Duedil, the business reputation startup, secured first prize in the startup competition, and an on-the-day announcement from DFJ Esprit that it would award the winner a £50,000 no strings investment in the form of a convertible note. This would convert into its next funding round at the price of the next round. That kind of announcement is more common in Silicon Valley, so to have the deal announced literally within a couple of hours of Duedil’s pitch on stage was real news for a European event. Let’s hope we see more of that kind of fast action in the rest of the year. They also won a crack at a year’s worth of Windows Azure hosting, £5,000 in free legal advice form Orrick and free premium job advertisements for a year on CoderStack (normally £120 per ad per month). Not a bad result for a 3 minute pitch.

Runners up in the startup pitch competition we Artfinder and Pora Ora who won £2,250 free legal advice from Barlow Robbins LLP. Also launching on stage were wirewax.com, art-spotter.com, Clearer.tv, Capedkoala.com, Thesocialcv.com, Yearbookmachine.com, Areanow.com, Qubulus.com, Flypost.co and Marketinvoice.com. In the Demo Pit the judges picked out Currency Cloud as their winner followed by Teamly and Colour DNA.

We also launched a dedicated app for the event called DanceKard. This a mobile Web app (go to http://dancekard.com/app on your smart phone, login with a twitter account, which schedules meetings around a conference agenda). The whole conference was sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, Moonfruit, DFJ Esprit and TechHub.

In addition Brainient, an interactive video advertising platform, dynamically inserting into the Bambuser live stream a live Twitter feed, more information about the speaker on the video and an interactive agenda.

In startup news Gowalla announced on stage that it would be opening a London office. Gowalla’s CEO, Josh Williams plans to base a small four or five person team in the city now that 45% of the company’s growth is outside the US particularly Europe and the Middle East.

You can still check out the action on the Twitter hashtag #GKNR, the recorded live stream embedded below and pictures by @RougeFrog here and on Facebook

As with last year there is a special emphasis on launching startups and connecting them with investors, who will comprise our judging panels. There will also be a “DemoRolla” area of demo tables for startups to showcase their products. The venue will be Park Plaza Victoria, 239 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 1EQ. The now legendary GeeknRolla Afterparty, which will take place at the amazing, world-famous London nightclub, Pacha, will also help the networking. Ticket holders for the main day-long conference will automatically get in to the after-party, so fear not! We will release a limited amount of After-Party-only tickets shortly. Details of how to get these will be available in due course, so stay tuned to the GeeknRolla Twitter feed and the event web site. For sponsorship opportunities please email events director Aléna Dundas ( alena [@] techcrunch.com ) for further details. You can follow any specific updates on the GeeknRolla twitter feed.

I’d strongly advise you get a ticket. Last year we more than sold out. To attend the event, tickets will be only £149. Thus is a stunning price for a conference of this nature. See who we had to speak last year and check out all the video.

Huge thanks to our lead sponsors a href=”http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com”>Microsoft BizSpark, Moonfruit, TechHub and our streaming media partner Bambuser.

PROGRAMME:

• 09.00
WELCOME
Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe

• 09.05
KEYNOTE
Dave McClure, 500 Startups
“Startup Pirates”

• 09.30
CONVERSATION
Martin Varsavsky (founder of Fon) via video skype
“On Europe”

• 09.45
“SPEED SPEECH”
Michelle You, Co-founder Songkick
“Product management for start-ups. 10 things I wish I’d known at the beginning”

• 10.00
STARTUP COMPETITION LAUNCH PITCHES
Judges:
Lea Bajc, Northzone Ventures
Michael Jackson, Mangrove Capital
Alex McCracken, Silicon Valley Bank
Bindi Karia, Microsoft BizSpark

• 10.25
SPEED PANEL
“Sorting the Shysters from the Meisters”
(Or – Making the motley crew of mentors and Non-Execs work better for European startups)
Lucy P. Marcus, CEO, Marcus Venture
Reshma Sohoni, CEO, Seedcamp
Jon Bradford, Springboard
Ben Tompkins, Eden Ventures
Moderated by:
Milo Yiannopoulos, Daily Telegraph

• 10.55
SPEED SPEECH
Wendy Tan White, Co-founder, Moonfruit
“Money Makes You Lazy!”

• 11.10
COFFEE BREAK

• 11.30
STARTUP COMPETITION LAUNCH PITCHES
Judges:
Avid Larizadeh, Boticca
Spencer Lazar, Accel Partners
Tom Hulme IDEO/HackFwd
Thai Tran, Lightbox

• 11.55
FIRESIDE CONVERSATION
Josh Williams, Gowalla
Moderated by Jemima Kiss, The Guardian

• 12.20
SPEED SPEECH
Azeem Azhar, Peer Index
“The future of social reputation”

• 12.35
SPEED PANEL
“The Demon Seed – Where is early stage and follow-on funding heading in Europe?”
Jeremie Berrebi, KIMA Ventures
Edward Shenderovich, Kite Ventures
Stefan Glaenzer, White Bear Yard
Paul Jozefak, Neuhaus Partners
Moderated by: TBC

• 13.05
LUNCH

• 14.15
GEEKNROLLA GRAD SCHOOL
We hear the latest news from the last year’s hottest startups.

Panel providing commentary:
Alex Hoye, Angel
Eileen Burbidge, White Bear Yard
Juan Lopez Valcarcel, Pearson Digital
Nic Brisbourne, DFJ Esprit

• 14.35
KEYNOTE
Morten Lund, TradeShift / EverBread
“The Entrepreneur”

• 15.00
SPEED SPEECH
Benjamin Joffe, CEO, +8* – Founding Partner, Cmune
“Asian Eye for the Startup Guy”

• 15.15
KEYNOTE
Errol Damelin – Founder and CEO, Wonga
“The future of money in a realtime world”

• 15.40
COFFEE BREAK

• 16.00
KEYNOTE
Tariq Krim, Jolicloud
“Cloud apps – what’s next”

• 16.25
SPEED PANEL
“Silicon Roundabout – Mythical hype or Tech City foundations?”
Paddy Cosgrave, Dublin entrepreneur, founder of F.ounders
Hussein Kanji, VC
Elizabeth Varley, CEO TechHub
Anthony Browne, Chief Economic Advisor to the Mayor, Greater London Authority
Moderated by: Tim Bradshaw, The Financial Times

• 17.00
SPEED PANEL
“Exit stage left – Exits in Europe”
Iain Dodsworth, Tweetdeck
Brent Hoberman, PROFounders
Rich Martell, Floxx
Tommy Ahlers
Moderated by: David Rowan, Editor, Wired UK

17.35:
• DemoPit Judges Josh Bell, Robert Dighero report back on “DemoRolla” companies

• Announcement of GeeknRolla Startup Competition Winners
• Closing remarks and end of conference

• 19.30
After Party, Pacha

LEAD SPONSORS

Microsoft® BizSpark™

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.

Support. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources.

Visibility. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners As a Microsoft BizSpark member, you’ll be tapping into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners and support resources around the globe, helping you grow and succeed. Microsoft BizSpark is the quickest way to get your Startup fired up.

Joining is easy. Check to see if you qualify – most privately held software development startups in business for less than 3 years that are generating annual revenue under USD $1 million can join. You can join BizSpark through a valid BizSpark Network Partner or a Microsoft BizSpark Champ to get your BizSpark enrollment code. Enrollment is free, just pay a USD $100 program offering fee at program exit. For more details about BizSpark, see: The Startup Program Guide , which describes the program benefits and more. If you want to join BizSpark, click on the link below or send an email to BizSpark@microsoft.com if you are eligible, we will send you a code. www.microsoftstartupzone.com

Moonfruit has been providing DIY tools for people to design and build ‘Beautiful websites, simply.’ since 1999. To date 2.7m+ websites have been built by small businesses, communities, families, designers, crafters and freelancers who want to express themselves online without having to code. Moonfruit is passionate about creativity and simplifying technology for everyone. Our latest release Moonfruit 5.0 is not just a website editor, it behaves more like a graphic design package giving you control over the detailed design of your site. The Flash environment allows true drag and drop, point and click editing. You can layer, crop, animate, colour, apply transparency to objects on your page. You can also now add HTML widgets and social media tools to your sites. All sites are rendered in Flash and an alternate version in HTML. Moonfruit has been profitable since 2003 and grew 70% in 2009. Please go to www.moonfruit.com for more information.

DFJ Esprit: At DFJ Esprit we believe that good venture capital begins with good judgement and good relationships. Our partners have a track record of helping entrepreneurs to make their companies successful. In today’s world the best businesses have global ambitions from day one and the best venture funds have the networks to support those ambitions. DFJ Esprit is a member of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, the largest venture capital network in the world with 140 investment professionals and over 600 portfolio companies. DFJ Esprit is a single team of partners all of whom benefit from and contribute to the success of our investments. We are entrepreneurs ourselves and we are proud to have built our firm to its current size and are passionate about continually moving forward, which means backing winning companies and doing everything we can to help them achieve and exceed their ambitions.

TechHub (@TechHub on Twitter) is the new hub for the technology community. Just 10 seconds walk from Old Street tube station, TechHub London is aimed specifically at technology entrepreneurs, startups and developers. Inside London’s main technology cluster and close to the financial heart, it offers affordable permanent desk spaces, a large member-based co-working area, meeting rooms for hire, a large board room and a conference/event space for up to 200 people. You can work all day on the 100mbs WiFi and connect with a great community of TechHub members. TechHub runs its own events as well as being available to hire for tech or developer events, conferences or meetups. Members are already joining TechHub from all over Europe, Silicon Valley, the Middle East and Asia to use TechHub as a base when they’re in London and we’re arranging Member discounts at some of the great bars, restaurants, cafes and hotels in the area too. TechHub facilities include: 30 permanent desk spaces for monthly hire, 100 pre-bookable co-working spaces, meeting rooms for hire by anyone (discounted for TechHub members), A/V, whiteboards, kitchen facilities and printing. Permanent deskspaces come with wifi/wired data, power and a mailing address. Contact us here. Join the mailing list to get regular updates here. Address: TechHub, Ground Floor, 76-80 City Rd, London, EC1Y 2BJ. Old St tube (exit 5) and a short walk from Moorgate Tube, Liverpool Street mainlines station, and close to taxis and buses.

STREAMING MEDIA PARTNER

Bambuser offers a service that gives its users the opportunity to stream live video from a mobile phone or web-cam using 3G or WiFi network. The simplicity of the application and the unlimited mobility gives you the opportunity to instantly share your experience with your viewers and interact and communicate through the web- to-mobile chat. Share the world, Live and Mobile with Bambuser, visit www.bambuser.com. Bambuser is drawing comparisons to mobile videocasting service Qik. The major difference is the lower latency that bambuser offers due to different technical approaches. Another difference between the services is that Bambuser offers streaming both from your computer and mobile, while Qik only allows streaming from the mobile. In October 2009 Bambuser was the first of the live streaming start-ups to allow users to stream video directly from their mobiles to their Facebook Wall.

MEDIA PARTNER

If you are a European startup in stealth or in private beta and want to launch at GeeknRolla, then fill out this form. The deadline is February 24. Any startup selected to pitch on stage will get one free ticket (for the person pitching) and there is no charge to pitch. We will notify all companies invited to pitch by March 4. If you have not heard from us by that time, your application was not successful. If you wish to attend the GeeknRolla conference you will then have to purchase tickets.

As with last year there is a special emphasis on launching startups and connecting them with investors, who will comprise our judging panels. There will also be a DemoPit for startups to showcase their products. We have some interesting plans to give exposure to even more. The venue will be Park Plaza Victoria, 239 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 1EQ. The now legendary GeeknRolla Afterparty, which will take place at the amazing, world-famous London nightclub, Pacha, will also help the networking. Ticket holders for the main day-long conference will automatically get in to the after-party, so fear not! We may release a limited amount of After-Party-only tickets at a later date. Details of how to get these will be available in due course, so stay tuned to the GeeknRolla Twitter feed and the event web site.

