Matt's Investments Blog

Making It Mobile

Matt Mead - 01.04.2012

The Business Leadership Network’s Making It Mobile event: what a great showcase for Britain’s entrepreneurial talent. There were 5 minute pitches from twelve companies competing for the MiM award 2012 interspersed with the other presentations throughout the day. I was one of many judges in the room asked to award a mark out of ten for their “potential to make businesses mobile”.

The companies presenting covered the entire mobile value chain, from Cella Energy (aiming to radically improve battery life) to apps and services offering real utility (I wish I'd thought of Hailo for hailing a cab). Three companies came away with prizes (augmented reality champions Blippar and Aurasma and mobile payment solution paythru), but all of the companies came across as well-informed, articulate, charismatic and energetic... They have to be, to overcome the slow-moving conservatism of many of their customers.

Speaking of which, it was a genuine pleasure to see engagement from companies like ITL (ITV), Domino's Pizza, The Financial Times and Tesco - talking candidly about their interests, experiments, successes and failures and inviting all-comers to help make their businesses mobile. For start-ups, it's not easy to meet these people (or even identify who they are). I'd love it if there were more events like this which gather the blue chips together with the start-up community.

Aside from obvious opportunities arising from making a virtue of the local and social elements of mobile there remain some major questions in mobile around business models, bandwidth and platforms - all rich seams for start-up innovation.