A First Tuesday Aubade - Julie Meyer, London

The End of the Beginning - Ross Laurie, Edinburgh

The World As We Make It - Roberto Saint-Malo, Madrid

Real "Face Value" - Tim Delhaes, Santiago de Chile

Building a Phenomenon - Steve Glange, Luxembourg

Motivation for Innovation - Michael Wright, South Africa

A First Tuesday Aubade
Julie Meyer - London

I called First Tuesday my revenge on socialism. Maybe that's why Tony Blair, Prime Minister in 1999, always threatened to show up at a First Tuesday event, but never did.

From the first First Tuesday at the Alphabet Bar in Soho, to the second one where Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox hugged the microphone, to the third where John Taysom talked about investing in Yahoo, to the fourth where the Microsoft Web TV guy spoke... my life was organised around which deals I could get done for whom between those Tuesdays... at one point, I scratched out £150 million of known deals that had been agreed at a London First Tuesday event - both the networking events and the more structured Matchmaking Evenings we started doing in the early months of 2000 where entrepreneurs would sign up to give First Tuesday 2 per cent of the funding of the deal.

But the summer of 1999 was one of my favourite times of my life. Christopher Spray of Atlas Ventures had said "why don't you expand into a couple of European cities?" and we had been receiving requests from across Europe to "take First Tuesday international", so with my bonus check from NewMediaInvestors (now Spark Ventures) on the lastminute.com and WGSN deals, First Tuesday had its seed funding of £35,000. I quit my job and started planning an international launch in what became 17 cities for 7 September 1999. The Wall Street Journal put us on the front cover with tennis partner, Stephanie Gruner, writing the story...

There were times when I would come out of a meeting, log into my voicemail, and feel like passing out when I would hear "44 voice mails". How could I get through it? Would we launch on time?

There was a licensing agreement in the works, but not signed before the international launch. The City Leaders who launched with me an international network on the 7th of September 1999 decided to trust each other that if anyone made money, we would all make money together. "Trust is efficient," I would say - again and again. "I will make it work for all of us to build this network together."

It is one of the great regrets of my life that I didn't control the variables well enough to live up to my promise to my friends and colleagues in order to do so. It is a life-changing thing to be outvoted in the Board room and have your company sold without your desire for it to be - particularly when you are so associated with it.

On a personal level, the spirit of First Tuesday was about empowerment. It's not where you're from, it's where you're going to. And I was frequently asked in the early years of this century whether anything good came out of the dot com period. Actually, there is a generation of more well-rounded managers, individuals who tried and learned, and others, fewer, who tried and won. Everyone who takes a risk in life gains. We must figure out what we are capable of as individuals as we each have a unique contribution to make to this world.

I still believe that. In a world where most people operate on a 'win/lose' basis, only one of us can win - I'll continue to strive in everything I do for the 'win/win'. I think there's enough out there for us all to be successful, and I'd rather invest in other's success and live from a point of view of abundance.    The only way to get there is to operate on trust - it really is efficient.

Yes, Entrepreneur Country picks up where First Tuesday left off.    If the newly minted Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund (ACE Fund) will pick the leading 12 entrepreneurs every three years to back, Entrepreneur Country will build a nation more attuned to creating global leading entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur Country will be built around the principles of its Manifesto. I believe we are a small number of people who believe the Manifesto today, but I do believe that the principles outlined will determine the success of the UK and Europe.

I went to Israel for the Millenium. It was the only country where I thought I could continue working throughout the holiday as they didn't celebrate Christmas. I stayed at the King David Hotel in Tel Aviv and everywhere I went meeting the local VCs and entrepreneurs, I would explain First Tuesday, and they would say "sounds like Yazam".

Yazam, the Hebrew word for entrepreneur, was set up by Jerusalem Global and Shlomo Kalisch. The business model was similar to what I was trying to implement with First Tuesday - similar also to Garage Ventures, set up by Apple Macintosh evangelist Guy Kawasaki. When I met the Yazam guys in Jerusalem on the 3rd of January 2000, I sat across the table in my little pink sweater with 20 Israeli investment bankers with orthodox hats on, and listened to them talking and thought: "catch me if you can, gentlemen - I will be running like the wind, and you will not be able to."

