Entrepreneur Country Welcomes 300 Guests From Across Europe

The spirit of entrepreneurship remains vibrant and infectious – despite plunging stock markets, the spectre of rising unemployment and the credit crunch.

Almost 300 of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs, including Caffè Nero founder Gerry Ford and Betfair co-founder and Chairman Edward Wray, shared stories of success at Ariadne Capital’s one-day Entrepreneur Country event. The seminars, held at the Institute of Directors (IoD) in central London, coincided with the official launch of Entrepreneur Country online.

For Sir Paul Judge, chairman of Schroder Income Growth Fund and of the Enterprise Education Trust, enterprise remains the lifeblood of the UK economy. His “how many people will die today” metaphor may have been somewhat macabre, but it clearly demonstrated the risks of life and starting a business. He began proceedings at the IoD with an acknowledgement that these are difficult times. But he told the audience that hard times are not necessarily all doom and gloom for entrepreneurs. “The higher the risk the greater the return,” he told them, adding that “risk is an inherent part of progress”.

Sir Paul also debunked the myth that fledgling companies are more risky than more established ventures with statistics that revealed big companies are not as ‘safe’ as they are perceived to be. For example, the top 25 companies in the US in 1900 were tracked and only two of the original 25 remained by 1960.

Thunderhead's brainstorm

Although the state of the economy was uppermost in everyone’s mind there were clear examples of successful entrepreneurial companies, such as Glen Manchester’s Thunderhead, which was built through the technology recession during the early years of this decade.

One of Manchester’s opening shots was to declare ‘recession is a good time to build a company’. Certainly Thunderhead, which began life in the technology doldrums of 2001, is a shining example of success. The company has come up with a hassle-free system that allows companies to control all their communications. After perfecting the offering, Thunderhead’s first customer was Deutsche Bank, which led to an initial dominance of the investment bank sector – though this has now expanded and the company works across many sectors.

Last year Thunderhead was named by Deloitte as the fastest growing technology company across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. And Manchester picked up his own entrepreneur of the year award last November.

“Recession demands a change of approach to make companies more competitive and successful,” he said. “This is a good environment to build an organisation. Recession creates necessity.”

Manchester’s rationale when he started out was that large companies would not be investing and small companies would not be innovating. “I thought I could pounce,” he explains. It was a tough time to get venture capital backing so Manchester ended up funding it himself. He was spurred on to make a profit because he had his own capital tied up in the venture. His lessons for entrepreneurs starting out are to focus on profit, and to concentrate on one industry and become very good at it.

The Flickr for data

Roman Stanek, founder and chief executive of Good Data Corporation and an Ariadne Investor Member, entertained the packed audience with his theories on launching and running a business. Good Data is Roman’s third company and he showed that great technology companies do not have to be built in traditional business centres. After all, he has successfully built a generation of honed development teams in Prague and Vietnam.

Roman, who describes his group as the Flickr for data, also delivered some razor sharp observations about how business can thrive in a downturn. Firstly he said forget the traditional business plan.

“Don’t get a plan. Get a meta plan,” he said proving that all plans morph and businesses must have a meta plan to be able to adapt to ever-changing market conditions. He also found favour with event delegates when he pronounced that rather than being worried about a recession business can embrace it and come out stronger the other side.

“Tough times create tough companies,” he said.

Betfair's set fair

Edward Wray, chairman of gaming giant Betfair and another Ariadne Investor Member, continued Roman’s theme saying that while the economy has made things harder, there’s no reason to panic. He also caused quite a few chuckles when he revealed that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing when he first sought funding to launch Betfair in 1999. But that start-up wobble didn’t stop him building one of the world’s most successful online gaming groups. And he certainly did not want his mistake to put anyone off launching their own new project.

“If there’s one piece of advice I would give people,” said Edward, “it would be to have the courage to go and do it. Do something you’ve always believed in and be brave. The rewards, in terms of satisfaction and sense of achievement, for building your own company are just wonderful.”

Ford focus

Focus was a message from Caffè Nero founder Gerry Ford. With a background in venture capital and a childhood growing up in the shadow of Silicon Valley, Ford approached setting up his business in a very structured way. He came up with the concept in 1996, but then he spent 18 months laying the foundations so that the company would start out on the right footing. This meant an attention to such detail as the company colours, the logo, the product mix and even the blend of coffee – all designed to make it stand out from the competition. Diligence paid off and Caffè Nero is a well-documented success story. It grew rapidly and spent a period of time quoted on the London Stock Exchange before returning to private ownership in 2007. The company now boasts 400 stores in 200 UK towns, has 4,200 employees, and serves 1.1m customers a week.

Ford’s personal mantra for success is to be ‘restless and relentless’. And he said it is important to be innovating and developing constantly. “If you are not moving forwards you are moving backwards.”
The event ended with new contacts having been forged, and a new generation of entrepreneurs inspired to make their businesses flourish through the economic downturn.