LeWeb – Day 2 Wrapup

Due to the WiFi seriously dying on me today (though it was mostly fine yesterday – go figure) I tended to tweet today’s sessions in bursts — the bursts corresponding to me being online and actually in the session, rather than offline but in the session, online but not in the session, or offline talking to someone interesting. Anyway.

In a reverse kind of order, here are a few Day 2 goodies. The day ended on a Gillmor Gang live session which consisted mostly of overweight loud Americans shouting at each other — with a surprising detour into a quiet and all-too-brief discussion on news filtering algorithms. One of the things about this panel that appeared on the Twitterstream was the fact it lacked women. I’ve also seen a few comments here and there about the number of women at LeWeb. Plus, a brief exchange that sparked at least one tweet — when asked what the audience liked about Google’s presentation at LeWeb, it’s apparently perfectly fine to note that the (female) speaker was “hot”.

And so my response, as someone qualified to comment on this sort of thing due to having two X chromosomes. Firstly, the voice yelling from the audience that Marissa Meyer was hot was, I believe, a female one. The guys on stage merely repeated it, and didn’t elaborate or extend the comment. Sure, it is a little off that we as a society judge successful women based on their looks — but that doesn’t mean a woman has to look great to be successful in tech. There are plenty of counterexamples to that which I’m way too polite to enumerate. If the audience had shouted anything else, perhaps the ‘hot’ comment wouldn’t have been repeated — but they weren’t forthcoming. So I’m not overly bothered by it — Marissa obviously cares about her appearance and sometimes it’s good to be validated, especially when she has plenty of intelligence to prove that she isn’t just a pretty face. (And how I hate that phrase!)

Secondly, about women as a whole. I’ve already briefly commented that to me, the number of women here seemed fine — a bit higher than usual, even. Bear in mind I’m used to a 10-15% ratio at best and I’d peg LeWeb at 20% minimum, although the actual numbers (are there any?) might prove me wrong — this was simply from counting heads in rows near me. I saw plenty of women. There was even a queue for the toilets at times, something rare at a tech event. A lot of the attendees were tech entrepreneurs, and although I’m admittedly working from a fairly limited sample size, I really don’t see many other women who hold that title. Two, so far, in the whole of Edinburgh. Let’s not get into the whys and wherefores — just, as numbers go, LeWeb seemed fine. As for putting a woman on the Gillmor Gang… why? How many women are even at the level of ‘internet startup celebrity’ that people like Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington and Gabe Rivera personify? I can think of some who might have held their own just fine in that company, but they’d be artificially inserted for all the wrong reasons. Self-selection’s what it’s all about.

So, one of the things the aforementioned loud (male!) Americans were shouting about was the difference between American and European startup culture. It all seems to be about the cluster effect. In America, everything happens in Silicon Valley. You can send someone an email one night and have coffee with them the next morning. In Europe, you’ve got to fly, you might not even speak the same language, and it’s generally much harder for the cross-pollination that exemplifies startup culture in the US. There are also cultural differences, such as Europeans taking long lunch breaks to get to know people better — though this doesn’t really happen as much in the UK.

Loic mentioned a French startup that’s turning over €600m a year. I hadn’t heard of it before today — neither had the panel. This is where the European-as-second-class thing kind of kicks in. A European startup that launches in its native language — not English — and focuses on its own country is just invisible on the American (and to some extent British) radar. One of the key messages from LeWeb this year was that starting in Europe is great, but think internationally. Well, maybe the rest of us should be thinking internationally too.

It was interesting and almost motivating to see the debate over whether it really is easier to start a tech company in Silicon Valley. The argument for: you can just slip into the insiders’ club, you’re surrounded by the right people. Against: well.. I’m not entirely sure what the main argument against was. To be honest, you can start a tech company anywhere you like; it’s whether it’ll be successful or not that matters. Thanks to the Internet it’s easy to outsource labour, to have a virtual office of homeworkers around the world and to gain viral momentum without having to have dinner with a particular person. There are even support programmes throughout Europe that help people start businesses, provide tax relief for people investing in startups, incubate university spinouts, etc, etc. But to what extent does this all outweigh the cluster effect? And why after watching the debate am I half filled with a fierce desire to succeed from a location not known for its technology cluster — and half tempted to move to Silicon Valley? (If I could…)

Another big theme of LeWeb was the economic climate. It was talked about so much — although, I have to say, more on a theoretical basis than a practical one — that by the end of day two the phrases “don’t take any money”, “bootstrap”, “now is a great time” and so forth were getting very tired. Yes, we get it. Lots of successful tech businesses started in a downturn (plenty didn’t, though!). By running on fumes until money is plentiful again, the winners stay alive but the less solid ideas drop out of the game. The thing is when people start to hammer this sort of message home so heavily, it’s almost making you wonder “so.. what are they not telling me?” — by reinforcing again and again that we can succeed ‘despite everything’, it makes the concept itself lose some confidence. Almost as much as the constant “the EU is a great place to be an entrepreneur” message.

Maybe I’m too cynical. It’s entirely possible all this is true, and I have to say that the sort of angle I’d prefer isn’t really one that’s friendly to a big stage and an audience from over 30 countries. I want to know that if now is such a great time to start a business, how can I keep going when I don’t have money? Which schemes, governments, organisations provide a small but still-existent (despite the climate) injection of cash into a one- or two-man-band? Which tax breaks, which angels, which investors are still around? If the EU is so great, how about some tips to overcome the 22 (is it?) language barriers and how about hearing from companies that made it from the UK to the continent? Yeah, specific stuff, but we do need to pull ourselves down to earth a bit and figure out the hows and whys as well as the happy-clappy ‘this is great!’ stuff.

Talking of the Earth, I think one of the highlights of the day was Brian Cox’s talk on space (I thought he looked too cool to be a physicist.. turns out he was also in D:Ream. The things you learn!). Nothing to do with the Web, a little to do with love, but really fascinating. I really liked the diversity of the programme, and especially liked the fact that the sessions I missed were twittered about in depth (of course). Twitter really seems the backbone of tech events these days.

Couple of other talks that were worth noting. John Buckman basically preached to the converted — told us all to go out and start a business, when I’d say most of the audience was doing just that. Not really sure it was aimed quite right. However, Gary Vaynerchuk was spot on. Just buzzing with energy and even made a wine-tasting entertaining. Really livened up the afternoon and gave me a little pause for thought about personal brands — I decided a while ago to focus on myself rather than what-I’m-doing-right-now, since I tend to wear a lot of hats and switch between them at will. The danger of that is people not actually knowing about you beyond the personal brand, of course.

Overall there were some really interesting talks and I met a load of fascinating people. I’ll hopefully be writing a bit more in depth about some of the startups I talked to (though don’t hold me to that) — it was almost scary to see how mature some of the companies are compared to what I’m doing, but hey, we all had to start somewhere.