For sponsorship opportunities please email events director Aléna Dundas ( alena [@] techcrunch.com ) for further details. You can follow any specific updates on the GeeknRolla twitter feed.

I’d strongly advise you get a ticket. Last year we more than sold out shortly after GeeknRolla was announced. To attend the event, tickets will be £149 (£130 for early bird tickets). Thus is a stunning price for a conference of this nature. See who we had to speak last year and check out all the video.

We’re initially announcing our first wave of speakers, and more are coming. But here’s who we have so far:

Dave Mcclure, founder 500 Startups

Iain Dodsworth (founder of TweetDeck)

Tariq Krim (founder of Jolicloud)

Morten Lund (early investor in Skype, now of Tradeshift and Everbread)

Wendy Tan White (founder of Moonfruit)

Martin Varsavsky (founder of Fon)

We’ll be hearing from Europe’s best entrepreneurs about how they are building their own companies and with it, contributing to Europe’s emerging tech ecosystem. I can pretty much guarantee that the speeches will be fast, furious and fulfilling. We run a tight ship on timing, and there is lots of opportunity to network.

Among many other startups and speakers last year we had on an investment panel include: Alan Patricof (Founder Greycroft), Chris Fralic (First Round Capital), Mattias Ljungman (Atomico Ventures), Robin Klein (The Accelerator Group) and Michael Jackson, (Mangrove Capital).

Below you’ll find our fantastic sponsors so far.

Startup demo tables:
If you want to get a table to demo your startup you can so so in the conferencenetworking/breakout area (with wifi internet access and 2 delegate passes to GKNR and after party). Please choose the ‘Startup demo table’ ticket category. This is £350 if booked by 15 Feb 2011 (only 3 available) or £450 if booked after 15 Feb 2011.

Editorial/Programme Editorial queries related to the programme should be directed to me, Mike Butcher. But do not email to enter the startup competition, just fill out this form.

Any questions relating to tickets, please contact Aléna Dundas (alena [@] techcrunch.com).

(Due to strong demand for tickets, we regret tickets are not transferable and not refundable. If you use your name to purchase multiple tickets, your guests must arrive with you to check in at the door. We will not make any name changes so please do NOT request these from the our event team. If you show up at the event without a valid ticket, We reserve the right to charge the full ticket price plus an administration fee to allow access to the event subject to availability. Why are we rather strict about this? Because our events are almost always sold-out and we like to protect the people who actually gone to the trouble of buying a ticket and following the instructions).

Lastly: Why “GeeknRolla”? Here’s why.

Here are some images from past GeeknRolla’s

LEAD SPONSORS SO FAR

Microsoft® BizSpark™

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.

Support. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources.

Visibility. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners As a Microsoft BizSpark member, you’ll be tapping into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners and support resources around the globe, helping you grow and succeed. Microsoft BizSpark is the quickest way to get your Startup fired up.

Joining is easy. Check to see if you qualify – most privately held software development startups in business for less than 3 years that are generating annual revenue under USD $1 million can join. You can join BizSpark through a valid BizSpark Network Partner or a Microsoft BizSpark Champ to get your BizSpark enrollment code. Enrollment is free, just pay a USD $100 program offering fee at program exit. For more details about BizSpark, see: The Startup Program Guide , which describes the program benefits and more. If you want to join BizSpark, click on the link below or send an email to BizSpark@microsoft.com if you are eligible, we will send you a code. www.microsoftstartupzone.com

Moonfruit has been providing DIY tools for people to design and build ‘Beautiful websites, simply.’ since 1999. To date 2.7m+ websites have been built by small businesses, communities, families, designers, crafters and freelancers who want to express themselves online without having to code. Moonfruit is passionate about creativity and simplifying technology for everyone. Our latest release Moonfruit 5.0 is not just a website editor, it behaves more like a graphic design package giving you control over the detailed design of your site. The Flash environment allows true drag and drop, point and click editing. You can layer, crop, animate, colour, apply transparency to objects on your page. You can also now add HTML widgets and social media tools to your sites. All sites are rendered in Flash and an alternate version in HTML. Moonfruit has been profitable since 2003 and grew 70% in 2009. Please go to www.moonfruit.com for more information.

TechHub (@TechHub on Twitter) is the new hub for the technology community. Just 10 seconds walk from Old Street tube station, TechHub London is aimed specifically at technology entrepreneurs, startups and developers. Inside London’s main technology cluster and close to the financial heart, it offers affordable permanent desk spaces, a large member-based co-working area, meeting rooms for hire, a large board room and a conference/event space for up to 200 people. You can work all day on the 100mbs WiFi and connect with a great community of TechHub members. TechHub runs its own events as well as being available to hire for tech or developer events, conferences or meetups. Members are already joining TechHub from all over Europe, Silicon Valley, the Middle East and Asia to use TechHub as a base when they’re in London and we’re arranging Member discounts at some of the great bars, restaurants, cafes and hotels in the area too. TechHub facilities include: 30 permanent desk spaces for monthly hire, 100 pre-bookable co-working spaces, meeting rooms for hire by anyone (discounted for TechHub members), A/V, whiteboards, kitchen facilities and printing. Permanent deskspaces come with wifi/wired data, power and a mailing address. Contact us here. Join the mailing list to get regular updates here. Address: TechHub, Ground Floor, 76-80 City Rd, London, EC1Y 2BJ. Old St tube (exit 5) and a short walk from Moorgate Tube, Liverpool Street mainlines station, and close to taxis and buses.

And here’s some bonus inspiration for you:

Congratulations to the winners of the startup competition. The overall winner, chosen by three panels of esteemed judges, was Cortexica. They were followed by iGlue, SongHi, DriveK, and Graph.me. The Audience Choice was Graph.me followed by GameCreds and iGlue. The Audience Choice from the DemoPit companies was LeNewz, followed by iGlue and AllMyApps.

We are working on editing the video from the live stream which our partner Bambuser managed to produce so well (as many have remarked, the sound was great throughout). At one point we had 5,000 viewers on the stream. But meanwhile, we have put together a full roundup of all our coverage of the pitches and presentations, with both blog posts and video which you can jump through to based on the time codes listed below. Enjoy.

VIDEO AT 19.50
Opening remarks: Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe
“How to Dive Bomb The European Tech Scene In 5 minutes Flat”

VIDEO AT 30.53
Keynote & Discussion: Tommy Ahlers, ex-ZYB now Vodafone
via Skype link from Copenhagen
“Exit: The How, When And Why Of Exiting Your Startup”

VIDEO AT 48.31
Joint discussion with Anil Hansjee, Head of Corporate Development Google EMEA
and Saul Klein, co-founder TAG & Chair, Seedcamp
Chair: Mike Butcher

VIDEO AT 1.04
Presentation: Jason Trost, Smarkets
“Nobody told me: practical startup advice”

VIDEO AT 1.19
Presentation: Pete Smith, Songkick
“Hiring And Recruiting In Startups”

Startup Launch Pitches:
Judging panel
Eileen Burbidge, Angel
Josh Bell, Dawn Capital
Daniel Heaf, 4IP
Inma Martinez, Stradbroke Advisors

Pitch 1 Steve Semenzato Cotexica Vision Systems Ltd

Pitch 2 Andrei Korobeinik CuteFund.com

Pitch 3 Gregory Kris Decibel

Pitch 4 Marco Marlia DriveK

VIDEO AT 54.00
Investment Panel: “Early stage investing right now”

INVESTMENT PANEL PART 1

Featuring
Alan Patricof, Founder Greycroft LLC, Apax Partners Founder
Chris Fralic, First Round Capital
Mattias Ljungman, Atomico Ventures
Robin Klein, The Accelerator Group
Michael Jackson, Mangrove Capital

INVESTMENT PANEL PART 2

FROM START

Startup Launch Pitches:
Judging panel
Paul Fisher, Advent Ventures
Bindi Karia, Microsoft BizSpark
Sean Seton-Rogers, PROFounders
Lea Bajc, Northzone Ventures
Robert Dighero, Angel

Pitch 1 Timothée Le Borgne GameCreds.com

Pitch 2 Ian Pickard Gigaboxx

Pitch 3 René Karsten Kunkel graph.me

Pitch 4 Peter Vasko iGlue

Pitch 5 Toni Wagner Linkcloud

NEXT VIDEO

VIDEO AT 1.56
Keynote: Katy Turner & Andy Chung, Eden Ventures
“How not to pitch a VC”

VIDEO AT 2.11
Presentation: Ewan McLeod, editor of Mobile Industry Review
“The disruptive opportunities for startups in mobile, and getting traction fast”

VIDEO AT 2.36
Presentation: Andrew Scott, Rummble
“The Dirty Dozen – 6 Do’s and 6 Don’ts of startups”

Startup Launch Pitches:
Judging panel
Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp
Dominic Monkhouse, PEER 1 Hosting
Sherry Coutu, Angel
Elizabeth Varley, TechHub

Pitch 1 Philipp Wassibauer Maptales

Pitch 2 Matt McCallum Musiio

Pitch 3 Marty Carroll pownum

Pitch 4 Juha Hynynen SongHi Entertainment

Pitch 5 Eddie George StrippedFinance

VIDEO AT 4.00
Presentation: Chris Fralic, First Round Capital
“The Art of the Introduction”

VIDEO AT 3.41
Presentation: Cedric Giorgi, Goojet
“Launching your service into the French Market”

VIDEO AT 4.20
Keynote: Alicia Navarro, Co Founder, Skimlinks
“The trials of the US funding trail for European startups”

VIDEO AT 4.45
Presentation & Discussion:
Morten Lund, Skype investor & serial entrepreneur
“Rebels With A Cause”
Chair: Mike Butcher

Please check out our generous sponsors and partners:

LEAD SPONSORS

4iP

4iP is Channel 4′s innovation fund to stimulate public service digital media across the UK. In English, that means supporting great ideas for disruptive websites, games and mobile services which help people improve their lives. 4iP aspires to be the riskiest and highest value add investor in the UK. Last year 4iP did over 30 deals including Audioboo, MyBuilder, GymFu, Newspaper Club and Mapumental. www.4ip.org.uk

Microsoft® BizSpark™

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.

Support. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources.

Visibility. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners As a Microsoft BizSpark member, you’ll be tapping into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners and support resources around the globe, helping you grow and succeed. Microsoft BizSpark is the quickest way to get your Startup fired up.

Joining is easy. Check to see if you qualify – most privately held software development startups in business for less than 3 years that are generating annual revenue under USD $1 million can join. You can join BizSpark through a valid BizSpark Network Partner or a Microsoft BizSpark Champ to get your BizSpark enrollment code. Enrollment is free, just pay a USD $100 program offering fee at program exit. For more details about BizSpark, see: The Startup Program Guide , which describes the program benefits and more. If you want to join BizSpark, click on the link below or send an email to BizSpark@microsoft.com if you are eligible, we will send you a code. www.microsoftstartupzone.com

CO-SPONSORS

PEER 1 Hosting

PEER 1 Hosting is one of the world’s leading IT hosting providers, and works with more than 250 fast-growth companies in the UK where the internet is critical to their business. PEER 1 is built on two obsessions: Ping & People. Ping, represents its commitment to best-of-breed technology, founded on a high performance 10GB SuperNetworkTM connected by 17 state-of-the-art data centres, 21 points-of-presence and nine colocation facilities throughout North America and Europe. People, represents its commitment to delivering outstanding customer service to its more than 10,000 customers, backed by a 100 percent uptime guarantee and 24x7x365 FirstCall Support™. PEER 1’s portfolio includes Managed Hosting, Dedicated Servers under the ServerBeach brand, Colocation and soon Cloud Services. Founded in 1999, the company is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with European operations headquartered in Southampton, UK. PEER 1 Hosting shares are traded on the TSX under the symbol PIX. For more information visit: www.peer1hosting.co.uk

Sun Startup Essentials

Sun’s fee-free, no obligation, Startup Essentials programme helps startups get off the ground running by listening to what they need, to innovate and get their business growing quickly. With help around Marketing, PR, Events, Discounted Scaling, Networking and Introductions to the right people, we can help you to grow your business quicker and smarter.

