This month’s London Mobile Monday took on a different format. It was sponsored by 3i and centred on funding with a prize of £1000 for the ‘best’ idea. Five companies of vastly varying maturity, described their (mobile related) ideas to a panel of VCs.

Zzizzl films won with their Handango-esque scheme to distribute independent short films. As with Handango, commission rates were the main talking point. Zzizzl plan to keep 50% (after costs) and give 50% back to the independent film maker. There were questions as to whether the film makers would be happy with this. It turned out that currently film makers rarely get anything for their efforts and 50% is actually rather a lot. An ideal situation for Zzizzl.

There was obviously much talk about what VCs are actually looking for in a new idea/company. However, I found what they are NOT looking for to be more interesting. Laurence Garret from 3i made the observation that application download implies a dreadful user experience. Furthermore, ideas that focus on one part of the industry rather than involving many (handset, operator, content) partners are much more likely to succeed. It’s a sobering thought that these things have been this bad for so long now that VC companies like 3i are now assessing ideas based on these aspects.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Mobile, Network Operators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.