I’m happy to announce that London Business School is launching a new speaker series this year to showcase successful technology entrepreneurs in Europe. The series begins as a monthly series and, if all goes well, will grow to a more regular frequency.
Our initial lineup looks great, with a bunch of colleagues from my Accel days agreeing to drop by campus for an hour, including:
- Robin Klein, probably the most prolific angel investor in Europe right now (bio) on October 1
- Stan Boland, who runs Icera and sold Element14 to Broadcom (bio), on November 5
- Stefan Glänzer, who helped build Last.fm and ricardo.de (bio), on December 3
- Bernard Liautaud, who built Business Objects and is now at Balderton Capital (bio), on February 4
- Jos White, who built MessageLabs (bio), on March 4
- Hermann Hauser, one of the most successful entrepreneurs and investors in Europe and the man behind Acorn, CSR, Entropic, Virata, etc (bio), on May 5
- Mike Hedger, who built and sold KVS to Symantec (bio), on June 3
There are a couple of more big names in the works who also plan to drop by so stay tuned. The full details of the new series is available here: http://london-entrepreneurship.com
Picasso once said “Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.” I hope Stanford doesn’t accuse us of too much intellectual theft. The speaker series is a replica of Stanford’s wonderful Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar – from structure and presentation style down to our intent to put every video online. I see no reason to reinvent the wheel.
Part of my impetus for cloning ETL is that there simply aren’t enough stories of success in the European entrepreneurial community. Unlike the Bay Area where I’m from (although I suppose I’m really a New Yorker), Europe lacks a culture of shared success and failure. The story telling that goes hand in hand with trying to change the world is sorely lacking on this side of the pond. I’m hoping that this series will address part of the gap.
Quick history flashback: I remember when BASES set up ETL with Tom Byers (who’s also a visiting professor at London Business School) back when I was a sophomore. I was too busy building Studio Verso with David Siegel at the time to spend too much time in class, but I recall regularly streaming the series on my PC. The series, along with the Mayfield Fellows program, definitely got Stanford students more plugged in with what was going on in Silicon Valley, if only via a process of osmosis. A lot of credit in setting up ETL goes to the two Toms (the second is Tom Kosnick, who you see in the videos all the time), but also to Erik Straser, who was instrumental in establishing BASES and carrying it for four years. He could do that since he was a PhD student at the time. It served him well, since he got to know everyone in the Bay Area, and he’s now a General Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures.
I’m hoping our series will give London Business School a chance to do the same thing for the European entrepreneurial community. I’m excited. I’ve wanted to start this for four years now, all the way back to when I first moved to London as a student. I just had my hands full juggling my job at Accel with an MBA class load back then, and then got too busy at Accel to get it going.
I can’t wait for the first Thursday of October. And the best news? I convinced London Business School to commit to opening the series up to everyone. That means you’re all invited.
