Vikingar

Some highlights from the Vikingar event organised by the Viking Fund. Charles Arthur, technology editor of the Guardian, emphasised the importance of Blogs and RSS push technology in alerting him to stories of interest. Ian Weatherhog from Standford Technology raved about Web 2.0 and how inclusion and community is what its all about. Jotted down “swarm” and “flock” as sites to check out.

Interesting debate about the importance of good management versus good technology. One view I heard expressed by a university spin-out was that if the technology is innovative and a market opportunity exists, everything else, including the management, can be fixed (and probably has to be in that context!). However, the overwhelming view of the audience was that good management was of paramount importance. The key point is that navigating from anything like a good idea to an addressable market through the innovation minefield requires a blend of management skill and experience.

And that relates to my view that too much money can be a bad thing, as it takes the pressure off the management to validate their value proposition in the market. Far too many young technology companies fail to embrace potential early adopters and sell something however badly! As ever the alternative also occurs as many of the propositions we see are being just too precious with their equity and should be raising far more money to make the most of their opportunity. A small slice of a bigger pie is invariably better than 100% of nothing! Also a valid point made by Andrew Burton was that invariably these companies need a second round of financing and multiple fund raising rounds diverts management attention from growing the business.

As I let the audience retire to the bar in good time in return for some Blog comments, I look forward to seeing this site race up the Google rankings. Who knows we may even end up on Charles Arthur’s news feed!