Sign up to our FREE Sun Startup Essentials newsletter at uk.sun.com/startups , which delivers a veritable buffet of information, training and support each month.
• Technical & Marketing Resources for Members Only
• Access to MySQL University sessions – Online education webinars – Plus many more free web- based training course http://uk.sun.com/startupessentials/services.jsp
• FREE/Discounted Tickets for all the major and not so well known Seminars/Workshops & Technical Briefings
• Technical support and advice directly from a Sun engineer (no need to buy anything!)
• Co-marketing opportunities (i.e. web and blog posts, joint PR, events, contests, etc.)
Email stewart.townsend@sun.com
• Webinars and white papers.
Useful SSE sites
Startups
UK Startups
UK Events
Contact details
Stewart Townsend, Manager Startup Essentials EMEA
Phone x18133/+44-161-9058 133
Mobile +44 (0) 7876 396788
Email Stewart.Townsend@Sun.COM
http://twitter.com/stewarttownsend

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is the world’s leading provider of web-based survey solutions. Powerful, yet easy-to-use, SurveyMonkey helps millions of people gain the insights they need to make more informed decisions. Customers include 100% of the Fortune 100, as well as other businesses, academic institutions, and organizations of all shapes and sizes. They count on SurveyMonkey to gather just about every type of feedback possible. SurveyMonkey is headquartered in sunny California. www.surveymonkey.com

LIVE STREAMING PARTNER

Bambuser

Bambuser offers a service that gives its users the opportunity to stream live video from a mobile phone or web-cam using 3G or WiFi network. The simplicity of the application and the unlimited mobility gives you the opportunity to instantly share your experience with your viewers and interact and communicate through the web- to-mobile chat. Share the world, Live and Mobile with Bambuser, visit www.bambuser.com.

Bambuser is drawing comparisons to mobile videocasting service Qik. The major difference is the lower latency that bambuser offers due to different technical approaches. Another difference between the services is that Bambuser offers streaming both from your computer and mobile, while Qik only allows streaming from the mobile. In October 2009 Bambuser was the first of the live streaming start-ups to allow users to stream video directly from their mobiles to their Facebook Wall.

AFTER PARTY/DRINKS SPONSOR

Bootlaw

Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. With over 600 members, it is the biggest law-related meetup on meetup.com and it is brought to you by lawyers Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu, the friendly technology specialists at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to www.bootlaw.com

EVENT PARTNERS

British Library Business & IP Centre

Thanks to Park Lane Champagne, specialist suppliers of personalised champagne, for providing champagne for tonight’s winners. Follow them on Twitter @nonvintage

Seedcamp

]]> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/21/all-the-pitches-speakers-and-video-from-geeknrolla-2010/feed/ 30 http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/20/geeknrolla-the-agenda-for-the-day-2/ http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/20/geeknrolla-the-agenda-for-the-day-2/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 08:13:01 +0000 Mike Butcher http://eu.techcrunch.com/?p=20149 Well, we know some of you have gone through a lot to be here for GeeknRolla in London. And some have had to hang around in London long longer than you thought. But we know everyone is here to make this a great day to discuss the wonderful world of tech startups, so here's our programme for today. Below you'll find our live video stream. We're also live blogging on TechCrunch Europe.]]> Well, we know some of you have gone through a lot to be here for GeeknRolla in London.

And some have had to hang around in London long longer than you thought.

But we know everyone is here to make this a great day to discuss the wonderful world of tech startups, so here’s our programme for today.

Below you’ll find our recorded live video stream. We’re also live blogging on TechCrunch Europe.

BROADCAST 1

BROADCAST 2

BROADCAST 3

PROGRAMME

08.55 Registration

09.30 Opening remarks
Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe
“How to Dive Bomb The European Tech Scene In 5 Minutes Flat”

09.35 Keynote & Discussion
Tommy Ahlers, founder of ZYB, via Skype
“Exit: The How, When And Why Of Exiting Your Startup”
Then joint discussion with Anil Hansjee, Head of Corporate Development, Google EMEA
Saul Klein, co-Founder TAG & Chair, Seedcamp
Chair: Mike Butcher

09.55 Speed Presentation
Jason Trost, Smarkets
“Nobody told me: practical startup advice”

10.10 Speed Presentation
Pete Smith, Songkick
“Hiring And Recruiting In Startups”

10.25 Startup Launch Pitches
Judges
Eileen Burbidge, Angel (White Bear Yard)
Daniel Heaf, 4IP
Inma Martinez, Stradbroke Advisors
Josh Bell, Dawn Capital

11.00 Morning coffee break

11.30 Speed Presentation
Andrew Scott, Rummble
“The Dirty Dozen – 6 Do’s and 6 Don’ts of startups”

11.45 Investment Panel
“Early stage Investing Right Now”
Chris Fralic, First Round Capital
Michael Jackson, Mangrove Capital
Robin Klein, The Accelerator Group (TAG)
Mattias Ljungman, Atomico Ventures
Alan Patricof, Greycroft and Apax

12.25 Startup Launch Pitches
Judges
Lea Bajc, Northzone Ventures
Robert Dighero, Angel (White Bear Yard)
Paul Fisher, Advent Ventures
Bindi Karia, Microsoft BizSpark
Sean Seton-Rogers, PROFounders

13.00 Lunch

14.10 Keynote: Katy Turner & Andy Chung, Eden Ventures
“How not to pitch a VC”

14.25 Speed Presentation
“The disruptive opportunities for startups in mobile, and getting traction fast”
Ewan MacLeod, editor of Mobile Industry Review

14.40 Speed Presentation
Nick Bell, Quick.TV
“How to manage PR when you’re a startup”

14.55 Startup Launch Pitches
Judges
Sherry Coutu, Angel
Dominic Monkhouse, PEER 1 Hosting
Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp
Elizabeth Varley, TechHub

15.30 Afternoon coffee break

16.00 Keynote: Chris Fralic, Managing Partner First Round Capital
“The Art of the Introduction”

16.15 Speed Presentation
Cedric Giorgi, co-founder Goojet
“Launching your service into the French Market”

16.30 Speed Presentation
Alicia Navarro, Co-Founder, Skimlinks
“The trials of the US funding trail for European startups”

16.45 Keynote & Discussion
Morten Lund, Skype investor & serial entrepreneur
“Rebels With A Cause”
Then joint discussion with Alan Patricof, Founder Greycroft LLC, Apax Partners Founder
Chair: Mike Butcher

17.15 Closing remarks

17.20 End of conference

19.30 After party, Orchid London
13 Coventry Street, London, W1D 7DH

Please check out our generous sponsors and partners:

LEAD SPONSORS

4iP

4iP is Channel 4′s innovation fund to stimulate public service digital media across the UK. In English, that means supporting great ideas for disruptive websites, games and mobile services which help people improve their lives. 4iP aspires to be the riskiest and highest value add investor in the UK. Last year 4iP did over 30 deals including Audioboo, MyBuilder, GymFu, Newspaper Club and Mapumental. www.4ip.org.uk

Microsoft® BizSpark™

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.

Support. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources.

Visibility. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners As a Microsoft BizSpark member, you’ll be tapping into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners and support resources around the globe, helping you grow and succeed. Microsoft BizSpark is the quickest way to get your Startup fired up.

Joining is easy. Check to see if you qualify – most privately held software development startups in business for less than 3 years that are generating annual revenue under USD $1 million can join. You can join BizSpark through a valid BizSpark Network Partner or a Microsoft BizSpark Champ to get your BizSpark enrollment code. Enrollment is free, just pay a USD $100 program offering fee at program exit. For more details about BizSpark, see: The Startup Program Guide , which describes the program benefits and more. If you want to join BizSpark, click on the link below or send an email to BizSpark@microsoft.com if you are eligible, we will send you a code. www.microsoftstartupzone.com

CO-SPONSORS

PEER 1 Hosting

PEER 1 Hosting is one of the world’s leading IT hosting providers, and works with more than 250 fast-growth companies in the UK where the internet is critical to their business. PEER 1 is built on two obsessions: Ping & People. Ping, represents its commitment to best-of-breed technology, founded on a high performance 10GB SuperNetworkTM connected by 17 state-of-the-art data centres, 21 points-of-presence and nine colocation facilities throughout North America and Europe. People, represents its commitment to delivering outstanding customer service to its more than 10,000 customers, backed by a 100 percent uptime guarantee and 24x7x365 FirstCall Support™. PEER 1’s portfolio includes Managed Hosting, Dedicated Servers under the ServerBeach brand, Colocation and soon Cloud Services. Founded in 1999, the company is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with European operations headquartered in Southampton, UK. PEER 1 Hosting shares are traded on the TSX under the symbol PIX. For more information visit: www.peer1hosting.co.uk

Sun Startup Essentials

Sun’s fee-free, no obligation, Startup Essentials programme helps startups get off the ground running by listening to what they need, to innovate and get their business growing quickly. With help around Marketing, PR, Events, Discounted Scaling, Networking and Introductions to the right people, we can help you to grow your business quicker and smarter.

Sign up to our FREE Sun Startup Essentials newsletter at uk.sun.com/startups , which delivers a veritable buffet of information, training and support each month.
• Technical & Marketing Resources for Members Only
• Access to MySQL University sessions – Online education webinars – Plus many more free web- based training course http://uk.sun.com/startupessentials/services.jsp
• FREE/Discounted Tickets for all the major and not so well known Seminars/Workshops & Technical Briefings
• Technical support and advice directly from a Sun engineer (no need to buy anything!)
• Co-marketing opportunities (i.e. web and blog posts, joint PR, events, contests, etc.)
Email stewart.townsend@sun.com
• Webinars and white papers.
Useful SSE sites
Startups
UK Startups
UK Events
Contact details
Stewart Townsend, Manager Startup Essentials EMEA
Phone x18133/+44-161-9058 133
Mobile +44 (0) 7876 396788
Email Stewart.Townsend@Sun.COM
http://twitter.com/stewarttownsend

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is the world’s leading provider of web-based survey solutions. Powerful, yet easy-to-use, SurveyMonkey helps millions of people gain the insights they need to make more informed decisions. Customers include 100% of the Fortune 100, as well as other businesses, academic institutions, and organizations of all shapes and sizes. They count on SurveyMonkey to gather just about every type of feedback possible. SurveyMonkey is headquartered in sunny California. www.surveymonkey.com

LIVE STREAMING PARTNER

Bambuser

Bambuser offers a service that gives its users the opportunity to stream live video from a mobile phone or web-cam using 3G or WiFi network. The simplicity of the application and the unlimited mobility gives you the opportunity to instantly share your experience with your viewers and interact and communicate through the web- to-mobile chat. Share the world, Live and Mobile with Bambuser, visit www.bambuser.com.

Bambuser is drawing comparisons to mobile videocasting service Qik. The major difference is the lower latency that bambuser offers due to different technical approaches. Another difference between the services is that Bambuser offers streaming both from your computer and mobile, while Qik only allows streaming from the mobile. In October 2009 Bambuser was the first of the live streaming start-ups to allow users to stream video directly from their mobiles to their Facebook Wall.

