The last day of the conference was pretty low-key. We attended one very useful panel entitled Venture Capital Europe on which Judy Gibbons of Accel Partners, George Coelho of Benchmark Capital, Jean-Marc Patouillaud of Partech International, Sasha Galitsky of RT Fund and Bert Markus of Wellington Partners. The roundtable was moderated by the inimitable Alex Vieux. The truth is that I expected a panel of back-scratching in which the moderator offered puffball questions that the VCs would knock out of the park to market their companies. But Alex’s questions were very intelligent and pointed. And whenever a VC offered a superficial response, Alex pushed them to give real answers. He was very aggressive, perhaps even to the point of being slightly antagonistic. But it seems that the VCs were prepared for his approach and took it in good stride. It seems that they knew and respected Alex, so his reproaches were not rebuffed but rather treated as legitimate criticisms that demanded a more appropriate response. And the entrepreneurs in the audience felt that there had an ally on stage that was defending their interests while forcing the VCs to give intelligent and well-thought-out responses. A few of the highlights:

• Everyone acknowledged that there is no comparison between Silicon Valley and Europe. The key will be when the ecosystem here can depend on experienced, serial entrepreneurs.
• Alex noted that the culture in Silicon Valley is one in which the VCs fly private jets and go off to vacation in super-exclusive and expensive hot spots. It seems that the European VCs have not quite adopted such a culture. Relatedy, VCs in Europe seem not to earn quite as much money as VCs in the United States. One question that Alex asked in this regard related to whether VCs make money more from the back-ends of transactions or from management fees. The consensus was that it was illegitimate to make the majority of a funds fees from management fees.
• The Internet is hot right now for the simple reason that investors like the possibility of being able to gain a lot of main with very little investment.
• There is a problem of seed capital in Europe. VCs come too late. I thought this was just a problem in Spain, but it appears that it’s also true throughout the rest of Europe. In the US, by contrast, it’s possible to raise a few million dollars in seed capital in a couple of hours. George Coelho recounted the example of a friend who raised seed capital this way and in such a short time span.
• A lot of VCs are very formula-based. They have to “do the math” to make sure that their institutional investors will be happy, but this might unduly limit the kinds of companies in which they can invest.
• There was some discussion as to whether active VC involvement is a reality, and if it is a reality, whether it’s a good thing. VCs want to invest in the winners within a certain investment class, but who is really willing to do the heavy work to transform an interesting project into a market leader? And what roles are the VCs better at — should they help more in terms of hiring, selling, structuring the company, providing international contacts, etc.? Or should the bulk of the heavy lifting be left to the entrepreneur? (I’m not sure what the right answer is here, though I know what my preference is. In any case, it’s funny to note that in many cases the VCs hire a heavy lifter and push the entrepreneurs to a non-executive role.) Apparently, the founders of SKYPE often state that they’re happy the VCs left them alone to build their project up, because otherwise the result might not have been as successful. It’s an interesting point of view. The consensus seemed to be that the VC should be an active board member, but she should not think that she is an active member of the executive team.
• Entrepreneurs should do due diligence before getting married to a VC. Call their other portfolio companies to see what they’re really like.
• There is no proven, world-class VC in Europe. No company has a sufficient track record to claim bragging rights. There might be 300 star VCs in the US, but unfortunately there are no real stars in Europe.

The second day of Red Herring ushered in the presentation and panel section of the conference. Unfortunately, we did not make it to many presentations or panel discussions, because we had to prepare our own presentation, which was scheduled for 5:15PM. And from about 3:30PM to 5:00PM, we’d be meeting with various VCs with whom we’d scheduled meetings. So I was a bit nervous.

The conference really drove home that a lot of times, the better you are in your personal life, the freer and looser you are in your professional life. For example, on the day of our presentation, we got up at about 9AM. We were already freaking out. The developers and designers didn’t have the website up to the level that we felt comfortable with, and we wanted to show the website to the VCs with whom we’d scheduled meetings. It was really an issue of cleaning up some simple errors, but sometimes it seems that programmers don’t think with a marketing filter. In other words, it’s not always enough that something works. It should also be pretty and/or look user-friendly. And since the web wasn’t at the level that we’d agreed with the developers, we started to freak out a bit. So at first, I started chain-smoking. I really wanted to go the gym to burn off the nervous energy, but we didn’t have enough time. So I made a couple of phone calls to key friends / love interest who knew exactly how to calm me down. Nothing magical. Just a fun chat that distracted me for 15 minutes and led me to think about other things and put things in perspective. And then I felt calm.

