Announcing the Land and Expand newsletter

Posted on January 7, 2016

Photo credit: Daniel Chapman

New year, new projects.

There is no question that I fell out of the blogging habit in 2015. One post in the entire year is a pretty poor showing. Sorry about that. Ideas have however been percolating in the background.

One of the biggest challenges of working in the tech start up space is keeping up with the relentless flow of news and analysis. Knowledge is power after all. Over the years I have built up a database of the key RSS feeds in an attempt to keep my finger on the pulse. Emphasis on ‘attempt’, I still miss much more than I read. It occurred to me that I should be sharing that information to save you wasting your valuable time by repeating the same process all over again trying to hunt down the best news sources.

With this is mind I’m please to announce the launch of two projects under the umbrella name of ‘Land And Expand’. Consider this very much an experiment. The idea is to see how it performs, gather feedback and iterate. To provide a place to start I have deliberately kept the initial focus narrow – The London Tech scene.

The first is a hand curated newsletter of the weeks best London Tech stories. The idea is to signpost the essential reading for your weekend. Only 3 – 5 links each issue. Overloading you is not the goal. Issue one will be a slight cheat, including some stories over the holiday break which were just too good to miss. Issue one hits the streets on the 15th January. Sign up here.

The second is a Feed.ly channel grouping together some of the best sources of news coming out of London’s Tech scene, from which the newsletter has been curated. In other words, go here to drink from the firehouse on a daily basis if you so desire. You can find that channel here.

If that sounds of interest, jump on board by signing up to the newsletter list here and please share with friends and colleagues. Your feedback will make it better.

Let’s see if it catches on, if not I will file under nothing ventured, nothing gained 😉

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A new podcast interview and a post on the impact of mobile in retail.

Posted on June 24, 2015

Firstly I can not believe it’s been a year since I last posted here. If there is anyone left following the blog, then I salute you.

A combination of head down graft getting the Twilio machine humming in Europe, and frankly writers block, just got me out of the habit. Well I’m still here, just mostly yacking on Twitter rather then writing longer form posts.

I was shamed into posting again after doing a recent interview with Alex Theuma from the Saascribe podcast. We covered a lot of ground including how I joined Twilio, what it is like working here, our marketing playbook, and the recently announced Twilio Fund. The transcript is here and you can listen to the audio of the interview via iTunes.

To round off you can read some thoughts on a post I wrote last week for Masterclassing called “How Can Retailers Increase Customer Satisfaction and Revenue Through Mobile?”

I’ll try and make sure its not another 12 months before I post again. You would not believe the backlog of plug in up dates and spam comments I had to plough through!

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And the winner of the World Cup is…England. No really!

Posted on June 21, 2014

After 63 matches and 210 goals I’m proud to announce the winner of the 2014 World Cup is ENGLAND!

Well that fantasy is certainly true in the world of EA’s FIFA World Cup 14. My son and I have just played the ENTIRE competition on the Xbox One and, mostly due to the fact he was playing as England, they beat France 3-1 to lift the World Cup for the first time since 1966. Shame in real life they have been knocked out after just two bloody games!

Yes, the ultimate glory, and after only just managing to scrape through the group stage on goals scored over Uruguay.

Notable results included Argentina being knocked out at the group stage with three losses, just 1 goal scored and 10 conceded, including a shocking 6-0 hammering by Iran! Another huge name, this time from Europe, also fell at the first hurdle – Germany despite only conceding 5 in 3 games they just couldn’t find their goal scoring touch and went home with just one win under their belts.

In the last 16 the unbeaten Spain came undone against an in form Brazil, Russia sneaked through on the tournaments only penalty shoot out, and France showed their potential with a 5-0 hammering of unbeaten Nigeria.

Games went to form in the quarter finals, the only surprise was England ripping 6 past the Netherlands.

In the semi’s England avoided Brazil, and sneaked past Portugal by the odd goal, whilst France surprisingly held off Brazil. In the final, well all those years of hurt disappeared and England went 2 up within the first 15 minutes after a red hot start.

The goal of the tournament is embedded below (well it was the only one we could be bothered to upload):

Just for completeness and to demonstrate the level dedication we have given to this (!),  here are the final tables and knock out stage results in full.

W L D GF GA

Group A – winners Cameroon, runners up – Brazil

Cameroon 2 0 1 7 1

Brazil 1 1 1 2 3

Mexico 1 2 0 3 5

Croatia 0 1 3 2 5

Group B – winners Spain, runners up Netherlands

Spain 3 0 0 6 0

Netherlands 1 1 1 2 2

Chile 1 2 0 2 6

Australia 0 2 1 0 2

Group C – winners Columbia, runners up Greece

Columbia 2 0 1 10 5

Greece 1 1 1 7 7

Ivory Coast 1 2 0 5 6

Japan 1 2 0 6 10

Group D – winners Costa Rica, runners up England

Costa Rica 2 1 0 4 5

England 1 1 1 7 7

Uruguay 1 1 1 4 4

Italy 1 2 0 4 3

Group E – winners Switzerland, runners up France

Switzerland 3 0 0 7 3

France 2 1 0 8 2

Ecuador 1 2 0 4 6

Honduras 0 3 0 2 10

Group F – winners Nigeria, runners up Bosnia

Nigeria 3 0 0 8 3

Bosnia 2 1 0 5 4

Iran 1 2 0 8 5

Argentina 0 3 0 1 10

Group G – winners Portugal, runners up Ghana

Portugal 2 1 0 7 7

Ghana 1 1 1 8 5

Germany 1 2 0 1 5

USA 1 1 1 7 6

Group H – winners Russia, runners up Belgium

Russia 3 0 0 10 2

Belgium 1 1 1 7 6

Korea 0 1 2 3 6

Algeria 0 2 1 6 12

Last 16

Cameroon 2 Netherlands 3

Switzerland 2 Bosnia 0

Spain 0 Brazil 2

Portugal 1 Belgium 0

Costa Rica 0 Greece 1

Columbia 1 England 4

Russia 0 Ghana 0 (Russia won 4-3 on penalties)

