola,Sol - have blown the commentators away.
There are simply too many great new features to enumerate here. Top of the list for most users will be the ability to sync across desktops, laptops and iPhone - across the cloud. Unlimited columns, auto language translation of incoming or outgoing tweets, spam buttons - these are just a few of the new features.
Read lots more ...or just go to Tweetdeck and download version 26
When you are setting out to change completely the way in which an industry works, sometimes its best not be an expert in that field.
Experts sometimes know too much about how things work, how things are done, how its been done for years.
When Errol Damelin first set out to change the way in which unsecured lending was done - he started with a blank sheet of paper. It was case of "what if customers could apply for a loan, be verified and risk assessed in real time and the money transferred to their account instantly?" And of course, the service operates 24X7 from anywhere. If that could be done, wouldn't this meet a need and be an awesome service?
This is not easy - even now, no-one else does it. Jonty Hurwitz joined him and they set about building this. Still not a banker in sight.
Since the funding round for Wonga was announced a couple of days ago, people have been asking - 'how does a company that's been trading for just less than a year raise $22m from some of the world's leading VCs - in this market.
The answer clearly is that Wonga have built some impressive technology, is serving its customers exceptionally well (they get a net promioter score in the 80's!) and is addressing an enormous market.
Errol and Jonty have built a great team too - dedicated to ensuring that their product remains cutting edge and obsessed with great cusomter experience and service. Congratulations.
Of course the APR debate will rage but its clear that this is an entirely inappropriate measure for the very short term loans which they make. For my part, if the customer needs and loves the service then Wonga are doing a great job.
We wrote about Imagini on February 26th - Imagini Comes of Age. Now Imagini has launched the beta launch of VisualDNA Shops a monetization widget that enables every blogger and web publisher to easily add personalized product recommendations, and start generating detailed demographic, psychographic and behavioral analytics of their visitors. VisualDNA Shops delivers real-time product suggestions from Amazon.com to every site visitor, based on responses to a series of simple visual questions. Products range from mobile phones to travel accessories, digital cameras and gadgets and products from sites such as eBay and Shopping.com are planned in the coming weeks.
VisualDNA Shops allows bloggers and publishers of any size to connect and understand more about their visitors’ preferences as well as providing a new way to monetize their traffic, since a percentage of every purchase is paid directly to the website or blog owner. VisualDNA Shops draws upon Imagini’s proprietary recommendation engine that it is powered by millions of users, enabling suggestions to be drawn from like-minded visitors from all over the world. Given that Amazon alone has more than 96,250 digital cameras in stock, and the keywords “mobile phone” in Google nets 204 million results, this is also a tool that will help consumers navigate the seemingly endless choices by tapping into the collective likes and dislikes of global consumers on a scale never previously possible.
We have popped a phone shop in the sidebar of this blog. It took about 5 minutes.
VisualDNA Shops is also available as a Pro version for $2.99 a month. This comes with advanced analytics that allows site owners and bloggers to view the types of visitors that come to their webpage, as well as who they are and what appeals to them. The Pro version also allows for new products to be suggested to different types of shopper, and "Similar Site" analysis that shows visitors other sites visited by people with similar preferences. These shared links will directly enhance search engine optimization (SEO).
The tools for publishers - aimed at monetisation and enhancing SEO, traffic and engagement are improving all the time. In TAG's portfolio they include: bit.ly, Daylife, Skimlinks, UserVoice, Webmynd and Zemanta
We are pleased at TAG to announce the launch of microsyntax.org — a non profit organisation to help shape and codify the use of structured syntax within real time data streams - like Tweets.
Users are increasingly coming up with their own microsyntax and abbreviated Twitter grammar to make their Tweets more expressive. RT, @ and # are already part of the venacular.
The purpose of Microsyntax.org, is to investigate the various ways that individuals and tool providers (like Tweetdeck) are trying to innovate around this sort of microsyntax. We hope to create a forum where alternative approaches can be discussed and evaluated.
Stowe Boyd is leading the effort — charter funding from Betaworks and TAG — details and the manifesto on the site, microsyntax.org.
Read Techcrunch on Microsyntax .... together with all the twitter-bashing comments .... :)
TAG has long been an advocate of the Silicon Valley approach to evolving winning web sites. Get something out quickly - an Alpha version - to a handful of supportive and friendly users. Listen hard to their comments, improve, redesign and get the Beta out and keep listening, iterating.
We have joined the group of angels backing a simple to install, white label tool - Uservoice - which elicits Customer Feedback and Idea Generation based on “Ideas Anywhere” Approach.
