I got the chance yesterday to attend one of the best events I've been to this year - all focused on European tech startups wanting to get into the US market.

It was hosted at the "Plug and Play Tech Center": an incubator for hi-tech companies.  It's an incredible venue started by a Persian rug merchant who rented out a small room at the back of his store in Palo Alto to startups including Logitech, Google and Paypal.  After missing out on Logitech's success the owner, Saeed Amidi - who I had the chance to chat to yesterday - started taking stakes in the companies in place of some of the rent and hit the jackpot as Google and Paypal passed through on their way to big things.  He's since invested in the Plug and Play Center idea and now hosts up to 200 startups on the campus, with partners (advisors, lawyers, accoutants etc) who are all experts in dealing with early stage ventures.  (This artice in last week's WSJ talks about his move in the VC market - http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/05/15/tech-accelerator-plug-play-mulls-20m-venture-fund/?mod=rss_WSJBlog .)  The buzz on the campus is contagious.  I know there's similar incubator projects in Scotland - does anyone have any experience of them?

Interestingly Amidi has linked up with the Norwegian and Canadian Governments who have assigned spaces in the center and have schemes to send startups from their countires there for months at a time.  The model they follow is to keep all engineering work in the home country and run the business side from California - which they say increases the companies chance of success 5x. 

The event itself was a mix of keynotes, panel discussions with some of the leading players in Silcon Valley (all entrepreneurs in residence at the Plug and Play Center) and finally 30 3-minute pitches from European startups looking for angel or venture funding in the US.  The keynotes were from Bart Decrum, the CEO of Tapulous who make Tap Tap Revolution - an app installed on 32% of the world's iPhones - and Chris Shipley, a leading Tech Analyst, who has helped bring 1000 new products to market since 1996.

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I could write 100 blog posts going through everything in detail but here's a taster of what was discussed:

"Europeans are far too charming and humble - don't be afraid to market yourselves and shout about what you have." 

"It takes around 7 years to become an overnight success."

On Columbus discovering America:
"Isabel rejected Columbus 3 times before eventually giving him the funds to set sail."
"Having a vision is so important - Columbus had a vision to find a new trade route with India, without that he'd never go the support to sail West.  Your vision might not always transpire as expected but you must have one if you want others to follow and support you."

On Cloud Computing:
"Massively exciting trend"
"Allows anyone to setup a business with a credit card and a couple of spare months"

On Mobile:
"Netbooks will be free in the US in the next 12 months - how does that change the rules of the game?"
"There must be an opportunity to improve the way iPhone Apps are marketed."

On Actionable Insights
"Too many companies have collected tons of data over the years and now have no idea what to do with it"
"Great potential for companies that can take massive amounts of data and turn them into insights"

On Next-Generation User Interfaces
Speech Interface: "We're approaching 90% untrained accuracy", Google Voice Search is just round the corner.
Visual Search and Storage: "search for the content of images, not just what they are named"
Interactive TV: "Can I press a button to buy the watch that Jack Bauer is wearing?"

On Balance:
Bart Decrum, CEO Tapulous: "You need to decide between 'Laying Foundations' and 'Executing Quickly'.  I needed to be first to market when the iPhone launched.  I didn't have time to build the perfect team around me so had to hire quickly, we then had to lose half the team after 6 months.  Was that a bad thing? Of course. Could I have done it differently? No - it would have taken me 12 months to hire 12 perfect people and I didn't have that time."

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The pitching was great to see real companies in front of real investors.  I thought there were some common things worth highlighting though:
- Almost everyone did what Prof. Charm warned us against and used their 3 minutes to rush through their 5 minute pitch at double speed.
- It was amazing the number of companies who couldn't explain what they did in 3 minutes in a way I could understand.

Out of the 30 companies pitching, all of them European, none were Scottish and only 1 from England.

As I said to Ian yesterday, the only thing that bugged me about the day was not pitching something myself.  I'm going to do my best to be there next year though - anyone up for working together on a pitch??

Neil