The Up Group

On Wednesday 15th May, The Up Group hosted a networking breakfast for the European CTO community.  The event, chaired by Nigel Beighton of Rackspace, connected senior technology leaders from start ups, growth businesses and international corporates and a range of topical debates were covered.  It was a pleasure to host such an interesting group of people and we look forward to our next technology-focused event in the coming months.  The list of attendees was as follows:

Nigel Beighton (Chair) - VP International Technology, Rackspace

Tim Boughton - former CTO Europe, HomeAway

Frederick Cheung - CTO, Dressipi

Dave Cook - CTO, Time Out

Jon Hogg - Head of Platform, blur Group

Jonathan Howell - CTO, Huddle

Jackson Hull - CTO, onefinestay

Simon Lambert - CTO, Wahanda

Xen Lategan - former CTO, News International

Aaron McKee - CTO, Struq

Toby Moore - Founder & CTO, Space Ape Games

Lukas Oberhuber - CTO, Simply Business (Xbridge)

Matthew Pontefract - ReThought, Founder & CTO

Bimal Shah - CTO, Covestor

Andy Skipper - former CTO, Made.com

Robin Spira - CTO, Chemist Direct

Philip Su - Director of London Engineering, Facebook

Matt Young - CTO, Geonomics

Clare Johnston - Founder & CEO, The Up Group

Pete Alexander - Senior Consultant, The Up Group

Gemma Hale - Business Development Manager, The Up Group

Alex Langridge - Consultant, The Up Group

Last night, we were privileged to host an informal dinner at The Langham Hotel for fifty CEOs and C-level executives from across the European start-up and corporate technology community.

Our thanks go to all who attended, for making the evening such a vibrant source of discussion and insight. 

Attendees

Made.com, Chairman

Criteo, CEO

MindCandy, COO

Web Reservations, CEO

Housetrip, CEO

Vouchercodes.co.uk, CEO

JustEat, COO

Wahanda, CEO

Kelkoo, CEO

BaseKit, CEO

Skimlinks, COO

StylistPick, CEO

Livebookings, COO (The Up Group, NED)

Lyst, CEO

onefinestay, CEO

GlassesDirect, CEO

Currency Cloud, CEO

Chemist Direct UK, CEO

Funding Circle, CEO

Brainient, CEO

Quill, CEO

LoveHomeSwap, CEO

MyBuilder, CEO

7Digital, CEO

GreenManGaming, CEO

USwitch, CEO

Busuu, CEO

Qype, former CEO

Dressipi, CEO

Media Ingenuity, CEO

Mangahigh, CEO

Long Tall Sally, CEO

Videdressing, CEO

WAYN, CEO

Weve, COO

Ezetop, CEO

Qubit, CEO

YPlan, CEO

Codemasters, CEO

Rangespan, CEO

TrialReach, CEO

Avangate and CloudBag, Co-Founder

Payment Sense, Founder

Guardian, Chief Digital Officer

Yahoo!, VP & MD EMEA

Google, Country Sales Director UK

Facebook, Regional Director EMEA

Braintree, GM International

viagogo, MD Europe

The Up Group, CEO

What is the story behind YPlan?

Founders Rytis Vitkauskas and Viktoras Jucikas were both working in high pressure city jobs – Rytis as Vice President at tech VC fund Summit Partners, and Viktoras as Strategy Director for Goldman Sachs. They both quit their day jobs with a sole purpose to explore opportunities to develop innovative and disruptive business ideas together, and spotted a gap in the entertainment market: no single app or website provided an efficient way to discover and purchase genuinely last minute nights out.

I was introduced to Rytis and Viktoras by one of our eventual investors about a year ago when I was still at Time Out, and joined in the summer when leading tech investors including Wellington Partners and Octopus Ventures were secured. They had already covered an enormous amount of ground up to this point, building an early version of the app and engaging in some initial user-testing, and this allowed us to really hit the ground running once the team was in place.

In building the team, we’ve combined experience from both the entertainment industry and mobile commerce, recruiting from the likes of Time Out, See Tickets, Lastsecondtickets, GetTaxi, Toptable and Airbnb. Through the inception period, we have received mentorship & guidance from the founders and managers of Skype, Facebook, Google, Lastminute, Hailo, Geckoboard, Dropbox and others. Now with 18 people on the team, YPlan goes from strength to strength. 

YPlan events are limited to London. Do you have plans to broaden the geographic focus to other cities?

