This is my second update from the Singularity University, a technology summer school hosted by NASA in California. As part of the programme, I’ve been attending semi-exclusive VC breakfasts and VC dinners where the latest business ideas are discussed, and the person next to you may well be a billionaire.
On this side of the Atlantic they don’t just back ideas – they back people. This is probably the magic ingredient resulting in billions of dollars worth of value creation. Keeping back the greedy desire to dilute equity so prevalent among European VCs, while also ensuring founders and innovators are rewarded, means that people are incentivised to fix the initial idea if it turns out to be bunk – or come up with better ideas and keep the company alive.
Our group of 40 students consists of an international blend of scientists, doctors and entrepreneurs. To help us, we have David Rose, an entrepreneur and serial angel who founded Angelsoft. He rapidly brings the academics up to speed on enterprise, business cases, and the latest new business models working the street – the “Longtail” effect of extra revenue through specialist inventories – such as online books and music, or increasingly customised products.
Then there is “Crowdsourcing” – beyond single transaction outsourcing, the idea of breaking up work and sourcing it across a network. We see a powerful example in the venture CrowdSpring.com, where you can have hundreds of brochure or logo options designed and you only pay for the best one you like.
Rose reminds us about the importance of key presentation skills and getting the elevator pitch right. He turns both into an art form, whistling through a presentation in five minutes where each slide automatically advances every 15 seconds. He explains that the most important aspects to sell in a VC pitch is ‘You’, and then to get across key characteristics such as Integrity, Passion, Experience, Knowledge (to listen to a David Rose presentation, click here).
It seems to inspire some of the students. As part of the exercise, a few of them form a peer-to-peer car share company called Gettaround.com and that weekend it wins an award at an iPhone development camp. Meanwhile another student registers a domain and starts placing ad-word bets on Google, to see if a find-your-nearest barber service makes sense.
Entrepreneurship is as much about a good idea as it is experiment and execution. The Valley continues to be a hotbed of creativity where coffee shops are packed with tanned, skinny, ridiculously bright young things, hunched over laptops and brewing outrageously ambitious business plans. Students at nearby Stanford write code and world-changing academic papers hoping to outdo the classic papers of their predecessors (check this article out as an example by clicking here).
Certainly, there is everything you would need here in terms of resources and – crucially – encouragement to start a business, but a big question here is whether entrepreneurship can be taught, or whether it’s something in your DNA? I doubt that entrepreneurship can be taught; I tend to think it is in the DNA, combined with diversity of life and years of practice. However, I am certain that the UK doesn’t come close to supporting, materially backing and fostering an atmosphere of creativity and risk taking in business as entrepreneurs and VCs do in the Valley. But then again, who does?
