Julie Meyer

For similarly named people, see Julie Mayer.
Julie Meyer
Born Julie Meyer
Dearborn, Michigan, United States
Residence London, United Kingdom
Nationality American
Occupation Entrepreneur, Backer of Entrepreneurs & Author
Known for First Tuesday, Ariadne Capital, Dragons' Den Online UK, EntrepreneurCountry Global, Strong Jules

Julie Meyer is an American-born entrepreneur, investor, business adviser, networking expert, broadcaster, and business commentator. She is the founder and Chief Executive of Ariadne Capital, the Managing Partner of Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund, the Founder of EntrepreneurCountry Global, and the Founder of Strong Jules. She has lived in London, UK since 24 July 1998, and is a permanent resident. She co-founded First Tuesday which raised $130 million.[1] First Tuesday was sold in July 2000 to Yazam, a subsidiary of Jerusalem Global, for $50 million making it one of the casualties of the dot-com bubble.[2]

Meyer was asked to be part of the original Dragon’s Den series in 2005, and decided to accept their offer to be an Online Dragon as one of the two dragons on the BBC’s Dragons' Den[3] Online, the online spin off from the Dragons' Den TV programme, which aired online in 2009 and 2010. She was a regular columnist for the London business paper, City A.M.,[4] has contributed to The Daily Telegraph’s[5] business pages, writes for Forbes.com,[6] and is an Influencer on LinkedIn.[7]

She has won awards including the World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (October 2000) and a place in the Wall Street Journal’s 30 most influential women in Europe. She was also cited as one of INSEAD’s ‘50 alumni who have changed the world’ (2010).

Meyer is also the author of Welcome to Entrepreneur Country, published by Little Brown in 2012, and translated into Russian and Greek.

Early life and education

Meyer was born in 1966 in Dearborn, Michigan, but moved to Sacramento, California, when she was one month old. Her father, also an entrepreneur, is a pulmonary doctor who founded Pulmonary Medicine Associates[8] in Carmichael, CA in the early 1970s; her mother was a school teacher who later became a Judge’s Clerk.

She received a B.A. in English Literature and Humanities from Valparaiso University[9] and her M.B.A. from INSEAD in France.[10]

Meyer is a Lutheran.

Early career

Meyer spent her early 20s in Paris from 1988 to 1993 where she taught English, modelled and set up her own consulting firm where she had clients including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 3Com and Hewlett Packard.[11]

From 1993 to 1996, she worked for Andy Cunningham at Cunningham Communication, Inc. in Boston where she consulted for Motorola on the PowerPC Alliance.[12]

In 1997, she took her M.B.A. at INSEAD[13] and in 1998 she went to London and co-founded the networking forum First Tuesday.

Business ventures

First Tuesday

In 1998, Meyer started working in London for Tom Teichman’s NewMedia Investors (now Spark Ventures) where she helped advise companies including Lastminute.com, WGSN and Arc Cores to build their teams, raise capital and establish themselves internationally.[14][15]

In October 1998, together with journalists Nick Denton former WIRED UK Editor, John Browning, and investment banker Adam Gold, Meyer started organising networking events for new media entrepreneurs and business people on the first Tuesday of every month. It then became known as First Tuesday. Under Meyer's direction, First Tuesday expanded into 17 cities across Europe. The Wall Street Journal (Europe edition) covered the international launch to 17 cities on the 7th of September 1999.[16]

First Tuesday was sold to Yazam on the 20th of July 2000 for $50 million despite raising over $130 million.[17][18]

Ariadne Capital

After Meyer left First Tuesday, she set up Ariadne Capital in August 2000, an investment and advisory firm, with £550,000 of her own capital and the backing of 62 leading entrepreneurs who wanted to build the ‘Entrepreneurs backing Entrepreneurs’ model for the financing of entrepreneurship in Europe, which didn’t exist at the time. Ariadne invests in enabling technology start-ups at the late seed stage. Ariadne has claimed to have advised on millions of investments and backed explosive growth firms: Espotting (now MIVA), Kashya (later sold to EMC), Skype (later sold to Ebay), Monitise, Spinvox, Zopa.

