Young Company Finance Conference – will it blend?

I always feel that the Young Company Finance Conference is the start of a new business year. So first things first. Lets get Phil and Ally (BBC Scotchsterland Hogmymoney Show) to play out the old bad recession focussed business year with a lament and then play in the new business year with a…. hmmm… another lament. Oh well.

I tend to see the YCF Conference as a day to get myself sorted out as the new business year starts – to get re-focussed. This year probably more than ever that refocus activity was a requirement.

Alert folks will remember that we were promised by a man called a Darling in 2009 that the recession would end in Q1 2010 – and technically it did. But recently we have been promised by a man called Dave that we have to pay down the debt and expect tough times.

Hmmm… I didn’t borrow any of that debt… so why am I part of the repayment scheme? However, regardless of my lack of culpability, the recession by any practical measure isn’t ending anytime soon. Flip (substitute your own phrase here ****).

So YCF… what’s the tone this year? Well there was talk of changing business models from The Company Creators, though those models didn’t get an overwhelming reception from Archangels (in my opinion).

There was chatter at lunch about the banks… sorry can’t repeat it… it was all good… honest. Not a lot of banks in attendance actually – so special brownie points go to Llyods TSB (or Group or something) and the Clydesdale for coming to one of Scotland’s leading finance conferences. Hope you got lots of business.

The VC chap from Londonshire at Octopus Ventures (were they the guys that picked the world cup winners?) was pretty good at explaining the type of businesses they liked…. software, low capex, low burn rate, customer focus, alpha iterations, recurring revenue etc. I hate when people talk about you – without realising you’re in the room (we accept cheques payable to cash). 

Blether Media were the token marketers in the room and a good job they did of explaining the social media thing. Much talk of Purple Cows and the guys from Brew Dog dressed as Penguins, and I always like a Will It Blend clip. I wasn’t convinced there were many people pulling on their purple pullovers by the end of the presentation – but it did force me to wonder if we have taken our purple foot of our purple accelerator when it came to exposing ourselves (and my flowing locks) in the social media world. Cheers Kyle – nice one.

Other notable things? Well a number of POC (proof of concepts) did some quick, if perhaps difficult to understand, presentations. Inquisitive Systems I’ve followed for a while and they continue to look really strong, though I did notice that the lining of Jamie’s suit seems to double as a Superman Cape – so that could be an unfair advantage when conquering the security world.

So by day end – where’s my head? A bit clearer – maybe.

Jamie at Inquisitive asked me what I was “taking away from the day”, so after some thought…

• There is genuine concern about the lack of banking support at overdraft level among a wide population of the Scottish business community (in my opinion).
• There is a lack of exits to fund new investments (in everyone’s opinion). 
• There is acceptance that social media marketing works – though it still seems to be an activity dominated by the media companies (in my opinion).

Given the first two bullets it’s a good job the social marketing thing can be done with limited funds! So onwards and upwards with the promotion of our pension advice site.

Just one thing I’d like to know… The UK Debt. Will it Blend?

Search Engines and the webmaster

We’ve been looking at the effectiveness of the webmaster tool that you can use to monitor your website from Google. Unlike the brilliant Google Analytics the Google Webmaster tool seems to need a wee bit more work from the geniuses that are Google.

We’re finding Google Webmaster reports that some of the websites we have developed are getting high search position ratings for certain keywords. Good news! Well not really, when you check for the search term it’s clear that webmaster has got its knickers in a twist. But it’s not consistent either – as some of it’s info looks accurate. Our search engine optimisation service is getting increasingly popular as more and more folks in Scotland realise that SEO is important to their website so the free tools from Google are making things a lot easier. Despite the fact that they are free it still comes as big surprise when the Google tools fall short of helping us maximise SEO when we have been busy website developers.

Putting more skin in the game

Good to see a Scottish technology company going on the acquisition trail and particularly exciting that’s it a North American business that they have acquired. Touch Bionics have acquired North American Inc Livingskin. A case of Livingstone company getting Livingskin. Touch Bionics are in the artificial limb business and the skin aspect is clearly an essential aspect of what they do – and so of course is the USA market.

Growth through acquisition is a tricky business but if you can pull it off then it obviously can work wonders. There aren’t a lot of businesses in Scotland in the technology sector who take this approach due in large part to a lack of funds and to some extent “bottle”.

Consuming another company is a challenging and time consuming business and the personalities of the acquired board and indeed staff can make proper integration slow and at times impossible.

Good for Touch Bionics – good to see them putting some skin in the game.

Graham Technology – the airship has departed

The Scotsman is always good company for my bowl of porridge in the morning and this morning it not only acted as a handy table mat for my messy eating it also brought a smile to my face. The folks at Graham Technology have pocketed a healthy payday and sold the company to a French organisation – well done.

The home of Graham Technology exuded confidence – a marvelous piece of architecture and beautifully detailed in the inside drawing its inspiration from airships. The India of Inchinnan building near Glasgow Airport was always worth the visit. I had the privilege of dining there at a business meeting and got an insight into what made Mr Graham tick. It was pretty clear that sales made him tick. For businesses in Scotland Graham Technology stood out.  In Grahams 20 years the software industry has changed dramatically – our website team webwisebusiness and software business Objective Associates have seen huge changes in just 5, I can’t imagine what we’ll be like in 20 years (though if I’m not retired I’ll be a sad chap).   

Best of luck to Mr Graham and his family.

Software Scotland – its in the game

It’s been a long time since there has been a notable investment story for the software industry in Scotland so even though it was a month back – thank goodness for Realtime Worlds in Dundee, Scotland. They are developing a new game to be launched in 2009 and got the backing of USA based Maverick Capital to the tune of $50mn.

Software in Scotland has long struggled to raise large funds so good to see the games industry leading the way. Lets hope its the start of a trend. There are investment funds in Scotland who take large risks with young Software companies – but they can’t come near that level of funding.

Back in the software goldrush days of 1998-2000 all you needed was a pony tail to get investment and no business plan “we’d like to get in early” (great Dilbert cartoon). Today it’s a lot harder for software in Scotland. Lifesciences are the new big thing (well nano thing) and software is something you offshore. So lets hope that the Realtime deal shows the local investment community that software is worth a serious look.  Though I suspect if we want to see interest I’ll have to get over my nausea when playing Tomb Raider. So we’ll just stick to developing business software at Objective Associates.

Flying by the seat of your kilt (how to measure up for a kilt)

We’re two thirds of the way through a website for a business that specialises in Kilt Hire and wedding services. Today we were working on the Kilt mail-order form and it came to the surprisingly complex area of how you measure someone for a kilt.

Forget inside leg (obviously) and you can also forget waist size.

Three dimensions are required when measuring someone for a kilt.

1. The distance around your body two inches above your tummy button or navel or belly button (whichever you have).

2. The distance from 2 inches above your navel to the cut of your knee (where it gives).

3. The distance around your erm…. well your…. how can I say this.. well we decided on “seat”. Rather than any other euphemism. 

We just hope site visitors will understand what we really mean and don’t go measuring themselves sitting on their Parker Knoll recliner. 

The sites nearly live at www.wearitright.co.uk  if you want to see the diagram we came up with to explain things politely.