So we met with one VC who succintly explained his theory to us: a successful start-up needs to demonstrate one of three things: i) an exceptional and experienced team; ii) a technology that is clearly above its peers; or iii) interesting traffic numbers. Nothing too surprising here, but the formula was so succint and clear that it really helped us to clarify our priorities.

I didn’t have much time to practice the presentation beforehand, but luckily 7 years of debate experience (high school and college) and 1 year of explaining the product meant that the presentation came off very smoothly. Once I start talking, I lose most of my nervousness. Usually, it’s the waiting that’s the worst thing. Once I get into it, it’s almost reflexsive. The goal is simply to have an interesting conversation with an audience without boring them to death and presenting the product in appealing but simple, layman’s terms.

After the presentation, a few more VCs came to speak with us, and various of the VCs with whom we’d scheduled meetings came to see our presentation. One seemed particularly interested. That made me happy.

Walking back to our hotel room from the presentation, we bumped into Andreas Rührig, the CEO of Wazap!, a vertical search engine for video games that is supported by two German VCs. Andreas’ company launched in 2006, but they already have impressive traffic numbers. Andreas was very nice, very friendly and very relaxed. He approached us after our presentation and told us that he also had a similar product. As a sign of his increased recognition within the search community, he was invited to be a Red Herring panelist to speak on the future of search. Andreas is definitely one to watch, not just because his product seems to be so successful, but also because he’s such a good guy.

At dinner that night, we were a lot more relaxed. We chose a random table of French entrepreneurs and just laughed and enjoyed ourselves. We had had a few more VC meetings, and after the dinner we went outside to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the view. We took some pictures with our mobile phones and one of me pretending to get into a Bentley convertible that was parked outside the hotel.

When we went back into the hotel, we went straight for the bar. A couple of VCs came to speak with us informally about our website, and their comments were very useful. I don’t what to get into too much detail, but suffice it to say that it’s astonishing the extent to which some VCs really condition their investments on the potential exit, even to the extent of redefining the product to faciliate an easier exit. We’re not really sure the extent to which we buy all of the arguments, but it was an interesting exercise nonetheless.

To me, the most fun part of the night came when we met Andrej Nabergoj, a successful Slovenian entrepreneur. We started speaking with Andrej, because he was standing next to us and introduced himself. I told him that I knew he had to be successful, because he was drinking a caipirinha, and given the price of my €18 Smirnoff Screwdriver, I could only imagine what a caipirinha must cost. So he invited me to a caipirinha and that set off a 3-hour discussion about VCs, entrepreneurs and staying true to yourself and your project. I remember one VC saying that he didn’t know where or when, but he knew that eventually he wanted to invest in one of Andrej’s companies, because Andrej is carismatic, very obviously intelligent but down-to-earth. He is definitely one to watch.

So we went to Red Herring a couple of weeks ago. It was DEFINITELY worth it. It’s a very well-planned event attended by important VCS who are VERY accessible and very human. Again, it doesn’t mean that every company that goes there will get funded, but it does mean that phone calls that would normally be ignored get answered by key decision-makers. (We scheduled various meetings with VCs who’d attend the conference beforehand, and in general, the meetings were very productive and seemed to reflect a sincere interest in discovering more about our product.) Red Herring makes such meetings possible. The rest is up to you (and your relevant market).

As a penny-pinching start-up, we drove to Cannes from Barcelona. It took us about 6 hours to get there, but it was a fun drive as I’d made my R&B / pop / commercial house music remix beforehand. My business partner, Oriol, and I were singing most of the way, so the drive went quickly and was a lot of fun as we reminisced with Britney, Mariah, Whitney, Beyonce, the Sugar Babes, Justin Timberlake, Ne-yo and the Black Eyed Peas.

We got there at about 6:15 PM. We were dressed in really casual street clothes. I was in my favourite ripped jeans and a t-shirt. After the valet took my car keys, I was standing on the curb admiring the hotel with my typical roadtrip accessories — a bag of Doritos and a Diet Coke. When I got my first full glimpse of the hotel, I knew it was going to be amazing. I’ve stayed at my fair share of 4 and 5 star hotels, but the Intercontinental Carlton Cannes is really spectacular in that it reeks of “Old World Luxury” AND has a privileged view of the Mediterranean Sea. I told a friend that I felt like Prince William. The rooms were also amazing, with great toiletries, comfortable robes and what has got to be the most comfortable bed that I ever slept on. Honestly, it was like sleeping on a cloud.

