Imbibing the spirit of the Valley

From Tuesday, for the rest of the month of June, I will be based in San Francisco. I am hoping that by stretching the day, it will be business as usual for me in the UK (except for face to face meetings) while I meet with partners, entrepreneurs, VCs, Angels, bloggers and folks at Stanford.
Already, the openness and generosity of spirit of people I hardly know has been very encouraging. Rob Young at First Round Capital has offered me a place to camp; Scott Rafer, Lance Cottril and others have made a number of key introductions and the diary is filling up.
TAG does have a number of investments on the west coast and naturally visiting them and meeting with some of the great co-investors we have there will be enlightening.
The companies based on the West Coat (incl 2 in LA) are: Mashery, Lookery, Spotrunner, 60 Frames,OpenX and Academia.
In addition Zemanta and Dothomes have recently made strong forays into the markets there and are considering establishing presence.
There is much to read about the ecosystem that has been developed in the Valley and many other cities are attempting to emulate that special 'sauce' they apparently have. I figured a month may give me some insights.
[A really interesting book dealing with the PRE-web period which describes the way in which Silicon Valley took over from Route 128 - Boston is Regional Advantage by Annalee Saxenian]

Zemanta - enhancing content for thousands of bloggers

Zemanta is more than just an exotic start-up from an unlikely source. They were one of the Seedcamp winners of 2007. At the time the Zemanta founding team of Bostjan Spetic and Andraz Tori - read about them here - moved their entire team (5-6 folks including a biz dev guy who knew the ropes quite well) to London for 3 months and brought the same attitude of complete dedication in going for the total win. They used every opportunity Seedcamp gave them to expand their network, they knew exactly what they wanted and who they wanted to meet.
One of their meetings was with Scott Rafer (Lookery) (who sold Mybloglog to Yahoo) and Oren Michels, of Mashery, who have helped them ever since.
Now Reuters have done a video piece on the company, helping further raise its profile and new releases of the software and new partnerships will be announced soon.
One to watch - and to use, if you create content.

Bostjan and Andraz have hired Bostjan's brother, the experienced Ales to head the company and he has been spending lots of time on the the West Coast, East Coast, all coasts spreading the Zemanta words and striking partnership deals.
Best of luck chaps!
Zemanta is backed by Eden and TAG.
PS: I will be spending the month of June in San Francisco and hope to do my little bit for Zemanta while I'm there.

Reminder: There is exciting stuff happening in Europe

This piece by Reuters is a reminder to the tech investment community that there is good tech innovation coming out of Europe.
Saul's interview draws attention to Seedcamp and the other initiatives.
Lets hope that the current slowdown and change in general investment sentiment does not filter down too strongly to the start-up zone where companies still need decent length runways to establish themselves.
Despite the lower cost of getting tech companies off the ground and the measurable and effective marketing routes available, great companies will still take time, effort and capital to build build them. Patience and persistence is called for.

Have fun spotting fakes - with Koodos

Go to Koodos for authentic top brands at great prices.

Moo wins a Webby

Congratulations to Richard and the team at Moo for being nominated in the retailer category and winning the people's voice Webby award in the services category.
Moo is only one of 5 website winners from the UK this year - the others being: FT, Wagamama, Transport for London and the Discovery Channel.



Its great to win awards from knowledgeable and eminent judges but getting the most votes from an admiring (or loving, in the case of Moo) public is the real accolade.

See what Moo's customers think of the award.

Dopplr meets Mr and Mrs Smith

Dopplr is a service created for frequent travellers who belong to the same social, business or industry network.
If you travel a lot to conferences, meetings or otherwise its amazing how frequently you find that someone in your network happens to be in the same city at the same time - or perhaps you'd miss by a day or two.
The Dopplr site was built early last year and
about 500 heavy travelers from technology and media companies were invited to
road test the software. Since the Dopplr users were logging thousands of air
miles a month, the site quickly became the place for wired
globe-trotters, many of whom are now hooked on checking each others'
movements.

The site is now open but of course permission
to view another member's itinerary is by invitation only.

The service has attracted a lot of attention including a nice piece in Time magazine and is now being adopted by some large corporations as a way of optimising 'face-time' between their wide travelling executives.
Now Dopplr have added a superb, fully integrated partnership (through to booking) with the Boutique Hotel group - Mr and Mrs Smith.



The Hotels recommended by Mr and Mrs Smith may not meet everyone's budget but the direction which Dopplr are going is clear - great functionality for the user and smart monetisation of a super service.
Great job, guys!

OFT Clears LoveFilm Amazon merger

Yesterday the OFT gave the go-ahead for LoveFilm and Amazon to merge their DVD rental operations. Whilst most people expected this, it was by no means a 'slam dunk'.
The OFT said that while it had competition concerns about the merger, which will control 90% of the online DVD market, it concluded that LoveFilm had no incentive to worsen its customer proposition because of the competition it faced from an array of other providers of video content.
LoveFilm in the UK and Netflix in the US have once again demonstrated the power of the web to disrupt well established and entrenched business models - in this case the Video Rental stores.
Lovefilm's CEO Simon Calver says the high street film rentals market has "completely imploded" with 50 per cent fewer stores trading today than two years ago as consumers continue to flock online to hire their movies.
Speaking at the First Tuesday 'Retail Revolution' event in London this week Calver said there are simply more attractive options online for film fans, with the internet now accounting for 45 per cent of the total rentals market, as it provides a platform for more choice, greater convenience and better value-for-money.
Although LoveFilm will have 90% of the DVD on-line rental market after the merger, the OFT clearly recognises that the next disruptive wave could be coming from downloads and other VOD channels.

