UK Budget - not all bad for Entrepreneurs

With thanks to Graeme Burnham of Complete Tax Solutions .....[the comments in italics are mine]
The highlights extracted from the Chancellor's 2011 Budget are as follows:


· Corporation tax rate is reduced to 26% [for those making profits]
· EIS relief will increase to 30% from 20% [Great boost for Angels]
· Entrepreneurs relief lifetime allowance has doubled to £10m [Excellent news for founders]
· Non-domiciles may be able to remit income/capital gains without
charge if invested in qualifying businesses [haven't examined the detail but this could bring a lot of non - dom cash into the eco-system]
· The business rate – relief holiday for small businesses will be
extended to October 2012 [All helps]
· Small businesses (less than 10 employees) will face less
regulation [must be good - again, lets see the detail]
· The small companies R&D tax credits will rise from 175% to 200%
to 225% [Excellent!]
· Short life asset allowance to increase to 8 years from 4 years 
· National insurance will (at some point in time) be combined
with income tax
· Gift aid will be simplified and administration will be taken
on-line
· A 10% reduction in the inheritance tax rate if 10% of a legacy
is given to charity to be implemented in April 2012

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• Budget Day 2011 MANY TANKS, GEORGE (thesun.co.uk)
• Tax change 'to benefit charities' (bbc.co.uk)
• Osborne cuts Corporation Tax rate (bbc.co.uk)
• Budget 2011: Chancellor George Osborne pledges to boost 'growth and jobs' (menmedia.co.uk)
• Budget at glance (menmedia.co.uk)

London is a magnet for talent -update

Image via Wikipedia

March 16th: UK Government introduces new visa rules ..... http://goo.gl/rKfOc


At a recent meeting at Fizzback, I became aware of the large number of non-Brits on the team. They may be an exception because after all they do a fair amount of semantic analysis using natural language processing in half a dozen languages but 38 out of a total of 66 Fizbackers were born outside of the UK. 
That's 58%.


The non-UK nationalities represented are:

AMERICAN, ARGENTINIAN, CHINESE, DANISH, DUTCH, GEORGIAN, GERMAN, GREEK, INDIAN, INDONESIAN, IRISH, ISRAELI, IRANIAN, NIGERIAN, PORTUGESE, RUSSIAN, SWISS, SWEDISH, SERBIAN, SPANISH

That's pretty impressive - don't you think?

Looking around the London office of Index, there are only 6 British born - out of a total complement of 18.

At a time when Governments around the world are pushing for enterprise, start-ups, small businesses and technology to lead their economies back to health, its more important than ever that talented people who want to participate in a country's economy are encouraged and allowed to come.

Organisations like Seedcamp and SeedSummit have been lobbying the UK Government to make non-EU Visas easier to obtain to allow this very phenomenon to flourish. This is important and I hope that the strong words that the PM is using about enterprise and growth extends to ensuring that talent wanting to come to the UK will find it easy to do so.

[update, 16th March 2011 ...

Government 'rolls out the red carpet' for entrepreneurs and investors ...http://goo.gl/rKfOc ]

Just this past week, Techcunch ran a story entitled "Why Silicon Valley Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Returning Home"

London clearly has some extra-ordinary pulling power despite the weather (which by comparison with many places is not that bad anyway)....and is producing some super companies. Saul wrote an interesting piece on this a couple of months ago.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron said yesterday: "Where there has been an aversion to risk, there needs to be boldness.

"I'm telling you today that your job under this government is not to frustrate local people and local ideas, it is to enable them."

If the Government can follow through on this rhetoric and continue to foster and develop an enterprise culture, there is no reason why London will not continue to be the startup capital of Europe.

If you have some stats on % of non-Brits in your London based startup, let me know.
Perhaps someone needs to pull together a comprehensive data set.