Companies of All Sizes Now Have Easy and Affordable Way to Immediately Engage Customers in Two-Way Feedback Process
UserVoice provides hosted community sites where people share their ideas for how to improve a product, service, process, institution, or city. Users vote up the best ideas to give a clear picture of what they want in a fraction of the time and expense it would take with traditional solutions (e.g., emails, surveys, focus groups). Additionally, with users organized around specific ideas, organizations can easily respond to them as a group and create ongoing dialogue around specific issues, which is much more effective than the classic newsletter. As a result, people feel heard and gain a sense of ownership in the solutions they come up with, thereby building a new kind of brand affinity.
UserVoice already has hundreds of paying customers in multiple vertical markets that run the gamut from technology, government, healthcare, education and retail. New customers include companies of all sizes including Intuit, NASA, Facebook, Xing, Nielson, Genentech, Blackbaud, University of Wisconsin, Animoto, Seesmic, StumbleUpon and TweetDeck.
Companies can also leverage UserVoice internally to crowdsource ideas from employees on various projects. This same feedback approach can be applied in a number of different vertical markets as well — university administrators can discuss funding issues with students; politicians can work with their constituents on new propositions; and rock bands can connect with their fans about what they'd like to see on tour.
Since UserVoice is easy to configure, any organization can integrate and launch within a day or two for as long or as little a duration of time as needed. The flexibility lets administrators generate an “ideas anywhere” solution to complement existing efforts or create new channels of feedback. UserVoice is optimised for fast, affordable deployments that don’t require a lot of planning or resources from IT departments, offering an end-to-end white label solution — branded, domain-alias, single sign on, and with open APIs for creating unique, custom integrations.
For more information on UserVoice, please visit http://uservoice.com.
For additional perspectives, please visit the UserVoice blog at http://blog.uservoice.com.
A price comparison service that allows consumers to get cheaper mobile phone deals by monitoring their online bills was accredited by Ofcom on Thursday last.
BillMonitor’s price comparison calculator has been awarded the Ofcom price accreditation scheme logo for meeting the terms of a rigorous independent audit. The audit checks whether the information provided to consumers is accessible, accurate, transparent, comprehensive and up to date. BillMonitor is the first mobile price comparison service to have their calculator accredited by Ofcom.
BillMonitor uses advanced statistics to find the best mobile price plans for consumers across the five network operators 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone. The comparison engine was developed by BillMonitor’s team of mathematicians with scientific advisors from the University of Oxford.
-online Bill Tracking, where consumers supply their online billing account details and BillMonitor automatically analyses their online bills for a tailored recommendation; and
-a one-off Tariff Search, where a consumer can enter minutes and texts used, as well as overseas calls, picture messaging and data usage.
BillMonitor analyses historical usage patterns to predict future usage and can keep consumers updated on the money they could save as the networks change their price plans.
Ofcom research shows that 57 per cent of mobile users are more likely to shop around if there is information available to calculate the cheapest supplier based on usage and 50 per cent are more likely to trust an accredited price comparison website.
How much could you save?
The following three anonymous users who used the online Bill Tracking service demonstrate how BillMonitor can help consumers to save money.
Consumer A is a light user on a contract with more inclusive minutes/texts than she uses, paying on average £31.33 per month. Bill Monitor recommended that she switched provider to reduce her average bill to £16.34 (saving over £15 a month) and still leaving her free minutes most months. Without switching provider, she could still save £11.41 a month by changing price plan with her current provider.
Consumer B currently has a monthly contract with no add-ons. He calls and texts Turkey, France, USA and Greece and has roamed while in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Greece. He pays £83.96 per month on average. When BillMonitor analysed his online bill, it recommended that he switch to a different provider and use their free roaming add-on which would reduce his average monthly bill to £67.52 (saving over £16 a month).
Consumer C is rarely off the phone. He uses an average of 2179 minutes and 853 texts and pays £209.50 per month. By using Bill Monitor he managed to bring his bill down to £68.68 by changing price plan with his current provider and saved a huge £140 per month.
Since the OFCOM announcement, there has been tons of coverage in the major broadsheets and in the Sun and the Mirror. Clearly, Bill Monitor has struck a chord.
Stelios and Ofcom's chief can be seen on BBC2 working lunch tv program .
Traffic surge was large and persists throughout the long weekend, thousands of people trying on-line bill assessment in particular and leaving v positive feedback.
The Evening Standard's piece on Skimlinks' new Twitter initiative tops a round of pretty extensive publicity that Alicia has generated for her fledgling business. Techcrunch, which has liked the business from the start, covered their latest sales milestone and funding here.