Read previous TAG posts connected with LoveFilm

3 TAGsters make Red Herring 100

Congratulations to Fizzback, Wonga (currently trading as SameDayCash) and Zemanta for making Red Herring's top 100 in Europe.
All three have strong technology at their heart and are backed by first class VCs:
Fizzback (Advent), Wonga (Balderton) and Zemanta (Eden Ventures).
The full Red Herring list is here.

Zoopla! gets off to a cracking start!

Alex Chesterman, Simon Kain (both ex-Screen Select/Video Island/LoveFilm) and the Zoopla team have put together a really superb service addressing the needs of property owners, buyers, sellers and agents.
Very few subjects in the finance arena touches so many people as residential property. Nor do many generate the emotion, the column inches, the TV hours as does the great house price debate.
Until recently getting 'sold prices' on any property has been difficult or costly for consumers. Sold prices are, after all the one 'stake in the ground'.
Zoopla is a cleverly put together service. Its aim is to create a more transparent property market and to empower users by making information free and easily accessible. Its goal is to become the must-use resource for all data related to the property market.
Its interesting that people often spend time intensively researching the prices of PCs, TVs and Cars but when it comes to Property (by far the biggest investment of all) getting a discount off the asking price is the extent of the due diligence!

Zoopla! offers:

• Current value estimates on ANY home - using a carefully devised algorithm AND consumer generated data
• Sold price data on historic transactions
• Local information, trends and statistics
• For sale listings – agent and direct listings
• TemptMe! – owners set a magic number to tempt others to make offers
• AskMe! – find out anything you want to know

Zoopla! provide data on ALL homes – over 26 million – not just homes for sale. Users can find out about any home – theirs or anyone else’s – and participate in the community by sharing information

It has elements of a community website in the true sense, where everyone can participate by adding content and where usage and contribution helps improve the service.

Not everyone is delighted by this transparancy. Some estate agents, instead of using Zoopla to the full - its rich data set is a great tool for them and they can list their for sale properties pretty easily - seem concerned that their hitherto exculsive position as valuation experts is undermined. Of course, there is no substitute for an actual careful examination of the propeerty itself and Zoopla can only ever be a guide - accurate as it is.

The Telegraph has picked up on Zoopla's potential as a voyeur's paradise. Ever wondered what your boss's house is worth?

Meantime consumers appear to love it.
The site has been live for only 9 weeks and it has:
* Over 50k registered users already
* Over 250k visits so far in March alone
* Over 1m unique property searches so far in March alone

Zoopla is backed by Atlas Venture and TAG with William Reeve and Simon Murdoch as angels and board members.

We LOVE entrepreneurs

My recent post has caused something of a flurry. I am just not used to that. Then again, I don't normally craft my sentences that inelegantly or ambiguously.
I wrote: "Funding business plans from first time entrepreneurs just won't happen anymore!"
What I meant, but didn't spell out clearly enough, was that in my view, first time entrepreneurs who simply have a business PLAN (ie a PowerPoint + spreadsheet) would find it very difficult to get funding. They will need to have built something - a demo - a basic service.
In fact TAG loves first time entrepreneurs and makes a habit of backing them.
If you look down the list of our investments, more than half were first timers.
We particularly like those who can demonstrate the tenacity, invention, persistence and sheer bloody mindedness that has enabled them to get their product together with little or no external funding. Those are the guys who when they do raise cash use it wisely and well.
So, please be assured, TAG would not be one of the originators of Seedcamp or OpenCoffee if we didn't believe in and back first timers!!
Apologies for any confusion caused by a sloppy posting.

Innovation continues apace

Despite the generally uncertain economic climate, we have seen no diminution in the flood of interesting new ventures being launched.
In common with others who are investing in start-ups, I receive at least 2 or 3 propositions per week.
Its undisputable that the bar has been raised pretty high now for new tech companies. There is so much outstanding innovation about and the volume of new businesses is so high that fairly tough criteria are having to be set in order to filter.
For example, the companies we are favouring are those:
1. Founded by 2nd and 3rd time tech entrepreneurs
2. Aspiring to build global businesses with scale
3. With genuinely original ideas which are game changing or a significant advance on current state of play
4. Where the founder(s) have built prototypes or are already demonstrating momentum in customer/consumer adoption
5. Where founders have shown an ability to considerably ‘bootstrap’ the business with very little or no external cash (outside of friends and family).

Funding business plans from first time entrepreneurs just won't happen anymore!

For businesses with some or all of these attributes, there is still a large amount of money available.

The ‘new’ Retail craze: Private Sale

The web’s ability to disrupt well established markets or entrenched trading practices is well documented. The inexorable growth of many sectors of eCommerce at the expense of the high street continues apace.
Every now and then a new form of retailing is ‘invented’ which captures consumers imagination and represents a real threat to established players. The markets which are ripest for attack are those laden with regulation ie those where the freedom to trade in an unfettered way has been severely restricted.
In the past 5 years a new breed of on-line retailer has come out of France which has taken advantage of the years of conditioning which French, Belgian and other European consumers have been subjected to. Vente Privee is generating hundreds of millions of Euros of sales at high levels of profitability and has spawned more than a dozen copies.
Their formula is simple: a product or group of products is offered for sale for a limited period to their ‘members’. The product is usually very good value and is highly desirable.
How different is this from a retailer’s sale? Many retailers in the UK and the US have storecards (ie members) – they are often offered first crack at the bargains.
The difference is the application of rather archaic and restrictive trading laws in France, Belgium and elsewhere. These laws restrict retailers from running sales at any time other than those specified.
The Economist ran an interesting article which explains these laws more fully:

Part of the article reads as follows:
"If all this sounds fundamentally illiberal, that is because it is. One Eurocrat suggests that a key ancestor of many continental bans on unfair trading is a German law from the mid-1930s that sought to stamp out what Nazi officials called aggressive “Jewish” conduct among shopkeepers. But the laws also carry more than a whiff of distrust of capitalism itself. Belgian parliamentary papers from the late 1960s describe indignantly how some shops “deliberately” sell products at a loss to attract customers who might buy other goods at full price, a ploy referred to as “destructive” competition. Such loss-leaders were banned in Belgium in 1971, along with any selling below cost or at “extremely reduced” profit margins. This has kept the lawyers busy as the courts argue over what extremely reduced might mean. And that is why sales in Belgium are such a big deal: though offering discounts is legal at other times of the year, the sales are the only time when Belgian shopkeepers may sell goods at a loss."

