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This article was taken from the May issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
Who are the people who shape the Wired world? Which influencers can make or break a product launch, or determine how we'll spend our leisure time? We wanted to know. With input from 120 experts in fields from architecture to advertising, software to science, we present Wired's first annual survey of Britain's top digital power-brokers.
Today we count positions 51 to 100. Check back next week for positions 10 to 1, or consult the May issue for the entire list today. Positions 51 to 100 are already available online.
11. Martha Lane Fox
"Digital inclusion" tsar
The government's "digital inclusion champion" -- and cofounder of
lastminute. com -- is working to get four million non-internet-users online by 2012.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/190x120/o_r/Reshma-051999_v1CMYK.jpg" alt="Reshma Sohoni"/>
12. Reshma SohoniCEO, Seedcamp "It's hard in Europe for young entrepreneurs," Reshma Sohoni says. "We still need to break old habits and to encourage smart risk-taking. That's how we're going to build the next big global companies."
As CEO of Seedcamp, an early-stage mentoring programme for start-ups, that's exactly what Sohoni is doing -- turning promising ideas into the next big thing. Founded by Saul Klein (qv) in 2007, Seedcamp invites 20 start-up teams each year to an intensive weeklong workshop in London, where young entrepreneurs get the chance to learn from experienced mentors.
Between five and eight are selected to receive between €30,000 and €50,000 infunding (inexchange for five to ten per cent equity).
There have been 21 investments so far and alumni include moo.com, Spotify and Skimlinks. Born in India, Sohoni moved to the US when she was ten.
Now 33, her passion for start-ups began at venture capital firm 3i in New York. When she sat an MBA at Insead in Paris, she became fascinated by Europe. "In Silicon Valley there is lots of activity and everything is saturated, but in Europe I saw lots of potential and none of the structure."
For Sohoni, lack of capital is not the European tech scene's only problem. Fragmentation, cultural barriers and a fear of risk-taking are more serious. "In Europe, entrepreneurs have an innate technological ability and are very talented," she says. "But they have no business savvy and they lack the culture of failure that the Americans have. But we're learning, and we have role models willing to spend time and money with the next generation of entrepreneurs. Nurturing this cycle is a long-term project."
13. Oliver Schusser
Director, iTunes Europe
The iPad is shiny and new, but iTunes is the real secret of Apple's success. Schusser is responsible for managing its European content.
14. Danny RimerPartner, Index Ventures
Rimer's record is spotless, backing last.fm, Skype, LOVEFiLM, Astley Clarke and MySQL. He's now looking at cloud computing and e-commerce.
15. Michael Acton Smith
CEO and founder, Mind Candy
Not content with building the success of e-tailer firebox.com, Smith created the social online game Moshi Monsters.
16. Peter Molyneux
European creative director, Microsoft Game Studios
He sold his Lionhead Studios to Microsoft and is a key force in the latter's Project Natal, due this year. The brains behind
Populous has also been busy with Fable III.
17. Tom SteinbergFounder and director, mySociety
The political-transparency activist's mySociety sites are continually expanding. But he's gained new power as a tech adviser to the Conservatives.
18. JP Rangaswami
MD of innovation and strategy, BT Design
The Calcutta-born technologist is disrupting telecoms and nudging BT into a horizontal, open-business model -- eg by acquiring Silicon Valley start-up Ribbit.
19. Jonathan Kestenbaum
Chief executive, Nesta
Under Kestenbaum, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts -- with its £300m endowment -- has become a key backer of innovation.
20. Alex Balfour
Head of new media, London 2012
The cofounder of cricinfo.com plans to deliver the most digital Olympic games yet, developing the official website and harnessing mobile social engagement on a massive scale.
21. Sonali De Rycker
Partner, Accel Ventures
This venture capitalist worked for Atlas Venture, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. She currently sits on boards including Wonga and Seatwave.
22. Kevin EyresEuropean MD, LinkedIn
Eyres heads up the European operations of LinkedIn, the professional networking service with more than 60 million users -- and one more joining every second.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/190x120/s_v/Tom Loosemore-051643_v1CMYK.jpg" alt="Tom Loosemore"/>
23. Tom LoosemoreHead, 4iP
Tom Loosemore's appearance at pretty much every juncture in the development of the internet and the digital world in the UK over the past decade is worthy of the Woody Allen character Zelig. From the BBC's move into broadband to the government's embrace of the web,
Loosemore, 38, has been there, leading the UK into the future.
