Growth Forum News & Blog

To facilitate effective networking and meeting, here is a list of registered attendees as of Monday 12th July.

Join the conversation using the Twitter hashtag #BLN10

• 2e2 Group, Terry Burt, Chief Executive Officer
• ACIS, Dan Sandhu, CEO
• Adaffix, Claudia Poepperl, CEO
• Admob Europe, Russell Buckley, VP Alliances
• Advent Ventures, Stephan Gueorguiev, Associate
• AlertMe, Pilgrim Beart, Executive Director & Co-Founder
• All-In Group, David Peto, CEO
• AlpinaSearch, Gary Reeman, CEO
• Amadeus Capital, Laurence John, CEO, Amadeus Mobile Seed Fund
• Amadeus Capital Partners, Dr Hermann Hauser, Director
• Amino Telecommunications plc, Stuart Darling, CFO
• Angel Investor, John Taysom, Chairman
• Angel Investor, Mark Zaleski, Chairman
• ARM, Tudor Brown, Founder and President
• AskPeopleYouKnow, David Gilbey, Co Founder
• Astley Clarke, Bec Astley Clarke, CEO
• Atlantic Healthcare Ltd, Clare Twemlow, Director of Finance
• Audioboo, Karen Barber, Director
• AVEVA Group plc, Richard Longdon, CEO
• AVG Technologies, Santiago Matheus, VP Corporate Development
• AVG Technologies, Ashish Patel, Senior VP of Corporate Development
• babypac, Rebecca Chicot, Founder
• babypac, Diana Hill, Founder
• Balderton Capital, Harry Briggs, Associate
• Basis Technologies, Craig Oliver, CIO
• Basis Technologies, Phill Sly, CEO
• BDO LLP, Jamie Cassell, Partner
• BDO LLP, Tim Ferris, Tax Partner
• BDO LLP, Gary Hanson, Partner
• BDO LLP, Piers Harrison, Director
• BDO LLP, Jeannette Hume, Partner
• BDO LLP, Karl Kirk, Marketing Manager
• Betable, Christoher Griffin, CEO/Founder
• Betable, Jay Shek, CFO
• BioCair UK, Chris Cooke, CFO
• Breathing Buildings, Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Managing Director
• Breathing Buildings, David Wilkinson, Finance & Operations Director
• Buddi, Sara Murray, CEO
• Business Weekly, Tony Quested, Publisher
• Calibre One, James Brocket, Managing Director
• Cambridge Angels, Paul Anson, Director
• Cambridge Angels, Nick Balon, Investor
• Cambridge Enterprise, Shirley Jamieson, Head of Marketing
• Cambridge Enterprise, Teri Willey, Director
• Cambridge News, Jenny Chapman, Business Editor
• Cambridge Temperature Concepts, Shamus Husheer, CEO
• Camvine, Quentin Stafford-Fraser, CEO
• Catwalk Genius, Helen Brown, Co-Founder
• CDI Europe, Iris Lapinski, Director UK
• Channel 4 Television, Melanie Hayes, 4iP Investment Manager
• Chemist Direct, Mitesh Soma, CEO
• Chesham Holdings Ltd, Sherry Coutu, Trustee/Director
• CIP Technologies, Peter Wharton, CEO
• Clean Energy Investor, Chris Hardman, Contributing Editor
• Clickstream Technologies Plc, Brewster Barclay, Managing Director
• Clifton Cowley, Tom Wood, Managing Director
• CloudApps, Sam Bose, Chief Carbon Officer
• Corporate Locate, James Holloway, Founder
• CSR plc, Alex Bevis, VP Finance
• DataGiving, Sobia Hamid, Project Manager
• Delta Partners, John Kenny, Partner
• DIY Kyoto, Richard Woods, Director
• eCommera, Mike Ross, CEO
• EnvAl, Dr Carlos Ludlow-Palafox, Director
• EOC Partners, Martyn Macpherson, Founder and Managing Partner
• Fintech Ventures, Neil Mcclements, Managing Partner
• Flexiant, Alex Bligh, CEO
• FreshMinds, James Callander, MD Talent
• FreshMinds, Alistair Leathwood, Managing Director
• Gameware Development, Jeremy Cooke, CEO
• Genius Incubator, Arifa Khan, Managing Director
• Gill Jennings & Every, Rowena Powell, Trade Mark Attorney
• Gill Jennings & Every, Tony Smee, Partner
• Global Corporate Venturing, James Mawson, Editor
• Good Energies (UK) LLP, Etienne Pollard, Associate
• Green-Tide Turbines Ltd, Michael Evans, CEO
• Grove Group, Philip Witheridge, MD
• handPoint, David Gudjonsson, Managing Director
• Hotspur Capital, Colin Willis, Managing Partner
• House of Lords, The Earl of Erroll, Chairman
• Howzat Media, David Soskin, Vice Chairman
• HTK, Marlon Bowser, Managing Director
• Huddle, Alastair Mitchell, CEO
• ideaSpace, Stew Mctavish, Director
• IF Communications, Isabel Fox, CEO