Another snippet of news on a closely related topic caught my eye recently:
A union of French bookstores sued Amazon last month over the free shipping on orders over €20, saying that the cost of Amazon's delivery reduced the price of a book to one lower than allowed by the Lang Law. The booksellers were awarded €100,000 in damages in the suit, and Amazon was ordered to enact a delivery charge.
Amazon.com said that it would rather pay €1000 a day in fines than abolish its free shipping on books in France.

Readers of this blog may wonder which TAG company does this piece directly impact since I hardly ever write on subjects not directly concerning portfolio companies.
It is Koodos, the off-price branded fashion eCommerce site which has both open and closed sale platforms and is making quite a name for itself in the UK fashion scene right now. Clearly our belief is that in the US and UK, retailers run sales any day, all day - even pre Xmas - so consumers have different attitudes and are more inclined to buy on the merits of the offer itself.




Get your own partner koodos widget today ...they are starting to appear in many of the best publisher's sites.

Now, MoveMe is Yahoo's 'people's choice'

Yahoo have been running competitions for the best websites of 2007.
This is what they posted today:

"Move Me, this year's People's Choice winner, beat competition from far and wide to take the number one prize, proving that moving doesn't have to be as stressful as we may think.

In addition to taking the People's Choice crown, it also proved a popular site with the expert panel of judges, winning the Innovative category award announced earlier in January.

Move Me aims to take away the stress of moving house with its free Move Planner. The planner takes everything into account from finding reputable removal firms to who you need to notify of your change of address. "

Apparently, there were 18 sites shortlisted by the judges and Moveme took 1 in 6 votes - over 17% of the votes cast.

Congratulations to Mark, Keith, Charlie, Andy, Seb and the team.

In addition to being Yahoo's choice MoveMe announced today that it is the choice of Balderton and Advent too.
The following goes out on the wires today:
Moveme.com, the online home moving specialist, today announced it has secured £3.4million in its second round of funding from Balderton Capital, formerly Benchmark Capital Europe and Advent Venture Partners (“Advent Ventures”). Moveme.com will use the funds for further product development, marketing, recruitment and a new site launch in February.

Moveme.com is a free service which takes the hassle out of moving house in the UK. It helps both renters and buyers to manage the moving process online, giving information on everything from booking a removal company to changing satellite TV subscriptions and re-directing mail. The site is easy to navigate and requires only the date and addresses of the move. It can then provide a bespoke planner in diary-form to streamline the moving process, saving users’ time and money. The site currently has over 40,000 registered users.

Mark Cunningham, co-founder and CEO of Moveme.com, said: “Moving house can be one of the most stressful experiences in people’s lives. Moveme takes away this stress and helps those with very little time arrange all aspects of their house move online.

“We are delighted to partner with two premier investment firms. This latest investment is testament to Moveme.com’s continued success. The proceeds of this funding now give us the resources to re-launch the site and accelerate our plans for growth.“

Commenting on the investment, Sean Seton-Rogers of Balderton Capital, said: “All of us at Balderton are excited to be part of the Moveme team. Each of us has experienced the hassle of moving home and wish Moveme.com had been around to help us. We believe customers are going to love this free service that takes all the hassle away. The company has experienced tremendous growth and Balderton is proud to invest in the company’s expansion.”

Frédéric Court, Partner, Advent Venture Partners, added: “We immediately bought into the founders’ vision of easing the way people move when we first met and seeded Moveme last year. We are delighted that Balderton has joined us in backing Moveme and that the number of users of the service continues to increase rapidly.”

Sean Seton-Rogers of Balderton Capital has joined the Moveme.com Board of Directors, alongside Frédéric Court from Advent Ventures and Robin Klein from The Accelerator Group. The company is also backed by Brent Hoberman, co-founder of Lastminute.com.

MoveMe wins another award

If winning awards was the key to success, MoveMe has certainly unlocked that particular door.
After being shortlisted for Yahoo!’s Finds of the Year 2007 campaign, moveme.com has just been chosen by the judges as a winning site of their category in innovation. There is also a People Choice award as this does not take place until 16th Jan 08 so get voting now on Yahoo! Finds.

Move Me (www.moveme.com) aims to take away the stress of moving house with its free Move Planner. The planner takes everything into account from finding reputable removal firms to who you need to notify of your change of address. The judges particularly liked the user interface and design of Move Me. They also described the calendar as a brilliant tool which set the site apart from the other entrants.


This award follows the one they got from New Media Age back in June for the best new business.

MoveMe are working hard to get the latest version of their site launched this month but already many thousands of home movers have reduced their moving headaches by using www.moveme.com and the flow of complimentary comments from users back up the judgement of those who have chosen Moveme from the many great new sites launched in 2007.

The Seedcamp Video

The concept of Seedcamp is not difficult to explain. What is tougher is to convey the spirit of the enterprise.
Seedcamp have recently published its video. Its a 10 minute piece edited from 80 hours of film which is worth the watch if you have an interest in the entrepreneurial scene in Europe and what practical steps people are taking to fuel it in the tech arena.