In 2011, Ariadne Capital acted as sole financial advisor to BeatThatQuote on its sale to Google.[19]

Ecosystem Economics™

Ecosystem Economics is the Investment Methodology that Meyer has developed since 2005 through her work with her portfolio companies. It is a system and network economics thesis explaining how enabling technology firms helps non-traditional firms build digital revenues and compete with tech platform firms.

EntrepreneurCountry Global

EntrepreneurCountry Global[20](founded by Meyer in 2008) is a discovery platform which connects large non-technology, traditional businesses who want to engage with enabling technology, high-growth start-ups in order to build digital revenues.

EC Global expanded across Europe in September 2013.[21]

Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund

In September 2009, Meyer announced the first Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund.[22][23] She is the Managing Partner of the target £50 million fund which invests in ‘Digital Enablers’ - those enabling technologies and tools which create ‘Ecosystem Economics’™ for their partners when applied to them. Amit Pau is a Partner in the fund with Meyer.

Limited Partners include Irwin M. Jacobs, Founder of QualComm; the co-founder of BetFair, Andrew Black ; Felda Hardymon, Partner at Bessemer; Jon Rubinstein - Apple Inc., Palm, Amazon.com; Russ Shaw - Telefonica, Skype, Tech City; Sabeer Bhatia - Founder of Hotmail; David Rowe - Founder of Easynet; Nigel Wray; Andre Hoffman; John Redford, co-founder of Element 14 sold to Broadcom.

Litigation

Ariadne Capital has been involved in numerous litigation with its suppliers and is reported to have not paid its staff on time.[24] Ariadne Capital's CEO appeared in London's Mercantile Court over disputes with Startup Loans, a company chaired by James Caan where the court found Ariadne Capital was in breach of its contract and ordered to repay £50,000 advance plus interest and costs. Ariadne Capital was selected as one of the original delivery partners for a government backed loan scheme. The firm fell far short of its targets placing only 6 loans.[25] A winding up order was issued against the firm on 22 September 2014.[26] Previously, Ariadne Capital has over four unpaid judgements totalling more than £140,000 including three Country Court ones for a total of £27,546 from early September 2014 as well as an unpaid £112,924 High Court judgement against it dating from March, after it was pursued by law firm Nabarro.[27]

Media career and other work

Dragons' Den (online)

Having originally been asked to be one of the founding dragons in the BBC’s Dragons' Den in 2005, in March 2009 Julie Meyer became a dragon in the BBC’s Dragon’s Den Online where entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of potential investors known as ‘dragons’. She filmed 4 times and made 4 investments, and the online edition appeared on TV as well.[28]

The show was hosted by BBC Radio 1 breakfast newsreader Dominic Byrne.

Other media work

Meyer has appeared as a business commentator on the BBC (on shows including Newsnight, BBC Breakfast and BBC news online[29][30]), Bloomberg and CNBC. She writes for Forbes, Linkedin Influencer Program, CityAM, the Financial times, and the Spectator.

Julie Meyer has pioneered the understanding and analysis of the industrial framework and methodology - 'Ecosystem Economics'™ - previously published in Economia, the Sunday Telegraph and the Guardian.[31][32] She was the first to apply this to the post web 2.0 world. Ecosystem Economics™ refers to the network-orientation of all business in the next phase of industrial development. The winners, according to Meyer and Ariadne Capital, will be those companies who organise the business model in their ecosystem for all parties in the transaction. Ariadne seeks to accelerate the momentum of fast-growing technology-based businesses. Meyer and Ariadne use "Ecosystem Economics"™ to refer to how to launch and grow new businesses where the alignment of multiple entities in the marketplace are required to ensure success. "Ecosystem Economics" is a trademark of Ariadne Capital.

Book : Welcome to Entrepreneur Country

Welcome to Entrepreneur Country,[33] written by Julie Meyer and published in June 2012 by Constable & Robinson and a Top 20 Business Book at WHSmith in the UK, describes the essence of the new social contract that is emerging.

Julie's thesis is that prosperity is driven by harmonious interdependence, and the enemies of those people and organisations who don't care about outcomes (hyper independence), a state which infantalises its people (feudalism), and individuals who argue for their limitations and seek dependence.

Meyer's message is that the Goliaths must become platforms, and incentivise consumer data proactively in order to build Ecosystem Economics in their businesses.