Red rag to the bull, and they did of course catch me, but not before one of them died trying. Unfortunately, the man in charge of buying First Tuesday in February 2000 had a heart attack at age 39. But he learned where the fault lines were, and so First Tuesday was sold to Yazam on 20 July 2000.

The next morning I had breakfast scheduled with Guy Kawasaki. We sat down at the Grosvenor House Hotel for breakfast, he asked me what I had been up to and I said: "Well, I sold First Tuesday yesterday." I thought he would fall off his chair. We talked for a long time and then he said: "All of that work that I did for Apple, Julie, the first half of my career, I didn't make but 'x'. And then something happens and it flips, and you get tremendous leverage from what you do, say, think etc.  Keep going."

I have often said that I felt we were a digital island back then at the Alphabet Bar and the Great Titchfield offices of Syzygy, but ten years in we are becoming an Entrepreneur Country. It's a good place to be.

Julie Meyer, CEO, Ariadne Capital, founder, Entrepreneur Country and founder of First Tuesday

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Back in 1999 I think we were a digital island – or we were certainly at the start of a journey to become one. In many ways we still are but it feels like a channel tunnel has been dug in the last 10 years and we are now seeing acceptance and connectivity on a wider scale.

That’s what First Tuesday was about – acceptance of ideas that COULD change the world and the connectivity required to help make these ideas happen. This is why I love entrepreneurs and why I believe we are now well on the way to wider acceptance in what we pushed for last century.

It’s a challenging time in world markets just now and I don’t believe we’ve even seen the worst of it but the collapse of our industry during the “dot com bubble burst” has prepared all of us well for the turmoils we face currently. We appreciate not only the things we need to do to make our own businesses successful but we also appreciate that we need to help (some) of our competitors and suppliers succeed too – to coin the old dot com phrase “to prove the business model works”. I feel we are very well prepared for the opportunities that uncertainty brings.

These are definitely the most exciting times I have experienced in my work-history to date. I say “work-history” as opposed to “career” as, when I was in my final year at university, one of my lecturers told me I would never have a “career” – I was one of a new breed of workers who, over the course of their working lives, will work on 5-10 major projects, using the experience gained in each one to do something better with the next one. I don’t think I fully appreciated what he meant until recently when a new employee asked me about my career history and I rattled off a string of companies launched with my help and shareholdings in various diverse companies which were seemingly unrelated.  I reckon I’m on “Major Project” number three and four right now (a digital agency – www.line.uk.com and a transportation consultancy – www.braidwoodassoc.com). Both of these businesses rely heavily on connectivity, no boundaries/borders, smart working, technology and, above all, relationships. Both are doing remarkably well and growing during the recession; and both keep me excited about the future and what the next project will be. I know it’s going to be brilliant whatever it is – perhaps in property given the current market downturn – it can only get better and you have to speculate to accumulate.

Since First Tuesday I have helped found influential industry organisations and sit on the advisory boards of other institutions. First Tuesday helped me hone my “helping skills” and endorsed the fact that there is enough for all of us and by working together we can achieve much much more than on our own. It allowed me to make connections on an international scale that would have seemed impossible 10 years prior. Every single person who attended a First Tuesday event believed they could make a difference to the future and many of them have – how lucky we were to have been in the presence of such brilliant people. It fundamentally proved that the way we viewed business back then – and were scoffed at by many – is the way business is turning out. Traditional business models are quickly becoming corporate legend and there is real danger for those who ignore the new age of information consumerism we now live in. There’s a real opportunity now for the future of business to be driven by the entrepreneurs as opposed to the government – to coin a phrase, perhaps it’s time for a bit of anarchy in the dot co.uk?

I think we’re actually going to travel past “entrepreneur country” and jump from being a digital island to an entrepreneur planet filled with individual capitalists (ref Julie Meyer Independent article on “Individual Capitalists”). Technology has brought us connectivity and networks way beyond our comprehension last century and things are still accelerating forwards. I think we’re on a digital journey and as a famous politician once said: “This is not the end, it’s not even the beginning of the end, but it may just be the end of the beginning”.

ONWARDS!