AFTER PARTY/DRINKS SPONSOR

Bootlaw

Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. With over 600 members, it is the biggest law-related meetup on meetup.com and it is brought to you by lawyers Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu, the friendly technology specialists at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to www.bootlaw.com

EVENT PARTNERS

British Library Business & IP Centre

Thanks to Park Lane Champagne, specialist suppliers of personalised champagne, for providing champagne for tonight’s winners. Follow them on Twitter @nonvintage

Seedcamp

]]> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/20/geeknrolla-the-agenda-for-the-day-2/feed/ 17 http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/geeknrolla-update-not-even-a-volcano-can-stop-us-so-grab-a-ticket/ http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/geeknrolla-update-not-even-a-volcano-can-stop-us-so-grab-a-ticket/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:54:21 +0000 Mike Butcher http://eu.techcrunch.com/?p=20067 Well folks, it's been an interesting weekend of email and phone calls, but the good news is that GeeknRolla is STILL ON tomorrow, and there is not one single damn volcano on the planet, however ash-filled, that can stop us bringing this awesome event to you. The very last tickets and DemoPit tables are available here. And frankly, we have to pay tribute to you guys. We have been hearing amazing stories of how people are getting to London for tomorrow's event - from hiring boats, airplanes and even keynote speaker Morten Lund driving to London in a banged up car from Copenhagen. And our live streaming partners Bambuser are on a "#volcanrolla" road trip from Stockholm, overland and sea. Speaker Cédric Giorgi just got the very last ticket available on Eurostar, and Jennifer Lee has been collecting people at Calais to take over by car ferry. Amazing. Of course, because of the airlines situation, there will be one or two changes to the line-up. But we are working hard to make sure it all goes smoothly, and there will not be a drop in any of the quality of the speakers, and we still have over 400 people confirmed for the event. For breaking news about GeeknRolla we have fired-up the @GeeknRolla Twitter account to help people with information on travel plans, ticketing and anything else relevant to the event. Please subscribe to it. And if you cant make the main day but want to party with us and SixNationState, hit the After Party which has a separate ticket. Here are some more details for you.]]> Well folks, it’s been an interesting weekend of email and phone calls, but the good news is that GeeknRolla is STILL ON tomorrow, and there is not one single damn volcano on the planet, however ash-filled, that can stop us bringing this awesome event to you. The very last tickets and DemoPit tables are available here.

And frankly, we have to pay tribute to you guys. We have been hearing amazing stories of how people are getting to London for tomorrow’s event – from hiring boats, airplanes and even keynote speaker Morten Lund driving to London in a banged up car from Copenhagen. And our live streaming partners Bambuser are on a “#volcanrolla” road trip from Stockholm, overland and sea. Speaker Cédric Giorgi just got the very last ticket available on Eurostar, and Jennifer Lee has been collecting people at Calais to take over by car ferry. Amazing.

Of course, because of the airlines situation, there will be one or two changes to the line-up. But we are working hard to make sure it all goes smoothly, and there will not be a drop in any of the quality of the speakers, and we still have over 400 people confirmed for the event.

For breaking news about GeeknRolla we have fired-up the @GeeknRolla Twitter account to help people with information on travel plans, ticketing and anything else relevant to the event. Please subscribe to it.

And if you cant make the main day but want to party with us and SixNationState, hit the After Party which has a separate ticket.

Here are some more details for you.

1. Agenda – The conference is definitely going ahead with a small number of changes to the line-up and we will announce the finalised agenda on Monday afternoon. Please be assured that the majority of speakers are either already in London or have made arrangements to travel by alternative form of transport to ensure they arrive in London in time for the event.

2. Refund policy – TechCrunch Europe is happy to consider refunding ticket holders who are genuinely unable to attend due to the disruptions to flights. This applies if you are based outside of the UK and were supposed to fly to London/GeeknRolla and your flights has been cancelled due to the disruption by the Volcano. In this instance you will need to email your emailed receipt from Amiando to Petra Johansson on petra@twistedtree.co.uk.

3. Alternatively, if your flight to the UK has been cancelled, you can instead opt for your GeeknRolla ticket to be transferred to a future event within the next 6 months. This includes The Europas Awards & Summer Party, TechCrunch Edinburgh, and TechCrunch Copenhagen. In this instance you will need to email your receipt from Amiando to Petra Johansson on petra@twistedtree.co.uk.

So, if have any ticket enquires please *EMAIL* Petra. Please do not call her as she is too busy organising the conference for tomorrow.

Lastly, there are still a handful of tickets to the main day, DemoPit tables and the Afterparty purchasable here (GeeknRolla main day & DemoPit tables)

We hope that’s all clear. See you tomorrow.

All the delegate passes are *SOLD OUT*. However, we have begged and pleaded with the venue to cram more chairs into the space. So there will be a final allocation of 25 tickets going online tomorrow at 11am. If you want to come then watch the ticket page like a hawk at that time.

If you are feeling lucky, you can try entering SurveyMonkey’s raffle for a chance to win one Geeknrolla ticket (SM account required) by clicking here.

Right now there are just 35 tickets left to the Afterparty, where another 100 people will be joining us to network, and later on, listen to the awesome upcoming band Six Nation State (@sixnationstate).

During the day an amazing line-up of speakers, panels and startup judges will witness the launch of 15 startups in front of a panel of around 18 judges, while the offstage networking in the DemoPit will be fast and furious. Over 400 people are coming in total. See the programme.

The start-studded line-up includes: Tommy Ahlers, ex-ZYB now Vodafone; Morten Lund, Skype investor & serial entrepreneur; Stefan Glaenzer, Angel; Brent Hoberman, MyDeco & PROFounders; Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp; Mattias Ljungman, Atomico Ventures; Lukas Gadowski, Team Europe; Anil Hansjee, Google; Irena Goldenberg, Highland Capital Partners; Daniel Heaf, 4IP; Ari Wegter, LoveFilm Co-Founder and Alicia Navarro, Co Founder, Skimlinks.

Check out our generous sponsors and partners after the jump.

LEAD SPONSORS

4iP

4iP is Channel 4′s innovation fund to stimulate public service digital media across the UK. In English, that means supporting great ideas for disruptive websites, games and mobile services which help people improve their lives. 4iP aspires to be the riskiest and highest value add investor in the UK. Last year 4iP did over 30 deals including Audioboo, MyBuilder, GymFu, Newspaper Club and Mapumental. www.4ip.org.uk

Microsoft® BizSpark™

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.

Support. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources.

Visibility. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners As a Microsoft BizSpark member, you’ll be tapping into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners and support resources around the globe, helping you grow and succeed. Microsoft BizSpark is the quickest way to get your Startup fired up.

Joining is easy. Check to see if you qualify – most privately held software development startups in business for less than 3 years that are generating annual revenue under USD $1 million can join. You can join BizSpark through a valid BizSpark Network Partner or a Microsoft BizSpark Champ to get your BizSpark enrollment code. Enrollment is free, just pay a USD $100 program offering fee at program exit. For more details about BizSpark, see: The Startup Program Guide , which describes the program benefits and more. If you want to join BizSpark, click on the link below or send an email to BizSpark@microsoft.com if you are eligible, we will send you a code. www.microsoftstartupzone.com

CO-SPONSORS

PEER 1 Hosting

PEER 1 Hosting is one of the world’s leading IT hosting providers, and works with more than 250 fast-growth companies in the UK where the internet is critical to their business. PEER 1 is built on two obsessions: Ping & People. Ping, represents its commitment to best-of-breed technology, founded on a high performance 10GB SuperNetworkTM connected by 17 state-of-the-art data centres, 21 points-of-presence and nine colocation facilities throughout North America and Europe. People, represents its commitment to delivering outstanding customer service to its more than 10,000 customers, backed by a 100 percent uptime guarantee and 24x7x365 FirstCall Support™. PEER 1’s portfolio includes Managed Hosting, Dedicated Servers under the ServerBeach brand, Colocation and soon Cloud Services. Founded in 1999, the company is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with European operations headquartered in Southampton, UK. PEER 1 Hosting shares are traded on the TSX under the symbol PIX. For more information visit: www.peer1hosting.co.uk

Sun Startup Essentials

Sun’s fee-free, no obligation, Startup Essentials programme helps startups get off the ground running by listening to what they need, to innovate and get their business growing quickly. With help around Marketing, PR, Events, Discounted Scaling, Networking and Introductions to the right people, we can help you to grow your business quicker and smarter.

Sign up to our FREE Sun Startup Essentials newsletter at uk.sun.com/startups , which delivers a veritable buffet of information, training and support each month.
• Technical & Marketing Resources for Members Only
• Access to MySQL University sessions – Online education webinars – Plus many more free web- based training course http://uk.sun.com/startupessentials/services.jsp
• FREE/Discounted Tickets for all the major and not so well known Seminars/Workshops & Technical Briefings
• Technical support and advice directly from a Sun engineer (no need to buy anything!)
• Co-marketing opportunities (i.e. web and blog posts, joint PR, events, contests, etc.)
Email stewart.townsend@sun.com
• Webinars and white papers.
Useful SSE sites
Startups
UK Startups
UK Events
Contact details
Stewart Townsend, Manager Startup Essentials EMEA
Phone x18133/+44-161-9058 133
Mobile +44 (0) 7876 396788
Email Stewart.Townsend@Sun.COM
http://twitter.com/stewarttownsend

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is the world’s leading provider of web-based survey solutions. Powerful, yet easy-to-use, SurveyMonkey helps millions of people gain the insights they need to make more informed decisions. Customers include 100% of the Fortune 100, as well as other businesses, academic institutions, and organizations of all shapes and sizes. They count on SurveyMonkey to gather just about every type of feedback possible. SurveyMonkey is headquartered in sunny California. www.surveymonkey.com

LIVE STREAMING PARTNER

Bambuser

Bambuser offers a service that gives its users the opportunity to stream live video from a mobile phone or web-cam using 3G or WiFi network. The simplicity of the application and the unlimited mobility gives you the opportunity to instantly share your experience with your viewers and interact and communicate through the web- to-mobile chat. Share the world, Live and Mobile with Bambuser, visit www.bambuser.com.

Bambuser is drawing comparisons to mobile videocasting service Qik. The major difference is the lower latency that bambuser offers due to different technical approaches. Another difference between the services is that Bambuser offers streaming both from your computer and mobile, while Qik only allows streaming from the mobile. In October 2009 Bambuser was the first of the live streaming start-ups to allow users to stream video directly from their mobiles to their Facebook Wall.

AFTER PARTY/DRINKS SPONSOR

Bootlaw

Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. With over 600 members, it is the biggest law-related meetup on meetup.com and it is brought to you by lawyers Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu, the friendly technology specialists at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to www.bootlaw.com

EVENT PARTNERS

British Library Business & IP Centre

Seedcamp

FINALLY, A reminder of GeeknRolla, the movie:

GeeknRolla – The Movie from Mike Butcher on Vimeo.

Plus, we just released only 100 tickets to the now legendary Afterparty where you can join the 350+ delegates from the main day – I’d grab one of those before they all go very shortly.

The start-studded line-up includes: Tommy Ahlers, ex-ZYB now Vodafone; Morten Lund, Skype investor & serial entrepreneur; Stefan Glaenzer, Angel; Brent Hoberman, MyDeco & PROFounders; Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp; Mattias Ljungman, Atomico Ventures; Lukas Gadowski, Team Europe; Anil Hansjee, Google; Irena Goldenberg, Highland Capital Partners; Daniel Heaf, 4IP; Ari Wegter, LoveFilm Co-Founder and Alicia Navarro, Co Founder, Skimlinks.

I’d strongly advise you get a ticket. Last year we more than sold out.

