You techie things... London's online entrepreneurs have a bright future

Today in Los Angeles the capital’s smartest online entrepreneurs are selling their ideas to Hollywood’s big hitters. Gideon Spanier finds the future of the internet is bright, young and beautiful
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5 February 2013

Move over Oscars — Los Angeles is currently overrun with smart Brits, many of them Londoners, showing off their talents. Neurons are snapping, Natalia Vodianova is smouldering, Will.i.am is riffing as our hottest techpreneurs take to the stage. Welcome to the Innovation Forum, a two-day summit to promote Britain’s creative and tech industries in America.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is sharing a platform with The Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am discussing the disruptive power of technology. Next up is Lucian Grainge, British boss of Universal Music, the world’s biggest music company, on how “English-speaking content” from both sides of the Atlantic is so dominant in the new digital age.

Why are they all here? The big idea is that Britain is a world leader in terms of creativity — think of the impact of Danny Boyle’s Olympic opening ceremony — and that if we do a better job of selling these industries to the world, it could help kickstart the ailing UK economy. So where better to start than LA, home of the entertainment industry?

UK Trade & Investment, the arm of the Government that drums up foreign investment, has backed the Innovation Forum as part of its “Great” campaign — putting the Great into Great Britain.

Lord Marland, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Ambassadors, and Joanna Shields, chief executive of Tech City, the organisation that backs east London as a technology hub, have both flown in to meet Californian political heavyweights. UKTI added a further seal of Government approval by hosting a party for 400 guests at the British Consul-General’s grand residence last night, lighting up the exterior of the mansion in patriotic red, white and blue.

The excitement around the event is thanks to Founders Forum, a British group led by lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman and media banker Jonnie Goodwin, who persuaded almost 50 British tech start-ups, most of them founded by entrepreneurs in their twenties and thirties, to fly in.

Among them are some familiar faces: Michael Acton Smith, founder of Mind Candy, the company behind hit kids’ website Moshi Monsters; “Gollum” actor Andy Serkis, who also runs Imaginarium Studios, which creates avatars of actors’ performances for use in computer games; and Joe Sumner, son of singer Sting and co-founder of Vyclone, an app that allows users to edit together video clips from the same event, such as a rock concert, to create a single film.

Yesterday, the start-ups each got two minutes on stage to sell themselves in an “elevator pitch” — so called because it’s the length of a lift journey. Then it was all about networking with movie and music bosses and private investors to discuss investment opportunities on the roof-deck of Hollywood’s Siren Studios.

Delegates ranged from Jon Miller, the former digital boss of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, to Russian supermodel turned philanthropist Natalia Vodianova, who has been looking for digital ideas to improve her fundraising efforts. She believes some charities are “not thinking of innovation” and social media offers huge potential. “Billions are raised for charity but not through that platform,” she explains.

The British start-ups include MakieLab, pioneering the 3D-printing of physical toys, and Raspberry Pi, the super-cheap computer that costs as little as £18 and has sold one million units in less than a year. Kookier still is Reality Jockey, run by Michael Breidenbruecker, who came on stage with a ghetto blaster to illustrate his mobile app that lets users create and change a piece of music with sound effects to suit their mood.

The founders of these UK net businesses are a diverse bunch and they aren’t all British. They hail from Italy, Germany, France, Lithuania, Nigeria and Brazil — proof that London is a magnet for international talents who see the capital as a good place to build a global business. “We want them to walk away with business development deals and to do business,” says Hoberman.

Only a handful of the Innovation Forum’s “netpreneurs” are women. Emma Obanye, founder of Buddy Bounce, an online loyalty programme that allows musicians and bands to get to know their fans by offering them rewards, says it is the nature of the tech industry. She recalls how when she studied engineering at Brunel University a decade ago, only eight out of 150 students were female. “But it’s changing,” she adds. “There’s a real change in the terms of the numbers of people wanting to study technology. It’s becoming quite cool. Tech is very rock’n’roll now.”