London is one of the most vibrant cities on earth so it was only natural that we started here. But absolutely, we're building our international expansion team as we speak so watch this space.

Similarly YPlan is exclusively on iOS. Are Android, Windows 8 and a web version in the works?

Being a startup it’s essential to focus, and we’ve found that by developing on iOS, and more specifically for iPhone, we’ve been able to fine tune the UX that makes YPlan so easy to use and so popular with our users. We’ll be launching on Android in the first half of this year.

What is the rationale behind limiting the number of events available on a given day?

Our objective at YPlan is to offer a curated shortlist of great things to do tonight or tomorrow, whilst making it extremely simple for our customers to book and attend the best that our city has to offer. It’s very important to prevent customers from drowning in choice. One of the biggest challenges during my four years at Time Out was being able to surface cool bookable events that would convert well, whilst at the same time provide an exhaustive guide to what’s on in London.

What would you say are the top two focus areas for your business at the moment? Product development? Partnership development? Marketing? Why?

As we are still in our first year of operation, all of the above are extremely important to ensure YPlan continues to engage our users and satisfy our event partners. But if you want to tie me down to two, I would say that product development and building event partnerships are the most important: if you have a great product with fantastic and exciting events, everything else will follow.

Where are you focusing your innovation efforts?

We’re constantly evolving and updating the app to improve the user experience. We’re also looking extremely closely at personalisation and socialisation to improve content discovery and relevance for our users.

What do you see as the main challenges for YPlan over the next 12-18 months?

We’ve seen some amazing traction so far and uptake has exceeded even our very ambitious expectations – we now have well over 100k downloads and we’re seeing extremely high levels of daily user engagement. Since we are carving new ground in a brand new industry - mobile commerce - we anticipate many challenges along the way, and we will continue to tackle them head on.

Are there any companies / business individuals you admire particularly at the moment? Why?

I’m most drawn to genuine innovators who are redefining traditional and change-averse industries. I’m particularly keen on peer-to-peer businesses. For example, companies like Funding Circle and Zopa have the potential to change banking and investing – surely the ultimate ‘traditional’ industry – in the same way eBay and Amazon has changed retail. I also think the way businesses such as Hailo, Airbnb, and Spotify have been able to so rapidly scale and dominate their categories is incredible.

Tell us about MOVE Guides? What does the company do and how did the company develop from an idea to a business?

I founded Move Guides after the hassle I encountered during multiple international moves.  I grew up in the United States and studied Chinese at university --- always eager to work in high-growth Asia!  After school, I worked in finance across more than 10 countries and lived in Hong Kong, Singapore and India.  I came to London to do my MBA at London Business School and moved into a Foxton’s sublet without hot water or internet…in the middle of winter!  I also had no mobile phone or bank account, having just arrived.  In moment of frustration on evening, I asked my husband why it was still so hard to plan an international move and so easy to plan international travel.   He said, “You should change it.”  And thus, was born MOVE Guides!

Today, MOVE Guides is a one-stop-shop for international relocation, which offers companies a cloud-based platform for employee relocation and management.  Our HR software offers dramatically reduced costs and improved data to HR departments, and brings the best features of the consumer web to employee relocation. Our consumer product helps individuals plan a full move between cities.  So far, 98% of employees and consumers have rated their experience ‘Very Good’ with MOVE Guides!

You’ve raised some money from Angels and are planning a fund raise later this year – how difficult has it been to raise money?

We raised £400K in seed funding in July 2012 from top European angels Sherry Coutu, Tom Hulme, Dale Murray, Sean Park, Kevin Eyres and others.  We are planning to raise another round this year to support our geographic, product and sales expansion. 

MOVE Guides is competing with some large incumbent businesses, how have you differentiated?

We specifically focus on the young professional demographic introducing, for the first time, the best features of the consumer web to the global mobility space.  Our software brings transparency, convenience and choice to end-users (employees and consumers) and unique data and insights to HR departments…plus a trustworthy supplier network!

Who is the business aimed at and why should they use MOVE Guides?

The business is aimed at young professionals, so anyone moving whether for work, study or play, should check us out at www.MoveGuides.com. Anyone at a business responsible for moving employees or cross-border hiring should also definitely check us out to make their employees’ lives much better!

How do you monetise the business?

We have a number of different revenue streams, including subscription and referral fees.

How do you plan to grow the business and what are the challenges you expect to face?