Today, as head of Channel 4's £50 million 4iP investment fund, he is the kingmaker of digital media. "I hope to support a new generation of talent to invent new ways of delivering Channel 4's purpose: public-service innovation with a centre of gravity in mass participation," he explains.
There's another agenda: "To cause a bit of healthy trouble in the public interest." Loosemore is good at troublemaking, having helped create They Work For You in 2006, which kicked off the drive for accountability among British politicians. He was part of the team that brought UK politics into the internet age with Adopt Your MP, while BBC's head of sport and music online. He left to go to Chello, the TV-over-internet firm, before heading back to the BBC as head of strategic innovation to write its entire strategy for web2.0.
A move to Ofcom as digital media strategist in 2007 led to a secondment to the Cabinet Office, where he laid the groundwork for open government data. "Working at the Cabinet Office was brilliant," he says. "I had all the fun and left the civil servants to pick up the mess."
Through 4iP he is responsible for funding much of Britain's best technological talent, such as Patient Opinion, which offers patient feedback on health services, and Newspaper Club -- cofounded by Russell Davies (qv) -- which helps people to make their own printed paper.
By surrounding himself with clever people and guiding them towards the wisdom that the internet makes thing different because it forcibly involves others, he lives up to what he says is key to his commissioning at 4iP: "How is this more meaningful because I'm in a crowd?"
Loosemore's attention is currently on the hyperlocal news websites produced by the Talk About Local network. One of 4iP's biggest investments, it is aimed at strengthening communities: the crowd, again, making all the difference. And after that? His next project appears to be the reinvention of television advertising. "The upside of working in the UK is that there's a higher volume of maverick per person -- and a healthy lack of chino," he says. "There is a very healthy environment for radical ideas here."
24. Anil Hansjee
Head of corporate development, Google EMEA
The software-engineer-turned-financier is Mr M&A for Google Europe.
25. Anthony Rose
Controller, vision & online media, BBC
Rose heads the BBC's mighty iPlayer project, which now caters for over 120 million TV and radio programme requests per month.
26. Jeremy HuntShadow culture secretary
Likely to have a key role on digital policy in a Conservative administration. Plans to overhaul UK broadband infrastructure.
27. David Yu,
CEO, Betfair
The former Alta Vista engineering VP now manages Europe's largest online sports betting company, which took £303m in 2009.
28. Brent HobermanExecutive chairman, mydeco.com; partner, PRO founders Capital
The web 1.0 veteran and cofounder of lastminute.com, Hoberman funds future entrepreneurs through PROfounders.
29. Daniel Waterhouse
Partner at Wellington Partners
The London-based VC manages Wellington's investments in Livebookings, Qype and Zopa. See p30.
30. John King
CEO, Trader Media Group
The Auto Trader group has shown that print can make vast profits by moving online effectively. Profits boost co-owner (with Apax) the Guardian Media Group.
31. Joanna Shields
Entrepreneur
Shields took Bebo from early funding to its $850m acquisition by AOL. Her new venture with Elisabeth Murdoch combines TV, digital and social media.
32. Tim Steiner
Cofounder and CEO, Ocado
It took seven years and £277m of investment before Ocado made any money. Now it's leading the e-grocery market under Steiner's careful direction.
33. Gerry O'Sullivan
Director of strategic product development, BSkyB
3D TV will be a reality in 2010 -- because O'Sullivan says so. He's also in charge of all new Sky services.
34. Ajaz Ahmed
Co-founder and chairman, AKQA
Ahmed has taken his digital agency global, with clients including Coca-Cola, Nike and McDonald's. Oh, and AKQA helped Microsoft design the Xbox 360 user interface.
35. Nick Lansley
Head of R&D, tesco.com
Tesco's resident technologist built the first web app for groceries back in 1996. He delivered 20 per cent growth in 2009.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/190x120/d_f/Dan Heaf-051916_v1CMYK.jpg" alt="Dan Heaf"/>
36. Dan HeafDigital commissioner, 4iP
At Channel 4's digital-media VC fund 4iP, Heaf finds the creative entrepreneurs who deserve finance and support.
37. Kristian Segerstråle
CEO and cofounder, Playfish
Segerstråle proved that there's hard cash in social games -- selling Playfish to EA last November for up to $400 million.