Nigeria 0 France 5

Quarter Finals

France 2 Russia 1

Netherlands 1 England 6

Switzerland 0 Portugal 2

Brazil 2 Greece 0

Semi Finals

England 3 Portugal 2

Brazil 1 France 2

Final

England 3 France 1

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The Effect of Software People on Telco – Updated

Posted on June 18, 2014

This is a long overdue follow up to a presentation I gave back in March looking at the Startup Disruption in Telco. That talk was from the perspective of the startup / entrepreneur. This talk is from the perspective of the Telco.

Some of the content is reused from the first incarnation of the talk which I wrote back in July 2013, but there is also a lot of new content and some simplification. Read that as less data and charts! I delivered this talk at the Telco Cloud World Forum in Munich on April 30th, 2014.

Ok, so lets get into the commentary. I’ve not expanded where the slide content is self explanatory. Where some additional thoughts where given live on stage, I’ve added them below.

Slide 1

It was only a 20 minute presentation, so I didn’t go deep into any of the topics I raised. The talk looks at the mindset, the DNA, of various players in the new mobile product & services ecosystem. It’s not a technical presentation, it’s focused on how people think.

And some of these people are now very much in the driving seat of mobile products & services.

So my goal is to provide some markers and to provoke some thoughts. Feel free to leave a comment / tweet if you want to expand on any of the points raised.

Slide 4

I’ve chosen to start with this tweet as I think it highlights a number of interesting things, at the heart of this talk. This was a Tweet Paul Graham posted after the announcement that Facebook were going to acquire What’s App. It was interesting when I asked the Telco World Forum crowd who had heard of Paul Graham, about 5 people out of a crowd of ~100 raised their hand.

To me this tweet highlights the PR challenge Telco’s face – “abusive monopolies” – very emotive language. It also reminds us that many startup’s succeed by spotting opportunities for disruption – quite different to the Telco mindset.

Slide 7

I’ve grabbed this diagram from Tsahi Levent-Levi. It helps illustrate those points about startups thinking globally and open from day 1 due to the web. Due to historical reasons Telco’s are vertical and specific to individual countries.

Slide 8

Today’s technology, society, business, customer experiences and customer expectations are a million miles away from 1985. These historical constraints & thinking have been baked into the Telco DNA over the past 30 years.

Slide 11

Having made those huge investments there is huge pressure on the Telco to pay back. Therefore the focus is on monitizing, retaining customers, and acquiring competitors customers. All this is happening while revenue and price erodes. It’s also a repeatable investment per country of operation.

Slide 12

Yet despite this burden, in the new world, Telco’s MUST resist the temptation to think defensively. They should shed the decades of control. Remember WAP, on deck content like Voda 360, Telco App Stores? The days of the Telco dictating to their customers which services they can enjoy is gone. Open has conclusively won in the services space.

Slide 13

The telco stack starts off identical to the web stack, then it stopped. For 100 years nothing has fundamentally changed. The Telco’s never created their WWW for 3rd parties to innovate on top of. That open thinking was missing. This is why, with the advent of mobile data, startups have just gone and done it anyway, giving birth to the OTT issue.

Slide 20

So the world is changing. Software people are the new creators and the new channel to market and APIs are the building blocks they use. It has moved from a direct to an indirect model. The Telco’s need to open up their networks and their mindsets. Embrace software people and stop trying to build product. If your company is not providing APIs for software people to innovate with, how long will you survive?

Slide 21

Another quote I love, this time by API pioneer John Musser. It’s from a few years back now, but John has been proven to be right. Providing the right tools to tap into Software People innovation has to be the way forward.

Slide 22

11,335 APIs were listed on Programmable Web as of last week. In fact 650 new APIs have been added to Programmable Web since January this year! Compare that to 32 public APIs in 2005. Mash ups are key – Developers combining your assets with the assets of others to create great experiences – its the opposite of control. Look at the company names in the Top 10 list of mash ups – the brands driving the new digital economy

Slide 23

Embracing the power of developers via APIs is liberating for your organisation. No longer do you need to come up with the next big thing. No longer do you need to pour millions into NPD only to find you have been out executed and brought your product to market 12 months late. How many water fall NPD projects can you take? Idea, customer research, RFQ, business case, product requirements, roadmap prioritisation, project team, customise the supplier product beyond recognition, bring to market, marketing campaign, miss internal expectations.

Slide 25

O2 UK feel that letting customers change their phone when ever they like before the end of their contract is worthy of a £5m TV campaign which is running at the moment. To me this is a powerful example of how the Telco’s have a hit an innovation wall.

Slide 27

Getting locked into one cash cow impedes your vision. Even if you ask customers what they want, when they give what you perceive as the wrong answer you ignore it, because the implications are just too scary. Kids have already moved to products that have small or zero profit for the Telco.

Let me know your thoughts.

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KPCB Internet Trends Report

Posted on May 30, 2014

This report has gained legendary status. The 2014 edition is out, and is a must read.

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