The people behind the people in power

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Rohan Silva & Mike Bracken
Rohan Silva (left) and Mike Bracken

I am on a break so rather out of the loop, but just heard the news about Rohan Silva leaving No.10.

Rohan was (or rather is until June) David Cameron’s special advisor and is one of the architects of the Coalition’s tech-friendly policies. As a behind-the-scenes operator his is not a name widely known outside of tech circles, but he deserves a huge credit for what he has achieved.

He is the third of what one might call “the big three” such advisors. First to go, when his boss got kicked out of office, was Nicolas Princen, who was Sarkozy’s man. That Sarkozy finally woke up to the importance of the internet at the very end of his tenure is, in no small part, due to Nicolas.

For most of Sarkozy’s presidency France was a byword for being a reactionary force as far as the net is concerned; this is the home of the Hadopi law after all. But there was a distinct change in the Elysee culminating in the absurd, but nonetheless significant, eG8. Significant because, ridiculous as it was, it was the first time the G8 had bee, albeit tenuously, associated with innovation.

And it got Sarkozy a nice pic of him shaking hands with Zuck for his Facebook page, which after all was the real aim.

As far as I know, Hollande has not replaced him.

Then more recently the stepping down of Alec Ross as the special advisor for innovation at the US State Department. He is the primes inter pares of the three.

His role in spreading technology around the world as a force for democracy is largely unknown but I am sure in time he will be given the credit he is due. To have someone with his understanding, and his sheer intellect, in that role was hugely significant.

Alec is well known on the conference circuit even here in Europe, he spoke at DLD and LeWeb amongst others.

All three are, I understand, going into the private sector to pursue entrepreneurial ambitions. And perhaps that is a good thing. What the public sector needs is the loan of talent and firepower on a short term, especially in such influential slots. But such talent is seldom going to find a permanent home in the public sector; it is too slow, too bureaucratic. Don’t expect many of these people to be drawing their civil service pensions.

Lean In

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A few years back I watched Sheryl Sandberg give a lecture at the LSE for 45 minutes and afterwards took 45 minutes of questions. She was brilliant. She was lucid, self-effacing, funny, warm and utterly charming. She also spent 90 minutes not saying a single thing. It was, as I wrote at the time, impossible not to ever so slightly fall in love with her.

I met her for an informal chat at DLD a few months later. She is in person as she appears on stage. But what was utterly striking about her was how she works a room, or to be more precise, how a room works her. It was fascinating to watch how people are drawn to her. What was most interesting was how many people, male or female, touched her. They would shake hands and they would touch her forearm or her shoulder.

That is a very strong signal. It is a way of imprinting, NLP practitioners use touch to “anchor” or to form a strong association. But it is a strong taboo, especially for a male to touch a female, even in a completely non-sexual way. That men felt they wanted to do that was a very strong response to her presence.

When I saw the response that she engendered in others it was clear to me that, coupled with her ability to utterly charm an audience while giving nothing away shows she is a natural for politics.

Add to that her book, Lean In, about women’s position in business and don’t be too surprised if her name appears on a ballot paper somewhere sometime in the not too distant future.

Correlation, not causation

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20130313-195948.jpg

San Francisco, New York, London, Berlin, Tel Aviv.

What connects these cities? Well all are great tech hubs, arguably five of the most important in the world.

What else?

All five are gay-friendly cities. The first four have hugely popular Pride marches, the fifth, Tel Aviv, was voted gay capital of 2012.

Are these two observations related in any way? I think they are. It is not that tech startups are run by a disproportionate number of gay people, but rather the cities that are likely to attract gay people are also likely to attract the people who are run startups. It is not a huge leap to suggest that there is a shared mindset, a shared attachment to liberal (small “l”) values.

Does this work by negation? Alas not. One of the least friendly gay cities, Moscow (it banned pride marches for a century — that is long-term planning), was actually rated above Berlin as a tech hub (although I wonder about the methodology of that report).

So that rather pricks any grand unified theory and it remains merely an observation.

Is an exit always a success?

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Martin Bryant, over at The Next Web picked up on this story that first ran on TechCrunch a US startup buying a UK-based rival. What worries me about this is that we are hailing an exit, any exit, as a success. But is it? Is selling out to your rival something that we should praise?

