If First Tuesday sings again, it must be the New New Economy

Signs that the "new economy" (NE) is back in Europe are everywhere. Last year fifteen tech companies raised rounds larger than 20 million euro, more than double the combined number of the two previous years; eBay bought Skype for USD 2.6 billion; this week 21.7 million went to fund WiFi aggregator FON, which has everything but a clear business plan. The other week at the DLD conference in Munich, Swedish entrepreneur Ola Ahlvarsson (who was one of the key players of the paneuropean NE 1.0) commented: "We are gonna see it all over again: the energy, the ideas, the money, the rhetoric". A statement mirrored last week at the LIFT conference in Geneva by Swiss forecaster Xavier Comtesse: "The NE is back, look at the valuations of the major Internet players: they're higher now than they were at the peak of the bubble".
So it was probably inevitable that First Tuesday in London would also stage a comeback. It has another name (Second Chance Tuesday) and new leaders (no Julie Meyer nor Nick Denton nor John Browning in the group) but the spirit is the same: bring "the entrepreneurs and investors who are helping create the next generation of online businesses" together at regular intervals for evenings of "networking", schmoozing and, possibly, matchmaking. In the late 1990s First Tuesday gathered them on the first Tuesday of every month - hence the name. The group became a global phenomenon when the idea was replicated by franchisees in three dozen countries. Eventually the company that coordinated the global network was sold in 2000 to Israeli firm Yazam, and later faded away (Independent local operations still exist in a few cities, such as Zurich, although they have morphed into think-tanks).
SCT's first gathering is announced for tonight, 7 Feb, at the Century  in London. Michael Smith, one of the founders of SCT, who received the first round of venture capital for his company at a First Tuesday event, told silicon.com: "We've been really keen to do this for about a year now and all the signs are good. I believe we are about to enter an era of sustained growth." Which on the Second Chance Tuesday site is shamelessly translated into: "let's party like it's 1999!". Ola was right speaking of "the same rhetoric".

Comments

[Robert J. Chassell]

> ... this week 27 million went to fund WiFi
> aggregator FON, which has everything but a
> clear business plan.

FON does have a business plan.

In countries where bandwidth is cheap, it must
prevent towns, chambers of commerce, companies,
libraries, and the like from offering gratis
connections to encourage economic or
civilizational development. Then, the funders
can presume that enough individuals will pay for
access rather than provide access points
themselves.

In countries where bandwidth is expensive, in
Africa for example, it is worth being able both
to throttle a connection and to charge for it
FON will eventually enable this.

Under today's circumstances, this is probably a
reasonable business plan.