We’ll be hearing from of Europe’s best entrepreneurs about how they are building their own companies and with it, the European tech ecosystem. As with GeeknRolla’s fast pace style, the speeches will be fast, furious and fulfilling.

Check out our awesome sponsors and partners after the jump.

LEAD SPONSORS

4iP

4iP is Channel 4′s innovation fund to stimulate public service digital media across the UK. In English, that means supporting great ideas for disruptive websites, games and mobile services which help people improve their lives. 4iP aspires to be the riskiest and highest value add investor in the UK. Last year 4iP did over 30 deals including Audioboo, MyBuilder, GymFu, Newspaper Club and Mapumental. www.4ip.org.uk

Microsoft® BizSpark™

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.

Support. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources.

Visibility. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners As a Microsoft BizSpark member, you’ll be tapping into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners and support resources around the globe, helping you grow and succeed. Microsoft BizSpark is the quickest way to get your Startup fired up.

Joining is easy. Check to see if you qualify – most privately held software development startups in business for less than 3 years that are generating annual revenue under USD $1 million can join. You can join BizSpark through a valid BizSpark Network Partner or a Microsoft BizSpark Champ to get your BizSpark enrollment code. Enrollment is free, just pay a USD $100 program offering fee at program exit. For more details about BizSpark, see: The Startup Program Guide , which describes the program benefits and more. If you want to join BizSpark, click on the link below or send an email to BizSpark@microsoft.com if you are eligible, we will send you a code. www.microsoftstartupzone.com

CO-SPONSORS

PEER 1 Hosting

PEER 1 Hosting is one of the world’s leading IT hosting providers, and works with more than 250 fast-growth companies in the UK where the internet is critical to their business. PEER 1 is built on two obsessions: Ping & People. Ping, represents its commitment to best-of-breed technology, founded on a high performance 10GB SuperNetworkTM connected by 17 state-of-the-art data centres, 21 points-of-presence and nine colocation facilities throughout North America and Europe. People, represents its commitment to delivering outstanding customer service to its more than 10,000 customers, backed by a 100 percent uptime guarantee and 24x7x365 FirstCall Support™. PEER 1’s portfolio includes Managed Hosting, Dedicated Servers under the ServerBeach brand, Colocation and soon Cloud Services. Founded in 1999, the company is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with European operations headquartered in Southampton, UK. PEER 1 Hosting shares are traded on the TSX under the symbol PIX. For more information visit: www.peer1hosting.co.uk

Sun Startup Essentials

Sun’s fee-free, no obligation, Startup Essentials programme helps startups get off the ground running by listening to what they need, to innovate and get their business growing quickly. With help around Marketing, PR, Events, Discounted Scaling, Networking and Introductions to the right people, we can help you to grow your business quicker and smarter.

Sign up to our FREE Sun Startup Essentials newsletter at uk.sun.com/startups , which delivers a veritable buffet of information, training and support each month.
• Technical & Marketing Resources for Members Only
• Access to MySQL University sessions – Online education webinars – Plus many more free web- based training course http://uk.sun.com/startupessentials/services.jsp
• FREE/Discounted Tickets for all the major and not so well known Seminars/Workshops & Technical Briefings
• Technical support and advice directly from a Sun engineer (no need to buy anything!)
• Co-marketing opportunities (i.e. web and blog posts, joint PR, events, contests, etc.)
Email stewart.townsend@sun.com
• Webinars and white papers.
Useful SSE sites
Startups
UK Startups
UK Events
Contact details
Stewart Townsend, Manager Startup Essentials EMEA
Phone x18133/+44-161-9058 133
Mobile +44 (0) 7876 396788
Email Stewart.Townsend@Sun.COM
http://twitter.com/stewarttownsend

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is the world’s leading provider of web-based survey solutions. Powerful, yet easy-to-use, SurveyMonkey helps millions of people gain the insights they need to make more informed decisions. Customers include 100% of the Fortune 100, as well as other businesses, academic institutions, and organizations of all shapes and sizes. They count on SurveyMonkey to gather just about every type of feedback possible. SurveyMonkey is headquartered in sunny California. www.surveymonkey.com

TECHCRUNCH PITCH! SPONSOR

UKTI

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 network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage. For further information please visit www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7215 8000.

LIVE STREAMING PARTNER

Bambuser

Bambuser offers a service that gives its users the opportunity to stream live video from a mobile phone or web-cam using 3G or WiFi network. The simplicity of the application and the unlimited mobility gives you the opportunity to instantly share your experience with your viewers and interact and communicate through the web- to-mobile chat. Share the world, Live and Mobile with Bambuser, visit www.bambuser.com.

Bambuser is drawing comparisons to mobile videocasting service Qik. The major difference is the lower latency that bambuser offers due to different technical approaches. Another difference between the services is that Bambuser offers streaming both from your computer and mobile, while Qik only allows streaming from the mobile. In October 2009 Bambuser was the first of the live streaming start-ups to allow users to stream video directly from their mobiles to their Facebook Wall.

AFTER PARTY/DRINKS SPONSOR

Bootlaw

Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. With over 600 members, it is the biggest law-related meetup on meetup.com and it is brought to you by lawyers Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu, the friendly technology specialists at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to www.bootlaw.com

EVENT PARTNERS

British Library Business & IP Centre

Seedcamp

FINALLY, A reminder of GeeknRolla, the movie:

GeeknRolla – The Movie from Mike Butcher on Vimeo.

Michael Birch is the Co-founder of Bebo and Birthday Alarm. Birch was raised in North London, England, went to Imperial College, London in Central London, worked in West London and moved to San Francisco in 2002. Michael and his wife Xochi Birch sold Bebo to AOL in March 2008 for $850 million. Since then he has gone on to invest in many other startups and is a champion of the UK/Euorpean tech scene from his bases in the UK and the US.

Anyone who has seen Birch speak will know he tells it like it is. His appearance at GeeknRolla is not to be missed.

Birch is just the latest to join the start-studded line-up of investors and experienced startup founders at GeeknRolla. Our full speaker programme is here.

Our speakers and panelists will also include Brent Hoberman, MyDeco & PROFounders; Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp; Mattias Ljungman, Atomico Ventures; Lukas Gadowski, Team Europe; Anil Hansjee, Google; Daniel Heaf, 4IP; Ari Wegter, LoveFilm Co-Founder, Stefan Glaenzer, Angel investor; and Alicia Navarro, Co Founder, Skimlinks.

In addition to Birch, Tommy Ahlers, founder of ZYB which was acquired by Vodafone for €31.5m in 2008 – will be keynoting. He’ll be joined by Morten Lund, early backer of Skype and now CEO of Everbread.

This year’s GeeknRolla in London on April 20 will, in a word, be awesome. Grab a ticket!

We’ll be launching around 15 startups in front of a panel of around 18 judges. (The deadline to enter your startup to launch has now passed).

Startups can also purchase an affordable DemoPit to demo their products.

I’d strongly advise you get a ticket. Last year we more than sold out.

Btw, why “GeeknRolla” I hear you ask? Here’s why.

Our speaker programme is below. This year there is a special emphasis on launching startups and connecting them with investors. As you can see we’ll be launching around 15 startups in front of a panel of around 18 judges. There will also be a DemoPit for startups not selected to appear on the main stage.

[UPDATE: We are now sold out of tickets to the day programme. There are now less than 100 tickets to the now legendary Afterparty where you can join the 400+ delegates from the main day - I'd grab one of those before they all go very shortly.]

It’s an amazing line-up including: Tommy Ahlers, ex-ZYB now Vodafone; Morten Lund, Skye investor & serial entrepreneur; Stefan Glaenzer, Angel; Brent Hoberman, MyDeco & PROFounders; Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp; Mattias Ljungman, Atomico Ventures; Lukas Gadowski, Team Europe; Anil Hansjee, Google; Irena Goldenberg, Highland Capital Partners; Daniel Heaf, 4IP; Ari Wegter, LoveFilm Co-Founder and Alicia Navarro, Co Founder, Skimlinks.

I’d strongly advise you get a ticket. Last year we more than sold out.

We’ll be hearing from of Europe’s best entrepreneurs about how they are building their own companies and with it, the European tech ecosystem. I can pretty much guarantee that the speeches will be fast, furious and fulfilling.

So this is our last and final call. If you are a startup in stealth or private beta want to launch at GeeknRolla, then fill out this form. The deadline already passed, but just in case you missed it, we’ll give you 12 hrs more. It’s just a simple form.

Below you’ll find our programme and our fantastic sponsors.

Why “GeeknRolla”? Here’s why.

PROGRAMME

08.55 Registration

09.30 Opening remarks
Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe
“How to Dive Bomb The European Tech Scene In 5 minutes Flat”

09.35 Keynote & Discussion

Tommy Ahlers, founder of ZYB which was acquired by Vodafone for €31.5m
“Exit: The How, When And Why Of Exiting Your Startup”

Then joint discussion with Anil Hansjee, Head of Corporate Development – Google EMEA
Chair: Mike Butcher

09.55 Speed Presentation

Jason Trost, Smarkets
“Nobody told me: practical startup advice”

10.10 Speed Presentation

Pete Smith, Songkick
“Hiring And Recruiting In Startups”

10.25 Startup Launch Pitches
Judges

Eileen Burbidge, Angel (White Bear Yard)

Irena Goldenberg, Highland Capital Partners

Daniel Heaf, 4IP

Inma Martinez, Stradbroke Advisors

Josh Bell, Dawn Capital

11.00 Morning coffee break

11.30 Speed Presentation

Nigel Eccles, Fanduel.com
“Customer Development for startups”

11.45 Investment Panel
“Early stage investing right now”

Stefan Glaenzer, Angel (White Bear Yard)

Mattias Ljungman, Atomico Ventures

Sean Seton Rogers, PRO Founders

Michael Jackson, Mangrove Capital

Robin Klein, co-founder, The Accelerator Group (TAG)

12.25 Startup Launch Pitches
Judges

Paul Fisher, Advent Ventures

Ari Wegter, LoveFilm Co-Founder

Bindi Karia, Microsoft BizSpark

Sean Seton-Rogers, PROFounders

Lea Bajc, Northzone Ventures

Robert Dighero, Angel (White Bear Yard)

13.00 Lunch

14.10 Keynote

Ben Tompkins, Eden Ventures
“How not to pitch a VC”

14.25 Speed Presentation

“The disruptive opportunities for startups in mobile, and getting traction fast”
Ewan MacLeod, editor of Mobile Industry Review

14.40 Speed Presentation

Nick Bell, Quick.TV
“How to manage PR when you’re a startup”

14.55 Startup Launch Pitches

Judges

Brent Hoberman, MyDeco & PROFounders

Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp

Dominic Monkhouse, PEER 1 Hosting

Sherry Coutu, Angel

Elizabeth Varley, TechHub

15.30 Afternoon coffee break

16.00 Speed Presentation

Lukasz Gadowski & Kolja Hebenstreit, Team Europe
“How to extend you startup to Germany”

16.15 Speed Presentation

Cedric Giorgi, Goojet
“Launching your service into the French Market”

16.30 Keynote

Alicia Navarro, Co Founder, Skimlinks
“The trials of the US funding trail for European startups”

16.45 Keynote & Discussion

Morten Lund, Skye investor & serial entrereneur
“Rebels With A Cause”

Then joint discussion with Michael Birch, Founder, Bebo
Chair: Mike Butcher

17.15 Closing remarks

17.20 End of conference

19.30 After party, Central London venue

LEAD SPONSORS

4iP

4iP is Channel 4′s innovation fund to stimulate public service digital media across the UK. In English, that means supporting great ideas for disruptive websites, games and mobile services which help people improve their lives. 4iP aspires to be the riskiest and highest value add investor in the UK. Last year 4iP did over 30 deals including Audioboo, MyBuilder, GymFu, Newspaper Club and Mapumental. www.4ip.org.uk

Microsoft® BizSpark™

Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing key resources when they need it the most:

Software. Receive fast and easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions. There is no upfront cost to enroll.