We are growing exceptionally quickly, which we are all so excited about!  Our main focus right now is product development and geographic expansion.  We plan to be in more than 50 cities by year end --- a truly global UK tech startup --- and have a lot of exciting features in development for our product.  Incidentally, I recently wrote an article for Tech City News about why I think the UK is the best place for cross-border startups, and we are finding this totally true.  Great time zone, connectivity and international perspective!

How big is the team now? What has been your experience in building a team?

We have a team of about 10 in London and Eastern Europe.  We also have about 10 writers throughout the world who generate local content and 6 great interns…and are always looking for more!  Recruiting is always a challenge, but we’ve been able to put together a great group so far.

Have you found it challenging not having a technology background as a CEO/Co-Founder of MOVE Guides?

I actually haven’t!  I think this all comes down to the people that you have on your team.  We have an exceptional tech lead and our COO has a great technical and project management background, so that has been helpful.  We also just brought on an experienced product lead, who also has a technical background…so it’s all about team at the end of the day!

What has been the highlight so far?

It’s definitely been signing up our first big corporate account.  Such a great feeling to see the amazing feedback for all of our hard work and sign up a big company as our first client!

In hindsight, what are some of the things you would have done differently?

There are always a lot of things that can be done better, but each day is an amazing learning experience! 

Following on from our last post on Friday’s London Web Summit, we have summarized the panel discussion about the developments in online education; an area in which we have witnessed rapid growth and innovation over the past eighteen months.

Online Education

• Chip Paucek – CEO, 2U (Start-up focused on partnering with great schools to bring degrees online)
• Jan Reichelt – Co-Founder & President, Mendeley (Destination for discovering, managing and sharing academic research papers)
• Andrew Ng – Co-Founder, Coursera (Platform for elite universities to provide free online courses)
• Ed Cooke – Co-Founder, Memrise (Online visual learning tool)
• Matt Cynamon – Regional Director, General Assembly (Moderator) (On and offline courses in technology, design and entrepreneurship)

Explosion of EdTech – What is behind this?

• In general, web adoption is increasing and especially within education. We have seen that the continued introduction of new and improved web technologies enabling more effective collaboration and communication online has prompted an explosion in online learning, where these are critical success factors.
• Andrew from Coursera thinks they (Edtech founders) are the reason for the growth and increased accessibility. He is a Stanford professor, and by putting his course online he has been able to reach 100,000 students instead of the 400 he can access through traditional teaching methods.
• Online has a positive effect on offline too. Being able to offer online lectures as part of traditional offline courses allows course leaders more opportunity to interact with students during face-to-face time, which generally results in improved performance.
• The panel generally held the view that it is less important to focus on the existence of online learning platforms for their own sake, and more pertinent to observe web adoption and innovation by education institutions; schools embracing the web makes a huge difference. Businesses like 2U and Coursera exist because of their ability to partner with such institutions.

Rapid adoption of Edtech by traditional institutions – why have some been swifter than incumbents in other traditional industries?

• Overall, the panel felt that a basic passion to educate and an openness to learn, makes educational institutions more willing to do new things. Coursera is a free service and exists because institutions like Stanford are motivated to reach a wider audience.
• Their core mission is to make a positive difference, and to have an impact; not just “be seen” to embrace the web. This motivation and the open and connected nature of the web have driven large and elite institutions to take the web seriously as a vehicle for education.

Edtech one year from now – what will it look like?

• Chip from 2U sees further developments happening in the certification of online courses. He hopes to see an improved understanding of how to credit people who have studied online and how to match the quality of the accreditation with offline learning.
• The availability and access to high quality online learning will only increase. For the panel the ultimate vision is for an individual who feels like learning a totally new and random subject will be able to find and access an online course to attend immediately.
• Online lectures will continue to permeate traditional learning and will free up more and more time for professors to do more interactive learning in class.

Last Friday, we joined a host of key players in the London Tech scene at the London Web Summit in the heart of The City. We were able to listen to views from some of Europe’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors. What follows is a brief summary of a panel discussion focused specifically on the tech scene in London.

State of The London Tech Scene

• Eileen Burbidge – Partner, Passion Capital
• Arnaud Bertrand – CEO & Founder, HouseTrip
• Eze Vidra – Head of Campus, Google
• Pete Smith – COO, Songkick
• Greg Marsh – CEO & Founder, OneFineStay
• Martin Bryant – Managing Editor, The Next Web (Moderator)

Funding

• The prevailing view was that as a result of an increase in ideas and access to capital, there is no better time than now to try to start a business in London.
• Passion Capital has seen an increase in the number of submissions for funding, the level of follow-on investments in London, and the interest in investing in London-based start-ups from international investors.

