List of VC Funds

For several years, I have been building a personal, private list of venture capital funds that invest in the UK technology space. Please note that this is a list of active VC funds, sorted by vintage date, not of VC firms. My private list dates back to 2000 and has over 300 funds on it.

Recently, I started recording all this information in an easy to use online database. The database lists all VC funds relevant to the UK market that have been launched since March 2007 (that I can find/know of). It can be found here. I haven’t had the time to backfill all funds launched since 2000, but it is a start:

http://creator.zoho.com/jenslapinski/list-of-vc-funds#

I think this could be very useful to all entrepreneurs raising capital. If you help me build the list, then I think this could become a great tool for the community. Enjoy.

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Spreading Ad Hoc News

I was just trying to use our marketing software to send a message to our beta users and found that the website was down. No idea what is going on. Because the website is down I can’t even look at the company’s blog to see what is happening. So I went to search.twitter.com and immediately saw that other people experienced the same problem. But nobody from the company was there to let us know what was happening…

Lesson learned: when your server goes down, your team should post a brief explanation in various places to let people know what is happening. Twitter is a good place for spreading your ad hoc news, particularly when you website is down. Very fast. Very easy. Potentially big impact. Good stuff.

UPDATE

The company I was referring to is Vertical Response. As soon as they woke up in California, they started keeping people up to date on Twitter. See a screen shot of their messages below. Well done guys!

UPDATE 2

And when you are doing it really well, then you replace your homepage with something like this and simply redirect people to Twitter for more updates. Loving it:

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Don’t Treat Users Like Children

When Facebook recently changed the design of the homepage that users see when they log in, hundreds of thousands (or dare I say millions) of users protested. Very strongly.

What was the problem? Poor design choices? Or poor communication? I personally think the design changes were great, many other people agree, Mike Arrington is just one of them.

The problem is not what the design actually looks like. The problem is that Facebook changed anything at all. I think that Facebook has become so integral people’s lives, that they see their homepage on facebook as literally being part of their lives.

Imagine it like the room that you had in your parents’ house. Remember? Your space. ‘Don’t Enter’ sign at the door. Your domain.

Facebook just walked into their users’ room and then they just changed the layout. The bed is in a different place, so are the desk and chair, and the wardrobe. It doesn’t matter whether the new layout is better or worse than before. They just went in there and changed it! How dare they: “I hate you!!!”

Solution: Give people the ability to design (and keep!) their own layout of their homepage. Let them put stuff where they want it. Help them design their ‘room’ in their taste. Empower them to get it their way.

Don’t be an invasive parent. Everybody hates that, regardless of your good intentions.

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