Related articles

• Seedcamp Announces a Sizzling slate of Startups for Mini Seedcamp London (seedcamp.com)
• Seedcamp London 2011 - the Teams (seedcamp.com)
• Could the UK build a Y Combinator? (broadstuff.com)
• The London List - London startups exceeding $10m in annual revenues (eu.techcrunch.com)
• Why you should apply to Seedcamp in 2011 (seedcamp.com)

Best Practice - series

Yesterday morning - March 4th - I received the fist of the monthly stats packages from a TAG portfolio company - for analysing February's results. In the next day or two, I'll get the full set of management accounts - P&Ls, Balance Sheet, commentary, the works. That's really good.

That same morning, I received the accounts package from another profitable and well run company - but for January.
It made me think about the very privileged position I have in being able to compare and contrast and draw conclusions as to best practice across a whole range of companies at different stages, with different priorities.
Having made more than 70 early stage investments in my 15 years of active investment, there is a certain pattern recognition which emerges and which I'm going to attempt to crystallise as 'Best Practice Tips'.

The best way to disseminate these - in the hope that they'll be useful to some - is to 'tweet a tip' every day.

The output will not be organised in sections or subject heads - nor will they necessarily follow logically one to the other but will be randomly put out - as they occur.

Two tweets have already gone out 'on test' - and I intend persisting with them as long as people are commenting.
Sometimes the 'best practice tip' (bpt) will be tough to get into 140 characters without being too obtuse or cryptic, in which case, deck.ly will do the job.

The 2 tips put out thus far are:
Tip1: know your cash balance every day
Tip 2:Get management accnts out by 10th of month,closing KPIs on the 1st. So Feb KPIs ar… (cont)http://deck.ly/~VZ17o 


Want to keep getting the best practice tips? Follow me on Twitter ... @robinklein

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Great Entrepreneurs focus on their mission rather than their competitors

I’ve noticed a tendency of some early stage tech companies to be excessively distracted by what their competitors are doing, or what they think they are doing.

Understanding the landscape and differentiating your product – or approach to the market - is of course essential and there could be a number of areas of head-on competition. Competing for key words on Google as key distribution channels are examples of these.
  

But, the overriding focus of the CEO must be the customer/user not the competitor. 

The questions to be answered are:

• ·         What is our real mission
• ·         What would make a better experience
• ·         How can we deliver our service/product better, cheaper, faster?  Than we are currently doing.

My own experiences have brought home the importance of this focus.

Joe Corre, co-founder of Agent Provocateur, never looked at a competitor’s product!   I well remember the occasion that a new member of the design/marketing team went out and bought a pile of competitor’s bras for price, quality comparison.  Joe absolutely flipped and practically threw both the offending garment and the unfortunate member of staff out of the office.  He and Serena, his partner, had our clear vision of what the product should be like and they wanted no distraction of that vision.

 This may be extreme but during my 5 years I was associated with AP I was able to see firsthand how this unfettered vision was instrumental in making AP one of the worlds admired fashion brands.

Steve Jobs at Apple clearly comes from a similar school.

Wonga, one of Europe’s start-up superstars, was founded and is run by two entrepreneurs (Errol Damelin and Jonty Hurwitz) who designed their business, product and service without any regard to competitors but rather by recognising a consumer need and filling it with precision and dedication to a great user experience.

The same can be said of Daniel Ek at Spotify.

Look around and I’m sure you’ll recognise the characteristics in most of the great new companies.

Great entrepreneurs and companies don’t spend large amounts of time and money refining and defining nuances of differentiation from competitors or indulging in feature wars with them.

Quite often the real competitor is NOT the other on line (or pure play) company but the off-line incumbents putting the user at the centre of the thinking, immediately flushes out who the real competitor is.

Related articles

• TechCrunch Europas Awards 22 European Startups for 2010 (thenextwomen.com)
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• Robin Klein: Start-Up 100 judge (telegraph.co.uk)

Index Seed Investments

Following my post yesterday which presented an overview of Index Seed - 6 months after launch, I've been asked a few times to list the companies which we have invested in - that is, those which are not still in stealth.
Here they are:

• Group Spaces
• People per Hour
• ERPLY
• Path
• GoTryItOn
• Stylistpick
• Freejit

Freejit is still in stealth but announced.
5 other announcements due soon.


