"You have to start it to get better"

This is a guest blog from Spencer Mahony, HM Consul & Director South East US at UK Trade and Investment at the British Embassy in Washington, DC.

That was the conclusion of Marc Cenedella, Founder & CEO of

TheLadders.Com, one of the 10 search engines in the US to have exceeded a

turnover greater than $20m. He started the company by building the

website himself in under 3 weeks. He knew it would have to be improved,

but the key was to make the bold step of starting the business.

Cenedella was speaking at the 5th annual South East US Venture Capital

Conference, where I was in attendance. Over 50 entrepreneurs were

there pitching to a VC community that is on a rebound after a sluggish

two years. VC money is a suction pump for innovation, spurring on new

ideas and business models.

My role at the conference was to emphasise that the UK is open for

business and taking a number of actions (such as reducing corporation

tax, improving regulation, reducing the budget deficit, investing in 

infrastructure and promoting trade and investment) to ensure we remain

the best place in the world to build and grow a business. And I wanted

to find out how the UK can attract more VCs to invest in our businesses

and to help their clients grow their business through the UK.

Global VC investment has reduced by almost half since before the

economic crisis. The VC community is stepping up its investments but, in

line with global trends, is much more cautious than three years ago.

Still it was reassuring to hear that though firms are increasingly

looking to invest in developing economic regions, they are still turning

to Europe and UK businesses as solid, lucrative locations for

investors.

This is great news for UK businesses looking to grow. The British

Venture Capital Association‘s "Britain’s hot talent" report lists 150

companies that are ripe for investment. It struck me that the more UKTI

can do to highlight our best companies the more VCs will be likely to

investigate the UK and help drive growth.

Great news, because many of these entrepreneurs I met have aspirations

of doing business in the UK. That is no surprise. The UK’s reputation

is an ideal starting point for expansion into European markets due to

the ease of doing business; the World Bank ranks us fourth in the world

in that category.

Thomas Dimitroff, General Manger of the Atlanta Falcons, who I had the

pleasure of introducing at the conference, summed things up well. His

advice for the UK was "you have started the ‘real’ football over there,

American football of course, but you gotta get better so we can play

together".

Seems whether its entrepreneurs or NFL bosses the message is to start

new ventures and just keep getting better. Worthy advice for us looking

ahead as we start helping more of the companies US VCs invest in to come

to the UK and encourage more of their funds to go in UK businesses. We

have started doing this much more  and can now  get much better!