View as slideshow
  1. Pair, The Mobile App For Two, Buys UK’s Cupple And Rebrands As Couple
    Tenthbit, the Y Combinator-backed mobile app studio behind the couples app Pair, is doubling down (literally) on its business ambitions: …
    Ingrid Lunden
    ·

  2. This was Martin’s piece, and his tweet.
  3. MartinSFP
    Martin Bryant@MartinSFP
    Cupple’s acquisition by its US rival is a shining example of how UK startups can succeed outside London tnw.to/h0bPO

    Mon, Feb 04 2013 09:31:13

    ·

  4. Steve O’Hear at TC, not the journalist behind the original piece, picked up Martin’s tweet:
  5. sohear
    Steve O’Hear @sohear
    @MartinSFP Really? An exit to a competitor for an undisclosed sum.

    Mon, Feb 04 2013 09:49:14

    ·

  6. And I just butted in …
  7. benjrooney
    Ben Rooney@benjrooney
    @sohear @MartinSFP I am with you Steve. Should we count being bought by a rival as a good? Wouldn’t the other way round be better?

    Mon, Feb 04 2013 09:57:00

    ·

  8. MartinSFP
    Martin Bryant@MartinSFP
    @benjrooney @sohear Of course that would be *more* of a success, but people need to see acquisition deals are possible in their city.

    Mon, Feb 04 2013 09:58:54

    ·

  9. MartinSFP
    Martin Bryant@MartinSFP
    @sohear @benjrooney Just as happiness is relative, success it relative. It’s an inspiring story for the Newcastle community.

    Mon, Feb 04 2013 10:01:34

    ·

  10. In Martin’s piece he wrote:
    “In Silicon Valley, an early exit to a similarly-sized competitor wouldn’t necessarily be seen as a success, but in the north of England, stories like this can be really encouraging to the wider community. They show that you can have an exit you’re happy with while being based somewhere like Newcastle. The Cupple story will no doubt go on to be a case study for startups in the north of England.”
    This troubled me. Why should an exit in Newcastle be held to a different standard? Are we not, literally, selling ourselves short? 
  11. benjrooney
    Ben Rooney@benjrooney
    @MartinSFP @sohear Good enough for Newcastle? Shouldn’t we be aiming much higher?

    Mon, Feb 04 2013 10:02:51

    ·

  12. MartinSFP
    Martin Bryant@MartinSFP
    @benjrooney @sohear An exit like this is part of a mix of activity that makes for a healthy community. As I say in the piece, it’s not ‘big’

    Mon, Feb 04 2013 10:05:36

    ·

I don’t want to look like I am attacking a fellow journalist for a piece he wrote and I didn’t. I also don’t begrudge the entrepreneurs for selling — well done them for exiting, and let’s hope their next company smashes it.

But what troubles me about this whole story is the idea that we should praise a startup for exiting, no matter what the nature of the exit is.

It reminds me of that great line, whoever said it, “Congratulating an entrepreneur for raising money is like congratulating a chef for buying the ingredients.”

Martin is right that an exit will inspire others, but will it just inspire others to early money? Wouldn’t it be better to inspire others not to take the money? Wouldn’t that be more inspirational and better for the whole ecosystem?

Thank you

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I have been remiss in not acknowledging, with great thanks, the award of Tech Journalist of the Year at the recent Europas in Berlin.

There is a line between bragging about, and false modesty and churlishness in not acknowledging, success. I fear I have erred too much towards the latter. I hope that in posting this I have not now swung too far in the other direction.

It was both a huge honour and very humbling to be given the award especially as it was — in some way — voted for by one’s peers. I am not entirely certain what the process was, it wasn’t completely transparent, but it did involve polling members of the corps of Euro Tech hacks.

It was the more humbling in that self-nominations were allowed, but it is our policy not to take part in judging competitions (there is an obvious conflict of interest in journalists taking part as judges in competitions on which they later report), so I was not able to nominate myself.

So thank you.

After a significantly crappy end to last year, (although the comments, tweets, emails and comments in person were overwhelmingly kind) this year has started pretty well.

What Berlin needs

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Having spent a few days recently in Berlin, firstly the Hy Festival, and then at the Europas, talking to a number of Berlin-based VCs, entrepreneurs and commentators, Berlin needs two things: one good, one bad.

