Blog | Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
Financial Times on Trampoline’s response to larger imitators
By Charles Armstrong | Friday, August 12th, 2011
In today’s Financial Times there’s a great article by Jonathan Moules (Enterprise Editor) exploring how innovative startups should respond when much larger firms develop imitative products or services. Trampoline is the main case study used in the article. There’s a hilarious photo of Charles lounging in the Blue Room at the Trampery.
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Trampoline in Wired Magazine feature on UK technology policy
By Charles Armstrong | Monday, January 31st, 2011
Wired Magazine’s February 2011 issue includes a feature dissecting the UK government’s plans to create a technology cluster of international significance in east London. The initiative, announced by the Prime Minister in November 2010, seeks to build on Shoreditch’s existing cluster of technology start-ups by bringing in large US technology firms, attracting venture capital businesses to the area and converting parts of the £6 billion Olympic site in Stratford into an “Accelerator Space” for more developed businesses.The policy is essentially a good one, recognising a phenomenon that’s already creating value and looking for ways to augment it. Unfortunately this sensible idea got mixed up with the Government’s political need for a convincing story about what happens to the (hugely expensive) Olympic site after the games are finished.
I was interviewed for the article and Wired used several of my more colourful quotes in the article, including this:
“Old Street is one thing: you’ve got this clear historical process,” Armstrong says. “In the 80s it became a cluster for the printing industry. Graphic-design businesses grew out of that and as a result Curtain Road, Shoreditch, became the epicentre of our dotcom boom. To take that natural phenomenon and then say there’s going to be a Tech City stretching from Shoreditch to Stratford — that’s just not a logical step.”
and this:
“In the case of Silicon Valley, and Israel too, it’s absolutely clear that the starting point was a massive defence industry investing in that area, which created a university system of a particular kind and a certain technical base. Unless the Government is planning on creating a huge weapons programme in Stratford and then waiting for 40 years, then it’s mad to be fixated on that model.”
You can read the whole article online. Meanwhile I’m meeting the Prime Minister’s policy team on Wednesday so I’ll have an opportunity to discuss my thoughts directly.
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Inkling Market predicts Trampoline customers for 2011
By Charles Armstrong | Monday, January 17th, 2011
We’ve just spotted that Inkling Markets, the web-based marketplace for predictions, has opened a book on which of eight large corporations will sign up as Trampoline customers during 2011. We’re thrilled to see people speculating on such things.By coincidence I did have a meeting with a senior executive from one of those eight businesses just last week – but it would be unsporting to reveal which one!
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O’Reilly: mapping email relationships with SONAR CRM
By Charles Armstrong | Monday, December 20th, 2010
Edd Dumbill, chair of the forthcoming Strata Conference, has written a short piece about O’Reilly’s experience using SONAR CRM to map its external relationships:At O’Reilly, we specialize in connecting people across and within technical community “tribes”. We’ve been experimenting with SONAR for some months. In my experience, it certainly contains the same knowledge about our contacts that I would otherwise have to obtain by asking around.
It’s been a pleasure working with O’Reilly over the last few months and the dataset is fascinating. It represents a who’s who of the leading figures in the technology, investment and policy worlds together with some notably dense and complex corporate relationships, the largest of which involve several thousand contacts.
Edd’s complete article is available on O’Reilly Radar.
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Ovum cites Trampoline for next-generation CRM
By Charles Armstrong | Monday, August 16th, 2010
Technology analyst Ovum has published an article “Using Social Search & Analytics to fix CRM” emphasising the need for businesses to incorporate data mining and social network analysis solutions as part of their CRM strategy. The article highlights Trampoline as the outstanding vendor in this technology sector. Ovum identifies three areas where such intelligence is transformative. First, providing a solution to the problem of incomplete data that plagues conventional CRM solutions:“Accessing the “missing” 75% of actionable information is vital from a competitive and business survival perspective, and so organizations must consider the option of information discovery tools alongside traditional enterprise search solutions.”
Second, enabling employees to instantly identify which of their colleagues can introduce them to a new contact:
“According to Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0, “social calling” (or a “warm introduction”, as traditionalists might call it) is 8-10 times more effective than cold calling, and so the business value of social connections is there for all to see.”