• IF Communications, Gemma Lewis, Director
• IF Communications, Cordelia Meacher, Director
• iMeta Technologies Ltd, David Levin, COO
• Imperial College, Adam Sebba, MBA
• Index Ventures, Shardul Shah, Associate
• i-nexus, Rex Harrison, CFO
• Informatics Ventures, Andrew Mitchell, Business Development
• Inmobi, Rob Jonas, VP, Managing Director
• Intel Capital, Abdul Guefor, Managing Director
• Intelligent Energy, Henri Winand PhD MBA, CEO
• Intergence Systems, Royce Murphy, Director
• IRIS Software Group, Martin Leuw, Chief Executive Officer
• Jefferies, Mark Fisher, Head of European Technology
• Jefferies & Company, Benjamin Robertson, Managing Director
• Judge Business School, Alex van Someren, Entrepreneur in Residence
• KashFlow, Duane Jackson, Founder
• Kestevenlaw, Ted Dewhurst, In House Counsel
• Kleinwort Benson Private Bank, Katharine Kennedy, Private Banker
• Knowledge Peers plc, Jessica Figueras, Director
• MedicAnimal, Andrew Bucher, Founder
• MedicAnimal, Ivan Retzignac, CEO
• Mind Candy Ltd, Toby Moore, CTO
• Mindcandy, Divinia Knowles, CFO
• Miriam Lagage, Miriam Lahage, Founder & ex CEO
• Mixcloud, Mat Clayton, Co-Founder
• Money Dashboard, Gavin Littlejohn, CEO
• mybusinessFD, Chris Chapman, CFO
• NESTA, Matthew Mead, MD
• NESTA, George Whitehead, Director, Business Development
• Net a Porter, Mark Sebba, CEO
• NHSI, Dawson King, CEO
• Nivio, Sachin Duggal, President and CEO
• Nokia Research Center, Tapani Ryhanen, Laboratory Director
• Novacem, Stuart Evans, Exec Chairman
• Octopus Investments, Alan Wallace, Director
• OpenCloud, Jeff Gordon, CEO
• Opportunity Link, Mark Cheverton, Managing Director
• Owlstone, Billy Boyle, Co-founder
• Patients Know Best, Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, CEO
• Pavers Ltd, Stuart Paver, Managing Director
• Plastic Logic, Martin Jackson, CTO
• Polecat, James Lawn, Co-Founder
• Polysolar, Jody Chatterjee, Director & Co-Owner + CFO
• PrismaStar, Joshua Z Tabin, Chief Techthusiast (CEO)
• Recogmission, Bill Ennis, Chairman and CEO
• Red Gate Software, Colin Oakman, CFO
• Scottish Equity Partners, Julie Curran, Partner
• SEB Venture Capital, James E. Raby, Partner
• Shazam Entertainment, Keith Lovell, CFO
• Silicon Valley Bank, Simon Andrews, Vice President
• Silicon Valley Bank, Phil Cox, Head of UK, Europe & Israel
• Silicon Valley Bank, Elly Gilbert, Communications
• Silicon Valley Bank, Oscar Jazdowski, Head of Origination
• Silicon Valley Bank, Erin Lockwood, Relationship Manager
• Sphere Medical, Stuart Hendry, CEO
• Sphere Medical, Ann Simon, CFO
• Spreadshirt, Jana Eggers, CEO
• SS-AW.com, Chris Morton, Founder
• Starfish, Peter Cowley, Director
• Suffolk Creative, John Rotherham, Founder, Owner
• TagMan, John Yeomans, Director
• Taptu, Steve Ives, CEO
• Taylor Vinters, Patrick Farrant, Partner
• Taylor Wessing, Charles Fletcher, Associate
• TeePeeGames Ltd, Tony Pearce, CEO
• The BLN, Cong Cong Bo, Project Manager
• The BLN, Samara Dawson, Events Manager
• The BLN, Darren Harper, Director
• The BLN, Augustyna Kret, Project Manager
• The BLN, Mark Test Littlewood, Founder
• The BLN, Mark Littlewood, Founder
• The Conversation Group, Ted Shelton, Founder
• The Extreme Sports Company, Al Gosling, Founder
• The Next Woman, Simone Brummelhuis, Founder
• TidePowerd, Nicolas Beecroft, CEO
• Timetric, Andrew Walkingshaw, CEO
• TLcom Capital Partners Ltd, Mauro Pretolani, General Partner
• Tonejet, Ray Southam, CEO
• True Knowledge, Jonathan Gough, Director
• TTP Venture Managers Limited, Mr Clennell Collingwood, Venture Manager
• TTP Venture Managers Limited, Alex McCracken, Partner
• ViaPost, Simon Campbell, CEO
• Viewsflow, Azeem Azhar, Director
• WAYN, Peter Ward, Co-Founder & Co-CEO
• Wellington Partners, Chirag Patel, Associate
• Whitefox technologies, Gillian Harrison, CEO
• Widget UK Ltd, Mark Needham, Chairman
• WorldStores Ltd, Joe Murray, Director
• XJTAG, Simon Payne, CEO
• ZBD Displays Ltd, Colin Garrett, Chairman
• ZeeToZed Inc, Sandeep Jain, CEO
• Zeus, Paul Brennan, Chairman