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• Index Seed updates us on progress so far (eu.techcrunch.com)
• 6 months on ..... (the-accelerator.blogspot.com)
• Seedcamp Invests in 12 European Startups (nytimes.com)

6 months on .....

There is a tiny bit of PR wisdom to which I have tried to adhere most of my working life: "refrain from talking publicly about what you are going to do, talk about what you have done".

When we made the Index Seed announcement, it was clearly necessary to indicate what we were going to do. This was so that entrepreneurs and fellow travellers had some sense of our plans and could propose working together.

Now, given that it is almost exactly 6 months since we announced that TAG and Index were getting together to launch Index Seed, it is time to review what we've done and how well or otherwise we've done it.

All the leading technology VCs do some seed stage investing, the questions to be asked are: how many do they do? what resources are applied? what are the processes involved in getting from A to Z ? (ie from trying to get a date in the diary to cash in the bank) and how involved are they once the investment is made?

We set out to invest in a style that blended the best of TAG’s angel and Index’s institutional approaches.

So, what has been achieved?:

• We have an active investment committee comprising 5 partners who meet weekly to review potential investments. Saul Klein, Neil Rimer, Mike Volpi, Danny Rimer and myself (Robin Klein)
• We are supported by a dedicated Seed Associate, Terrence Rohan, by Alex Gezelius (Associate at Venture - who has been invaluable to us) and by Thai Tran - a brilliant engineer who has been an EIR at Index and has acted as our Technology advisor.
• We have backing from the full Index Partnership as well as the operations team including, Legal and Admin - Nicola, Andre, Sayula, Nina and Pet
• We have reviewed over 750 plans and met with over 250 companies
• We have made 12 seed investments so far in 2010 (5 in London, 3 on the West Coast, 2 in Israel, 1 in Estonia and 1 in New York). Many are still in stealth so will only be announced at a time to suit the company's needs.
• Amounts invested have ranged from $100k to $1m
• We have a standard seed term sheet, refined and made founder friendly, closing deals at minimal legal cost
• Every investment has been made with fellow travellers including: Chris Sacca, Dave McClure, Quincy Smith, Ariel Poler, Simon Levene, Aydin Senkut, Marten Mickos, Robert Dighero, Stefan Glaenzer, Alex Zubillaga, Jerry Yang, Yaniv Golan, Avichay Nussbaum, Fabrice Grinda, Michael van Swaaij, Seedcamp, Redpoint, First Round Capital, Betaworks, True Ventures, Polaris, Ron Conway, Joi Ito, Matt Cohler
• Together with the other investors interested in supporting the earliest stage businesses like Eden, Notion Capital, Lars Hinrichs at HackFwd, we have actively backed Seedcamp with investment and attendance at events

What we're still working on:

• Consistently providing a definitive answer to founders within 3 weeks of our first contact. We achieve this often but not always
• Encouraging founders to get pre-endorsed by someone we know

We are really excited at the volume and quality of new start-ups coming from all geographies and fully intend keeping this pace of investment going during 2011.

If you're interested to hear more about the activities of Index Seed and TAG, please subscribe to this blog or follow me on Twitter @robinklein

Related articles

• WITN?: Saul Klein Defends the Honor of Wordy and London and Israel's Tech Scenes (TCTV) (techcrunch.com)
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KPIs - a really powerful tool

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
Albert Einstein, (attributed)
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

Image via Wikipedia

Deciding on a set of KPIs is one of the most important things we normally do when starting to work to build the business with a founding team.
What to measure? how frequently? what to publish? and to whom? are all good questions to be thought about.


Key Performance Indicators are a fundamental tool, the dashboard by which the company is monitored, guided, controlled and managed. It is surprising how frequently this really simple device is not properly used.