Support. Get connected to Network Partners around the world — incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters — that are equally involved and vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship who will provide a wide range of support resources.

Visibility. Achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners As a Microsoft BizSpark member, you’ll be tapping into a rich, vibrant ecosystem of peers, partners and support resources around the globe, helping you grow and succeed. Microsoft BizSpark is the quickest way to get your Startup fired up.

Joining is easy. Check to see if you qualify – most privately held software development startups in business for less than 3 years that are generating annual revenue under USD $1 million can join. You can join BizSpark through a valid BizSpark Network Partner or a Microsoft BizSpark Champ to get your BizSpark enrollment code. Enrollment is free, just pay a USD $100 program offering fee at program exit. For more details about BizSpark, see: The Startup Program Guide , which describes the program benefits and more. If you want to join BizSpark, click on the link below or send an email to BizSpark@microsoft.com if you are eligible, we will send you a code. www.microsoftstartupzone.com

CO-SPONSORS

PEER 1 Hosting

PEER 1 Hosting is one of the world’s leading IT hosting providers, and works with more than 250 fast-growth companies in the UK where the internet is critical to their business. PEER 1 is built on two obsessions: Ping & People. Ping, represents its commitment to best-of-breed technology, founded on a high performance 10GB SuperNetworkTM connected by 17 state-of-the-art data centres, 21 points-of-presence and nine colocation facilities throughout North America and Europe. People, represents its commitment to delivering outstanding customer service to its more than 10,000 customers, backed by a 100 percent uptime guarantee and 24x7x365 FirstCall Support™. PEER 1’s portfolio includes Managed Hosting, Dedicated Servers under the ServerBeach brand, Colocation and soon Cloud Services. Founded in 1999, the company is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with European operations headquartered in Southampton, UK. PEER 1 Hosting shares are traded on the TSX under the symbol PIX. For more information visit: www.peer1hosting.co.uk

Sun Startup Essentials

Sun’s fee-free, no obligation, Startup Essentials programme helps startups get off the ground running by listening to what they need, to innovate and get their business growing quickly. With help around Marketing, PR, Events, Discounted Scaling, Networking and Introductions to the right people, we can help you to grow your business quicker and smarter.

Sign up to our FREE Sun Startup Essentials newsletter at uk.sun.com/startups , which delivers a veritable buffet of information, training and support each month.
• Technical & Marketing Resources for Members Only
• Access to MySQL University sessions – Online education webinars – Plus many more free web- based training course http://uk.sun.com/startupessentials/services.jsp
• FREE/Discounted Tickets for all the major and not so well known Seminars/Workshops & Technical Briefings
• Technical support and advice directly from a Sun engineer (no need to buy anything!)
• Co-marketing opportunities (i.e. web and blog posts, joint PR, events, contests, etc.)
Email stewart.townsend@sun.com
• Webinars and white papers.
Useful SSE sites
Startups
UK Startups
UK Events
Contact details
Stewart Townsend, Manager Startup Essentials EMEA
Phone x18133/+44-161-9058 133
Mobile +44 (0) 7876 396788
Email Stewart.Townsend@Sun.COM
http://twitter.com/stewarttownsend

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is the world’s leading provider of web-based survey solutions. Powerful, yet easy-to-use, SurveyMonkey helps millions of people gain the insights they need to make more informed decisions. Customers include 100% of the Fortune 100, as well as other businesses, academic institutions, and organizations of all shapes and sizes. They count on SurveyMonkey to gather just about every type of feedback possible. SurveyMonkey is headquartered in sunny California. www.surveymonkey.com

TECHCRUNCH PITCH! SPONSOR

UKTI

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 network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage. For further information please visit www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7215 8000.

LIVE STREAMING PARTNER

Bambuser

Bambuser offers a service that gives its users the opportunity to stream live video from a mobile phone or web-cam using 3G or WiFi network. The simplicity of the application and the unlimited mobility gives you the opportunity to instantly share your experience with your viewers and interact and communicate through the web- to-mobile chat. Share the world, Live and Mobile with Bambuser, visit www.bambuser.com.

Bambuser is drawing comparisons to mobile videocasting service Qik. The major difference is the lower latency that bambuser offers due to different technical approaches. Another difference between the services is that Bambuser offers streaming both from your computer and mobile, while Qik only allows streaming from the mobile. In October 2009 Bambuser was the first of the live streaming start-ups to allow users to stream video directly from their mobiles to their Facebook Wall.

AFTER PARTY/DRINKS SPONSOR

Bootlaw

Bootlaw is a free boot camp for emerging technology, internet and digital businesses and the professionals working in them who want to learn more about the legal issues they face. With over 600 members, it is the biggest law-related meetup on meetup.com and it is brought to you by lawyers Barry Vitou and Danvers Baillieu, the friendly technology specialists at Winston & Strawn in London. For more information go to www.bootlaw.com

EVENT PARTNERS

British Library Business & IP Centre

Seedcamp

FINALLY, A reminder of GeeknRolla, the movie:

GeeknRolla – The Movie from Mike Butcher on Vimeo.

Before founding ZYB, where he has held the position of CEO since the company’s inception, Ahlers spent six years in strategy and management, partly in the mobile industry. He was previously with McKinsey & Company for more than four years, where he served as an engagement manager working with mobile operators to shape their strategies. In addition to ZYB, he also founded another start-up which provided a global SMS-service to mobile users.

He’ll be joined by Morten Lund, among others. We’ll be rolling out the rest of our speaker programme next week.

This year there is a special emphasis on launching startups and connecting them with investors.

If you are a startup in stealth or private beta want to launch at GeeknRolla, then fill out this form[update, the deadline has now passed].

The Deadline for entry is midnight CET, Sunday March 28.

We are looking for speeches which enliven the European startup scene and teach something tangible. You can pitch me your idea on email with the subject line ‘GeeknRolla”. But just saying you’d like to speak is not enough. You must have a real idea for a subject. Speakers do not get to talk about their company. They must impart real knowledge.

But we’re going to need your help.

We’re looking for speakers and startups to appear at our events, and we’re especially interested in new startups planning to launch (read on about why).

Meanwhile we’ve set up ticketing sites for you now so you can actually go and get early bird ticket prices right now. See below for details.

So far this year we’ve partnered with or created events in Istanbul and Barcelona for tech startups. The next series of events require YOU to get as involved as you can.

These take us to the Summer, after which we’ll be hitting other cities.

In all cases, here’s what we want:

CONTENT

To submit your idea for a speech/presentation, apply to be a panelist, or apply to pitch your startup please contact Editor Mike Butcher via email.

1. In your email, in the subject line write the city you are emailing about, so e.g. Write “TechCrunch Paris” if you want to explain why you want to pitch or speak or be on a panel. Please do not expect an immediate reply.

2. If you want to pitch your startup at our events you MUST cover the following areas in short parapgraphs, around one side of A4 text-only. In your A4 pitch include: The market “problem” you are solving with your startup, your solution, your business model, your competitors, your team and what you’re looking for (Seed funding, Angel funding, Series A round, etc). Use the subject line “TechCrunchPitch” in the email. There is no fee for one person from the startup to pitch, as is our policy. If it is already launched and public, add it to CrunchBase.

Geeknrolla

Special Note on Geeknrolla: This year we plan to LAUNCH 10+ startups at GeeknRolla in London. To enter your startup, this must be the FIRST time the world has EVER heard of you company. We’ll consider companies which are in private beta at GeeknRolla, but we’ll favour launching ones out of stealth mode, and these will take precedent.

To apply to launch your company in front of 400+ entrepreneurs and investors and be mentored and prepped by TechCrunch Europe for the launch, please FILL IN THIS FORM [update, the deadline has now passed]

This is, as always, free to enter for startups. For more on last year’s huge GeeknRolla event see here.

VIDEO STREAMING

Video streaming at events is imortant to us. Our live events are streamed onto TechCrunch.com, bringing hundreds of others in to watch the content and the startups. We want to work with local video artners to live stream out events, ideally to our Ustream channel. please contact Editor Mike Butcher via email.

SPONSORSHIP

To enquire about event sponsorship opportunities only contact Petra(@)TwistedTree.co.uk. Please do not expect an immediate reply.

PRESS
If you are a member of the press wanting to cover the event, please contact Rassami Hok Ljungberg on rassami (at) rassami.com.

TICKET ENQUIRIES
Please see individual events for links to ticket sales. Any questions relating to tickets, please contact Rebecca McRobb on rebecca (at) twistedtree.co.uk.

UPCOMING EVENTS

TechCrunch Paris – Paris – 24th March 2010
We had a great time last year and it’s clear Paris is a hotbed of startups right now.

TechCrunch Europe will return to Paris for its 2nd annual afternoon seminar on 24th March featuring yet another interactive and live-streamed session featuring some of the most innovative and interesting web & mobile startups and investors in France.

We are releasing a limited number of early bird tickets now and you can get yours here.

Geek’n Rolla – London – 20th-21st April 2010
2009 saw the launch of the highly successful Geek’n Rolla. More than 300 participants gathered in London for a full day of ‘speed’ presentations, interactive discussions and a TechCrunch Pitch event at the end. 2010 will see the return of Geek’n Rolla with the first day dedicated to startups.

New for 2010 will be a second day with an investment focus.

Special Note on Geeknrolla: This year we plan to LAUNCH 10+ startups at GeeknRolla in London. To enter your startup, this must be the FIRST time the world has EVER heard of you company. We’ll consider companies which are in private beta at GeeknRolla, but we’ll favour launching ones out of stealth mode, and these will take precedent.

To apply to launch your company in front of 400+ entrepreneurs and investors and be mentored and prepped by TechCrunch Europe for the launch, please FILL IN THIS FORM

This is, as always, free to enter for startups. For more on last year’s huge GeeknRolla event see here.

We are releasing a limited number of early bird tickets to the startup day of Geek’n Rolla – tickets for the investment day will be released in early February 2010. To get your early bird rate ticket to the startup day, please go here. Twitter hashtag will be “gknr”.

4ip is sponsoring Geek’n Rolla and our event in Edinburgh. 4iP is Channel 4′s innovation fund to stimulate public service digital media across the UK. In English, that means supporting great ideas for disruptive websites, games and mobile services which help people improve their lives. 4iP aspires to be the riskiest and highest value add investor in the UK. Last year 4iP did over 30 deals including Audioboo, MyBuilder, GymFu, Newspaper Club and Mapumental. Daniel Heaf 4iP’s National Investor said: “Geek n’ Rolla was one of my favourite events of last year and fits perfectly with 4iP’s mission to catalyse the UK start-up economy. There is huge benefit to bringing together those in the process of launching start-ups with more experienced entrepreneurs, business leaders and investors.”

TechCrunch Edinburgh – Edinburgh – 12th May 2010
TechCrunch Europe will be co-locating with EIE’10 in Edinburgh on 12th May 2010. Our venue hosts will be holding EIE in the AM and in the PM TechCrunch Europe will be running an interactive afternoon seminar followed by a joint networking party for both events in the evening. Full details of the day will be posted here soon along with details on how to book a place at what is set to be a highlight in Scotland’s entrepreneurial and tech calendars. We are releasing a limited number of early bird tickets now for this event and to register please go here.

TechCrunch Nordic – Copenhagen – 26th May 2010
TechCrunch Europe will host its 3rd TechCrunch Nordic event – joining Seedcamp on their European tour in Copenhagen at the end of May 2010. Full details on the event will be announced shortly. A limited number of early bird tickets are now available here.

