Today I spent the afternoon and evening at the Second Chance Tuesday event in London. In the afternoon there was an ''Early Stage Funding Workshop'' for an audience of about 100 companies, which consisted of a panel discussion with entrepreneurs and investors talking about what setting up and investing in a business is really like. Richard ...

After John Shinal and I talked in late November, we followed up with another short talk about “lessons learned” and advice for startups. This is short but contains three ideas I think are important for startups. I have run startups and I’ve worked with many of them here at Microsoft. John Shinal, Vator.tv : Hi. We're here with ...

UPDATE 4 Oct 2007 For those who weren't at the UK Microsoft Startup Accelerator Programme launch event (or fell asleep during my introduction and didn't wake up) on Monday the 1st of October, here is, in order of appearance both some pictures and videos.   Ryan Carson   Lars Lindstedt - Video   Brent Hoberman ...

  This is the second year that I'm involved in the Running the Gauntlet (RTG) entrepreneurship competition that the East of England Development Agency organises together with  a group of VCs (Create Partners, Low Carbon Accelerator, NW Brown, and SEP) and Library House. RTG, which I think can best be summarised as "Dragons' Den ...

Talk, Debate, Collaborate — VCs Get Down to the Business of Startups Just last week, approximately 200 venture capitalists from around the world converged on our Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View, California to join us for the eighth annual Microsoft Venture Capital Summit. Our theme? “Investing in a Converging World — Everywhere, ...

That all depends on what “invest” means. We do invest. We don’t invest. Which is it? Believe it or not, it does depend on how you define “invest.” We don’t invest in startups in the traditional venture capital way. At least not any more. But we do aggressively invest our resources, programs, people, and, of course, technologies in startup ...

Article by Dan'l Lewin (my manager) describing the Microsoft Emerging Business team and Microsoft's start-up investment strategy. Some key points:We are heavily investing in startups. We’re open for business and care passionately about entrepreneurs and their commitment to changing the world. In fact, during the last three or four years, we’ve had ...