Nov 2016
#PlayBiggerLDN 16/11/16
Written by Paul Maher
What a year it’s been. America has gained a contentious new President Elect, is losing its first black President and Britain has a looming exit from the EU’s single market.
These are uncertain times for UK businesses, especially those driven by technology, including London’s once-great banking sector. Like never before, Britain needs to ‘find its way’ in the world once more and it’s clear the UK needs a bit of help navigating the choppy waters ahead.
Big Businesses
The master of creating companies that dominate, the US, has traditionally served up global business leadership in the form of disruptive innovation. These so-called ‘Category Kings’ like Uber, AirBnB, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM… (you get the point) show how the early adoption of the concept of ‘Category Design’ has the power to propel businesses from napkin to NASDAQ in what seems like nanoseconds.
But now, the US has a President Elect who is pointing his shotgun at Silicon Valley and expects payment for the privilege. Couple that with #Calexit and you’ve got a rapidly escalating situation. British entrepreneurs meanwhile are watching on in a mixture of shock, awe and confusion. Sound familiar? This time though the UK stands to benefit.
To help educate the UK tech community on how to take advantage of this exciting new opportunity, we decided to fly in the leading Silicon Valley SWAT team who created ‘Category Design’ and work with leading Venture Capitalists and US Tech Firms (Goldman Sachs, HP, Andreessen and Horowitz) to create and dominate categories.
We are proud to announce the arrival of Play Bigger in the UK.
At our packed out event on 16/11/16 we will be educating Europe’s top tech executives and Venture Capitalists on the importance of Category Design and will debate whether the UK can produce executive teams who can ‘Play Bigger’ to create Companies like Uber and AirBnB.
Our panel is equally impressive:
- Sophie Deen, CEO Brightlittlelabs is the lawyer-turned-techpreneur whose small, but perfectly thought-through UK startup needs money, but also great advice and a little luck. She added a KickStarter campaign, some hopes, dreams and created a really exciting new business with a social mission.
- John Taysom, former CEO Reuters Venture Capital and the Brit who funded 18 tech successes to IPO and got in early on Yahoo! Verisign, Blinkbox and We7. His career has witnessed more success and failure than most.
- Danvers Baillieu, the Brit tech veteran who helped a 14 year old sell his business for $60m.
The event is already a sellout, but don’t worry – we’ll be live-streaming the from techUK on the night. Watch live here.
#PlayBiggerLDN