Thoughts, Ideas, Opinions ... » We made the Guardian Tech 100, what's next ?

For the second-time running, Webjam was named last Monday a Guardian Tech Media Invest 100 company, topping some of the previous awards we had over the last two years and confirming our presence on the UK tech scene. This is great news for our clients and partners and of course a source of pride for all of us here, especially given the overall economic outlook.

What do we do now? Well we grow ! in uncertain times, a key reason why many of the companies in that list have been selected is that they have found the virtuous combination between the product, market and business model. What is paradoxical is that the market is not ready to finance anything these days, with VC funding in the whole of Europe  less than that of the Silicon Valley in Q2’09 according to Venture Source quoted by Guardian Richard Wray in the Guardian supplement.  It remains to be seen if banks  will be capable to lend and fund working capital requirements and long sales/partnership cycles: I find it amazing that our bank, HSBC, can only extend the corporate credit card limit to the amount we are ready to freeze on a separate account. We are actually lending money to our bank while they are collecting recurring monthly fees ! This is not a mundane issue for many of the companies mentioned here who usually have in common the need to finance the upfront development and commercial work required to continue gaining paying clients and subscribers.

In any case, I’d rather enjoy being on the side of the entrepreneur these days, with great new clients in the pipe and new business being brought by existing clients: these awards are a celebration of entrepreneurship and it is fitting that our relationship keeps growing with Make Your Mark, the organizer of the worldwide “Entrepreneur’s week” and whose communities across 77 countries are powered by Webjam. I would  definitely share the enthusiasm of Mike Butcher from Techcrunch that this is a good time to start a company, simply because the slump makes competition healthier with everybody zooming on providing real value to the client. It has never been easier to be focused !

As for Webjam, we will continue building on the three trends that make our industry so exciting :

• Social Media is a deep sociological change in human behaviour that is here to stay;
• That makes pro-active on-line reputation management the next big thing in marketing;
• The platforms and solutions that will win are the ones which can interconnect how users interact with brands and organisations across different networks.

Congratulations to all the companies in this Guardian Tech Media Invest 100 list where in many case we have friends and with whom we could end-up partnering at some point !