Some say Britain’s relative lack of tech skills compared with America — the fact that we have not produced a company to match an Apple or Google or Facebook — is holding back the UK. Eben Upton, founder of Raspberry Pi, made the point he was motivated to launch his affordable computer because of the “appalling decline” in computer skills in Britain.

“There’s not quite the technological sophistication and breadth of job experience you get in Silicon Valley,” admits Acton Smith. “But we’re catching up.”

The Innovation Forum continues today with a series of panel discussions planned at Soho House West Hollywood. Grainge, who is also a British business ambassador for UKTI based in LA, has used his Hollywood connections to bring in other industry heavyweights such as Ari Emanuel, boss of talent agency William Morris Endeavor.

North London-born Grainge is showing his personal commitment to the UK-US “Special Relationship” by hosting a big drinks party at his LA home this evening to close the Forum.

Acton Smith says there is no substitute for face-to-face encounters and that this can produce unexpected results. “It might be the people you bump into in a lift. There are serendipitous meetings — and that’s when the magic happens.”

But he admits America is a culture shock. “I find I have to shift my mindset in LA. Everyone is super-confident. You really have to sell yourself. We Brits are really quite humble. You have to say, ‘We’ve got 70 million users, we’ve got a film coming out’ and so on.”

Shields and Marland aren’t just keen to export British talent to the world but also to sell the UK as an attractive place to invest. They’ve been talking up the cut in corporation tax to 21 per cent and tax breaks for computer gaming, film and high-end TV drama. “I feel incredibly passionate that London is the best place to imagine, grow and start a business,” declares Shields.

UKTI is set to host another Innovation Forum event on home territory in London in November at the BBC. “The Olympics have given us renewed confidence,” says Marland. “It’s reminded us of the huge bandwidth of skills in the UK — it’s reminded us of the art of the possible.”

FIVE START-UP UPSTARTS

Michael Breidenbruecker

Reality Jockey

The Austrian entrepreneur co-founded Last.fm in 2002. More recently, he launched world’s first iPhone only album. He says latest project Reality Jockey is about looking “beyond recorded music” to “create tools to change the soundtrack”. One example is an app that reacts to the way you are walking or jogging in real time, distorting or changing the sound electronically.

Emma Obanye

co-founder of Buddy Bounce

After studying engineering at Brunel then ecommerce at Queen Mary, University of London, Obanye set up Buddy Bounce with friends. The site, which launches soon and was voted start-up most likely to succeed, rewards music fans with points for interacting with bands on Facebook and Spotify — accumulating points can lead to special downloads or exclusive videos. Based at the Wayra academy for start-ups in Tottenham Court Road “it’s the only fully female-founded company,” says Obanye. “I’m very proud of that.” Supports Manchester United and loves prawn sandwiches.

Alice Taylor

founder of MakieLab

Taylor founded Shoreditch-based 3D printed toy company MakieLab in 2011 after 16 years building digital products for channels including Warner Bros and “marvelling at the size and slowness of the industry”. Her five-year-old daughter was another inspiration. Now, MakieLab has a staff of 14. Martha Lane Fox is chairman.

Marie-Alicia Chang

co-founder of Music Metric

Chang describes MusicMetric as the world’s largest digital entertainment database for music. It collects data from across the web and social media. Clients include Nokia. The company wants to expand into TV, film and books. Before starting MusicMetric, Chang graduated from UCL with a BA in history of art. In her spare time she writes her own music and puts on club nights in London.

Chris Gorell Barnes

founder of Adjust Your Set

“Advertising and marketing is broken,” says Gorell Barnes, who makes online videos for brands to show their customers. “Video is right at the heart of it. It is the most powerful media. But it needs new technology, strategy and analytics.” He has worked with brands such as Marks & Spencer and HSBC to create branded content. “Brands now need to think like media businesses.” Lives in Marylebone with long-term partner Martha Lane Fox.

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