The filming, editing and production was done by Bonney and Klein (the Klein being Anthony Klein, my nephew). This post would have been up a month or two ago but I was waiting the the guys to get their website up - to give them a well-deserved plug.
Alex and Anthony are very talented film-makers who are applying their talents in a number of creative ways.
For example: FilmWorks is a film-making ‘boot camp’ developed by
Bonney and Klein Productions for companies wanting interesting and exciting training and team-building programs.

Bonney and Klein did a superb job on 80 hours of Seedcamp footage - thanks guys!

APAX and GMG bag WGSN as part of their £1bn EMAP buy

I don't normally comment on non-TAG companies but I felt compelled to write something about one of my favourite digital companies, WGSN.
WGSN (originally Worth Global Style Network!) describes itself as 'the world's leading online research, trend analysis, and news service for the fashion and style industries'. It was a pioneer in subscription based information services on line at a time when major clients required a dedicated satellite dish to receive it because the web was inadequate.
WGSN was launched by the brothers Julian and Marc Worth in 1998 and was sold to EMAP in October 2005 for £140m.
Amidst the myriad properties that APAX and Guardian Media Group (GMG) have acquired this nugget which from EMAP's public statements in March and July this year indicated was continuing to perform ahead of its plan.
I wouldn't be surprised if WGSN could recover half of the entire purchase price for Bidco. Another coup for Stephen Grabiner and his team!
APAX and GMG both have strong digital credentials and will certainly understand WGSN a lot better than EMAP did and its potential should be unleashed.
My own connections with WGSN go back to when I introduced the service to Arcadia and it became WGSN's first significant client.
Later, Marc and Julian were very keen for TAG to invest but we were never able to come to terms. Ah well ....

More Flesh on the bones ...

Apologies to the few readers of this blog that my previous post announcing the sale of Agent Provocateur was thin on detail.
You'll understand that confidentiality rules apply and one has to wait for details to enter the public domain before commenting or confirming.
On the numbers provided, a sale price exceeding £60m looks very full but the business is well primed for a classic retail rapid roll-out. The aggregate, consolidated pre-tax profits for the year ended March 07 (accounts were filed last week) were £1.9m but quickly heading north.
The brand is capable of being a global luxury brand of sizable proportions.
Many more stores are planned but the role of digital media and its viral effect has been a significant factor in the brand being far bigger than the business at this stage.

Whilst both founders remained in the business, rapid expansion was impossible. The solution found is one that is perfect for the business and the strong management team that has developed over the past 5 years. 3i have made a very good buy.

Trust the Sunday Times to add the colour - and there is a lot of it.

From TAG's point of view a very successful exit but one which we would not have sought had the unfortunate breakup between the founders occurred a year ago.

A welcome exit from AP

Early yesterday morning, TAG sold its interest in Agent Provocateur.[See FT piece which is sort of accurate]. See also 3i announcement.
TAG held its stake via an investment syndicate which it put together in October 2002 to acquire 20% of AP from the founders. At the time the company had 4 shops.
This brings to an end a most fascinating and involving investment about which we have posted on previous occasions. MBE rejected, MBEs awarded,Kate Moss for AP.
FT.com featured the sale today. I particularly like this bit: "The last published accounts for Agent Provocateur show the business made a pre-tax loss of £207,831 for the year to March 2006 on turnover of £8.9m.
Mr Corré, who warned that he did not worry about financial detail, said he thought the following year had seen the company make a “profit of about £2m” and “£15m or £20m turnover”.
No doubt there will further column inches in the coming days. This company has a penchant for headlines.

Digivate becoming a serious digital agency

Digivate is one of TAG's oldest investments. Its positively mature. TAG invested about 7 years ago. Far from getting a 7 year itch, we're pretty excited about the way its shaping up. Profitable and cash generating from its core business of building eCommerce websites on its own open source platform, Digivate has fairly recently extended its activities beyond eCommerce and database building/email marketing into search engine marketing (SEM) and particularly into SEO.

Their approach to SEO is comprehensive. Understanding the internal structures of websites through building dozens of them certainly helps but adding a really good understanding of how contextual links works and building forums, blogs and developing (writing) appropriate content for clients all go to deliver a compelling solution.

Digivate have developed their own sophisticated SEO evaluator tool that emulates the Google search algorithm and breaks down the relevant site to identify the specific areas where improvements can be made. Its tools can also provide detailed reports of competitors' weaknesses to provide an advantage for the most competitive search terms.

The next step for Digivate is to extend their graphical and UI (User Interface)design capability

The heritage of the founders lies in catalogue mail order, direct marketing, database design and development. It shows.

Digivate clients include leading high street retail groups, catalogue companies, new internet services and financial services companies.

Imagini announces its funding

Imagini the company that introduced or 'created' visual DNA with such compelling effect has announced its Series A funding round.

Imagini definitely falls in the 'intriguing' category and a year ago left many potential funders scratching their heads as to where the company would ultimately go.

By April 2m users had completed their visual profiles in a matter of months (now well over 4m) and Imagini was seen in a somewhat different light and wrapped up a very interesting group of investors fairly quickly.

Now Imagini has developed a super facebook application called Youniverse which promises further engagement with the concept of visual DNA.

Victor Keegan has written intelligently about the company in the Guardian. This is worth a read if you're still scratching your head.

Backers include Atomico, North Zone Ventures and TAG

"Bec Clarke’s website has revolutionised the jewellery world."

Today's Sunday Times style magazine ran a 2 page article on Rebecca Clarke and her Astley Clarke Jewellery business.

This type of coverage is just what new, young eCommerce businesses need and Astley Clarke are well aware of the role that PR plays in establishing credibility and inspiring trust. With prices ranging from £35 to £6000 trust is vital and the Sunday Times together with the many other column inches which Rebecca has got is certainly helping.

Congratulations, Becs!