Her idea for monetising Tweets is simple and uses the Skimlinks technology to follow links via 19 affiliate networks through to many thousands of retailers:
The project, called good.ly, allows people to recommend items such as books, electronic items and clothes by putting a link on Twitter.
When a person clicks on the link, they go to the retailer's website. If they buy the item, a proportion of the sale price goes to a charity — currently Dogs Trust, a fund for rehousing, or Crisis for homeless people.
To use the service, users log on to a shopping website and go to the page that shows the item they want to recommend. They then copy its webpage address into a text box at www.good.ly.
When they press return, good.ly creates a message — or tweet — with the link on the Twitter website. A commercial version of the system is being sold to publishing companies.
Alicia has been shortlisted for The Entrepreneur of the Year at the National Business Awards, together with:
Chris Bond, W H Bond & Sons Ltd Gary & Carmen Lewis, A1 Pharmaceuticals Georgina Tarrant, The Great Outdoor Gym Company Hunter Abbott, Now Group UK, Karen Paterson, Patersons HR and Payroll Solutions Marc Boyan, Miroma Margaret Manning, Reading Room Mike Tobin, TelecityGroup Sara Murray, buddi [Great job, Sara!]
[BTW, Sara was an adviser to Seedcamp when it first set up in 2007]
I just spent 3 weeks working out of New York. You can feel the buzz and the energy even in these difficult times.
There is a lot happening on the East Coast in the web start-up scene.
Just as many of the digital media, real time web start-ups on the west coast choose to set up in San Francisco – rather than Palo Alto – New York and Boston have got their attractions too.
An example isDaylife, a TAG investment of some 4 years vintage. Its hard to imagine them based in a better place than New York, surrounded as they are by the large scale publishers who use their technology.
New York is, after all, media city – all the TV networks are there, IAC is there, the ad agencies, the Investment banks and a few really good tech investors.
Union Square Ventures are as good as any and better than most – with a string of great companies in their stable….and of course Fred Wilson’s blog is required reading (but you can do that from home!)
John Borthwick and Andy Weissman of Betaworks have an original approach to developing Digital businesses – or if you prefer,a new type of media company.
Veteran (or should that be founder) of the Venture Capital industrylike Alan Patricoff is turning his Greycroft Partners towards digital media in a serious way and has already built a portfolio of interesting companies.
Sure, for deeper tech you’ll need to go to Boston – where Atlas and other famous VCs are based – but for content and digital media, NY is hard to beat.
On the other end of the scale, ProvidenceRhode Island, where Moo chose to set up their US distribution and customer service centre has welcomed Moo with open arms and can’t do enough to help. Meetings which Richard and Brian had with the Governor and Mayor indicate their commitment to promoting start-ups in the state.
Dear Lord Drayson, Put £100,000 into 10,000 startups - not £10m into 100!
There has been a lot of chatter about the Government's apparent initiative to make £1bn available for innovative early-stage companies. Apparently, Lord Drayson, the Minister of Science and Innovation in the Department for Universities and Skills is driving this. The BVCA is keen to promote the idea through its influential contacts that this money should be channelled via the large established VC funds.
From where we sit, putting lots more money into the large funds achieves the exact opposite of what I understand the desired the objectives to be.
What is urgently needed in the UK - in order to promote entrepreneurship and encourage innovation - is funding at the very earliest stages.
One of the major drivers for Silicon Valley's success has been the readily available, quickly raised seed capital. Its not uncommon, even in today's funding climate to find start-ups funded with $500K in a matter of weeks by angel syndicates led by an agile tech VC.
There is more than enough capital available once companies have proven their technologies, validated the market need and have real momentum. This capital is NOT venture, it is development or growth capital.
The so-called funding gap has never been adequately filled and the growth in size of the leading funds has forced them to move up the food chain and to back relatively fewer pure start-ups.
We have all been wringing our hands at this gap for many years and in the current environment the gap is noticeably widening.
Seed funds are extremely difficult to make work effectively on the classic 2/20 model since it is important that seed funds invest in a large and diverse portfolio (in order to find the winners) while at the same time need to provide a lot of hand-holding to these companies (implying a larger organisation - more partners).
The BVCA’s position is interesting in that it looks at the whole issue from the 'industry's perspective' – you can’t blame them for that – its their job. Its certainly not being looked at from the entrepreneurs perspective!
We at TAG have had terrific support from some of the large tech VCs but their ability to do many seed fundings is very limited. We need healthy and growing seed capital partners to join us in our quest to find and nurture the next world beaters.