The Europas – London – July 7th or 8th – To be confirmed, 2010
The Europas is TechCrunch Europe’s summer awards event for the tech community and where we recognise the talent in Europe at a stunning awards ceremony and party, done “TechCrunch Europe style”. Please mark these days in your diary for now, tickets to be released in due course.

The above series of TechCrunch events is sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials programme.
Sun Startup Essentials program consists of:
· Discounted servers
· Discounts on storage
· Open source software
· Discounted partner hosting
· Free technical advice and training
· Co-marketing opportunities
For more information or to sign up please visit them here.

TechCrunch & UKTI pitch workshops
Since late 2008 TechCrunch Europe and UKTI have been organising a series of pitch workshops – the next one is on 10th February 2010. It is free to attend for qualified startups and it gives you a chance to possibly pitch at a forthcoming TechCrunch Pitch event. For more information on future pitch workshops or to register, please contact Petra Johansson on petra (at) twistedtree.co.uk.

The pitch workshops are supported by:

UKTI – 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 network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage. For further information please visit www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7215 8000. British Library and IP Centre – The British Library Business & IP Centre at St Pancras, London can help you start, run and grow your business.

2010 Events organised by others which TechCrunch Europe is supporting:

Seedcamp Events

Prague – 2nd March
Barcelona – 23rd March
Paris – 15th April
Tel Aviv – 6th May
Copenhagen – 27th May
Berlin – 16th June
London – 20th July

Music 4.5 – 4 March 2010, London
2Pears, the team that bring you the popular TechCrunch Europe events and the UKTI Pitch Workshops, are pleased to announce the launch of a new music tech start-up event – Music 4.5 – which will take place in central London on Thursday, March 4, 2010. Music 4.5 will bring together music tech start-ups, serial entrepreneurs, investors, artists, band managers and key industry players to share knowledge, discuss strategies for business success, debate market trends and evolution, as well as network. TechCrunch readers can benefit from a 20% discount on delegate rates by using the discount code TCE10

If you’re a European startup then you need to check out Plugg on March 11, 2010. Organised by long-time Web 2.0 consultant, blogger, entrepreneur and now TechCrunch contributor Robin Wauters, the event will take place in Brussels, Belgium, and will feature a host of top speakers from the continent, and a startup competition.

Social Media World Forum – 15-16 March 2010, London

Social Media World Forum is now firmly established as Europe’s leading social media event. With 5 supporting conference streams, over 300 speakers, free to attend workshops and exhibitions. Covering the latest in brand engagement within social media, monitoring campaigns, branding, b2b social networks, pr, virtual currencies, gaming, and many more. TechCrunch Europe readers can claim a 15% discount by using the discount code #SMWF2010

Marketing 2.0 – 22-23 March 2010, Paris
The Marketing 2.0 Conference is aimed at all professionals who think that today’s marketing industry is in need of a change! We are bringing the world’s best experts and specialists together to discuss the future of marketing, (social) media, and advertising, as well as new technology. TechCrunch readers get a €200 discount on the standard attendance fee by quoting the discount code “TCM2C”

EIE’10 – 12 May 2010, Edinburgh
Engage | Invest | Exploit is Informatics Ventures annual showcase of the high-quality deal flow spinning out of Scotland’s world leading Informatics and Computer Science departments, and hot startups associated with our institutions. The Informatics space is vast, including ventures in BioTech, CleanTech, Gaming, Mobile/Wireless and all varieties of Software. In its third year, this annual showcase has a simple value proposition for investors, serial technology entrepreneurs and industry: spend one morning with us and get to see fifty hot prospects in one place with an engaging agenda, in one of Europe’s most dynamic and award winning physical environments. Add to this the extra value and buzz of E|I|E 2010 being followed in the afternoon and evening with a TechCrunch Europe event. Investors who have previous attended E|I|E include: TTP Ventures, Seven Spires, Seraphim Capital, Scottish Equity Partners, Pond Ventures, Pentech Ventures, NESTA, Doughty Hanson, Balderton Capital, Archangel Informal Investment, Amadeus Capital and 4iP.
· Images from E|I|E 2009 can be found here.
· A video summary of E|I|E 2009 can be found here.
· One page “crib sheets” on each company pitching and demonstrating at E|I|E 2009 can be found here.
· E|I|E 2009 featured a keynote speech by Guy Kawasaki which can be found here.

SXSWi/Digital Mission
Organised by Chinwag and the UKTI, the Digital Mission (a kind of punk trade mission) to SXSWi is back for it’s third year after a successful trip to Austin in 2009. TechCrunch Europe is a media partner because to get on the mission all you have to have as a company is a UK headquarter, so in other words any European company with a UK HQ counts. Last year Zemanta, which is really built in Slovenia but has a UK HQ, came along.

Tim Dickinson (Vocals), Leo Dawkins (Guitar), Leon Barron (Keyboard), Chris Hill (Bass) and Chris Egglestone (Drums) also went to the trouble of getting a video made of the GeeknRolla evening, so here it is for your enjoyment:

A link for downloads of tunes and videos are all on their MySpace page at Myspace.com/enamel1. The band can be contacted via chris[@]chrisegglestone.co.uk. Follow them on Twitter at EnamelTheBand.

Enamel has two gigs next week..

Wednesday – 29 Apr The Wilmington Arms, Angel. London
Saturday – 2 May 333 motherbar , Old Street . London

Joe Drumgoole, CTO and co-founder of PutPlace, (@jdrumgoole) has now uploading the slides from his ‘speed speech’ at Geek ‘n Rolla, title “Launching your Startup on a cloud computing infrastructure”. The main take-away? Watch the per transaction costs in cloud computing.

Benjamin Ellis wrote on Business Tech Feed:

This Tuesday’s TechCrunch Geek n Rolla event included a presentation by Joe Drumgoole, “get of of my cloud.” It probably steered between too technical for non-tech folks and not technical enough for the techies. Launching a start up on a cloud infrastructure makes good economic sense – it’s a success-based cost model. The same holds true for start up projects inside of larger businesses…. However, Joe advised some caution, per transaction costs can kill you (this is ironic given that the concept of “Free” – so popular with the Web 2.0 world – is based on infinitely low transaction costs)… In summary cloud computing is a great adjunct, but don’t get rid of your main servers just yet. Be ready to deploy to any other grid at speed, so that you have a recovery plan. Also, watch those transaction costs.

Video:

Due to a technical fault at the time TechCrunch Europe wasn’t able to live blog his speech, but we now have the video:

Here’s a selection from just a couple of blog posts about his talk:

Redcatco

* More cash doesn’t mean more customers. It is how you use it.
* Boot strap with cash – cashflow beats money.
* Think about your burn rate. How much cash you are consuming each month controls your future.
* Look for performance based spend.
* Pick the metrics that matter, and manage tightly against them – if your key metrics slide has 50 things on it, you need to re-think it!
* Choose your partners well to manage your cash flow.
* Can you afford success? If your costs are ahead of revenues, do some creative thinking.

Steve Parks (A selection from a more detailed post)

Started as 3 different businesses – Lovefilm, Screen Select and Video Island – all with the same idea. Lovefilm launched first, about a year later the other two launched. Lovefilm had raised £1m from angels, Video Island was venture backed with large funding of approx £9m-ish, Screen Select raised £2m via angels. But then all raised substantial money and went for aggressive growth. Businesses later merged.

Bootstrapping
In the early days of these businesses the boot-strapping companies beat the business that had most cash, but in later development the venture backed business was able to accelerate more rapidly. Screen Select had a cash burn of half (at £98k) of video island, but had more growth. The biggest difference was in hiring approach. Video island hired ‘ahead of the curve’ spending lots to get experienced talent. Screen Select looked for new emerging talent – which was cheaper. Video Island had outsourced to grow faster at significant expense, but then had to work hard to fix and adapt it. Screen Select had built everything themselves with a team of 3, which gave them a stronger platform – and that’s now the one used by all the merged businesses.

Cashflow
You have to pay for acquisition, approx £20 per customer. You then have to send them DVD’s which cost you, so you’re about £60 down. Then you get monthly revenues for membership, and customers breakeven after 9 months. It took William about 3 years to really understand the reality – which was better. You typically give a 2 week free trial, which costs, you send them DVDs – but you don’t have to pay yet – you can use credit terms – so the customer actually pays before you have costs. So the cashflow is better than expected – and the customers actually provide you with funding!

How to scale
Culture is critical, communication is important. keep business simple – focus, focus, focus. Scaling beats revenue and profit – important beats urgent.

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 more than one man – and the irony that a bad sore throat cut down our only guy was not exactly invisible. (Paul Walsh was unable to join the panel due to a bout of viral tonsillitis. And yes I replaced him with a banana, hey it was a little joke).

However, we soldiered on. I felt I couldn’t join the panel as I was running the whole day already. So I figured I’d let the panel kick things off their own way. Half way through it became clear that we did need a male voice. Milo Yiannopoulos, a tech blogger with The Daily Telegraph seemed keen, so he volunteered. It wasn’t a bad idea because frankly he provided a fairly opposite-end-of-the-spectrum point of view (to put it mildly).

At that point the audience got fired up and we had some great debate and great questions. Our live blog kicked off a debate. And the next day Yiannopoulos blogged his views again (see below)

Since then, a war of words has kicked off about the whole subject. Frankly, I’m not sure how productive this war is going to be, and Cate and I were keen to find SOLUTIONS to this issue, not just more mud-throwing. But I hope out of this debate that tech companies and startups really do start to *think* about whether they could behave in a more female-friendly way. After all, there are many sound business reasons for doing so. So I’m going to encourage you to get involved in the debate and please go read the posts from these commentators and form you own view, whether you agree with me that that this is an “issue” or not.

Here is our transcript of the debate covered by TechCrunch Europe writer Basheera Khan. Here is a selection of just some of the posts so far:

Telegraph: “Men perform better in many technology jobs. Must we apologise for that? (32 comments)”

As Joshua March pointed out yesterday, since most start-ups are founded by developers, and most developers are men, it’s natural that a lot of the CEOs on the scene are male. But the tech scene is much bigger than the startups themselves: there’s an entire ecosystem of VCs, PRs and journalists. Many of these jobs are done by girls. As Paul Walsh puts it: “The women who want to work in technology are working in technology.”

Manufactured anger over the lack of women in tech (22 comments)

It’s my opinion, which I’ll articulate tomorrow, that the books of males vs females doesn’t need to be balanced in favour of more females. Why? Well, because there are plenty of females in tech and those that aren’t, don’t want to be. Ok, so there might be a small percent who would like to be in tech, but don’t make it. But can’t the same be said for any industry?

Computer Weekly:

Ciara Byrne makes a good comment underneath Yiannopoulos’s blog, saying, “Working in an environment where you are always the only woman (apart from the secretary) does get wearing and you always feel like an outsider to some degree. While positive discrimination is not the answer, creating an environment which is more female-friendly would help.”

That is the point women are trying to make – they’re not anti-men, and they’re not calling for special treatment, they’re just trying to describe their own experiences and think about how they could help more women get involved in the sector. It’s obvious that there are plenty of excellent female technicians and IT managers around: the problem is that they make up just 15% of the industry, and there should be more. The caveman proponents of “men good, women bad” arguments are getting increasingly lonely as more and more men decide mixed teams are more successful, but there’s still a long way to go.

James Higgs

[Milo's] argument boils down to “men and women are different, men are better at tech, deal with it”. This is bullshit. Here’s why.

Milo seems to think that technology is a pure meritocracy, and that we can therefore say that because there are fewer women in tech we can draw the conclusion that women are not as good at it as men. But this argument doesn’t fly.

