In the spirit of not whining, and of trying to get things done, and because some people have complained I was too hard on the lack of a British innovation culture – great at design, great at music, but poor at building businesses – I decided to ask – what would be the essential British web 2.0 startups?
What made me think of it was this from Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch.
Michael just visited Tel Aviv and came up with some interesting Israeli startup action.
Israel, with its close linkages to the US, and culture of intellectual property research and investment, with business savvy, has already spawned any number of interesting enterprise technology companies, notably in the security space.
Its like this though- if you’re a British firm doing good things then of course you should be contacting people like me – I have a readership and customer base and I like to write about cool things. I also believe there is no shortage of creativity, or marketing savvy, in our little corner of the North Sea. We just seem to be a bit crap at creating companies… and Web 2.0 is no exception.
I am going to keep a list, so if Michael does come to London he knows who to call.
As so often is the case though it seems the Irish are way ahead of me/us. Who knew that TechCrunch was going to be franchised? Apparently the Irish Web 2.0 scene is developing nicely, EirePreneurs indeed. Or how about Web 2.0 Ireland.. (100% Irish- Stephen would surely approve.)
Check out Sxoop Technologies – which has a very neat online photo effects service, PXN8, with a nice upload to flickr function and other Web 2.0 goodness. They even have a business model… 😉 It will be interesting to see if the Tablane browser gets any traction. I am a Firefox man myself.
What would a top ten list of UK Web startups look like?
I would stick DropSend from CarsonSystems on the list for starters, now I know the firm is British… cheers Ryan (hat tip to Ian Fenn for letting me know that Carson the company is UK-based).
Mydeo can go on there too because it was smart enough to take the UK government’s money… although I am not sure I would want to compete with Google Video. (thx Deirdre for the link).
I will keep an eye out for more when I check out Beers and Innovation.
If you know of cool Web 2.0 ish startups in the UK please let me know.
James Corbett says:
March 2, 2006 at 10:40 am
Hi James. The TechCrunch franchise thing never happened in the end, not for us anyway, but it was interesting to see Mobile TechCrunch launching recently so I guess Mike was considering his options.
I love TechCrunch and have great admiration for Mike but I think we’re probably better off ploughing our own furrow on Web2.0Ireland.com to be honest. For one thing there simply isn’t anything like the volume of startup activity here so our group blog is developing into more of a general news site about what’s happening Web 2.0 wise in Ireland with the odd review thrown in for good measure.
BTW, I’m thoroughly enjoying MonkChips.
james governor says:
March 2, 2006 at 10:47 am
cheers James. its always a pleasure to get some positive feedback. and thanks for the clarification.
walter says:
March 2, 2006 at 11:34 am
James,
Thanks for the PXN8 mention. There was a good irish contingent at the recent FutureOfWebApps summit in London. We were just talking about how it takes an event across the water for us all to get together. I think that’s changing though with an upcoming web2 event in Cork ( http://www.tomrafteryit.net/anyone-have-contact-details-for-tim-oreilly/ ) and a few other upcoming events.
Walter
james governor says:
March 2, 2006 at 11:51 am
cheers walter. that is a cool app…
it was the carson summit that started this whole thread- and from where i am sitting it looks like Ireland may be ahead, not behind, this side of ther ppond
Julian Ellison says:
March 2, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Thanks for the mention of Tablane. Our Web2.0 credentials should be sharpened a bit as move from Phase 1 — our whizzy browser — to Phase 2 — our even whizzier on-line service. This will hopefully be available for public consumption during April/May. This will be usable by whatever browser sect you belong to. Keep an eye out for it! And yes, I do think more innovative things are happening in Ireland, particularly the West, than the UK which I left a year ago. Perhaps a small market encourages bolder thinking.
Laurence Timms says:
March 2, 2006 at 4:20 pm
I’d love to say that http://chuquet.com is a true startup business with funding and a plan…but it’s just a coolish web 2.0 memetracker with three guys investing personal time in developing it, without any clear idea about income generation or how to attract investment.
It’d be great to see more entreprenurial activity in the UK, but our (my) attitude is usually more conservative and risk-averse. I have no idea why that should be – our history is built on empire, trade and enterprise.
We need the web 2.0 21st century equivalent of Lloyd’s coffee house…
Richard Anson says:
March 2, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Hi James
Interesting post! we were just discussing other UK web start-ups this afternoon.
At the risk of self promotion, please check out “Reevoo”:http://www.reevoo.com/. We are a funded UK web start up, based in London. Our aim is to become the UKs leading brand of customer reviews, based around trust, relevancy and transparency.
To date we collect reviews from two sources, from confirmed purchasers from our retail partners and we have just started aggregating reviews from the edge in essence from blogs.
We now have reviews covering in excess of 2000 electrical products and have served our 1 millionth ReevooMark impression on our partners sites.
Hope you like what you see, Reevoo is still in its infancy and changing all the time.
