“The Individual’s Time Has Come.” With this declaration Julie Meyer welcomed an amazing group of entrepreneurs, investors and innovators to Entrepreneur Country at the Institute of Directors on June 17, sponsored by Morse.
It hardly seems possible, but ten years have passed since Julie Meyer came to London and founded the investors’ network First Tuesday. On the third Tuesday of June she showed she is still the supreme networker on the entrepreneurial and investment scene by getting together an outstanding group of people at the Institute of Directors where she preached revolution beneath the portraits of the kings and queens of England.
Another country
They wouldn’t have disapproved. Entrepreneur country isn’t a breakaway state, rather a vision of how enterprise can make Britain as great as empire ever could: “I thought that in many respects we live in an alternate but parallel country at Ariadne Capital. We are convinced that reality is converging on where we are,” she says. And much of her motivation comes from her conviction back then that London was not only the financial centre of the world but one of the most enterprise-friendly environments. Today Ariadne Capital’s headquarters is in the heart of the City and hoses a team of specialist building on the company’s early successes with companies like Skype, SpinVox, Monitise and Momail.
The Entrepreneur Country Manifesto is a 15-point statement containing some statements that won’t go down too well with the bureaucrats. Here are a few: “The bigger the State grows the weaker the people become...”; “No real, sustainable wealth creation through entrepreneurship ever owed its success to government”; “...it is still counter-cultural to be an entrepreneur in the UK and Europe...”; “Individual Capitalism is the force that will shape the 21st century.”
Not a Utopia
Julie Meyer loves the buzz of creation, and believes passionately that capital will always follow good ideas. That is why entrepreneur Country is not a Utopia – the people who spoke have proved her thesis time and again in every kind of business environment. Enterprise and wealth creation are not self-indulgent activities: rather they leaven the whole of society by strengthening the voice of the individual and can lead to positive philanthropy (as opposed to charity) as in the case of Seb Bishop.
In 2000 Bishop founded Espotting and pioneered the pay-per-click model of online advertising in the UK, merging it four years later with FindWhat.com in a deal that valued it at US$186million. Now we know it as MIVA and Seb is its President, however he’s probably best known now for his appearance on C4’s Millionaires’ Mission – he talked about the satisfaction of seeing a community in Uganda begin to identify sustainable tourism income.
Another entrepreneur with a mission is Paul Barry-Walsh, one of Ariadne’s founding investors and chairman of Netstore, who said he found it difficult to access funding in his early days. How much more difficult for disadvantaged people, he thought, so he set up The Fredericks Foundation to help people take control of their lives and start their own businesses. The average loan is £2,500 but for every 100 people helped he estimates the taxpayer is saved £3million. Entrepreneur Country is not just for the privileged.
Enterprise and imagination
In the end, hard work and imagination are the factors that will get the UK out of its depression. But not just the UK. Location is becoming irrelevant and Entrepreneur Country has no boundaries, as is shown by Sean Phelan, a Londoner despite his name, who started Multimap in 19995 and sold it to Microsoft for £30million in 2007. Phelan’s six recipe for the 21st century entrepreneur includes drive and energy, technology and marketing vision, and taking on people who can’ get stuff done’. “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it!” he suggests, quoting Michelangelo.
Entrepreneurship does not only reside in inventing new stuff though. When the first keynote speaker Dr Jalal Bagherli joined the chip maker Dialog Semiconductor in September 2005 it was losing money and reeling from the collapse of its biggest customer. He turned it round by changing its corporate strategy and culture, by focusing on core competencies, by ‘killing the zombies’ (cutting research on dead-end projects) and by paying most attention to the largest customers. In the first quarter of this year Dialog was back in profit and showing strong growth.
Entrepreneur Country is disruptive rather than subversive. The corporation is mutating: the revolt of the masses is over. The growth of our prosperity and our economy will henceforward be driven by talented and determined individuals. People who follow visions, are determined to realise them. People who understand the tools technology has given them and refine those tools to build a world that works to improve the human condition without waste and without.
When Success happens, we must celebrate it. So says Julie Meyer and the event on June 17 was a celebration with direction and purpose. The group of new companies aspiring to citizenship of entrepreneur Country couldn’t have been more eclectic – a mobile gaming serviced (Cellectivity); integrated communications (Corebridge); hyperlocal news (Consenda); social travel planning (029) but they are all strong on innovation and imagination.
We will see Entrepreneur Country expand over time both online and off as people tell others what life is like in these new territories. In the meantime, says Julie Meyer, it is being settled by its brave young (young at heart that is) pioneers who are opening its doors and waving its flag – inviting everyone to join them in building the future.