In many traditional businesses, the monthly management accounts serve as the barometer of corporate health and comparisons to budget help to drive actions by the philosophy of 'management by exception'. This approach is completely out-dated and inadequate for fast moving web businesses capable of generating vast amounts of meaningful data in real time.


Distilling all this data down to the key numbers and tracking them against expectations is where the effort needs to go in setting up the set of KPIs that are going to drive the business.


No board should burden the management team with data requirements beyond those which are needed to run and plan the business, so an agreement as to the KPI set - should be sought as soon as possible.


Make sure that everyone in the senior team 'owns' one of the KPIs.  The big goals of the business which are agreed by the board should be represented at the targets against which the KPIs are measured.


I like to get an email containing KPIs at least once a week (preferably auto generated, untouched by human hand) and in some cases every day! I find this no burden at all - its easy enough to glance at the headline (in the subject line) and delete.


Some teams prefer to give non-execs access to the analytics or admin dashboards inviting them to look up the numbers when it suits.
For me this misses a very important point. That of being 'top of mind' for your board. Most NEDs sit on multiple boards and if you want them to think about your business and provide meaningful, helpful advice, contacts etc then its best that you keep reminding them of your existence.


You'd be amazed at how efficient your board meetings can become when everyone is up to date with the performance, has lived through the month's ups and downs through the KPIs and has a good idea of where the issues lie.
You will spend less time reviewing the month past and more time discussing the issues and planning the future.

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Am I just naive? Or is this type of stuff just 'par for the course'?

One of the things I really enjoy about the early stage technology scene is its collaborative nature. Companies routinely compete and co-operate and "frenemies" co-exist pretty happily.
Lots of people give freely of their time and expertise understanding that we are all part of a larger eco-system with many mutual dependencies.
There is a time to compete really strongly - and this is normally done by being faster and smarter.


I was shocked recently by the behaviour of one of MyBuilder's competitors - namely MyHammer.
This German company, with operations now in the UK has behaved in a way that is frankly very difficult to understand or justify.
[I need to declare a direct interest in this matter as a board member and investor in MyBuilder]
Firstly, MyHammer registered the MyBuilder trademark in the UK - back in June 2008, AFTER MyBuilder had launched their site in May 2008. Clearly this was an 'own goal' on MyBuilder's part and is a lesson to all startups to register your brand as soon as possible.


Then,recently, MyHammer initiated a PPC campaign / new affiliate site, my_builder.com (ie my underscore builder),  just when MyBuilder's TV advertising campaign launched. See screen grabs below - 

Following a strenuous complaint by MyBuilder, MyHammer agreed to take down the offending site - no doubt having hoovered up a decent number of potential customers. I would also hope that they would hand back to MyBuilder their brand registration and URL - the goodwill in which has been built by MyBuilder at considerable cost and over a number of years.


I'm interested in what people think about such practices and how widespread they are. Certainly there is no board that I sit on which would sanction such an approach to competition.


This is the TV commercial which is helping to build the MyBuilder brand:

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Why we all love Wonga ... all who know it that is.

Image via CrunchBase

Wonga.com (Wonga = English slang for cash) is a web phenomenon. It started offering small cash loans on the web 2.5 years ago, setting out to solve an important and pressing need that many have for emergency or instant cash in a very simple, clear, open WYSIWYG way - in fact, in a way which is entirely culturally compatible with the internet.

The regulations surrounding financial services are quite correctly stringent but have evolved for a very different era. They require all loans to be expressed as an effective APR (Annual Percentage Rate)  - even if the loan is for 14 days - or 7 or 30.
It also includes any application fee (Bank's generally call these 'arrangement fees' - in commercial lending) and transmissions fee (for same day - or in Wonga's case, instant transfer) to be included as interest within the APR.

An example. if you borrowed £100 to tide you over for 14 days, you'd pay back £120. Wonga charges £20 to process the loan, transmit the cash, collect it and take the risk of non-payment - all for £20.
Wonga explains the APR question nicely on its website.

This APR issue has made Wonga a controversial brand - loved by many hundreds of thousands but misunderstood by some - and an easy target for those not ever likely to use the service.

