The last day of the WebMission 2011 is upon us, and it’s time to take one last long look at San Francisco. What an amazing city!

Although I have visited before, this week has been the first time that the spirit of San Francisco has really got under my skin and made me realise that there really is something very special about this place. There’s a magic characteristic present in the place, the beautiful buildings and the breathtaking bay but also in the people from the cheery American stranger, who opened a door for me one day and said with much vigour ‘Ta Da!’ to all the really smart and creative people inolved in San Francisco business culture.

San Francisco is a fantastic place for our WebMission businesses to have spent a week because it has a great pulse of innovative and entrepreneurial energy at its very core and  we have been lucky enough to spend time with enough of the right people this week to tap into it. What better place to think about the future, new ideas and development than in a city that thrives on those things and lays itself open to possibility. The norm here is a positive, open, proactive and energetic approach to life and in an environment like that all kinds of barriers fall down and suddenly a whole lot of things seem possible.

Today was a full day even though we are flying back this evening, we visited Microsoft and also spent time in a really productive and helpful ‘wash-up’ session with the businesses that was kindly hosted by one of the mission sponsors Orrick. This was a chance for them to spend time in a facilitated workshop, discuss the things that they have gained this week and work out what they are going to do differently as a result of spending a week on the WebMission 2011.

The feedback was amazing. There is no doubt that the businesses have had a fantastic week and that it has opened up a lot of great opportunities for them. Every business that I have spoken to today has listed a range of positive outcomes from the mission, whether that be new partnerships, VC follow-ups or just identifying a new direction for their business.

The feedback session identified that the businesses had benefitted enormously from immersing themselves in San Francisco business culture for a week and that there are many things about the way that business operates here that they would like to take back with them to the UK.

It was great to hear the businesses acknowledge all of the organisers and sponsors and recognise the great job that Oli Barrett does as the mission’s figurehead and lead. The businesses learnt a lot this week about the Technology Strategy Board and the role that UK Trade & Investment plays over here and the high level of support that they can offer them. In all it’s so great to hear that the businesses feel that this was a very valuable opportunity and I will enjoy tracking their progress and watching the future opportunities emerge. Next stop San Francisco airport and then it’s back to Blighty.

The WebMission 2011 pitching session kindly hosted by Orrick at Menlo Park, was quite something and I will be taking my very positive impressions of it back to my colleagues at the Technology Strategy Board in the UK.  Presented by Oli Barrett, the whole event was slick, well organised and impressive.

I love watching mission companies pitch. You’ve had time to get to know them and their products a little and then the moment comes, when the VCs are all in the room and it goes quiet as the first company take the floor to do their stuff.

When that first pitch started it was a barnstormer! Emi Gal from Branient told me minutes before he started that he “enjoyed speaking in front of an audience.” And boy didn’t we know it! Confident, unflappable (when the slide deck ‘ slipped’ a little through no fault of his own) and full of charisma and wit, Emi made sure that VC’s got the full flavour of his confident personal style alongside a good idea of what his company and product are all about.  Brainient helps advertisers increase ROI for their video advertising campaigns by creating interactive video adverts. www.brainient.com

 When I asked Emi afterwards what he thought of the WebMission, he said:

 “I’m loving it, it’s very fun, there’s a lot going on; a lot of meetings, a lot of events, a lot of new people and I’m really enjoying spending time with the other companies and the entrepreneurs.

 “I think that most of them are onto something big and I really enjoy, besides the work part, I enjoy the fun part.”

 All the other presentations in the pitching session ran through pretty much to time and the general quality was very high, with most of the companies leaving me feeling impressed with their ability to be relaxed in a pressurised situation like this, present themselves well and clearly describe the important things that differentiate their products from their competitors.

 It was my job to catch some of the VCs afterwards and capture their impressions of the session on video, and that material will be available on the video stream on this site from Wednesday. I had to prise the VCs away from talking to the businesses, which took some doing and support from colleagues. The VCs who I spoke to were very impressed.  Gary Little from Morgenthaler Ventures, a 42 year old venture capital fund said:

 “ I thought it was just terrific. It was an excellent group of companies. I thought all of them were interesting and worth following up with. I see partner opportunities for my investments here, as well in the United States and it made me think just how innovative the British entrepreneurs are.”

 This positive impression was echoed by many of the other potential investors including Randy Haykin from Haykin Capital, who has been in Silicon Valley for the last 30 years. He told me that he was one of the founders at Yahoo and that he loves working with start-ups:

 “I just loved the companies that presented today. I complimented a number of the speakers on the innovativeness of the business models…..I found that quite a few of the presenters today were projecting some interesting new models that I think could work in the market place and I think that it’s fantastic that they could come out here to Silicon Valley and present for some of us investor types to take a look today. “

So I think that we can safely say, all of that amounts to a good day. I am now looking forward to the Kicklabs visit tomorrow.