One of the most important and effective vehicles for promoting entrepreneurship in the tech arena in recent years has been Seedcamp - the flood of applicants and the rising quality of these applicants attest to the strength of innovation emanating from Europe.
They are deserving of far greater financial backing.
PS: TAG is an early stage technology investor with 43 investments currently in its portfolio. We invest actively mainly in the UK but also across Europe and in the US.
Forget the high powered talks. What are the wives wearing? The world's press, hot on all the nuances that matter on these occasions, have analysed in some detail what Sarah Brown, Michelle Obama and others are wearing. You can imagine how delighted Astley Clarke were when once again Sarah Brown called for her favourite jewels. In these times of austerity, she chose impeccable design and quality at affordable prices. As CNN says: "Brown also wore a pair of Astley Clarke earrings, according to a spokeswoman from 10 Downing Street. The Astley Clarke Web site sells earrings from less than $100 to more than $10,000".
A great profile article appeared in today's FT featuring Richard Moross. Richard is creating something quite special at Moo. The Moo brand has real flavour, a defined personality - none of this happens by accident. The attention to detail is awesome. One of the benefits of being such a cool brand is that Moo has been able to attract a really good team which is ambitious and committed to continuing to be 'remarkable'.
Tweetdeck now accounts for 13 % of all Twitter users. Tweetdeck is the most popular desktop client for Twitter. Pretty remarkable for a small UK company, months old and until recently, funded partly by donations from users of the site.
Its utility keeps improving with new features and functionality. The latest of these is an application that adds Tweetdeck to Facebook connect. This means that when you send out a message from Tweetdeck, you will be able to send it to Twitter, Facebook or both. A new column gets added to Tweetdeck showing you updates from your facebook friends. If one of your Facebookfriends is online, a green dot appears next to their name and you can initiate a chat via a pop-up window.
Alex Willcock'sImagini has always fallen in the 'intriguing' category. The idea of consumers having a 'visual DNA' is the big idea. What to do with this concept and the 12m profiles which Imagini has collected has always been the issue. Imagini have created some compelling applications which have proven the hypothesis that profiling by visual preference enhances response significantly and is an engaging and entertaining mechanism.Hotels.com's 'Hotel Visualiser' created by Imagini is a superb example of Visual DNA in action.http://hotels.visualdna.com/statement/module/HotelsModule/Hotels_Module.
Others who have used the Imagini approach include: MyDeco, The Army, Nectar, Pepsico and MSN http://visualdna.com/advertisers/
Imagini has just announced a second round funding of $13.5m The additional investment comes from Horizons Ventures, NorthZone Ventures and Atomico. See Techcrunch.
In addition, Imagini has appointed Dermot Halpin, former President of Expedia Europe, as non-executive Chairman and Board Director. Prior to joining Imagini, Dermot was President of Expedia Inc. Europe. Imagini has developed unique technology that offers advertisers, publishers and agencies extremely detailed profiling information about their online target audiences. By offering a series of picture-based quizzes to website users, Imagini’s VisualDNA product creates the opportunity for brands to connect with their customers in a completely new way. The bespoke quizzes can either run on a company’s website, or be embedded into flash, making them easy to distribute through online ad and affiliate networks.
Now Imagini is developing a VisualDNA Plug-In that will allow any website publisher to create their own free online quiz, in order to enhance their site. Imagini also operates a consumer site called youniverse.com which has a reach of nearly 1m unique users per month, and was recently nominated by BBC Click as 'one of the best sites on the web'. For more information about Imagini and its brands, visit www.visualdna.com or www.youniverse.com . Many readers of this blog may not be familiar with Horizons Ventures. "Horizons Ventures is a Hong-Kong based investment company focused on early-stage companies in the field of telecommunications, media & technology. With extensive business experience and reach in Asia, Horizons partners and invests in innovative companies that bring about transformational changes to their focus areas. Successful investments and current portfolio companies include Skype, Facebook, UMPay, NBA China, Joost, Lemonade, doubleTwist and Rfinity."
Moo ships its minicards, business cards, stickers and postcards to over 180 countries. Its biggest market is the USA. It has now reached a size where it makes sense to send the digital files to the US and print and distribute its US orders from there.
The office will be based in Providence, Rhode Island.
Moo, which was seeded by TAG and then funded by Atlas Venture and Index Ventures in 2006, has grown rapidly through quality product innovation and superb attention to detail in the development of its brand. The idea of using your business card to do more than provide your contact co-ordinates but to project your brand, content, products is a simple but strong one. Moo's unique technology allows each card in the pack to be different.
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