I have gotten used to the visceral reaction of some on the social web to seeing the Wonga TV ads (latest version is below) and the APR in the thousands - but every now and then I notice people from the tech industry rushing for the moral high ground and shouting foul.



Why is Wonga one of the stand out successes of the internet?
[Europe's fastest growing company, according to GP Bullhound's Media Momentum Awards and still growing at around 500%]

• It solves a very real and large problem - not solved elsewhere with the speed, convenience, flexibility and honesty that Wonga does.
• Its customers really love it!  With a NPS of around 79, there are very few brands that match it. I have been involved closely with some brands that elicited great loyalty and affection from its customers - none quite like this. 90% of respondents who had used another lender agreed that Wonga was a better service (30% ‘better’ and 60% ‘significantly better’).
• The product is backed up by a determined customer service ethos which strives to be open, responsive and flexible to the needs of the customers - via a multitude of channels. 
• Lending decisions are made in real time referencing over 3500 data points and analysed in Wonga's proprietary risk engine.
• The technology which makes all this possible is world class.

Little known facts about Wonga.

• To be a customer of Wonga, you need to have a bank account.
• 99.7% of Wonga's customers own a mobile phone. 
• 17% own an iPhone
• Wonga sponsors Blackpool FC in the Premier League

Errol Damelin, Jonty Hurwitz and the team at Wonga are building a business to be proud of. I, for one am proud to be its Chairman.

Image by Wonga.com via CrunchBase

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TAG and Index get together to drive Seed investing.

Image via CrunchBase

The ecosystem has been alive with reams written about how active angels are becoming, how VCs have gotten too large, how companies need less cash and how the VC model is broken. And of course, there is the perennial complaint about the lack of early stage capital in Europe. [see links to some related articles below]


A number of the large US VC firms have made special arrangements or adjustments to their models, their PR or have re-emphasised their commitment to early stage and start-up investment.


Sequoia invested in or with YCombinator, Reid Hoffman joined Greylock, Andreessen Horowitz has been launched promising low friction, multiple investments in amounts ranging from $50K to $50m. They appear to have done 12 investments since August last year including 4 seed investments.


Super early stage investors with relatively modest fund sizes have emerged in the US - like First Round Capital, Union Square Ventures, True Ventures as have new institutional seed guys like Mike Maples and Jeff Clavier along with super angels -Aydin Senkut , Chris Dixon and the like.
Betaworks are building a different kind of incubator/investment company.


Whilst this is going on, we've seen very little from Europe's top tier-VCs.


Until now.


Index and The Accelerator Group (TAG) have announced a plan to directly address this opportunity.


Index will create Index Seed. In some ways similar to Index Growth which was announced in January 2008, Index Seed will benefit from clear focus, application of appropriate resources and a discreet pool of capital.


Index has invested continuously in seed since 1996 so this is no new space for them - on the contrary they are arguably the best tech seed investors in Europe. Inevitably, however, as the firm grew, the proportion of pure seed deals fell and with it the misconception grew that many deals were simply too small.


This will no longer be the case.
I will join Index as a venture partner - helping to lead the Seed investment activity together with Saul and with the support of Neil Rimer, Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer, (all partners in Index Ventures).


We will aim to make around 20 investments in the coming 24 months - with initial amounts from $50K to $1m. As TAG has done for many years, we will seek to invest alongside 'fellow travellers' - people with whom we have been investing for a number of years and the growing band of active angels in Europe and the US.


TAG will have co-investment rights in all seed deals but will have the freedom to invest on its own if circumstances dictate.


Some History:


Saul and Danny worked together first in 1995 in the US, while Saul was at Firefly & Microsoft and Danny was at H&Q (JP Morgan) and the Barksdale Group. As TAG, we worked with Index first in 2003 when they led the first institutional round of investment in our own startup, Video Island.....(which then acquired ScreenSelect, merged with LoveFilm)


We are co-investors in 14 companies (including Moo, My Heritage, Glasses Direct, OpenX, Stardoll, Moshi Monsters and LoveFilm). The introduction to these companies has been both ways - TAG's introduction to Index and sometimes Index inviting TAG's participation.