In the afternoon we walked over to the Twitter office where we got some information about the culture of the organisation, its approach to business relations and the features of Twitter that may not be being harnessed to their full potential by innovators. Talk about laying down the gauntlet.

Another full day tomorrow starting with investor pitching in the morning.

WebMission 2011 is underway and I am excited to be a part of it. Last night the 18 companies met at a reception and talked part of the night away. It was a great first night with a buzzing bunch of people.

How to describe the 18 successful UK companies out here in San Francisco, who are going to help make this the best WebMission ever? Well if you are a consumer of web based services these guys are offering a ‘veritable sweetshop’ of new options that could dramatically transform your world. As I am a consumer, it’s the easiest for me to wear that hat when exploring their products.

So for fun, let’s imagine together….two consumers, one’s a woman looking for new social experiences. Carla is a 35 year –old single, professional who’s quite web literate and has high expectations of what social media can offer. She’s recently left a long term partner and wants to open her life up to new things and new people and is wondering whether she can use the web to help her do this kind of thing.

Stu is a businessman in his late 40’s who has been running his own independent bookstore for years but is starting to wonder whether he needs to look at what’ s happening in the publishing world in order to ensure that his business survives. He’s aware of the internet and dabbles a bit but has a friend, Rob who knows a lot about it.

Just in case you get our great mission companies mixed up with the Facebooks and twitters mentioned in this story, I have put them in bold when they appear. So, what do the 18 companies offer for both of our characters? Stu and Carla have; after all, one of the most powerful things at their disposal, the choice to use these products…

Carla wakes up and it’s a lovely spring day.

“Today’s the day” she thinks. “It’s now or never. Time to get out there and meet some new people”.

She‘d love to meet a new boyfriend and friends too. She goes on line and searches around looking at the usual dating sites but she’s tried internet dating and speed dating and wants a different experience. Just something sociable that isn’t loaded with the pressure and expectation that any dating experience can bring and she happens on Housebites.com . It’s an online social dining platform that enables people to meet through dinner parties in the home.

“This looks more like it”, thinks Carla.

She especially likes the way it’s being run with hosts having the choice of holding a private party or inviting new people. Carla finds an event in her area and registers. She goes along and has a great time and meets one guy, Stu who she really gets on with, so they agree to meet for coffee another time. They do coffee a few times and things are looking up.

When Carla wakes up one morning she receives an email on Facebook to tell her that Stu, her new friend has sent her a nice message saying he’s looking forward to meeting up again, this time for a night out and wants to send her a gift through Parcelgenie.com. ParcelGenie.com has pioneered a new genre of communication: ‘Instant gift messaging’ enabling real little gifts to be sent via social networks and mobile phones without needing a delivery address.

The message asks her to say where she would like it to be delivered. She gives her home address and the next day a small parcel arrives. It’s 200ml bottle of Freixenet Cordon Rosado, she smiles as she thinks this is sweet and continues to look forward to meeting up.

One thing leads to another and after dating for a while Stu and Carla decide to go on holiday together. They want a cheap flight and use Skyscanner, a leading flight comparison website, where they have the option to search over 600 airlines and 670,000 routes as well as hotel, car hire and package holiday information. They settle on a package deal to the island of Hvar in Croatia, because it offers everything that they are looking for and the money they save on the flight enables them to book into a great marina-front hotel.

Carla loves yoga and wants to shape up before the holiday so she goes online and finds, Bookingbug.com, an online platform designed to become the future of booking services and activites. It enables Carla to look at all of the classes in her area and book the right lesson for her, all online. She loves this, as it’s the easiest experience she has ever had in booking a class. Usually you can only find the phone number of a yoga teacher and then you need to call them and hope they get back to you by the time of the next class. With Bookingbug, Carla is able to go to a lesson the next day and the teacher is expecting her.