The BLN Growth Forum is now sold out.

As of Thursday 8th July, the following companies are confirmed attendees at the BLN Growth Forum. Attendees are senior executives in high growth businesses.

• Commonest titles (in order of popularity): CEO, Founder, Chair, CFO, Director, VP, other.
• Over 95% board/partner level.
• Revenue range $0 – $ 800,000,000

2e2 Group – ACIS – Adaffix – Admob – Advent – AlertMe – AllIn Group – Amadeus – Amino Telecommunications – Anti-X Labs – ARM – AskPeopleYouKnow – Astley Clarke – Atlantic – Audioboo – AVEVA Group plc – AVG Technologies – Balderton – Basis Technologies – BDO – Betable – BioCair UK – Breathing Buildings – Buddi – Cambridge Angels – Cambridge Enterprise – Cambridge Green – Camvine – Cambridge Temperature Concepts – Catwalk Genius – CDI Europe – Channel Four – Chemsit Direct – Chesham Holdings – CIP Technologies – Clean Energy Ventures – Clickstream Technologies Plc – Clifton Cowley – CloudApps – CSR – DataGiving – Delta Partners – DIY Kyoto – eCommera -Enigma Diagnostics – Enval – Extreme Group – Fintech Ventures – Flexiant – Freshasalettuce – FreshMinds – Gameware Development – Genius Incubator – Gill Jennings & Every – God – Graham and Green – Green-Tide Turbines – Grove Group – Hotspur Capital – Howzat Media – HTK – Huddle – ideaSpace – IF Communications – iQ Capital –  iMeta Technologies – Index Ventures – i-nexus – Inmobi – Intelligent Energy – Intergence Systems – IRIS Software Group – Jefferies – KashFlow – Knowledge Peers – Medicanimal – Mind Candy – Mixcloud – MMC Ventures – MoneyDashboard – NESTA – Net a Porter – NHSi – Nivio – Nokia Research Center- Novacem - Nuance – Nujira – Octopus (not a pyschic one) – OpenCloud – Opportunity Link – Owlstone – Patients Know Best – Pavers – Plastic Logic – Polecat – Red Gate Software – SEB – SEP – Shazam Entertainment – Silicon Valley Bank – Sphere Medical – Spreadshirt – SS-AW.com – Starfish – Suffolk Creative – Tagman – Taptu – TeePeeGames – The BLN – The Conversation Group – TidePowerd – Timetric – TLCom – Tonejet – ViaPost – WAYN – Whitefox Technologies – Viewsflow – Violin – Wellington Partners – Widget UK – Worldstores – XJTAG – ZanRan – ZBD Displays – ZeeToZed – Zeus

Due to unprecedented demand for tickets, the BLN Growth Forum, produced in association with BDO, ideaSpace and Silicon Valley Bank will close registration on Thursday 8th July.