Best
Richard
Fergus Burns says:
March 3, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Hi James
Love the blog – and i agree – we need to get our act together (we can’t let the valley have all the fun)
The web2.0 scene is coming on in Ireland – we’ve got the govt bodies clued into the models @ web2.0
(see this pic for example – http://battellemedia.com/archives/001988.php)
Some Irish companies in the web2.0 space
– http://www.webresint.com/
– http://www.newbay.com
– http://www.nooked.com [disclose – my company]
– http://www.infacta.com
– http://www.tablane.com
– http://www.my-me.com
– http://http://www.ciceronetworks.com/ (mobile 2.0)
and no doubt i’ve missed some
Regards
Fergus
Deirdre Molloy says:
March 3, 2006 at 4:31 pm
James – this is geting spooky now. In my immediate family the other women are called Siobhan and Aoife.
Inspired by the gorgeous sunny weather, I looked up the origin of whingeing this morning and found the most detail on US site word-detective.com:
“In any case, “whinge” is basically the same word as our good old-fashioned “whine,” meaning “to complain peevishly.” Both whinge” and “whine” are ultimately from the Germanic “hwinan,” meaning “to whine.” The “ge” ending of “whinge” is evidence of its origin as the Scots and Northern English form of “whine,” much as “clenge” and “ringe” were at one time the Northern forms of “cleanse” and “rinse.”
It comes directly from the Old English word “hwinsian,” and first appeared in its modern English spelling in the early 18th century.”
So it’s a longstanding tradition round these parts 😉
Dennis – I agree with much of what you say, and London/UK obviously doesn’t have the scale of the US or the Far East/Asia. But in terms of what we are fostering, is the discussion here fostering realism or pessimism and what’s the difference? If it’s a self-fufilling prophecy, what’s the point? (uh oh, I feel an existential haze enveloping me…)
A couple of things though:
If you look at London it is populated by people of all nations. Isn’t your point about the Valley that it’s got a global mix of technology professionals – which isn’t the same as being generally cospmopolitan, which London must be the epitome of..? Was that your original meaning?
Given what Ryan Carson said at The Future Of Web Apps about the costs of geting a start-up off the ground, is lack of VC backing being over-emphasised as a UK-specific stumbling block on the pathway to success?
Not everything begins in the Valley Stateside – Del.icio.us recently had to up sticks and move there from its home turf of New York so Joshua Schachter could stop making money in Wall St (in his day job) and start making it with Yahoo! There are other examples too numerous to mention but I thought I’d pick that one becuase of the Web Apps conference connection.
Also, mobile innovation has been totally ignored in this discussion and that’s an area where Europe excels, along with the Far East. Mobilista Russell Beattie recently had a few timely words to say about the whole Web 2.0 thing, that might float your boat Dennis…
Cheers,
Deirdre
Jon Collins says:
March 3, 2006 at 10:18 pm
Hi James,
I couldn’t post my comment as it thinks there are dodgy words in it, so I put it here: http://www.joncollins.net/wordpress/?p=170
Cheers,
Jon
Ryan Carson says:
March 6, 2006 at 8:34 am
Hey James,
Thanks for the mention. We wanted to share what we learned when we bootstrapped DropSend (www.dropsend.com) with all the attendees at the Summit (www.carsonworkshops.com/summit).
When I introduced the Summit, I said that we were tired of everyone talking about the Valley. There’s tons going on elsewhere in the world – especially Europe.
As your readers probably know, they can grab the MP3s from here.
Take care,
Ryan
Colin Donald says:
March 6, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Hi James,
In the wake of Beers and Innovation, my company decided to tackle the issue of UK Internet start-ups being isolated and, often, effectively invisible.
Jigsaw, a wiki to support the development of the UK new media industry, is here:
http://www.futurescape.co.uk/wiki/
The rapidly-growing list of innovative (ie roughly Web 2.0) companies is here:
http://www.futurescape.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Internet
Youre cordially invited to add yourself to the blogs page
http://www.futurescape.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Blogs
and to pass this on as an invitation to anyone who might be interested in contributing. Official launch is this Weds at Wiki Weds in London:
http://www.socialtext.net/wikiwed/index.cgi?london_wikiwed_8_march_2006
Regards,
Colin Donald
Director
Futurescape
anonymous says:
March 7, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Would it be an idea to have a meeting at www2006 of all the web2.0 companies of UK? I’m sure that many of the Web2.0 companies will attend www2006, won’t they?
I’m not working in a UK company but actually I’m searching a job in UK (currently living outside UK).
james governor says:
March 8, 2006 at 5:26 pm
not a bad idea anon. i must admit i dont know www20006.
anonymous says:
March 9, 2006 at 10:02 am
www2006 is in Edinburgh, May 22-29.
I hope it will rock (I’ve never been to a conference though), there will be a collaborate tagging workshop that hopefully will be worth attending.
But if you don’t know it then probably not many UK people will attend..