Martin Varsavsky, the Argentinian founder of Fon, the world’s
largest wifi network, loves Europe so much that he has made Spain his
home. But he finds himself a pariah in his adopted country.
“A lot of people in Europe think entrepreneurs are thieves,” he told
participants at Seedcamp today, having dropped in on the week’s events
between flights from Madrid to Beijing.
Mr Varsavsky, who attracts 300,000 a month to his blog on
entrepreneurship, is no Eurobashing American. He tried living in the
US, he admitted today, but said he didn’t like it, and criticised those
in the US who still believe Europe as an expensive museum.
This is probably why his words should be taken seriously by those that
believe Europe is somehow superior to demonise those who seek to create
wealth.
It is a paradox that Seedcamp probably benefits from the current lack of entrepreneurship in Europe. Those who have managed to build global internet businesses have gladly backed Seedcamp’s cause, in part because they see it as vital and nobody else is doing it.
It will take a lot more than this event, however, to change the culture of a continent.
Europe’s loss is Seedcamp’s gain, however, and participants have been treated to one-on-one mentoring with some of the continent’s most successful business founders.
Today they have been focusing on improving their products and marketing.
Kristof Fahy, former head of brand and advertising at Orange, now European brand director at Research in Motion, emphasised the importance of knowing who you are.
He claimed he spent six months at his new employer before he found someone who could succinctly explain what a Blackberry did. “We had had such runaway success as a product that we had lost that soul,” he said.
In the end, Mr Fahy claimed he only got the answer he was looking for from the company’s founder, Jim Balsillie, who explained they were “creating tools for success”.
Donna Sokolsky, co-founder of Spark PR, stressed the importance of not throwing money at marketing campaigns. She explained how Mozilla was able to take on the mighty Microsoft in the browser market by generating a buzz on the internet about its Firefox browser and letting web users do the marketing for it.
“You don’t need an elegant campaign. You don’t need a beautiful campaign. You need an effective campaign.”
The aspiring entrepreneurs at Seedcamp do not have the luxury of marketing budgets, which is probably a good thing according to Mr Fahy. “With marketing, you don’t need a lot of money,” he said. “The best ideas come when you have absolutely no money.”
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