The good.
Berlin needs a hit-it-for-six exit, the breakaway try, the volley from outside of the box. It doesn’t matter who it is, but Berlin needs to show it can build real companies.

There is a world of speculation about whether Rocket is going to float, or just one of its properties. While both are possible my money is on the latter. The obvious candidate is Zolando. While the company has yet to report a profit, it has a very healthy income stream.

In an interview with Die Welt (tip of the hat to Venture Village) the founders are remarkably candid about their figures and their plans.

If it isn’t Zolando then who? The other leading lights of the Berlin scene are the likes of SoundCloud and Wooga. Both are great companies; are either ready to go public?

An acquisition is always possible of course. There have been rumours about ResearchGate exiting. There are always rumours around SoundCloud. EA bought Playfish a few years back — is someone eyeing up Wooga?

Now the bad.
Berlin needs a big ugly failure. It needs someone to crash and burn in a horrible way. The city’s over-heating community needs a healthy dose of reality. All entrepreneurs are essentially fantasists, but there is a worrying gap growing between aspiration and reality, a gap being filled by a growing bubble.

An ugly failure would go some way to taking some of the air out of the bubble. So who will it be? I can think of a couple of start ups that it hard to see have much of a future.

Note to aspiring hacks—work on your CVs

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Having just had the pleasure of going through a very large number of CVs to recruit a new tech reporter I thought it would be good to share some feedback on my thoughts on tech journalism CVs. These are absolutely my personal observations and IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER represent the views of my employer; and always remember that I am an old fart and no doubt completely out of touch with modern recruitment procedures.

Journalists are supposed to be good at presenting the facts so don’t fill your CV up with BS. That is probably the biggest mistake people made.

  • If you have to have a “profile” section (don’t feel you have to…) then fill it with facts. Do tell me you are an award-winning journalist. Do tell me you have experience using Final Cut Pro or you are NCTJ qualified, or that you have shorthand. Do tell me you have language skills. You are not applying to be the sales manager for the Swindon district so don’t tell me what a valued team player you are, or that you are a confident self-starter, or a hardworking, energetic employee. Remember that scene in The Fugitive where Harrison Ford meets Tommy Lee Jones in that storm drain and tells him he didn’t kill his wife. Remember TLJ’s response? “I don’t care”.
  • I want to see how you use social media professionally. I don’t want to see pictures of your cat or you getting drunk with your mates on Facebook.  I do, however, want to see how you use Twitter, so give me your twitter address. If you have a blog, or a Tumblr, let me see it. (For sheer kiss-arse-ery probably not a bad idea to follow the person who is going to interview you.)
  • Your education is the least important part of your CV so put it at the end. I couldn’t care less where you went to school, what GCSEs you have (and certainly not what grades), what A levels you have, or the fact that you were the captain of the First XV (you probably weren’t). I am marginally interested in what university you went to and what sort of degree you got. It is not, for me, a deal breaker if you didn’t go to university at all if you have other experience. However if you are applying for a junior role and you were news editor of the student paper I do want to know that. I don’t care that you were secretary of the ski club.
  • Cut the BS. Unless you are applying to be the editor of The Economist, your CV should fit on two sheets of A4. If you are a junior reporter get it on one sheet. We are journalists, so don’t waffle. You didn’t “assume the position of assistant editor”, you “became assistant editor”. Don’t tell me you attend press conferences or have a bulging contact book. I know, that’s what reporters do. Do tell me that you increased the traffic to your site by 20% by introducing a new feature.
  • At the other end of the scale, don’t just give me your job title. Help me out here, give me a reason to interview you.
  • Do not claim you have a passion for news, are fanatical about the truth, burn with a zeal to uncover wrongs. You don’t. Don’t tell me you are an investigative journalist. You aren’t.
  • Great though it is to have work experience/internships, do not list every week-long assignment you did separately with the dates. Do say you did them and do list them, just summarise them. Do have evidence of freelance work, and tell me about it.
  • Today we are all multi-media journalists. I would expect to see evidence that you have done video etc. Even if you don’t do it in your job, you must have edited something — so say you are experienced in using Final Cut Pro, or even just iMovie.
  • Some real basics. Don’t put Curriculum Vitae or Resume on top of your CV/Resume. I know what it is. Also no greengrocer’s apostrophes/typos — an instant rejection.