We know each other well and there is a congruency of purpose and values.


Despite this closeness, TAG has successfully worked, over many years with many other VCs such as Accel, Advent, Atlas, Balderton, Eden, Greylock, Octopus and Betaworks. Some of TAGs most successful investments like Wonga, Fizzback and Zoopla - as well as some emerging companies like Graze, MyBuilder, Bit.ly, Tweetdeck and FreeAgent - were made with these VCs and others.


A guiding principle for us has been that we never forget that we back entrepreneurs - the business is theirs and we are part of the support team - like their other team members. How much money? from whom? and when? is very much a team decision.


So, TAG will remain independent and Index Seed will seek to actively co-invest with 'fellow travellers' - large and small - at early stage.


There has never been a better time for technology Entrepreneurs.


It is thrilling for me to work closely with young, smart people who are - in many cases - genuinely changing the way in which people live or businesses work.


The leadership Index is demonstrating with its commitment to Seed and the eco-system in Europe and beyond is very significant and I am hoping its impact will extend far and wide.


Looking forward to hearing your views, comments, questions and will post again in week or so to expand on any topics.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For those unfamiliar with the TAG details - a short summary:


The Accelerator Group (TAG) is the father and son investment team of Robin (@robinklein) and Saul (@cape) Klein, which last year was recognized at Techcrunch Europa's as European investor of the year (http://bit.ly/2lhP3J ). TAG has actively invested seed capital in over 60 ambitious entrepreneurs with global ambitions in the last 12 years.


Some of TAG's 10 exits include Agent Provocateur (3i), Sit Up TV (Virgin Media), Lastminute.com (IPO), Last.fm (CBS) and Dopplr (Nokia) where we've had the pleasure to work with great European founders like Brent Hoberman, Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, RJ, Marko Ahtisaari, Matt Jones & Biddulph, John Egan and Ashley Faull, Joe Corre and Serena Rees as well as superb seed investors like Stefan Glaenzer, Reid Hoffman, Joi Ito, Esther Dyson and Martin Varsavsky.


TAG currently has 44 active investments with some of Europe and the US top investors, including:


• Lovefilm (Index, Balderton)
• Stardoll (Index, Klaus Hommels)
• Moshi Monsters (Index, Accel)
• Moo (Index, Atlas)
• Fizzback (Advent, Sherry Coutu)
• Zoopla (Atlas, William Reeve, Alex Chesterman, Simon Murdoch and Sherry Coutu)
• Songkick (Jeff Clavier, Index, Stefan Glaenzer, Alex Zubliaga and Betaworks)
• Wonga (Balderton, Accel, Greylock)
• Tweetdeck (Betaworks, Ron Conway, ProFounders)
• Twitterfeed (Betaworks)
• Bit.ly (Betaworks, O'Reilly Alpha Tech)
• Erply (Redpoint, Index, Dave McClure, Aydin Senkut)
• Mashery (First Round Capital)
• Slideshare (Ariel Poler, Dave McClure)
• Amee (Union Square, O'Reilly Alpha Tech, Toby Coppel, George Coehlo, Amadeus)
• Graze (William Reeve, Octopus)


We've had a particularly strong relationship over the years with Index, doing more than a dozen deals starting from Lovefilm in 2003 and including Moshi Monsters, Stardoll, Moo, Songkick, GlassesDirect, OpenX, Netlog, MyHeritage, AstleyClarke. In some of these cases, TAG and Index co-seeded the company.


Saul founded Seedcamp 2007 and TAG has been active in supporting Seedcamp ever since, in addition to investing directly in Seedcamp teams like Zemanta, MyBuilder, Skimlinks and Erply. We have also actively invested in YCombinator companies for several years - companies such as Songkick, Habit Stream and WebMynd.

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