While women are under-represented, there are also comparatively few people from ethnic minorities in programming jobs in the UK. However there are quite a lot of people from ethnic minorities working in more lowly (i.e. less well paid) technology jobs like first line support and so on.

Are we therefore to draw the conclusion that white people are genetically best suited to be programmers? Of course not.

It’s not that long since we debated whether “allowing” women into the Vienna Philharmonic would change the orchestra’s distinctive sound (it didn’t), or whether women were capable of running a marathon (they are). These barriers have been torn down and exposed for the simple sexism they were. The same needs to happen in the tech industry, and the sooner it happens, the better.

Andy Skipper

The first panel discussion at today’s inaugural Geek’n’Rolla conference stirred a mite more controversy than the tech industry is used to at that type of event, and rightly so: the subject was of the imbalance of gender presence in the world of tech startups.

The panel discussing the point was formed entirely of one gender, which is never conducive of completely unbiased debate where the subject is gender equality, although the choice of replacement for Paul Walsh (out with viral tonsilitis, poor cherub) was provocative to the point of comic parody of right-wing journalists at large (being a journalist for the Telegraph, and largely apathetic to the lack of gender balance in the industry). He did raise a few laughs, intentionally or otherwise, but on the whole I don’t think his presence added to the discussion at all, and was a distraction from discussion of what I believe is the core of the problem: inherited social stigma and media reluctance to portray work in the tech world as anything other than rooms full of bespectacled virgins, socially inept, unhygienic, and, almost invariably, male.

This is not a world where the blossoming teenage girl, about to choose her career path, and, perhaps more importantly, her future social sphere, is likely to base her aspirations. The media needs to change first, and we can help them do that; in fact, the seeds were sown in the late 90s by the likes of Martha Lane Fox – they were just never followed through.

The issue is not going to be solved by forcing technology on girls at school, or by blaming the culture. The media needs to buy into girls as geeks, as unhygienic as the guys. So how do we make that happen?

Broadstuff

I was tied up in the morning so only arrived in time for a fairly interesting (in all senses of the word) panel on Women in Tech. The issue of “why there are fewer women in Tech than men” crops up perennially and usually circles round with no conclusion. No change this time, but the ante was upped by the Daily Telegraph’s Milo Yiannopolous taking the contrarian, un-PC, (and inaccurate in my experience) “its natural that men are better at some things and its OK”. Gets you fired from Harvard but got Milo mild admonitions and (according to him anyway) lots of private support.

Ah well…..I go back to Janet Parkinson’s work last autumn in Berlin which showed that there are more women on-web than men, controlling more spend, and they use the quite Web differently – so anyone who designs applications for what women want has probably got a competitive advantage that most (male built) sites will never understand. I recall Wired’s Ben Hammersley going hammer and tongs at her in Berlin when all she had done was assembled a basic fact base of these things (see the link above) , so there is clearly something deeply visceral in some men about admitting all this stuff, which Milo clearly tapped.

Hudde / Zuzanna

When Mike Butcher of TechCrunch asked me to participate in a panel on ‘Balancing Tech Culture’ at the Geek n’ Rolla , I thought I’d better find something to talk about. Enter ‘Getting women in start-ups’ research survey targeted at the tech and start-up industry. The results were predictable. They usually are on a 200 person sample. I am setting your expectations – it was not a scientific piece of research.

Women are the minority in the UK start-ups. 33 per cent said they had none or only one female colleague on staff, and 65 per cent admitted women were underrepresented in their firms. Worryingly, the majority of women in start-ups are in the low impact positions such as office management and manning the reception. Only one-third were employed in software or tech development.

Our panel tried to get to the bottom of why this number is so low and how we could fix it. It was a heated debate (you can see the transcript here), led by Cate Sevilla of BitchBuzz with Sophie Cox of Worldeka, Leisa Reichelt of Disambiguity and Nacera Benfedda of Viadeo, with a brief appearance from Milo Yiannopoulos of The Daily Telegraph.

The answer: one hour is not enough to sort this out. There was no general consensus. We agreed that there may be several reasons behind the current situation including gender inequality, culture, lack of female role models and female VCs.

Personally, and that’s possibly because I spent five years doing sociological research on similar subjects, I believe it’s a cultural issue. It’s true, tech is a women-friendly industry – we are liberal and offer flexible working hours. Yet, I don’t see young girls queuing up to be the next Gina Bianchini. Can we have ‘balance in tech’? Sure, perhaps in 50 years, just when we are hitting the equal numbers of men and women in the government. Once again, it will all come down to education.

Silicon Stilettos / Wendy Tan White

How do we get more women in tech? As many people have said it comes down to exposure, education and changing media portrayal. If you believed an industry was ‘unsexy’, ‘geeky’ and male dominated. Why would you aspire to working there as a young woman…. At school, I had an extremely enthusiastic maths/IT teacher, she really encouraged me to study computer science at uni rather than natural sciences or something deemed traditional for girls to study. Perhaps it was the one good thing about being at a girls grammar school, we all believed there was nothing we shouldn’t or couldn’t do. My friends at school still thought I was a little crazy wanting to study computer science, ‘Isn’t it dull?’… I’ve worked in manufacturing, finance and tech businesses and I’ve personally found the tech industry the most supportive. I’ve been equally supported by men and women and I love the fast pace, appetite for change and can do attitude of it’s communities.

BitchBuzz / Cate

“…There are also men out there – many of whom I met yesterday – that do acknowledge that this is a problem, and are willing to speak up about it. I have to tell you, being in a room filled with geeky men who were even acknowledging that, hell yes, we do need more women in tech was fucking amazing. I hit some sort of Geek-Guy-Tech-High. Having guys take the microphone and stand up for women in tech had me so blissed out I didn’t even know what to do with myself. And, the fact that Mike Butcher would even organize and have a panel of this nature at a major start-up event says a lot in itself. (Huge fucking high-five to Mike!)

At the end of the day, I’m thankful that Paul Walsh and then Milo Yiannopoulos agreed to be on this panel, and that they both took the time to blog about it. I mean, your views on women in tech are heinous and are exactly why things in tech for women suck sometimes – but at least you get people talking about it. We had a room full of people talking about getting more women in tech start-ups. People were debating about it on Twitter. The blogosphere has boomed with pieces about our panel and about women in technology.

This is a great step. Even if we can’t all agree – the conversation is what’s important. It’s putting the spotlight on these issues, whether you even think it’s an *issue* or not.

We’re getting coverage, we’re getting people thinking about it, and that is exactly what needs to happen.

Huge thank you from BitchBuzz to Milo, all our panellists, Mike Butcher, Petra Johanssen, Rassami Hok Ljungberg and the entire team.

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 by finding speakers who were the bluntest, frankest people I know – some of whom, like William Reeve, I had to coax out of a five year conference avoidance, or like Jof Arnold who has never presented his findings about being a mobile startup before. And, well, it looked like it worked.

So for now, I want to thank all our speakers and panelists, sponsors (the very supportive Viadeo, Bootlaw, UKTI, NESTA, School for Startups, Park Lane Champagne), TechFluffTV for their video, Rassami, Petra and Bash (my awesome team) and you the delegates for making the day and the night a real Geek ‘n Rolla experience.

I leave you with me making a fool of myself at the After-party. But I just love rocking out…

Alternative link here GeeknRolla

Live TV : Ustream

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.

Freemium – there are more and more startups looking at this model. But you have to be extremely careful about deploying, because it’s about the numbers. Fred Wilson writes great posts about this. There has to be enough of a feature set in your product to allow you to charge a premium for truly advanced features, and balance this out against your internal resource requirements so that the premium sales actually make you some money.Eg. Basekit, Box.net, Zemanta.

Marketplaces – if you build a great marketplace, they will come – myBuilder has done a fantastic job of building a marketplace that connects homeowners with builders; myBuilder gets a share of the completed rate.

Virtual goods are relevant to specific markets, such as gaming and virtual worlds such Second Life and Habbo Hotel.

Reshma’s a believer in the concept of graduated business models – citing the example of myBuilder going from percentage of transaction to subscription to advertising/lead-generation. Amazon went from ecommerce to hosting to affiliate advertising.
BIO: Reshma Sohoni runs Seedcamp on a day-to-day basis as its CEO. She joined Seedcamp from the Venture team at 3i. Prior to 3i, Reshma spent over 3 years at Vodafone in their Commercial Strategy team, working across the Europe and Japan footprints in marketing strategy and pricing functions. Reshma started her career in the US in investment banking (Broadview) and venture capital (Softbank).

Video:

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

Fred describes himself as being on the dark side of the force – way to get the geeks on side. Here follow’s Fred’s frankly excellent advice for European entrepreneurs looking for VCs.

Remember, VCs are human too! When you go to a networking event, don’t drop your business card straight away – have a chat, build a relationship. Once I see you’re a credible person, you’re intellectually a joy to deal with, that’s the first step.

The second step is, how to get a meeting? Statistically the chances of getting to the finish line are not high, but it doesn’t matter; I do this job because I like entrepreneurs, and I like helping businesses achieve their goals.

The realistic view of my priorities as a VC is the following: my family, my partners in the firm, my existing companies, my personal brand, managing my deal flow – that business priority at number 5 often comes in at number 1, because we’re obsessive about what we do. Every week we reassess what’s in the pipeline – generally about 30 deals a week.

The objective of the first pitch is not to tell me everyting about the business, it’s to impart to me the core elements that would excite me about the business within about 40 minutes. Get me hooked. It’s like show business – you’re setting a stage and you need to turn the story into an exciting story.

When I meet a company, within 3 minutes you know whether you like them, within 5 minutes you know wehther you want to fund them. In other words, I will have an urge to give you money. But because I’m a good VC, I’ll rationalise this urge asking questions that I know I’ll need when I’m selling the business to my partners.

Beware of pitch decay. What I need from you is the 4 or 5 bullet points that explain why this is a good opportunity.

Europeans are very bad at following up on pitches and meetings. It’s a sales job, and you have to keep yourself up in the mindshare of the VC. Even a short 15-minute call is sufficient – it helps get me comfortable with the startup you’re trying to sell.

At some point the tables turn and you start to feel that we’re hungry and hooked, we want your business. We’re going to start shooting questions back to you for more detail. And I find that people are very unprepared to answer what I think are just basic questions. I find that people haven’t done the work thinking about the next steps and so they start scrambling a bit.

You need to focus on the right things – the saying that ideas are cheap and execuition is king is really true.

If we fast forward to the partnership presentation – we don’t need 5 people and the banker in the room. People pay relatively little attention to this – arrive 15 minutes early, make sure your technology is working, and your pitch is prepared with the investor in mind.

Until you have money in the bank, you’re creating risk. Deals fall through, timing is everything, get the money while you can, you never know what’s going to happen. Be paranoid while you’re in the process about managing it well.

Afterwards, managing the relationship. We want to be partners, building a business is long and painful, it consumes your life. The key is that you have to think your VC is nothing more than a financing opportunity at heart – it’s the best tool that the market invented to fund startups, but it is still just a tool – they’re not going to build your business for you.

In a way, entrepreneurs and VCs share in a suspension of disbelief – we wouldn’t do what we do otherwise. But you need the emotional maturity to know when it’s time for the company to evolve, and when there is a need for founders to bring in the talent and manage their way down from the CEO position.

Questions from the floor:

Q. How do European entrepreneurs compare in aggressiveness with those from elsewhere?

A. Israelis, Chinese and Indians, West Coast Americans – these are all more aggressive than European entrepreneurs.

Q. How comfortable are you with single-person companies?

A. Extremely uncomfortable. The hardest hurdle is starting the company, then finding people to share the vision and work for free, and then to find funding. The perception that people have of their own value to the business is always out of whack. Companies work as a collective organism.

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

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.

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 of humour, most times it just does not travel well.

Ian Hogarth

“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