Awards and honours

References

  1. ↑ "YFirst Tuesday sold". http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/129460/first-tuesday-sold--335m--50m. Retrieved 2015-03-03. External link in |publisher= (help)
  2. ↑ "Yazam buys First Tuesday". Brand Republic. Retrieved 2000-07-26. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  3. ↑ "Online Dragon - Julie Meyer". BBC.
  4. ↑ "City A.M News & Analysis - Julie Meyer". City A.M.
  5. ↑ "Telegraph-Julie Meyer". London: Daily Telegraph. 2010-08-07.
  6. ↑ "Forbes.com-Julie Meyer". London: Forbes. 2014-09-12.
  7. ↑ "Julie Meyer LinkedIn Influencer". LinkedIn.
  8. ↑ "Pulmonary Medicine Associates".
  9. ↑ "Christ College, Valparaiso University".
  10. ↑ "INSEAD: An MBA Alumni Profile - Julie Meyer". TopMBA. Retrieved 2011-04-15.
  11. ↑ "3rd Insead Private Equity Conference". Retrieved 2005-05-26.
  12. ↑ Meyer, Julie (2012) Welcome to Entrepreneur Country, Chapter 5.
  13. ↑ Eye, Eagle. "Julie Meyer: what the UK can learn from the US attitude towards entrepreneurialism". The Independent. Retrieved 2009-11-23.
  14. ↑ "Julie Meyer:profile". London: The Guardian. 2010-09-23. Retrieved 2010-09-23.
  15. ↑ "First Tuesday:Julie Meyer". Growing Business. Retrieved 2006-03-01.
  16. ↑ "London Networking Club Is Hot Ticket for E-Business". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 1999-09-07. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  17. ↑ "Yazam Acquires First Tuesday". Globes.co.il. Retrieved July 2000. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  18. ↑ "YFirst Tuesday sold". http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/129460/first-tuesday-sold--335m--50m. Retrieved May 2015. External link in |publisher= (help)
  19. ↑ "Ariadne Capital Advises BeatThatQuote.com on its Acquisition by Google". SYS-CON UK. Retrieved March 2011.
  20. ↑ "Reflecting on EntrepreneurCountry and our Call to Action". Fresh Business Thinking.com. Retrieved July 2010.
  21. ↑ "Dot-com veteran Julie Meyer sets her sights on the world". The Telegraph. Retrieved September 2013.
  22. ↑ "Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund (ACE).".
  23. ↑ "Julie Meyer launches £20 million fund". Growing Business. Retrieved 2009-09-07.
  24. ↑ "Ariadne Capital".
  25. ↑ "Former Dragon's Den stars square up in court spat".
  26. ↑ "Companies Court Winding Up List 22.09.14".
  27. ↑ "Dragon fires back at judgment critics".
  28. ↑ Andrews, Robert. "Ariadne’s Julie Meyer Becomes Dragon for New Online-Only Den". Retrieved 2009-03-18.
  29. ↑ "BBC News–‘The New Entrepreneur:do you have the DNA?’". BBC News. 2007-06-07. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
  30. ↑ "BBC Breakfast". BBC. Retrieved October 2009.
  31. ↑ Meyer, Julie. "Individual capitalism is the way of the new world". London: The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved August 2010.
  32. ↑ "An Interview with Julie Meyer". London: The Guardian. 2010-10-22. Retrieved 2010.
  33. ↑ "Welcome to Entrepreneur Country by Julie Meyer".
  34. ↑ "INSEAD 50 Alumni who changed the world".
  35. ↑ "Next Women List".
  36. ↑ "Big name entrepreneurs join new government advisory forum". Business Zone. Retrieved 2010-11-16.
  37. ↑ "London's 1000 most influential people 2010: New Media". London Evening Standard. Retrieved 2010-11-26.
  38. ↑ "London's 1000 most influential people 2011: Digital". London Evening Standard. Retrieved 2011-11-11.
  39. ↑ "Vestergaard Frandsen Board of Directors". Verstergaard Frandsen. Retrieved February 2011.
  40. ↑ "UKtech50: Meet the 50 most influential people in UK IT". ComputerWeekly. Retrieved December 2011.

External links

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