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!