A wrap-up post collating lots of feedback and thoughts by people who attended Geek’ n Rolla is coming. But one of the most hotly debated issues since the conference on Tuesday has been the panel about Women in Tech, specifically tech startups. Here’s who was on the panel and the original title: 11.50am Panel: Just a girl – Balancing Tech Culture: Getting more women involved in tech startups Moderator: Cate Sevilla, BitchBuzz Panellists: Leisa Reichelt, User experience consultant Sophie Cox, Worldeka.com Paul Walsh, OpenSoho (startups networking event) & Entrepreneur Zuzanna Pasierbinska-Wilson, Huddle.net Nacera Benfedda, Director of Product, Viadeo First some background about why I put this panel together: A long time ago I was a journalist covering the media industry. That business sector was (and is) full of women, probably even over 50%. It is full of smart women contributing to a vibrant industry. I then moved on to writing about new media. In the mid-1990s, admittedly, there were more men than women generally, as it was a more male/geeky environment then. That changed and I would say that the “new media” sector is pretty balanced these days. But over the last few years I have headed profoundly into the tech space and I have been puzzled at the dearth of women involved. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to be honest, and from time to time it pops up in conversations on and off-line. Plus, I think it’s something tech startups should address, not because they are inherently sexist – far from it I would say – but there are huge advantages to be had from tapping into this relatively untapped talent. And sometimes male-led tech startups don’t really *think*. For instance, they will get the cheapest office they can find in the most dangerous part of town and then wonder why they can’t attract any female candidates for that job opening… So I felt we needed to discuss it. After consulting with lots of people and consulting with the chair, Cate Sevilla, we decided to put the debate slap bang in the middle of a fairly mainstream event for tech companies – GeeknRolla. We could have put it on as a standalone event. But we figured that would just be alienating the subject even further. It needed to be debated by men and women, broadly. In hindsight we should have balanced the panel with → Read More

In the two days since GeeknRolla ended I’ve had some great feedback from you all about how it went. And I’m afraid to say that I’ve been hard pressed to find much criticism of the event. The feedback, in real life and on Twitter (see #gknr) has been roughly 99% positive (no, really!) even if I do say so myself. So, given that you can comment anonymously on this blog post, feel free to re-balance the views, if you really do have any feedback on how we can improve next year. And I’m still collating all the Tweets and blog posts for a more comprehensive wrap-up. (Picture: (CC) Benjamin Ellis – benjaminellis.org). But, in the main I think everybody got something out of the day. Although I was concerned to make sure things would go well, I was, however, not too surprised, since I really didn’t have much to do with it. I simply did what I think all conferences should do: research the industry, take soundings from key people, invite clever people to speak and then select the most appropriate presentations. I was merely the ringmaster. Our speakers and panelists did all the heavy lifting, and for that I am hugely grateful. OK, I might have had something to do with the event in that I am a fairly rigid time-keeper, I like to keep things moving and, frankly, I like everyone to have fun. After-all, why shouldn’t conferences be fun? They are full of smart, witty people. But I also had a little fun myself- adding a musical flavour to the event – and generally getting people to network furiously, creating a mini-Silicon Valley style event in the heart of London. Did it help that we priced it extremely competitively (£75 for ‘early bird’, £95 full price)? I think it did. Suddenly my friends from a startup in Krakow could afford to come and network with their London compatriots. I loved that. The original idea behind Geek ‘n Rolla was for (deep breath) tech startups to talk to other startups about the experience of being a startup. What had they learned? What would they do differently? How did they survive? How did they hire people? All of these issues are too often assumed, and for some reason startups are all expected to learn these things themselves or by some mystical osmosis. I wanted to puncture that assumption and → Read More

Here is the Ustream video from the day. Huge thanks to Hermione Way (@HermioneWay) and the TechFluffTV (@techfluffTV) team, including Josh March (@JoshuaMarch).

Alternative link here GeeknRolla → Read More

Live Blog: Think through the business model early on – startups often make the mistake that this means tinkering with a spreadsheet for months.

There are lots of ways to sell valuable services – find the ‘best fit’ for your company and your customers. How and what are they willing to pay for the services?