38. Matt Jones
Design director, BERG
Now at BERG (formerly Schulze & Webb), Jones set up Dopplr with Matt Biddulph (qv). A connector whose much-cited original ideas carry weight in tech circles.
39. Paul Staines
Creator, Guido Fawkes blog
In an election year, Staines's six-yearold political blog carries weight -- and continues to break important stories.
40. James Dyson
Inventor
There's more to Dyson than hoovers and hand-dryers -- he's been leading a Conservative review aiming to turn the UK into the high-tech capital of Europe.
41. Niklas Zennström
Partner, Atomico Ventures
No longer distracted by corporate tussles at Skype, the London-based Swedish creator of Kazaa, Skype and Joost now provides capital for other people's start-ups.
42. Bindi Karia
VC/emerging business lead, Microsoft UK
Karia manages business accelerator BizSpark and helps starts-up across Europe -- more than 600 in six months.
43. Michael Lynch
CEO, Autonomy
Autonomy has grown from academic spin-out to Europe's second-largest pure software company. His big next project:
Meaning-Based Computing.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/190x120/s_v/Sherry Coutu-052286_v2CMYK.jpg" alt="Sherry Coutu"/>
44. Sherry Coutu
Entrepreneur and angel investor
Sherry Coutu remembers the early days of fibre optic cable. "My father was in the telecoms industry," she says. "He came home with some cables and was almost dancing around the house, saying, 'Wow, you have no idea what these little wires are going to mean for the future of our world.'" Coutu, 45, has been wired ever since, but it was a while before she realised she could build her own companies around telecommunications.
After graduating from the University of British Columbia in her native Canada, she began an MSc at the London School of Economics.
A classmate there, who had started more than 70 companies, told her that she was an entrepreneur. "I looked at him like he was slightly mad," she explains. "He said, 'When you realise you are, come talk to me and I'll fund whatever business you're starting up.' So I sort of lodged that comment in my brain."
One event in October 1994 changed her mind: Netscape Navigator was released and was soon being used by six million people worldwide. Coutu had been working as a consultant, designing databases for investment banks. "The old way of doing things had completely ended," she says. "This was an information database that could be accessed by anyone, anywhere, anytime. I got very excited."
She got in touch with her former classmate, Richard Caruso, who invested in her start-up without even looking at a business plan.
Interactive Investor International, which offered consumers previously unavailable financial information, was floated on the stock market in 2000; it was 33 times oversubscribed and valued at more than £500 million. The dotcom bubble burst barely a month later and in 2001 AMP, an insurance company, acquired the business for £52 million. Since then, she has been an angel investor, backing 30 companies, and an adviser to several charities.
If there's a common theme to these startups, which include LOVEFiLM, Zoopla and AlertMe, it's the power of databases. "I love data and I love information," she says. "It can empower a lot of people." Next, she's helping LinkedIn with its European rollout and is on the look-out for new investments: "The UK digital scene is thriving -- it's a lot different from 20 years ago when I started out. There are a lot of companies that want funding. I try to spot the ones solving the problems that are really big and important."
45. Feargal SharkeyCEO, UK Music
As head of the music industry's lobbying arm, the former Undertones singer is helping shape policy -- from supporting anti-filesharing laws to opposing the Licensing Act.
46. Cory Doctorow
Journalist; coeditor, Boing Boing
The sci-fi author, blogger and coeditor of Boing Boing is an influential commentator and copyright-liberalisation activist.
47. Dave Jones
Creative director, Realtime Worlds
A games-industry veteran behind Grand Theft Auto and
Crackdown, he has attracted strong VC interest to his fastgrowing developer Realtime Worlds.
48. Josh Silverman
CEO, Skype
In 2008 Silverman was the person drafted in by eBay to answer the question: how does Skype make money?
49. Nic Brisbourne
Partner, DFJ Esprit
Most VCs like to stay in the shadows, but Brisbourne's blog, theequitykicker.com, is required reading for UK start-ups.
<img src="http://cdni.wired.co.uk/190x120/s_v/Stefan Glaenzer-052372_v1CMYK.jpg" alt="Stefan Glaenzer"/>
50. Stefan Glaenzer
Angel investor
German-born, London-based Glaenzer used to be a professional DJ.
It's rubbed off on his career as an investor -- his companies have included last.fm and RjDj.
Have your say
Are you in this list? Should you be? Whatever your views, leave your thoughts in the comments below. And check back next week for the next list of positions, from 10 to 1.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