Direct .... from China

One of the biggest impacts on the world economy and probably the biggest factor in keeping inflation low in the Western Economies has been the emergence of China as a world's manufacturer of a huge range of quality goods.
The massive importers of goods from China such as Wallmart own dozens of factories there. All the leading retailers have buying offices and visit regularly.
Now medium-sized and small scale retailers, wholesalers and eBay traders have access directly to Chinese manufacturers and traders via DH Gate.
DH Gate have solved the problem of finding, sifting the goods on offer but more importantly have developed an escrow system backed up by a buyers rating system (similar to eBay)which gives buyers complete security that the goods will be as ordered and that payment is only released on satisfaction.
DH Gate have set up a dispute resolution process to deal with transaction problems if and when they arise.
All in all a thoroughly thought through business which is already generating multiple millions of dollars of revenue monthly and listing 2.5million items. All this in only 2 years.
Accelerator invested alongside our friends at Atlas Venture.

Glasses Direct takes on the giant opticians

It is very interesting to note the aggressive price stance being taken in the latest Specsavers press campaign.

Full pages featuring "A massive range for less than £40" - at the "UK's most trusted Optician"

[Source: Readers Digest Most Trusted Brands Survey 2007].

I think this is all very flattering for Glasses Direct, the tiny eCommerce upstart founded by Jamie Murray Wells and backed by Index and TAG amongst others.

A concerted campaign by the UK's leading opticians may slow Glasses Direct down a little but a price war is probably the last thing the high street operators need right now.

The fact is that as more and more consumers start to understand that there is relatively little mystery in buying subscription glasses on the web then Glasses Direct with their - "from the factory to the consumer" approach - is likely to keep taking market share.

Jamie has built his business on a lot more than price. The range is expanding rapidly to embrace fashion products and the service and quality that he is offering is superb.

Glasses is demonstrating a most interesting disruptive approach to a market which has paid little attention to price until recently.

Koodos using FeedCommerce

It is noticible that more and more user actions are being accomodated within the browser - not requiring new web pages to load. This undoubtedly leads to a more satisfying user experience and providing greater stickiness (to use a web 1.0 term) to publishers.
This phenomenon is now moving towards eCommerce and Koodos is an early adopter of this technology with the help of Nooked. Click on the grid below and see that you don't need to leave the publishers page to get product descriptions and price. Only at the point of transaction do you call upon the Koodos site (by all means do so and place an order).

Koodos is an ideal ecommerce application because it specialises in scarce inventory which changes daily so the feed technology keeps the offer current, exciting and relevant.
[Hot tip: If you do go to Koodos before 22nd August, make sure you register for their private sale of Diesel Jeans at only £29.99!]

Edgeio (another company in the TAG portfolio) has recently launched its paid content network enabling publishers to have their content paid for 'within the browser'.

A feature that makes it easier for consumers and publishers is one we are likely to see much more of soon.

If you know of any really great applications of FeedCommerce please comment.

Four out of Ten!!

I sincerely hope the Guardian Newspaper know how to pick winners - in the tech start-up space anyway!
They recently ran a series of articles headed Top 10 Dotcoms to watch. Their picks were:(in alphabetical order)

Dopplr
Social networking for frequent travellers.

Extate
Intelligent search of property websites.

Garlik
Online identity management.

MindCandy
Alternate reality gaming.

Moo
Print on demand: cards, notes and stickers.

OnOneMap
Map-based property search.

Touch Local
Local directory services.

Trusted Places
User-created local information.

Zopa
Peer to peer lending.

Zubka
Recruitment 2.0.

UK based only - of course.

Like all top 10's its bound to be controversial although since TAG is invested in 4 of the 10, we naturally hope they have it about right!

Fizzback shortlisted ...

Fizzback has been shortlisted for in the 'Best Use of Technology' category for the 2007 UK Startup Awards.
This category is for companies which have applied technology to provide an advantage in a traditional market or have come up with a totally new product, solution or service.

Fizzback's idea is brilliantly simple. Consumers comment or provide feedback using digital channels - primarily mobile phones using SMS. The service provider has their finger on the pulse of customers issues and comments in real time - while they are experiencing the service.
Fizzback enables consumer facing companies to capture instant feedback from their customers and convert real time insights into improved acquisition and retention. Some of Fizzbacks clients use the service to identify 'at risk' customers and initiate intervention or communication within minutes.

The powerful Fizzback engine uses artificial intelligence to interpret free form comments and instantly analyses and interprets the feedback delivering it its clients in a format that ensures they receive a continuous and real-time view of their customers’ satisfaction levels, issues and priorities. This is done via a web interface dashboard.

Feedback can give companies a real insight into what their customers are experiencing at the front line. Senior management can’t possibly patrol all their shop floors, train carriages, or hotel foyers. So they rely on feedback to tell them what’s going on. And yet it is often something that companies seem to dread receiving.

If you get to a customer quickly, at the point of the experience, you can not only stop that customer defecting to a competitor, but can actively convert them to loyal advocates. But you have to know that they’re having a bad experience in the first place.

Traditional methods of capturing customer feedback are deficient in many ways. Questionnaires, on or offline, are notoriously unreliable for gathering a real understanding of customers’ future intentions. The feedback form that tells you that a guest at a hotel was ‘satisfied’ with the service, but is it enough to get them to return? What would have changed that view to ‘excellent’?


Fizzback’s research shows that companies using this system have reported a 67 per cent drop in issues and complaints from customers (up to 73 per cent in the retail sector) coming via other methods such as letters of complaint. The immediacy of feedback stops disgruntled customers defecting to a competitor. Some companies use it to identify common problems, for example, with suppliers. If they receive a number of complaints about a particular supplier, it may be that the contract needs reviewing.