It’s all about the details – the devil is in the details and the execution. Talk to other startups, do your homework. Try to learn from each other, share your experiences to help your fellow startups along.

It’s starting to get pretty noisy in the online world, so don’t rely solely on advertising; rates are falling so you have to pedal twice as fast to go the same distance. If you are going to advertise, look beyond ad words into lead generation, affiliate programmes, blend complementary business models. Example: Zoombu looking at a lead gen model, Zemanta using Amazon affiliate. → Read More

Bankrobber – To VC or not to VC? That Is The Question

Fred Destin, Atlas Ventures
Fred Destin joined Atlas in 2004 and is a Partner in the technology group. He focuses on software and technology-enabled services and digital media infrastructure and applications. He previously co-managed OM Technology Investments, an IP Services and FinTech focused fund backed by Allianz/Dresdner. He served on the board of a number of companies including SGI-spinoff Kasenna, Xerox PARC-spinoff Inxight, Capital IQ (acquired by S&P) and Rainfinity (acquired by EMC). Previously he was a Venture Manager with Speed Ventures, a seed stage fund backed by Permira and Soros Partners. He was also an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs and has further experience with Zurich Capital Markets and J.P. Morgan. Fred authors a widely read blog at www.freddestin.com, commenting on European innovation and the digital media space. He currently serves on the boards of Atlas portfolio companies Dailymotion, Inspirational Stores, KDS International, NTRglobal, PriceMinister, RealEyes3D, Seatwave, Sporever and Zoopla. He also serves on the board of Seedcamp, which provides mentoring and seed funding to European start-ups. Fred holds a Masters in Financial Engineering from the University of Brussels (Solvay). He is on the Boards of: Dailymotion, Inspirational Stores, KDS International, PriceMinister, RealEyes3D, Seatwave, Sporever, Zoopla → Read More

Send me an Angel – Funding and How to Handle Angels Nick says: Finding an angel is like finding an invisible man – they don’t tend to broadcast their presence but they network to find likely opportunities, and they also know each other. They’ll group together by region so they can do larger investments as well. There are plenty of companies out there who say they can get you into networks, and will charge you a percentage fee of any money you raise – which can mean a 10% hit to your funds before you even spend anything. Steer clear of anyone who promises an instant solution of raising money – get out there and go to the events. Blog, get on Twitter, do whatever else you need to do for people to find you. Key things to remember: Build a plan of how to find your angel Get on with your angel Valuation is what you make it Get a good lawyer Finding An Angel Investor View more presentations from Nick Halstead. BIO: Nick Halstead is the CEO & Founder favorit Ltd, which runs http://fav.or.it, http://www.tweetmeme.com and http://www.feedbroker.net. Fav.or.it at launch generated a frenzy of tech-media coverage for its approach to bringing a more mainstream view of the social web to consumers and to businesses. Nick has been in development for over 15 years running multi-million budget projects for some of the biggest development studios in the UK. An active participant in the London Tech scene who likes to evangelise the use of Twitter, data portability and the use of the social web for businesses. → Read More

American Idiot – Launching Your Startup In the US – when you’re actually in Scotland LesleyEccles, co-founder of  Hubdub, a news prediction game drops the 411 on how to successfully launch a startup in a region  you don’t actually live in. The site launched in November last year and got about 500k web users, mentioned across about 100 media outlets, considered to be quite a successful launch. By way of introduction, the company is based in Edinburgh, its founders are Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English… and 70% of the audience is US-based. Why did they choose to launch in the US? Echoing a point Inma Martinez made earlier, Lesley says, if you want some of the pie, make sure it’s a big one. They focused on the US and only the US (again, very similar to Leisa Reichelt’s point about picking your audience when designing your user experience). Lesley’s advice: Use conferences to launch your product, hire a PR agency. It was very expensive, Hubdub spent about a third of their seed money on the launch – but it worked. They travelled once a month or so to keep in touch with customers and advisors, and to meet potential investors. Advisors – choose advisors in the region you’re launching. Work out who can add value, and find people who are helpful – when people offer, they genuinely mean it so take them up on it — but don’t abuse it. Network, network, network. Be nice to your users – citing Paul Graham from Y Combinator who says people are so used to having poor service that you’ll stand out from your competition just by being nice. Identify your superusers – these are the people spending more time on your site than you are. Hubdub identified their superusers and then hired from among them. There are also a few people who work for free as moderators, because they love the product so much. They’ll evangelise for you, offer advice and Hubdub uses them as a sounding panel. They try to meet as many of their superusers in person when the opportunity arises. Sweat the small stuff – like, getting a US phone number. People are much more likely to trust you if they recognise your dialling code! Steep yourself in the culture – calls it the Indian call centre mentality. They watch US tv shows, sports games, game shows, etc. Be careful → Read More

