Philip’s blog

Today I was surfing and found Manoj Ranaweera’s blog.  It is a great blog and I left a comment about Equity Fingerprint.

He has kindly left a comment as follows:

“I love the way the site graphically represent equity split during the lifetime of a company. He has included two case studies for illustration. One of these is been none other than Google.

Suggestions to Philip:

1. Strike a deal with Library House, and build these graphical and tabular presentations for VC (and angel) funded companies in UK and Europe.
2. Sell these representations to analysts, etc for inclusion in their reports.
3. Provide a subscription model for punters to access all information on companies.

Just few thoughts off top of my head. Philip, thanks for getting in touch.”

That is a great comment: action.

Hat tip: Open Coffee

  The Daily Telegraph described how Mark Attwood set up topskips.com.  When his Father-in-law retired from his skip business, Mark keyed in skip hire to Google and not much happened.  In the Internet age, who needs skips to run a skip business?  You just set up a portal.  Turnover in three years is £3.5million and growing strongly - in fact enough to fill a very large skip!

Mark commented on the Equity Fingerprint site and started off by saying “I hope you’re not too emotionally attached to your website (www.equityfingerprint.com). This might be rough.  The site is a mess. It has taken me far too long to find out what it is actually about. It needs a much clearer structure and a headline that tells me precisely what the site is for.”  There followed much detailed analysis and helpful comments and then a list of key words which should be used.

Now I see why Mark is so successful - happy skip hire!

R. tells wonderful stories of being a lodger in B+Bs (Mum + Pops) in the Cambridge area over the last ten years.  He stays from Monday to Thursday night and then travels home for the weekend.  It always starts the same “Treat the place as if it’s home” and then slowly over the months thngs change.  “Don’t leave your keys here”, “Don’t come back too late” and you can imagine the rest. 

I hear of people lodging during the week and going home for the weekend.  I guess it is better than sleeping in a lorry every evening by the side of the road.  But then there is no one to say “Don’t……”.  We all have such different lives and it makes me realise how lucky I am!

David Gill, Tim Minshall, Craig Pickering and Martin Rigby have written a well researched and reasoned report on the changes in the entrepreneurial high technology environment over the last 40 years.  Much has changed for the good better except there is still the “Equity Gap”.  Is this a gap of cash or of management is not clear.  Good teams raise cash quickly but inexperienced teams struggle and blame the funders. 

Silicon Valley has developed a host of VCs who bring in cash and management.  One of the best examples is eBay.  Generating cash from day one, money was not a problem.  The investment by Benchmark allowed them to attract a top CEO who moved from the East Coast to Silicon Valley.  My guess is that most Cambridge, UK, entrepreneurs would not have had the vision for such a deal.

Being an entrepreneur, I am more interested in 40yrs on from now - 2050.  I will be long gone but I want to build a business which will still be around and be the proud owner of Yomp.

Most posts from this report as I absorb all the data.

We have a new favicon for Equity Fingerprint.  It works so well in Firefox but is taking time to make an appearance on IE.  Anyone know what we should do?

Web 2.0 on the go as Equity Fingeprint is able to point Aaron Fernsrom in the direction of Noam Wasserman.  Noam has a great blog based on his research at Harvard where he has detailed information on nearly 500 companies.  Noam has been very helpful with Equity Fingerprint.  We just need to get over there and work in his cluster for a few days to get the creative juices moving!  I am not too sure of the favicon on the Harvard site.

Great e-mail from Becca Braun, Chief Operating Officer of Jumpstart.  She is putting together a course for entrepreneurs and likes the design of Equity Fingerprint.  Credit or tip hat to the amazing Dill.  It shows the power of conversation on web 2.0. thanks to Geoff.

A special evening with WJF  and Geoff and a Master Class on web 2.0.  Global conversations are amazing.  There as time for a tune on the classical guitar and a demonstration of Cronto’s new software.  All the security you could want with a click of a mobile phone taking a picture of the pattern on the screen.  Software on the phone decodes the picture and you key in the number for access to the site.  Cronto is a Cambridge Cluster start-up and let us hope that it does not stay a secret for long!

In my day, a 21st was a couple of bottles of wine and a sore head the next day - the wine was so cheap. Nowadays celebrations last over a long weekend and include a trip to The Savoy.  Some of us had to be content with the local Indian restaurant - excellent but not quite The Savoy and nor were the prices!   

    It was time to clean up the pond as the liner was leaking.  Time also to re-pond the fifty frogs into the local river.  They needed a new home as some were red and not very well.  The pond is now beautiful and clear and is already home to a new family of frogs.  How long will it keep clear?