Talent

• London is seen as a hub of technical talent in comparison with many other areas of Europe. Although Housetrip was founded in Lausanne in Switzerland, the decision was made early on to move the headquarters to London in order to recruit developers.
• Regardless of this, the panel felt that hiring is still the biggest challenge for European businesses, particularly at CxO level, where there is not felt to be enough of a volume of experienced executives to meet demand. Onefinestay relocated a CTO from the US after a 6 month UK search.
• London’s diversity is its greatest strength. Unlike other cities, there is no mono-culture. Greg Marsh chose to start Onefinestay in London and then in New York because he felt both locations bring to bear a great variety of talent, industry, cultures and attitudes. Whilst this means it is a competitive environment, he believes this type of environment is the only place to start a business like Onefinestay. Tech-specific meet-up groups and jobs fairs like Silicon Milkroundabout (founded by Songkick) now exist to address the competitive issues of hiring against big Financial and Technology institutions. 

Tech City

• Though the launch of Tech City by the government has polarised public opinion, the panel felt the general impact on the image of entrepreneurship has been positive. Putting a spotlight on start-ups is validating Technology as a viable industry to work in and is helping in the efforts to recruit.
• As well as morale, positive impacts have been felt from a policy perspective as changes have been made to influence tax relief for small businesses, visas for international talent and broadband availability.

Exits

• Though the general public perception of the volume of exits in London is low, the panel was positive about the City’s performance; citing examples such as Llustre (acquired by Fab), CrashPadder (acquired by AirBnB) and Moonfruit (acquired by Yell Group) as great recent outcomes.
• There are many local champions flying under radar that for various reasons have had to reposition themselves in order to achieve exits and international scale.
• More can still be done from a policy and governance perspective to make it easier to have a successful exit in London, and to increase the number of local champions to prove London as a global Tech player.

The Up Group was proud to sponsor February's London Product Tank, the largest meet-up for the European product community.

The theme of this month's meet-up was "Talent - how to find it and how to nurture it", a topic close to our heart(!)  There were some interesting talks from Gareth Jones, Partner and Head of Fresh Thinking at The Chemistry Group, Ken Ward, former Director of Talent at Mind Candy and Kate Leto, former Head of Product at MOO.com.  
Over 250 people attended the event, proof that Product Tank continues to go from strength to strength.  The March meet-up will take place on Wednesday 20th at the same venue: Central Foundation Boys' School, Cowper Street, EC2A 4SH.

What is Gogobot?

Gogobot is the worlds largest social travel planning service where your friends, not strangers, provide you with recommendations for the best places to go, stay and party. Online or on-the-go users can explore, plan, book and share, benefiting from the input of their friends on Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. 

What is the background of the business?  Why was it founded and how does it make money?

Planning a trip isn't fun. You spend endless hours comparing anonymous reviews and pricing on different sites, with hopes that you will have the holiday you deserve. Gogobot solves this problem. It provides you the opportunity to tap into a network of friends, and other travelers like you, to provide a personalised list of recommendations. You can explore the places your friends have traveled, book hotels and restaurants from the site or mobile app, and you can easily share your travels either on-the-go with our iPhone app, or after the fact via twitter and Facebook.  Most of all, it's fun. We have an affiliate and advertising revenue model. 

Gogobot has raised significant funding from Google, Redpoint and Battery Ventures and has grown its user base rapidly in the last two years. How have you achieved such traction? 

We are lucky to have fantastic investors who let us get on with it and provide us valuable input when we ask. Our traction has come from targeting the right market and building products that our core consumers love to use. Our core user base, avid travellers, are globally connected and heavy users of social media. We are constantly in contact with this user base to get product feedback and user insights.  The product team uses this feedback to improve the customer experience and increase consumer engagement. We also invested in mobile from the beginning and as a result see about 46% of our traffic coming from mobile.



How does the social recommendation platform work to ensure users get the most relevant travel reviews for them personally?

Over 92% of our 2 million + users users are Facebook connected. Consequently, we leverage the data we have on the people in their network, including facebook and foursquare checkins, to provide a personalised results.   This information, combined with their activity on the site, starts to give us a good understanding of what the users like. On Gogobot a 20 year old backpacker will see a different list of hotel recommendations for Paris than a jetset, 30 year old Hedge Fund manager. 

What are the main areas of focus for the business over the next year or so?