Ian Hogarth, co-founder and CEO of music startup Songkick.com reckons the best way for a startup to focus on what they do best is to find third party tech tools to do the non-core heavy lifting. To this end, he’s started a wiki collection of startup tools, contributed by Songkick, Playfire, TinyCoupon, Habit Industries, Poll Everywhere, GroupSpaces and Huddle. “One of the most important lessons we learned is the importance of focus – that’s what you should do but how you do it is the hard part. That’s where tools come in.” Ian’s advice: Talk to other startups and advisors to try to find the right tools for your business. Investors can help by getting you face-time with the ops directors of the startups you want to emulate. Twitter helps too as does Facebook. He also announced the creatiion of the amazing Startup Tools Wiki → Read More

Leisa Reichelt, freelance user experience consultant, talking about what startups most often get wrong about UX and what they should do about it. Step 1: Find your audience. It’s amazing how few startups actually know who their audience is. There is no such thing as ‘the general public. Step 2: Know your audience This is the step that a lot of companies just seem to ignore. Once you know who your audience is, invite some of them over for a beta testing focus group where you watch them use your app/product, and talk to them. Ask them questions about it – can you tell what it’s for? What can you do with it? How do you do it? You’ll end up with so much info you won’t know what to with it all. A product like AdobeConnect will allow for screensharing so you can be there as a virtual participant if you can’t meet your beta testers face to face. Step 3 – Design for your audience Consider using personas – make up an imaginary person based on the research you’ve done, include them in the design process when you’re deciding how the product’s going to work and what it’s going to do – instead of asking broad and useless questions, you can frame it in the context of your persona. Much more useful! Hire the best designer you can find as soon as you can – get them to design the styleguide that’s then used across the application/product. Step 4. Think big and small UX made up of a layer cake of processes; proposition, concept, structure, information, interaction. Video: UPDATE: Leisa has now posted her slides and a detailed explanation behind her presentation: GeeknRolla – You Can’t NOT Afford Good User Experience GeekNRollr You Can't NOT Afford Good User Experience View more presentations from Leisa Reichelt. → Read More

Balancing Tech Culture: Getting more women involved in tech startups A panel discussion featuring Cate Sevilla, founding editor at BitchBuzz Sophie Cox, co-founder of Worldeka.com Zuzanna Pasierbinska-Wilson, head of marketing communications at Huddle.net Leisa Reichelt, User experience consultant at Disambiguity Nacera Benfedda, director of product, Viadeo Video: LIVE BLOG: Cate asks, does the game need changing? Is it possible that the reason we see less women than men at tech conferences because there are simply fewer women who want to be in tech? Sophie: It’s more systemic than just wondering about just this tech conference – we need to look at education, and marketing, disseminating information. We have more women at Geeknrolla than you usually see at events, though it’s not 50/50, shows that it is to do with how conferences are sold/pitched. Zuzanna: Did some research, asked a few hundred people in tech. It comes down to one thing – choice. Women don’t get involved because they simply don’t want to. Hardly anyone blames education – but there’s more to the choice. It always comes down to the ultimate choice – do I want a career or do I want a family? Tech startups often require very long working days, can I balance it all? When it comes to hiring/recruitment, you come up against the existing stereotypes of men being more aggressive, then there’s the issue of the old boys’ hiring network, and they’re hiring in their image. Which is why there are always more men than women in the industry. Sophie: It’s ironic, because that data doesn’t reflect the liberal, inclusive values of the tech startup scene. It’s not as aggressive as the City, there’s the benefit of the flexibility; Worldeka’s chief developer (a man) goes home early to eat dinner with his kids and put them to bed before carrying on work. Cate asks what’s driven Sophie to work in a tech startup. Sophie: Love risk, hate working for other people. Zuz: If men could get pregnant and share the burden of child-bearing with women, we’d instantly see more women in tech, business, government, etc. Leisa: It’s a problem of identification and definition. Cites the example of PRs who even though they work mainly in technology PR, still wouldn’t go to an event that was plugged as tech – because they see themselves as being in the PR industry. Sophie: Girls in schools often say they don’t → Read More