Stu and Carla decide that before they go away they want to host a Housebites event, and run one at Stus home. They invite existing friends and new people. It’s a great success and they make a note to try it again in a few months time. Stu hosts it in his new house and lots of the new people he meets are from the local area, which he doesn’t know that well, so it’s a great chance to meet some people who live in his part of town.
Before they go on holiday Stu chats with Carla about his thoughts for his bookshop and says that his friend Rob, who’s really into the web, has been advising him to take a look at what is happening in the publishing industry with content as he’s not sure that the traditional bookshop business model is going to survive, or if it does, could face a bit of a dent from the digitisation of books.
Stu loves the atmosphere of the bookshop and the fact that clients use his little cafe area as well and come in for coffee and meet others there. He doesn’t want to lose the social and tangible aspect of his business and asks Carla what she thinks. She comes up with an idea.
“Why not keep the shop as a hub but start moving online by having a Facebook page? That way you can nurture the sociable, communicative side of the business and maybe even boost interactions with customers”.
Stu likes this and sets it up. After a few months lots of his clients and new ones are joining the online site, the sociable and literary conversation that characterises his bookshop starts to appear on the Facebook pages and Stu is happy that it reflects the character of his business. Now he has both, the shop and the online pages. Before he knows it Stu has 3,000 existing and prospective customers on his Facebook pages.
When Stu’s friend Rob learns of the changes that he has made, he introduces him to a range of online companies that he thinks can help him grow and change his business in an innovative way. First he shows Stu PeerIndex and Qwerly.
Peer index provides public ratings and data on people, based on their social activities, knowledge and expertise. Rob explains that he can use Peerindex to manage his online brand and also find out what his customers want so that he can build special offerings, services or discounts to them.
Rob explains that Qwerly is really useful because it is a large database of social media profiles that enables web developers to look up social identities based on Twitter handles, Facebook usernames or email. A range of useful marketing material is attached to the results including the area where people live, what social class and sex they are and what their likes and dislikes might be. Rob explains that if Stu really wants to move his business online more, this kind of information is really useful because it will help him target his product at the right customers, and also find out what his customers want.
Rob advises Stu to think about creating his own website for the bookshop and also becoming an online bookseller.

Rob tells Stu to look at Conversocial, a Service as Software company that helps businesses to manage the increasing volume of two-way communication going through social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Rob’s noticed that there are a lot of interactions going on, on the shop Facebook pages and suggests that a good way to get a handle on that and turn it to his advantage would be to try Conversocial.
Rob also wants to show Stu what’s going on in the world of digital publishing so that he can understand what the future might look like for publishing industry and book retail. He shows him Amazon and the Amazon kindle, the iPad and a range of other digital devices that people can use to download and read books. He also shows him Mobcast, a company that enables consumers to read eBooks on any connected device, such as eReaders, tablets, PCs or mobile phones.

“The great thing about Mobcast” says Rob, “is that any company can sell and distribute digital books (including audio books).”
“The software is device agnostic so it allows consumers to read their e books on virtually any connected device, such as eReaders, tablets, PCs or mobile phones.”
Rob also advises Stu to take a look at the following companies, just to get a taste of the interesting services that they offer other online businesses:
Crisp Thinking. Crisp manages online communities, maintains reputations and moderates content.
oneDrum –a simple desktop application that enables real time document collaboration, initially or MS office.
PrismaStar – an online search tool that utilises patented search and selection technology to help consumers find their perfect product.
Rightster – an online video and rights management platform, which unites content creators and provides access to premium video content.
ScreenReach –an interactive engagement company, whose core product is Screech. The interactive digital media platform allows users to create real-time interactive experiences for consumers through smartphones.
CloudApps – a company that enables organisations to embed sustainability and energy efficient solutions at the core of their business through engaging and exciting employees using an energy efficient cloud computing platform.
Brainient – a company that helps advertisers increase ROI for their video advertising campaigns by creating interactive video adverts.
Pusher – a cloud-based service that allows developers to quickly and easily add realtime functionality to web apps.
Rob tells Stu that he thinks he’s got a good chance of growing and even transforming his business using some of the online tools that he’s suggested and says that if the business does start to expand then he’ll need some help from BraveNewTalent, a game-changing, free to use social recruiting platform. The company’s mission is to improve the efficiency of the recruitment process and make it easier to identify new talent.

Carla understands that Rob wants to keep the bookshop with its mini-cafe so she suggests a refit for the shop and directs him to a great online furniture company that she thinks he can use. MADE.COM brings original designs to the masses by revolutionising the furniture retail market. The company enables consumers to vote and group-buy furniture at a fraction of high street prices.

So that’s all for now folks with Carla and Stu’s story but I’d like to think that Stu’s business grows into the online space and that they both live happily ever after. But enough, they have served their purpose and shown how helpful enterprising friends like Rob can be, who know all about our great WebMission 2011 companies. Carla and Stu have also helped us to see how relevant and useful the WebMission products are for business and consumers. Together the companies offer a rich seam of new and innovative UK web products and I am proud to be here in San Francisco supporting them.

It’s amazing what people tend to share
Losing billions, speak Czech
With cellists, pilots, trashers of towns
And competing on Influence with Shrek

They continued coming thick and fast
The evening finishing without a hitch
Although have just woken at 3am
With visions of that tortoise sandwich

A week of awesome lays ahead
So forget jet lag and all that jazz
Make the most of every second
Lead by James, Guy and Big Baz

The Web Mission guys have packed in a busy week for us; I’ve also packed in a load of other meetings with famous technology firms and on top of that I may have to fly down to Santa Barbara.

