As a venture capitalist, it’s my job to help spot these entrepreneurs and provide them with capital and support to build world-class businesses. It has been hugely rewarding for me to look back over the last decade, beyond the recent property crash and recession, to some of the huge successes that have changed our lives and made some entrepreneurs and their backers very wealthy. This includes plenty of entrepreneurs in the UK, which leads the world in a surprising number of fields.
It truly was the decade of technology, which is ironic given that by 2001 we were in the midst of a huge technology crash (during which many people wrote off tech investing completely). However, almost all of the prophecies made during the dotcom era have come to pass over the last decade.
Indeed, many technologies of the 1990s are now obsolete. If you think about mobile phones, smartphones, flat-screen televisions, digital recorders, streaming TV, digital cameras, MP3 players, Wi-Fi and SatNav, then you soon realise just how quickly innovation can revolutionise everyday life.
Incidentally, this list does not include the considerable advances in medical technology that many of us benefit from quietly as we age.
Being British, we are not very good at shouting about our successes, although the not-so-reserved Facebook generation is rapidly changing this trait. You may be surprised just how successful little old Blighty has been in the past decade. A company like Virata in Cambridge (now acquired), eventually found its technology in 40 per cent of the world’s DSL broadband connections. Our video game developers still remain a vital part of a huge global industry, including new gaming platforms such as online and social gaming, with great companies such as Playfish and Jagex.
Outside technology, the UK has created other massive global successes in the past decade. The Premier League has half a billion viewers in 202 countries and Formula 1 reels in 600 million viewers a year (with Mercedes buying the British world championship-winning team Brawn GP). British TV formats such as The X Factor, The Weakest Link, Strictly Come Dancing and Top Gear have conquered the world, and the UK is the clear global leader for new television concepts, with over 50 per cent of the world market.
There are always opportunities to bring ideas from around the world to the UK consumer, and while the British might have less cash since the property crash and may suffer from increased taxes in the future, there will always be new markets emerging.
The ideas that have done well in the UK include coffee shops, plastic surgery, smoothies, game consoles and low-cost airlines.
The amount of innovation in the last decade was awe-inspiring, and anyone who invested their time or money in bringing these ideas to market will have done very well. We don’t know yet what the next decade will bring, but I am absolutely confident that entrepreneurs who embrace innovation will continue to be successful.