Hardly anyone knows how to spell it, fewer people still know how to do it. But thanks to Joe Stepniewski, co-founder of Skimlinks, you too can learn the secrets of the dark arts of monetisation. Basically, stick to affiliate marketing rather than advertising; Joe showed some stats demonstrating CPM return slowdown; its dropped consistently over the last few quarters and doesn’t guarantee conversion because it can be poorly targeted. If you have to advertise, do it directly; try to arrange monthly advertising tenancies with targeted sponsors; look for themed sponsorship opportunities with brands/companies you’re passionate about so that you can really get behind them. Affiliate marketing is your friend; there are low barriers to entry, it’s quick to get going, it works with lower traffic volumes and it’s a level playing field; smaller sites get exactly the same deals as larger sites. Joe showed stats indicating affiliate marketing has experience 13% growth this year vs. 9% overall online ad growth. [Video]: Text links are the favourite form of monetisation because they convert the best and avoid the need for ad space. They allow for more creativity and tighter integration, and can make great use of tools such as voucher codes and APIs. Social media platforms and user-generated content are also good, they convert very well. So well that in the US the Federal Trade Commission requires that testimonials driving word-of-mouth marketing have got to be provably real. Affiliate links to retailers from forums and blogs can return up to 10% conversion rate; Twitter and IM even more, but you need to be very considerate of users; disclose, disclose, disclose. Joe’s kindly offered to send the presentation to anyone who asks. shared his slides below. Monetising your startup from the word go with advertising & affiliates View more presentations from digijoe. → Read More

Andy McLoughlin, CEO at Huddle talks really fast about hiring a team of peers – illustrating the point with a slide full of pictures of Piers Morgan. Oh, the trauma. Other than that, this is great advice. When recruiting people, meeting the perfect candidate is like falling in love. You’ve got to be able to imagine yourself spending all day, every day with that person. He also suggests that when you’re hiring, make it a peer review exercise, so in effect, everyone hires everyone else. Eat together regularly (like the guys at Fog Creek Software do). Andy’s reasoning here is that if you make your company like a family, your staff are less likely to fsck you over. (He has a nice family, apparently.) [Video]: He also suggests providing games in a break-out space for ‘axe sharpening’ – this is an excellent point, not enough companies pay sufficient respect to the notion of problemsolving without having to look at a computer screen. Here’s Andy’s excellent slides: Huddle.net – Hiring a Team of Peers View more presentations from bandrew. → Read More

Inma Martinez at Stradbroke Advisors is one of the world’s leading digital media strategists, described by FORTUNE and TIME as one of Europe’s top talents in Human Factors and Social Engagement through technology. Her advice for European startups: move to the US. The US market is where the ripple effect of the internet takes place. It can be hard, but you should still try, despite sticking out in your strange clothes and your funny accent – look at @loic (French founder of Seesmic), she says. “Ride it and own it”. Inma’s advice to startups: When they form a company, most people tend to form it with friends, but that’s the wrong approach – go out with the cool people for beers if you must, but we’re here to make money so bring the right people on board. Don’t spend ages in R&D, creating bigger IP — get busy selling product! Respect the suits. Startups need suits; they can fight the boardroom fights. Work with them, learn from them, and they’ll be there to fight your corner when you need them to, while you’re free to focus on your product. → Read More