Ross Laurie, Managing Director, Line Digital Ltd, former First Tuesday Edinburgh City Leader

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A few vivid memories about First Tuesday come to mind:

• the FT movement spreading like wildfire across cities, countries & even continents – FT became, seemingly overnight, a far-flung, budding macro-organisation; 
• the tremendous diversity and even levels of experience among the City Champions...  coupled with an overpowering sense of ownership, motivation and energy among these same champions; 
• the plethora of diverging ideas among Champions and stakeholders as to how best to structure, organise and manage the FT dynamo (and how testing it proved to craft a formula that all supported); 
• the additional multitude of crazy ideas that hovered about at each and every FT session (be they originated by red, green or yellow dots), many emerging from thin air and experience vacuums... but refreshing it all was, particularly when combined with all those mega-tons of energy floating around... it was a kind of huge, on-going, pseudo-global brainstorming session that would not abate; 
• and then the bubble bursting and things getting quickly quiet... except on the inside of many who’d been significantly touched by FT, many of them City Champions themselves... many of whom are still pursuing life with a special FT-induced/enhanced entrepreneurial spirit.

If I had to specify what “touched me most” about the FT experience it would be the wide-spread sense that the traditional rules could be re-visited and re-written. To be reminded that the World is not “as it is”, but rather “as we make it”.

Over the past few years the “noise” level on innovation and entrepreneurship has again risen. Since the FT phenomenon days, many of us have launched ventures, built companies, raised funds, invested in new ventures, even exited successfully (and gone on to a next adventure). Yet this time around, the quest for “new rules” is less present.

Perhaps the pendulum has again swung too far in an opposite direction... as if the big lesson from that late 90s bubble was “no more new rules”. We seem to have left aside the “missionary” (vs “mercenary”) mind-set as a critical element to successful venturing... to have forgotten that the pure, optimal company-building effort (if such a thing exists) is about “finance” but also about “romance”.

Yes, this is tricky trade-off territory – yet the element I find most missing today for big innovation to take place is an “it can be done”, “boot-strapping” spirit – a readiness to take on big tasks with limited funding. Too many entrepreneurs seem to need large teams and several €millions in funding (and thus high valuations to not dilute) to feel properly “backed”. In turn I see investors supporting on these terms, then finding themselves pressured to focus on the “finance” side in order to provide adequate returns to their LPs.  This in turn leads to partnerships between entrepreneurial company-builders and financial (VC) backers not being as entrenched as they should and otherwise could be.

Would be great if the entire ecosystem – including players from all categories (founders, early employees, later employees or specialist investors, advisors, etc) – would focus more on keeping the right innovation/company-building mind-set in place, particularly during the first few critical years of any venture.

Roberto Saint-Malo, Managing Partner of Adara, former First Tuesday Madrid City Leader

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Real "Face Value"
Tim Delhaes – Santiago de Chile

We started First Tuesday in Santiago de Chile only a few months after the launch in the UK. Within a few weeks we grew from 30 to more than 500 attendees per event and First Tuesday became the epicentre for technology and entrepreneurship in Chile. Like most cities, we went through the valley of death with the dotcom implosion but we were reborn last year.

Since March 2008, we grew our member base to over 6000 people, reached sustainability locally, helped San Salvador to get started, invented four different event formats and we are already negotiating sponsorship contracts for 2010.

I believe that the crisis has created a tremendous opportunity to redefine business ethics and how companies relate to society. A new generation of entrepreneurs now has the opportunity not only to create wealth for themselves but, as Obama put it, "be successful for somebody else". The spirit of the time is "do well and do good".

In an increasing on-line world of social networks, First Tuesday keeps on providing "face value". There is nothing better than meeting people in person.

Tim Delhaes, founder and CEO of First Tuesday Chile

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Building a Phenomenon
Steve Glange – Luxembourg

Early in my professional life, I was confronted with the choice of living and realising my own ideas or taking on a job in order to pay back the student loan, as well as pay the bills.

Hence when I look back sometimes, while not really with regret, I wonder what could have been different if I had taken the way of the entrepreneur directly. My choice was impacted by the fact that I did not have the necessary skills to survive in the business, nor the right network from which to find assistance  as well as propulsion to the next level.

So when, in the late 1990s, I came across the phenomenon of the First Tuesday events being organised in some cities, I saw the opportunity to give something back, as well as to enable other aspiring entrepreneurs to live or at least give their dreams a try.