Some of the companies using Fizzback - on trial or as part of their ongoing operations and customer experience monitoring are:
Barclays Bank, The National Health, Phones4U, National Express, Bourne Leisure, First Capital Connect.

Interested in reading further, read DM Weekly article

Seedcamp Sprouting

Saul referred to Seedcamp on Thursday last at the Library House Event, Essential Web.
The Seedcamp website went live on the same day and some of blogs have picked up on the story - as did the Guardian on-line.
There is quite a lot that isn't conventional about Seedcamp and perhaps this post will help to elucidate.

The theme of why we need to keep seeding European start-ups is a well covered one.

Like the Opencoffee Club, Seedcamp is essentially designed to promote entrepreneurship in the tech community in a down-to-earth, direct and practical way.
Like Opencoffee it is aims to be collaborative, inclusive and participative.

The idea is simple, Seedcamp will help to kick-start the best of European ventures through the provision of a small amount of money but more importantly by providing direct access to the best mentors in the ecosystem.

The website explains it in some detail.

Seedcamp will be owned by a wide range of VCs, Successful Entrepreneurs and Professionals.
Announcements will follow soon of those who are backing it.

In just a week and a bit - since Essential Web - rapid progress has been made on a few fronts.

1) 3 days ago, we had 12 fully submitted applications and 96 signed-up users. I am amazed at this given the application form only went up 4 days previously.

2) We have a number of backers on board. Our plan is to make a public announcement about our 1st group of investor/supporters in the coming week.

3) We started up a Facebook group around Seedcamp. There are 411 members today! Word-of-mouth and blogging is very active as we can tell by the links on our website and the emails we are getting

If you think you can add to Seedcamp as Investor/Sponsor/Mentor or you have a business plan which needs support please go to www.Seedcamp.com and contact us via the blog or the email.

If you can help spread the word, that too will benefit the community.

Moveme wins best new business from NMA!

Congratulations to Mark, Keith and the team at Moveme! This is a real accolade. They were up against some very stiff competition. Also shortlisted were Oodle and Viagogo.
I report from NMA verbatim below - the links are mine.
Best New Business
"Moveme.com is a specialist website providing a support and planning service for home movers. Its objective is to be involved with 20% of the approximately 500,000 house moves a month.

Launched in June 2006 as themovingserivce.com, the site was rebranded and relaunched in January 2007 as moveme.com. The company has attracted strong backers including venture capitalist firm Advent Venture Partners, seed investor The Accelerator Group and serial entrepreneur Brent Hoberman.

The site features a resource for the booking of removal services, utility suppliers and the automatic generation of letters informing appropriate parties of your change of address. Moveme is launching an active push in brand-building and awareness campaigns over the summer, but currently the only spend beyond software development is in the form of PPC with Google and partnerships with Findaproperty.com. Moveme.com also intends to launch a nationwide marketing, PR and viral campaign to drive traffic to the site and establish it as the main player within the online property moving market space.

Currently moveme.com caters predominantly for purchase moves, but is in the process of developing solutions and software specifically targeted for rental and student moves. The company also plans to offer a white-label service to compliment the existing web strategies of the leading estate agents and property portals.

According to a recent GP Bullhound Research report covering the online lead-generation sector, the home-move market will be worth in excess of £2bn globally in 2007. This is a growth rate exceeding 70% annually, making it the fastest growing segment of online advertising.

The judges said that the service had a great interface and practical useful tools, and that it was clear where the founders were driving the business as a facilitator."

Oodle was launched in US in early 2005 but is new to the UK and Viagogo is a UK version of Stubhub in the US.
Moveme is an original and clever solution to the universal challenge of moving home.

Wonga.com emerges from stealth mode

Wonga.com came out of stealth mode on Thursday at the Library House Event, Essential Web. Wonga offers same day cash to borrowers. In fact the alpha trials demonstrate that transferring cash to approved on-line applications should take no more than 30 minutes.
The system that Errol Damelin, Jonty Hurwitz and the team have developed has about 20 complex system integrations but using the power and speed of the web makes the whole experience for the user clean, simple, clear and quick.
Wonga is a simple solution for personal debt management, designed for anyone who occasionally wants a short term, unsecured, same-day cash loan to help them out when unexpected expenses or urgent cash requirements arise.
Wonga aims to build social contracts and trust ratings with all its customers, as well as carrying out standard and innovative credit checks. Once their trust rating is fully established, Wonga allows its customers to borrow up to £1,000 at any one time.
We also announced the first funding round of $6m for Quickbridge Ltd (the owner and developer of Wonga.com) by Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark Capital Europe).
Read some of the blogs referring to the announcement here: mashable, e-consultancy, venturebeat and P2P Banking

Daylife raises its Series A in London

Upendra Shardanand's Daylife in which TAG was the largest seed investor back in July 2005, has raised $8m from Balderton Capital (previously Benchmark) and Arts Alliance.
See FT.com's coverage.
The company's news aggregation tool, which sits on partners' websites, allows customers to search for a term and see results from articles, blog comments, pictures and other online sources displayed similarly to a newspaper front page rather than the results lists favoured by Google and other search engines.

This round brings the amount raised for Daylife to around $11m.

Ynon Kreiz of Balderton and Adam Valkin of Arts Alliance said the group had sought European financing because it was a global business with customers on both sides of the Atlantic.

From the outset, Upe and his team have determinedly positioned Daylife as global with its news gathered from every corner of the world and seeing it from every angle.

Upendra was one of the founders of Firefly, an early online community site and recommendation engine sold to Microsoft in 1998.

Can Getty do for music what it does for images?