With 14 days to go till the BLN Growth Forum, we thought you might like to see some of the companies that are attending.

Here is a partial A-Z list.

Please note it does not include the investors. We will publish a list of them later in the week but confirmed participants in this group include Advent, Amadeus, Index, Kleiner Perkins and Wellington. We really want an investor beginning with Z to get a proper A-Z index.

The following companies will have CEO/founder/partner/board representation:

2e2 Group – Adaffix – Admob – AlertMe – Anti-X Labs – ARM – AskPeopleYouKnow – Astley Clarke – AVEVA Group plc – AVG Technologies – Basis Technologies – BDO – BioCair UK – Breathing Buildings – Buddi – Cambridge Angels – Cambridge Enterprise – Cambridge Green – Novacem – Cambridge Temperature Concepts – Catwalk Genius – CDI Europe – Chesham Holdings – CIP Technologies – Clickstream Technologies Plc – Clifton Cowley – CloudApps – DIY Kyoto – eCommera -Enigma Diagnostics – Enval – Extreme Group – Flexiant – FreshMinds – Gameware Development – Genius Incubator – Gill Jennings & Every – God – Graham and Green – Green-Tide Turbines – Grove Group – Hotspur Capital – Howzat Media – HTK – ideaSpace – IF Communications – iMeta Technologies – i-nexus – Inmobi – Intelligent Energy – Intergence Systems – IRIS Software Group – Jefferies – Knowledge Peers – Medicanimal – Mind Candy – Mixcloud – NESTA – Net a Porter – Nivio – Nokia Research Center – Nujira – OpenCloud – Opportunity Link – Owlstone – Pavers – Plastic Logic – Polecat – Red Gate Software – Shazam Entertainment – Silicon Valley Bank – Sphere Medical – Spreadshirt – Starfish – Suffolk Creative – Tagman – Taptu – TeePeeGames – The BLN – The Conversation Group – TidePowerd – Timetric – ViaPost – Viewsflow – Violin – Widget UK – ZanRan – ZBD Displays – ZeeToZed – Zeus

We will announce the 10 startups to watch on the day.

We have offered our guests a money back guarantee since we started in 2007. We have offered the same guarantee for our BLN Growth Forum event.  We are about building networks and nurturing relationships and some people don’t feel comfortable committing cash and time against an unknown quantity – despite the testimonials of previous participants. Fair enough. We also calculated that the value we would get back from someone that asks for a refund is huge. If someone cares enough to ask for their money back, they will have something useful to say to us and we want to hear about it.

We tried to nick the wording take inspiration for the words for a money back guarantee from other event sites but then discovered that we couldn’t find any conferences or fora that offered such a thing.

Here then is ours. It is all our own work. If you know of events that do, would be fascinated to take a look.

No Quibble Money Back Guarantee

We hope you will get value from your day but we also recognise that you are busy and probably thinking why should I give up a day at work and go to another conference?

We think you will find the people you meet at our Forum have more in common with you, and have more to offer you by way of shared experience, advice, investment and potential partnerships, than most events you go to. (Or you don’t bother going to anymore because you have got bored with wasting your time at events where some terribly important people get up on stage in a large, darkened room and don’t really tell you anything).

We want the BLN Growth Forum to be different – and we are prepared to put your money where our mouth is.

If you register on time for the day, you can at any point over the course of the proceedings, tell a member of our team you are leaving as you don’t feel you got value and would like your registration fee returned. We would love to know why, but we will happily return it with no questions asked. We look on this guarantee as our investment in customer feedback.

Frankly, we find it strange that other events don’t offer the same promise.

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Join us on 15th July for the BLN Growth Forum in partnership with BDO, Ideaspace & Silicon Valley Bank.

Our speakers have created over $10 billion of company value from zero. Check them out here.

