I got the chance to see pitches this week from the companies that had been picked out as "Europe's 10 top tech startups".

My favourite was the French company, Climpact ( http://climpact.com ) who had identifed the impact climate can have on a company's performance.  For example, in France, when it rains sales of beer go down 5% and sales of chocolate go up 2%.  These guys work with a company's supply chain to ensure that in industries which are affected by the weather the company will be able to match supply and demand as closely as possible. 

Some of their customers are: Nestle, who estimate their ice cream demand two weeks ahead of time; Carglass, whose numbers of windscreen replacements varies massively by weather; and Merial who provide French vets with info as to the likelihood of dogs with fleas! - a pretty random mix...

The pitches were really polished: 2 minutes each (no powerpoint), and you really got a feel for what the company did and at what stage it was it.  Some of the VCs in the audience were giving them a real grilling after: lots of "but that just doesn't make any sense" type comments.

On Tuesday we were invited along while the CEO's from the startups met with Sun's Founder and Chairman, Scott McNealy.  He had some great comments:
"Be controversial: if your idea is obvious, everyone will do it.  So if your idea really has potential it makes sense that you'll meet a ton of folks who'll tell you it won't.  Believe in yourself - just make sure you're right."

"Break the rules of business but never break the law - the smartest people don't work for crooks."

"Make sure everyone you hire is crucial to your business.  Every person needs the same amount of TLC so if your game is software, hire the programmers and look after them - outsource your cleaning, cause if your customers don't care about the work your cleaners are doing then you don't want to spend your time looking after them - get someone else to do that and then they'll work for a business where they are crucial."

"Never commit to multi-year deals: always pay more and take the short term commitment.  You never know what the world will look like in a year's time."

Scott's a great character who comes across as a massively passionate individual, so it goes right back to everything we talked about around leadership and presence at Babson.

Hope everyone's had a cool week,

Neil