Background data enhancement to provide more accurate results and uncover hidden gems. Increasing transaction capabilities. Growing our user base. Increasing user engagement. 

The online travel space is a busy one. What are the biggest challenges for growing a business like Gogobot and how do you differentiate from the competition?

The biggest challenge is prioritizing resources - there's never enough time or headcount to do everything you would like to do in marketing or product.  Consumers don't trust the larger travel review sites because they don't know who are writing the reviews, there is no sense of context or transparency. With 92% of our users logged in via FB its pretty easy to identify who has written a review and easy to see if they are within your social network. The fact that our service has been multi-platform from the beginning, means our user base already has a habit of including Gogobot in every step of the travel process. 

Why did you join Gogobot and what was your background prior?

I've spent the past 20 years working for large companies - Viacom, Nike, Microsoft, AOL - in senior strategic marketing and product marketing roles. For the most part, I have been launching new business and products in Europe, US and Africa, so I have held relatively entrepreneurial roles within a larger corporate structure. I am a big believer in creating your own job description. Gogobot combines my two favorite hobbies: travel and consumer technology.  I have huge admiration for our founders, Travis and Ori; the entire team is super sharp and highly motivated.  It's satisfying being a part of changing the largest online e-commerce industry - travel. As a member of a small team with big ambitions I get to wear many hats; and with 20 years of diverse experience behind me, I have many hats from which to choose. 

What do you think is hot in the internet space right now?

Letting your friends do the search for you. I am renovating my house - I don't look on google to find kitchen options, I look on Pinterest. My friends and brands I trust, have already curated an entire range of great ideas for me to consider. When I need a new book to take on holidays I check out which books my friends have been reading on Goodreads. These services make sense of the long tail in search. 

Andreas, thanks for taking the time to speak with The Up Group today. What is Wrapp and what do you provide?

From an end-user's perspective, we're a social gifting service, with the twist that a lot of the gifts available are for free. From a retailer's perspective, we're a performance-based customer/sales acquisition platform. Retailers sponsor those gifts in order to get customers into their stores (at which point we charge our fees, hence performance-based), but also to get exposure in a very positive social context (the friend-to-fiend marketing component).

I see you have been busy ‘jetting’ to and from Wrapp’s US offices recently. How are your plans shaping up for further international expansion?

Wrapp is currently focusing on growth in existing markets, of which the US is the most strategic one.

Which markets is Wrapp hoping to launch in next?

We have a lot of markets in the pipeline, but prefer not to comment further on the specifics at this stage.

Wrapp faces some stiff competition, particularly with Facebook announcing its entry into the ‘social gifting’ market, not to mention the likes of Svpply and Toast building similar products. How does Wrapp intend to compete?

Both Facebook Gifts and Svpply are online storefronts for primarily physical goods, mostly from niche retailers. Wrapp works with large, nation-wide retailers and provide them not only an outlet for gift cards, but also a performance-based friend-to- friend marketing platform. It’s quite a different product. Toast is a social wishlist, if I’m not mistaken, which is also quite different.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on Spotify given your experience with them. With new businesses like Deezer raising $130m from Access Industries and MySpace overhauling its service what does the future look like for Spotify?

I think Spotify is excellently positioned. While I may be expected to say that, I don’t think any of the other services compare when it comes to product execution.

You travel extensively advising start-ups and attending technology conferences. In your view how does London compare to the San Francisco or New York when building successful technology start-ups? What factors would make London a more attractive city for technology entrepreneurs?

Both London and New York have great startup ecosystems, but Silicon Valley and San Francisco is in another league in my opinion. Nothing else compares when it comes to the sheer density of tech and product talent. London would be more attractive if it had more engineers per square foot and a more entrepreneurial and risk-taking mindset.

We’ve seen so many successful start-ups emerge from Sweden. What do you think the secret is?

Sweden is a good test market: big enough to get useful customer feedback and figure out product–market fit (and with a tradition of relative early-adopters), but small enough that you have to think globally from day one. With a big home market like the US, UK or Germany, it’s easy to focus on that for too long. There is also decent access to tech talent in Stockholm (for its size).

More generally, what are the top two areas of focus for your business at the moment? Why?

Growth and growth. It’s all that matters.

Outside of your own market, what do you think is the hottest emerging trend or technology right now?

Short-term trend: mobile payments. It's going to be a war between Apple, Google, PayPal, Square, Microsoft... Long-term: molecular nanotechnology. It will change mostly everything about the world as we know it.

Thank you.