Third, understanding the comparative strength of different relationships in a B2B sales process:
“In the world of B2B sales and marketing relationship management, developing and fostering relationships with the right people is incredibly important, and so by analyzing the information held in an organization’s email system, existing CRM platform, and corporate directory a more useful insight into the strength and nature of a customer relationship can be obtained.”
It’s exciting to see mainstream analysts like Ovum advocating the use of data analytics technologies as part of a CRM solution. The article caused quite a stir in the analyst community and has been covered by a variety of other titles including CIO Magazine Germany, Katonda Magazine, Computer World Norway, Computer World Philippines and CIOL.
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BBC broadcasts “Start Up Stories” film on Trampoline
By Charles Armstrong | Monday, June 28th, 2010
Today the BBC broadcast a seven-minute film on Trampoline as part of their Start Up Stories strand. The film covers Trampoline’s beginnings, our first experiences hiring and raising finance, and what advice we’d give to entrepreneurs thinking of starting their own company.
To my delight the BBC even managed to find some footage of the island of St Agnes which they included in the film! A total of ten businesses were selected for Start Up Stories including such luminaries as Autonomy, Slide and Zappos so Trampoline is in great company.
The film concludes with my advice to aspiring entrepreneurs:
“Don’t put things off by going to study for an MBA. Just dive in and start your business. You’ll soon discover if it’s what you really want to do.”
You can view the whole film on the BBC website.
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Trampoline in Wired Magazine cover article
By Charles Armstrong | Friday, May 14th, 2010
The cover article in June’s edition of Wired UK is titled “The Great Trust Experiment”. The article offers a detailed analysis of the wave of innovation in financial models triggered by the internet. As the title suggests, the article focuses in particular on the role of trust and personal relationships as the basis of financial interactions.
Three case studies are used to illustrate the emerging models. Kiva represents a new way for citizens in wealthy countries to establish a direct relationship with entrepreneurs in poor countries and support them through small loans. Zopa epitomises the rise of peer to peer loan markets, providing an alternative to conventional bank loans. And Trampoline demonstrates how crowdfunding offers an alternative to venture capital for fast-growth businesses.
James Silver, the article’s author, interviewed me back in March as we were preparing to offer the second tranche in the crowdfunding process. The section he wrote about Trampoline gives a good summary of how our crowdfunding model works.
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Trampoline interview by Techfluff TV
By Charles Armstrong | Friday, March 19th, 2010
A couple of weeks ago Techfluff TV came to interview Trampoline as one of ten business featured in their Silicon Roundabout series. This was inspired by Wired Magazine’s feature on the cluster of innovative technology businesses that has sprung up in the Shoreditch neighbourhood of east London, centred on Old Street roundabout.The interview went live on NextWeb today.
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Techcrunch article on Trampoline crowdfunding
By Charles Armstrong | Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
Yesterday night, as the Perseid meteorites streaked through Earth’s atmosphere, Techcrunch.com published a provocative article on Trampoline’s decision to “jump the VC ship” and raise finance via crowdfunding. Techcrunch has established itself as the journal of record for tech startups and the venture capital industry so this was bound to create a bit of a stir.In the immediate aftermath of the Techcrunch article Trampoline’s crowdfunding website was visited by 1,500 people from 70 countries around the world and 200 people posted messages to their networks via Twitter. Many of the comments came from entrepreneurs applauding the example Trampoline is providing of an alternative to VC.
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Sunday Telegraph feature on Trampoline Crowdfunding
By Charles Armstrong | Sunday, August 9th, 2009
Today’s Sunday Telegraph includes a feature on Trampoline’s Crowdfunding initiative written by the paper’s Enterprise Editor, Richard Tyler. The article discusses how conventional venture capital financing can lead businesses to raise progressively larger sums of money regardless of whether that’s what they actually need. As Trampoline proceeds down the crowdfunding path it will be interesting to see if there are other areas of strategy where we begin to innovate having previously followed the norms of the venture capital industry.Posted in Crowdfunding, Media | No Comments »