All of that being said, luxury is nice, but if we had to do it again, we’d probably have stayed at one of the 3-star hotels near the Intercontinental Carlton Cannes. You have the same access to the VCs, but you don’t have to pay almost 300€ a night. We had reasoned that we’d be more visible to the VCs if we stayed in the hotel and hung out at the bar a lot, but we met quite a few fellow entrepreneurs who chatted the night away with us but then went to sleep at much cheaper hotels. You live and you learn.

After really nice, long showers, Oriol and I changed into our suits (we were told that the dress was business wear) and made our way down to the dinner presentation where all of the 100 winners were called separately onto a stage and given plaques. I know that it might sound kind of cheesy, but it was actually kind of nice receiving an award. You get to go up to meet Alex Vieux, the Chairman and CEO of Red Herring, and people give you a warm round of applause. In my case, I also got a hug from Alex, who announced to the entire audience that it was the first time that he’d ever given an award to another person of African descent. The award presentation is also useful for the VCs and other attendees to identify their networking targets. After the dinner, a number of people came up to us, based on the very brief description (”a vertical search engine based in Spain”) of our project to the audience during the awards presentation.

The dinner itself was delicious and the wine flowed freely. I spent the first 1 hour of the conversation peppering Nicola Byrne of Benchmark with questions. I know that’s not the way it normally works, but I felt that it was a unique opportunity to understand better how the VCs work. And Nicola seemed so nice and normal that I couldn’t let the opportunity to speak honestly and openly with a nice, personable insider slip on by. Also seated at our table was George Coelho, a general partner at Benchmark and from what was said at the conference, one of the pioneering VCs in Europe. He was quite pleasant and down-to-earth. At one point, George, Nicola, Oriol, Sean and I chitchatted about how expensive the hotel was and apparently how small some of the single rooms in the hotel were. Seems that Nicola and Sean were given less luxurious rooms than George. What was most reassuring about meeting the Benchmark folks is that the conversation with them was human. Each of George, Nicola and Sean seemed like normal people, which shouldn’t have surprised me so much but did.

In terms of other entrepreneurs seated at our table, I met Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz, co-founder and CEO of VPOD.Tv. Seems like a nice guy. And he had his start-up reviewed by both Om Malik and TechCrunch, which is no small feat. We bonded while speaking Spanish. His company has at least some connection with Madrid, so that makes me even more interested in seeing how Vpodtv evolves.

And we also spoke with Marcel Smit, CEO of Q-Go.com. Another nice guy. Marcel’s company is working on a natural language search engine, and from what he tells us, they are generating quite a bit of buzz among very-large web 1.0 companies. We heard him talking about past and future meetings planned with key folks in California.

After the dinner, there were drinks. I was prepared to get my buzz on, but it didn’t happen. I knew I was in for a slow night when I heard some VCs talking about how expensive the drinks were. They were British, which meant that the drinks had to be really expensive, because to me EVERYTHING in London is really expensive. Anyway, I ordered a Screwdriver (Vodka with orange juice) and was surprised when the waiter poured me Smirnoff Vodka. No Belvedere or Grey Goose at the Intercontinental? Does J. Lo. really drink Smirnoff? (A reference to the Carlton magazine which showed all the celebrities that stay at the hotel during the Cannes film festival.) In any case, though the alcohol was cheap, the price was not. €18 for a diluted Screwdriver with mediocre vodka!

So the rest of my night was alcohol-free. It was still enjoyable, and I used the moment of clarity to speak a bit more with other attendees, sometimes about our product in particular and sometimes about life in general. We spoke with Anil Hansjee, European Head of Corporate Development at Google; Tami Zhu, Executive Director of New Ventures and Corporate Development at AOL; Nasser Batley, Vice President of Global Banking at Dresdner Kleinwort; and David Rowe of Microsoft. Th conversation with Anil was particularly interesting, as he indicated to us what Google might be looking for in a vertical search engine. Nasser was a really naturally likable person without any apparent agenda. We chatted with him consistently throughout the conference. We eventually went to sleep at about 2AM, getting ready for the next big challenge — the presentation and the meetings with various VCs that we’d arranged prior to the conference.