Getty Images are going to start making a real difference to the way in which film, TV and web creatives source their music in future.
In our multimedia world with digital content being becoming richer all the time and being distibuted across so many platforms, Getty has made what looks like a profound strategic move. They announced the acquisition of Pump Audio last week for around $42m.
For years, Pump Audio has been providing major media companies such as MTV, NBC, CBS and the BBC with a proven, legal way to access great independent music for their commercial productions.
Getty will help Pump make this same licensing solution directly available to everyone.
Getty Images now has a platform that allows customers to license pre- cleared, original professional quality music to enhance their broadcast, film, video, advertising and online projects. The music will, over time, be integrated into the various web sites of Getty Images, as well as being made available by the sales force of Getty Images.
"Getty Images has powered the forward momentum of the visual content industry over the past 12 years, delivering most of the major innovations and bringing new opportunities to our partners and customers. Today there is wide agreement in the music industry that the market for commercial music licensing is fragmented, inefficient and confusing, just as the imagery market once was,” said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images. “We are confident that bringing our digital distribution, e-commerce expertise and our customer relationships, as well as our understanding of intellectual property, to the music industry will have a similarly positive impact.”
There have been a series of moves on Getty's part to expand beyond photography and into the digital media sector. Last month, it launched a new division to license video footage and other multimedia content, and over the past few months has made a string of acquisitions, from amateur photography site Scoopt to fast growing photographer driven portals like iStockphoto.

MBE rejected

No sooner had I posted with pride the recognition that Agent Provocateur had received in the award of MBEs to the founders, than Joe Corre decided that he didn't want his. What followed was a tsunami of media coverage the likes of which brands cannot buy.
The entire front page plus page 2 of the Independent plus every other major newspaper plus news at ten on the BBC etc etc. Our press office received dozens of interview requests and emails through the website (most by far supporting Joe's views) came flooding in.

The fact that Serena was delighted to accept hers and that Joe made clear these were his views and not the company's has helped the brand's positioning significantly.
Agent Provocateur's brand is a blend of Joe's anarchism and Serena's style and glamour.

Business and politics don't mix ...come to think of it nothing much mixes well with politics.

AP founders awarded MBEs

What a wonderful tribute to Joe and Serena to be appointed MBEs for their services to fashion in today's honours list.
They started Agent Provocateur in 1994 from a tiny store in Broadwick Street, Soho. "When we began Agent Provocateur we wanted to create this beautiful place that only existed in our imagination. We had always hoped something similar existed somewhere else, but it didn’t."
Rees and Corré introduced their vision of lingerie avoiding the prudery that insists on categorising anything to do with sex as sleazy or smutty. The aim was to create an availability of high quality designer lingerie with creative flair.
TAG invested in 2002 when the company had 4 stores and was about to open in New York.
Today we have 29 stores (20 own stores and 9 franchised) in 13 countries with many more planned.
The website has been named "the world's sexiest site" by Vogue and it is the company's largest single store - outstripping Selfridges London, New York, Las Vegas and the rest.
AP's most recent award was for New Fragrance of the year for Maîtresse given at the Fifi awards in April. The FiFi Awards are put on annually by The Fragrance Foundation to honor the fragrance industry's creative achievements and is considered the 'Oscars' of the fragrance industry.


The couple are supported in the building of the brand by an oustanding management team built up over the last 5 years who are infused with passion for the brand and what it stands for.

Saul on why Europe needs to keep seeding

Saul Klein was one of the speakers at the recent NextWeb conference in Amsterdam. His theme was one that is talked about regularly in the Euro tech venture scene. It co-incided neatly with the LastFm exit helping re-inforce Europe's credentials in enabling the creation of global tech companies
Take a look at Fred Destin's blogpost on the subject.
In addition to the debate, there is a lot of practical action going on. In case you haven't noticed, The Open Coffee Club, started by Saul is now an international phenomenon.
Now established in 50 cities in the world, it was envisaged only 14 weeks ago as a means of stoking the European ecosystem. London alone has 579 members.

Saul's presentation at NextWeb is here.

Moo celebrates one year in MooStyle

It was a party disguised as a product launch - or is it the other way around?
In typical Moo fashion they organised a MeetUp in SF on Tuesday where an "exhibition of cool MOO stuff, loads of freebies, a rockin' DJ and drinks" were available.
to customers, partners, friends and fan of MOO.
Following the success of the moo minicards, the company has launched the Moo NoteCard. This clever bit of paper design is a greetings/note/invitation/ card which can be mailed (16 envelopes provided in the pack of 16 cards) or desk displayed using the folded section.
Of course, the NoteCard can be fully personalised by uploading pictures or graphics from your hard drive or Flickr stream.

Royal Mail benefits from the Web

While email is killing - or has killed - peer to peer letter communication, many web companies seem to be more than making up for the damage.
Amazon has given an enormous boost to the Royal Mail's parcel delivery service but the biggest impact to its letters business has undoubtedly been the on-line DVD rental services.
The Evening Standard's This is London in a piece about film state that "LoveFilm will reportedly soon become the Royal Mail's single biggest client".
Personally, I am a little sceptical of this statement the source of which is not attributed.
Yes, with an estimated 1m discs going to and from LoveFilm (Royal Mail gets paid there and back) each week its pretty good business for Her Majesty's postal service.

No wonder other home delivery services like Deutche Post are eyeing Royal Mail's UK stranglehold.

Royal Mail delivers 84 million items every working day and has a network of 14,376 post offices. Revenue for the year was £9.056 billion, and profits before tax were £312 million.

The Local Globe in action

When Saul coined the name LocalGlobe he showed profound understanding of the web.
We are seeing some really exciting examples of how this all works in practice.