I posted a message to Steve Carlson's NowEurope newsletter/forum asking where was the closest event in my region (Luxembourg). Swiftly I got a reply from a lady called Julie Meyer informing me that there were none and asking if I would be interested in starting it up. Without long consideration or reflection, I took the opportunity and, together with a good friend who was connected to the media world at the time (and is now my wife), we spammed around 200 suspects.

To our first event on February 1st 2009 came 80 curious innovators, followed by crowds of 120 to sometimes 300 attendees at subsequent events. Even though we did not concentrate on venture capital nor finance, we received positive feedback from people who also attended other First Tuesday events around the world.

So, focusing our local events on innovation and entrepreneurship, we became and still are THE informal independent meeting place for B2B actors mainly in the ICT field in Luxembourg, enabling them exchange their experience and present new ideas and products.

In order to close the gap, I was lucky enough to be able to join in the creation of the Luxembourg Business Angel Network (LBAN) in November 2004, of which I am actually still a board member, as well as being a director of the European Business Angel Network (EBAN).

Looking backwards, I have to confess that the First Tuesday experience provided me with a steep learning curve and a lot of interesting contacts, both private and business, on an international basis - in fact, nearly a contact in each city. To me First Tuesday was the first so-called social network, before the hype, and stands for the power of the people who care and are open to give and receive.

On the other hand, the hype of setting-up your own business in the late 1990s and early 2000s has maybe slightly vanished but luckily there are still people looking to join the adventure today.

Maybe in the time after the bubble burst, people took the lessons on board and did their homework before running for their own business.

In my honest opinion, anybody with a dream should have the opportunity to realise it but, before making the leap, do your homework, build up your network and listen to the network (and of course try to understand what you are hearing).

As a board member of the global First Tuesday network, I can confirm that we get regular requests to (re-) start a First Tuesday all over the world, from both former city leaders and former attendees of events or simply from people looking to create this enabling network.

Hence it is with a proud tear in my eye that I look back to the hype times, but with the same feeling of restlessness I am looking forward to contributing to the creation of an Entrepreneur Country/World.

Thank you, Julie and Ariadne Capital, for celebrating this proud anniversary and giving the First Tuesday city leaders this opportunity to share their experiences.

Steve Glange, Board member and founder of First Tuesday Luxembourg, Board member of First Tuesday Global, Board member of LBAN, Board member of EBAN

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First Tuesday is an integral part of my life. Ten years ago I was making plans to join 35 other eager entrepreneurs in London at the birth of the First Tuesday Network. Now I find myself back in London growing my own business in the spirit of First Tuesday.
 
I had started Striata in February 1999 at the crest of the wave. Not a bad time to raise money, but the following years were not always a good time to be a "dot com" start-up. I became the founder of First Tuesday South Africa a couple months later after an introduction to Julie Meyer through Rob Hersov of Sportal.com fame.

I never looked back.

Within a year Striata had grown to 10 people, servicing both the eBilling and eMarketing arenas and I was officiating First Tuesday meetings with hundreds of people each month in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. At our peak we had 1000 people attend a First Tuesday to hear Mark Shuttleworth speak about selling Thawte to Verisign for $535 million. The possibilities of being a global entrepreneur hit home and any perceived tip-of-Africa glass ceiling was irrevocably shattered.
 
Striata is now the world's leading 'push' eBilling business with offices in London, New York, Sydney, Hong Kong and Johannesburg. Could I have done that without the insights that came with First Tuesday ? I'm not sure.
 
Success is a powerful motivator and seeing successful entrepreneurs talking about their businesses was key to encouraging aspiring entrepreneurs  to take the final plunge. Global growth is driven by innovation and First Tuesday supplied the motivation to innovate in 110 cities around the world. But more importantly it fostered connections between likeminded individuals that made things happen.

To this day some of the best people I have met all over the world, I met through First Tuesday. For that alone I'm deeply grateful.

In the past 10 years we've had many cycles – ups and downs – and we will continue to experience more to come. Adopting an "entrepreneur country" outlook will assist in bringing great ideas and people to the fore – and what we need is a helping hand to new and young entrepreneurs to enable them to take that first step.

Michael Wright, founder and Chief Executive Officer, Striata, founder of First Tuesday South Africa

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