Here is the Ustream video from the day. Huge thanks to Hermione Way (@HermioneWay) and the TechFluffTV (@techfluffTV) team, including Josh March (@JoshuaMarch). Alternative link here GeeknRolla Live TV : Ustream EARLIER POST: Here you’ll find the live video stream from Geek’n Rolla, a day-long conference created by Mike Butcher for European early stage tech startups old and new to share real, hard-core knowledge about their experiences. Here is our agenda and speaker line-up. Geek’n Rolla is sponsored by Viadeo one of the largest professional social networks in the world, and supported by UK Trade and Investment, as well as NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts. Not only will we be having a great day of content for startups, we are planning the mother of all evening networking parties at one of London’s premier venues, Cafe de Paris, kindly sponsored by Winston & Strawn’s Bootlaw. Doug Richard’s School for Startups is our Strategic Event Partner. Speaker gifts and competition prizes are donated by Park Lane Champagne. OUR SPONSORS Viadeo – Lead sponsor (Peter Crosby, Wayne Gibbins, Nacera Benfedda attending) Founded in June 2004, Viadeo quickly established itself as the place to be for professional networking in Europe and beyond. Since then, with more than 7 million members (as of January 2009). Follow them on Twitter @viadeo. Viadeo is essential for those who want to: • Increase their business opportunities (to discover new clients, staff and business partners) • Enhance their visibility and their online reputation • Manage and develop their network of professional contacts Viadeo’s members consist of business owners, entrepreneurs and managers from a diverse range of businesses both start-up and well established. Each day Viadeo attracts more than 10,000 new members; 40,000 new connections are made and over one million profiles are viewed. Based in Paris (head office), Viadeo also has offices and teams in the UK (London), Spain (Madrid and Barcelona), Italy (Milan), China (Beijing), India (New Delhi) and Mexico (Mexico City). The company employs 200 staff worldwide. www.viadeo.com UKTI – Pitch! Sponsor (Bal Kaur is attending) UK Trade & Investment is the government organisation that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high quality investment to the UK’s dynamic economy – acknowledged as Europe’s best place from which to succeed in global business. UK Trade & Investment offers expertise and contacts through its extensive → Read More

Agenda: Geek’nRolla – Tech Startups Rock! London – April 21, 2009 Geek’nRolla is sponsored by Viadeo one of the largest professional social networks in the world, and supported by UK Trade and Investment, as well as NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts. Geek’n Rolla is also supported by our strategic partner, School for Startups. And not only will we be having a great day of fantastic content for tech startups, we are planning the mother of all evening networking parties at one of London’s premier venues, Cafe de Paris kindly sponsored by Winston & Strawn’s Bootlaw. *PLEASE NOTE – WE CANNOT GUARANTEE THE WI-FI WILL STAY WORKING. PLEASE BRING A 3G DONGLE FOR YOUR LAPTOP* OFFICIAL HASHTAG FOR THE DAY: gknr Venue: RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) 66, Portland Place London W1B 1AD Nearest Tube: Regents Park, Great Portland Street and Oxford Circus Map 10.00 Registration – Coffee and Tea 10.18 Opening Remarks 10.20 Europe, The Final Countdown – The Good, the Bad and the SuperBad Inma Martinez Stradbroke Advisors Inma Martinez is one of the world’s leading digital media strategists, described by FORTUNE and TIME as one of Europe’s top talents in Human Factors and Social Engagement through technology. Switching a career in the financial markets at Goldman Sachs and The Institute for Infrastructure Finance, she joined Cable & Wireless in the mid-1990s to form their New Technologies Advisory, specifically focused on the Internet and IP services. Co-founder in 1999 of Escape Velocity, a 3i-funded AI software company in the early days of mobile services and selected by Lehman Brothers as one of the Top 20 Software startups to watch, her work delivering transformational technologies to clients has continued to-date. Leading other technology companies in the UK and Finland, her client work moved towards Executive Advisory and in 2006 she founded Stradbroke Advisors, a digital media and fund raising consultancy working with Venture Capital firms (3i, Index Ventures), large corporations (NOKIA Finland, Blyk, BBC, MTV Networks, HP, IBM) as well as Web 2.0 startups and film and TV production companies. She is also an Advisor to the EU Technology Commission. Working across a wide variety of projects, she considers herlself fortunate and honoured to have been directly involved in the emergence of many of today’s digital technologies (Web 2.0, Mobile, Wifi, Blogs) and to work with some of the best talents in the medium. → Read More