The East of England’s very own Business Weekly runs with news that we are offering two companies the opportunity to attend the BLN Growth Forum event on July 15th as our guests to ask their business question to our team of expert speakers. A further 8 winners from across the region are entitled to a 50% discount on a full price ticket.

We wanted to apologise to anyone trying to register for the BLN Growth Forum over the weekend to take advantage of the Early Booking Discount. Unfortunately, there has been a technical problem with the booking process that means that you will not have been able to book for the day.

This was really NOT a shallow attempt to squeeze more money out of you!

The problem has now been rectified but we are grateful to all those who pointed this out. We will extend the early booking discount to all those that have been in touch and to anyone that registers to attend until 11.00 am on June 8th.

Following our BLN BDO CFO Breakfast last week we were interviewed by the FT for a Report on Sustainable Banking.

Our Breakfast meeting discussed the state of the equity and debt markets with CFOs and FDs of high growth businesses across the region. They key takeaway from this discussion for me was that banks won’t start lending just because governments tell them to. They will only do so when their shareholders start asking the banks what their growth prospects are rather than trying to assess their exposure to risk. This happened in the US earlier in the year and this is the sort of trend that the UK will likely follow in fairly quick succession. Until then, companies are forced to wait.

There is something else that is different about the US approach.

In today’s FT article, Phil Cox, Head of Silicon Valley Bank in the UK comments on the difference between US and UK Commercial banks:

“Banks in the US are more used to considering these factors, along with management expertise, when deciding to offer loans, says Phil Cox, head of strategy for Europe and the Middle East at Silicon Valley Bank, which provided Twitter with its first chequebook.

“European banks have more of a penny-pinching attitude to small businesses and less understanding of entrepreneurs, says Mr Cox. “Often, even when a bank has agreed a loan, this will be drip fed, so the company is continuously under a cloud and wondering where its next tranche of funding will come from.”

You can link to the FT article here.

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Join us on 15th July for the BLN Growth Forum in partnership with BDO & Silicon Valley Bank.

Our speakers have created over $10 billion of company value from zero. Check them out here.

Earlybird discounts available until 7th June.

Great to see Martin Leuw’s recent blog about the secret ingredients of business growth in the ever excellent Real Business Magazine. He uses a great example about how Walt Disney financed the huge cost of building his first theme park in 1955 when his banks told him to do the same thing that most banks are telling companies today. Visit his blog to find out how – I don’t want to steal all the best stories and their site is well worth a visit anyway.

Of course we were equally delighted to get a mention for the BLN Growth Forum on July 15th. Martin has slightly blown the gaff on our detailed instructions to speakers:

“(1) No PowerPoint

(2) Talk about your worst mistakes and what you’ve learned from them.”

Err, that is it.

It seems that we are already getting some BLN networking going though as a number of the speakers are planning on meeting in the coming weeks to plan how they are going to tackle their sessions and maximise the exposure and learning that we can gain from their business mistakes. We are humbled and grateful to you all for your input and can’t wait until we all get together.

We were touched by Martin’s comment:

“To me, that’s what entrepreneurialism is all about and I’m really excited about the event.”

Thanks Martin. So are we!

Join us on 15th July for the BLN Growth Forum in partnership with BDO & Silicon Valley Bank.

Our speakers have created over $10 billion of company value from zero. Check them out here. http://growthforum2010.thebln.com/

Earlybird discounts available until 7th June.

Congratulations to Russell Buckley, Admob’s EMEA CEO and VP Alliances, Omar Hamoui – founder and the whole Admob team. Creating a market is no mean achievement. We are delighted that Russell will be speaking about his experiences of Identifying and Targeting Big Markets at our  BLN Growth Forum event on 15th July.

We are pleased to announce that the principle supporters of The BLN Growth Forum, to be held on 15th July 2010 at the Hauser Forum, Cambridge are BDO and Silicon Valley Bank.

Mark Littlewood, founder of the Business Leaders Network commented;

“We are delighted to have secured the support of both BDO and Silicon Valley Bank for the first one day BLN Growth Forum. This event has been put together for grown up business people that wish to take their business to another level. We wanted to create an event for people who want to scale their businesses internationally and leveraging our ongoing relationships with both BDO and Silicon Valley Bank is a great way of achieving this.