Stardoll [for those unfamiliar, watch eNews on the Stardoll phenomenon], is now available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Hungarian. A look at the Alexa rankings for Stardoll shows how the effort of localising is paying off.
Another great example is TAG's latest announced investment, Netlog.
Netlog is the least known of the social networking giants see LocalGlobe's brief piece on it recently and the press announcement of the Index led round.
Countries where Netlog sites have been established include UK, Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Romania and there is a real local flavour to each. You'd expect a user generated site to be so but Netlog have really facilitated this process.

Netlog Facts: 18.1 Million Members
2 Billion Monthly Pageviews
25 Million Unique Monthly Visitors

It will be interesting to see how Imagini evolves since it uses few words and images tend to be fairly universal in their interpretation. Certainly the 2m VisualDNA profiles which Imagini have collected will throw up some interesting national differences.

Little Moo has not started localising but the comment from one of their customers, Dennis Howlett says a lot:
"Along with a certain scepticism that I might not receive the product given I live in the back of beyond.
Imagine my surprise when my Moo cards turned up - exactly on time.
Although Moo is a tiny company, it has reached 143 countries. A perfect example of the Global Microbrand."

In the big Euro/Valley debate the one advantage Europe and London in particular has is its awareness and readiness to internationalise and localise.
Of course localising is not simply a question of translation it often implies local customer service and cultural nuances.
As broadband penetration grows globally, we are truly seeing the WORLDWIDE WEB emerge.
Let me know of other Euro companies really doing a great job at localising...

Interested in eCommerce? Keep an eye on Digivate

A relatively low key part of the TAG portfolio, Digivate is demonstrating clearly that deep domain knowledge wins in the eCommerce agency space. The founders, Lysander, Will and Mark were all schooled in direct-marketing, database analysis, catalogues and merchandising while at Innovations together. They were all involved in Innovations doing the first UK consumer transaction on the web in May 1995.
They left to set up Digivate and built an eCommerce platform using open source technology. This proved to be a great long-term decision. It was tough in the early years to persuade larger clients who wanted IBM or Microsoft platforms. Not today!
Digivate has expanded its offer from Managed eCommerce service to eMarketing in all its manifestations and their deep knowledge of how to get and keep customers and how to drive conversion, analyse email marketing campaigns really does deliver.
Their latest client is the Pier - site by Digivate not yet released.

Their etails newsletter is worth reading if you are interested in eCommerce - they always have interesting observations about what is happening in the US and they watch the multi-channel retail scene closely.
I'm delighted for the team that they are growing so well, are very profitable AND that they are paying their shareholders good dividends!

moveme starts buzzing ...

MoveMe has attracted a lot of media attention recently. This morning's page 3 of the business section of the Sunday Times is just the start of what we are expecting to be some great coverage for the service.
MoveMe has developed a simple to use but comprehensive planning tool for managing house/flat moves.
With databases and prepared letters covering everything from parking permits, utilities, removal companies, credit cards and the dozens of other chores one has to do - this site is a real godsend to people moving home. The testimonials coming in from the users of the site attest to the fact that MoveMe is a really useful web service.

Spotplex - a better Digg?

We at TAG are betting it is. We've made our 4th US investment with our participation in a seed round of Doyon Kim's Spotplex.

The others are: Daylife, Edgeio and Spotrunner.

Spotplex provides internet users with real-time ranking of blog articles based on actual impression count.
In other words, you can find what is the hot news today, this week, or this month in real time at Spotplex. This is not a list of articles people recommended or voted for, but a list of articles read most in a given timeframe.
Bloggers can track and analyze their blog traffic with a simple Spotplex code or widget. Not just how many people visit the blog, they can even find which articles people read most and how many people read them. Whenever an article of the blog is read, it will show up at Spotplex in real-time and get noticed by Spotplex users.

Techcrunch broke the Spotplex story 6 weeks ago and other commentators like Dave Parker at Daily Internet News seem to like the approach that the company has taken which avoids the probelms that Digg has had in relation to 'gaming' site popularity ratings.
To overcome the problem of the posts from large blogs dominating the popularity stakes in the early months, Spotplex have introduced a neat 'relative measure' as well as an absolute.

With Blogging showing no signs of slowing down [BBC have an interesting article on the subject], Spotplex is aiming at a huge market.

Technorati is now tracking more than 60 million blogs, of which it believes around 55% are 'active' - updated at least every three months....and Chinese is now the third most popular language in blogosphere.

Astley Clarke - Luxury Brand of Tomorrow!

The champagne corks were popping down in Notting Hill when Astley Clarke was named one of the luxury 'Brands of Tomorrow'.

Walpole (the British luxury brands association) put together a panel consisting of John Ayton, Chairman of Links of London, Annoushka Ducas, Creative Director of Links, Sarah Elton, former MD of Smythsons, Lucia Van Der Post -luxury commentator and Demetra Pinsent, strategist at McKinsey to create The Walpole Brands of Tomorrow Programme.

This was announced in The Sunday Times this weekend past.

Congratulations to Becca Clarke and team on yet another accolade. The last of which was being named 'on-line shop of the month' by Marie Claire.

Koodos starts taking shape ...

Miriam and her team have really started to get Koodos on the fashion map. Getting the top luxury brands onto Koodos was always going to be a challenge but in the last 3 weeks some really big names have joined and they are now getting loads of inbound enquiries.
Featured on Koodos right now are Gucci, Prada, Chloe etc and great British brands such as Amanda Wakely, Georgine Gooman and the like.

The new Koodos Blog will help provide a point of view on fashion too.

Interestingly, the biggest issue from the consumer's perspective appears to be: "Are these brands genuine?" I guess the prices challenge the idea that they are the real thing and unfortunately conterfeiting in this market is rife.

Koodos has also introduced the notion of the 'private sale' to the UK. Already very popular as a retail format in France, Koodos is pioneering it in the UK.

Look out for some great promotions over the coming week and a site makeover, following early learnings will also be coming soon.