I can’t decide whether it helps or hurts that 2 of our board members are in town the same week, and one of my best friends is in town to sponsor Cloud Connect.

I got engaged last week and compulsory diet has come into force. Alcohol isn’t fattening is it?

1) In it together: Much of the benefit came from bringing the entrepreneurs together into an environment that gave them the time and space to really get to know each other (a subset of them cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge together on the Sunday afternoon with a celebratory beer after helped considerably) and to compare notes about what they were seeing in The Valley. I really didn’t expect that to be such a big aspect of the Mission. Early on in the week a couple of the entrepreneurs told me that they genuinely get fired up by hearing about the approaches that the others take to their businesses. This kind of healthy competition has got to be a good thing for UK innovation and commercial success.

2) An entrepreneur, a tech lawyer and an investor walk into a pub: Serendipity is all around in San Francisco. I’d of course heard about the freak networking opportunities there but to see it first hand was amazing. You could sit in a bar almost anywhere in town and overhear, and eventually join in on, conversations between different groups of people who if put together could probably develop a new idea, work it up and take it successfully to market. The networking with non-Missionaries started for me on the plane to San Francisco – I assumed the gentleman sitting next to me was a WebMissionary but he turned out to be a Founder of CloudMade. Needless to say, I told him about WebMission though not for the full 10 hours.

3) Those without ambition need not apply: UK companies wanting to tap into the US market need to be ambitious and outwardly so. Whether this is making sure the website has a .com address (rather than .co.uk) or asking for investment in the $millions as opposed to the $100ks (or, better still, state that you don’t actually need any investment right now thank you very much, even if you do). Bit of a cliché but not all UK innovators have this approach at the start. And they need to be prepared at least establish a US phone number for potential clients to call otherwise neither customers nor investors will find it straightforward to buy-in. Once US customers have bought into the idea, then business can boom.

Just a couple more days to go…and I can’t wait to see if this all still applies.

The Web Mission 2011 will give the entrepreneurs behind 19 growing web technology companies the opportunity to engage with top people from US technology businesses such as Twitter. Over $60m has been raised in private finance by companies that attended two previous Web Missions.

The mission is sponsored by; the Technology Strategy Board, UK Trade and Investment and Orrick’s Emerging Companies Group and supported and delivered by partners; Polecat, the Co-Sponsorship Agency and The Long Run Venture. The goal of the mission is to help entrepreneurs in the UK’s web technology sector to take their businesses into the global marketplace.

The pace at which current technology trends evolve stimulates the need for business innovation and the UK companies will see just how US businesses are addressing these market opportunities. The mission, which takes place March 5 – 11 2011, is designed to ensure that the businesses taking part benefit from the collective impact of a well-run trade mission.

The companies, already highly successful in the UK, will meet the media as well as peers from around the world, investors and potential partners. They will also engage with experts on the financial and public policy agendas relevant to web technology businesses operating in the US.

A range of web technologies are being showcased including innovative online booking services using social media, application optimisation technology, marketing optimisation tools, production and delivery of e-content and new forms of cloud -based file sharing.

Head of UK Trade & Investment’s Information Communications Technology (ICT) Team, Simon Carter said:
“It’s great that we can bring these 19 companies together and encourage them through the Web Mission to open their businesses up to international markets. UK Trade & Investment exists to support trade overseas and there’s a big push at the moment for the UK to encourage businesses based here to engage more in international markets. This mission will enable the web businesses to engage in essential networking in the US that could provide a springboard into really valuable business growth opportunities.”

Iain Gray, Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board, commented:
“The Technology Strategy Board enables innovative businesses to thrive and grow and Web Mission 2011 will provide these successful growing businesses with just such an opportunity. Previous missions have already proved to be very productive for some companies with businesses going on to attract significant investment and partnership opportunities.”

The companies selected for the 2011 mission are:

• BookingBug, www.bookingbug.com
• Brainient, http://brainient.com
• BraveNewTalent, www.bravenewtalent.com
• CloudApps, www.cloudapps.com
• Conversocial, http://hello.conversocial.com/hello/
• Crisp Thinking Group Ltd, www.crispthinking.com
• housebites.com,www.housebites.com/
• MADE.COM, www.made.com
• Mobcast Services Limited, www.mobcast.co.uk/index.html
• Qwerly www.qwerly.com
• oneDrum, http://onedrum.com
• ParcelGenie.com, www.parcelgenie.com
• PrismaStar, www.prismastar.com
• Pusher, http://pusherapp.com
• Rightster, http://rightster.com
• Screenreach Interactive, http://screenreach.com
• Skyscanner Ltd, www.skyscanner.net
• PeerIndex, www.pi.mu

Click here for the press release