“Gary Hanson from BDO’s Cambridge office is responsible for BDO’s support of UK companies moving into the US and helping US companies transition into the UK. Silicon Valley Bank bank 60% of the technology companies in the US. Between these two organisations, there is a wealth of experience and networks that we want to be able to access on behalf of our Forum participants. We are delighted to have them on board as partners.”

Commenting on the programme for the Growth Forum, Gary Hanson, Managing Partner of BDO Cambridge said;

“This is probably the most exciting assembly of business people ever to gather for an event in Cambridge. Cambridge has always been strong on technology but the sheer business savvy of these individuals, and their track records in creating value for shareholders – they have created over $10 billion of value from zero – not only speaks for itself but is proving instrumental in attracting overseas interest in the event. We are delighted to be partnering with The BLN on this event directly here and with our colleagues in the US and across Europe which we hope will inspire participants to think big.”

Oscar Jazdowski, Head of Origination at Silicon Valley Bank, a Brit wth 20 years experience working in the US, remarked,

“BLN’s Growth Forum brings together many of the best and brightest in the UK and European technology scene.  We are particularly interested in working with organisations that think about operating on a global basis and the open, innovative format of this event means that the opportunities to learn from each other is huge. It affords everyone participating a terrific opportunity to mingle, learn and grow from each other’s businesses. A great event in the making.”

The BLN is also pleased to announce that the event will be hosted by kind permission of the newly opened Ideaspace.

Supporters of the event include Intel Capital.

Media partners include: IF Communications & Knowledge Peers.

For further information about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Mark Littlewood, +44 7760 171 929 or mark@thebln.com

We are delighted to announce that the first BLN Growth Forum will take place on July 15th 2010 at the Hauser Forum, Cambridge.

A one day event, for senior executives in ambitious growth businesses, the BLN Growth Forum will feature some of the UK’s most accomplished and successful  entrepreneurs sharing their mistakes, their problems and their experiences in a highly interactive format. The subjects covered include the critical issues involved in scaling a business – sales, marketing, finance, team building and exit. As well as core conference sessions, there will be break out sessions for smaller groups of individuals to consider specific issues with acknowledged experts in their field under the Chatham House Rule.

We are proud to have enlisted the help of some frankly amazing individuals who combined, have been instrumental in creating, from nothing, businesses worth in excess of $10 billion. Even better, our speakers will operate in  Powerpoint free zone and talk about the problems they have faced in growing their organisations as we believe that you can learn far more from . We want this event to help senior people in great businesses to get real and practical help in growing.

Speakers include:

Mark Zaleski, as CEO, led QXL Ricardo to $1.1 billion exit, CEO/Chairman of DailyMotion
Mark Sebba, CEO, Net a Porter
Michael Ross, visionary founding CEO of Figleaves.com, co-founder of eCommera
Terry Burt, founder & CEO of 2e2 one of the fastest growing IT service providers in Europe with 1,500+ employees
David Harbord, CEO of Warehouse Express
Sherry Coutu, founder, iii.co.uk, prolific angel investor
Martin Leuw, CEO of IRIS, has led its growth from revenues of £9m to over £130m p.a.
Hermann Hauser, Amadeus Capital Partners, big thinking founding investor in 7 $billion companies
David Soskin, Chairman of MySupermarket.co.uk and Swapit.co.uk; ex-CEO, Director, Cheapflights Media
Head of Corporate Development, AVG
Ted Shelton, CEO, The Conversation Group
Henri Winand, CEO, Intelligent Energy
Russell Buckley, CEO EMEA, VP Alliances, AdMob, Sold to Google in 2009 for $750 million
Al Gosling, CEO and Founder, The Extreme Sports Company
Mary Turner, CEO, AlertMe, ex CEO, Tiscali UK
Richard Longdon, CEO of AVEVA Group plc
Tudor Brown, founder & President of ARM Holdings

The event will be hosted by the newly opened IdeaSpace and the principle sponsors of the event are BDO and Silicon Valley Bank.

Early bird ticket are available until June 7th, 2010.  We hope to see you there.

Launching the event site for BLN Growth Forum. 15th July 2010. The Hauser Forum, Cambridge.