American beauty

Julie Meyer, one of the founders of the matchmakers First Tuesday and a prime mover in shaping the global venture capital market and European Internet scene, talks to Nicholas Keith about her hard-won success in business

A Soho cocktail party in October 1998 has brought fame, fortune and a place on the business top table for Julie Meyer. The party marked the christening of First Tuesday, the international networking and matchmaking operation, which has helped to raise $150 million in seed capital in two years for more than 40 online start-up companies.

This success has propelled 34-year-old Julie Meyer to the top of the heap among the world's new-breed entrepreneurs. Identified by Forbes magazine as a person to watch in 2000, she has since been named as the 17th most powerful women by Management Today magazine and, in October, was chosen as the UK's Entrepreneur of the Year for the Supporter of Entrepreneurship category in the annual Ernst and Young awards for entrepreneurs.

First Tuesday was sold in July 2000 for a reported $50 million to Yazam, an Israeli investment company. As Queen Bee in the hive of internet investment, Julie Meyer buzzed: "It's not a bad cocktail party which eventually raises $150 million in seed capital for other companies."

Julie Meyer is extremely elegant and eloquent, and business is a very important part of her life. "I'm a natural information exchange person," she said of herself. "Information is mainly a question of give and take. The more you give the more you get back."

Born in Michigan but raised in San Francisco, Julie Meyer came to Europe at the age of 21 determined to make her mark. "Sadly, my parents were divorced but I was fortunate in that they always told me to set goals and go for it."

A graduate in liberal arts at Valparaiso University in Chicago, Julie deliberately chose to go Paris to "make her fortune". She quickly discovered that the French do not go out of their way to make it easy for outsiders. By her own admission she was not as assertive by nature as she is today. "But in France I soon had to figure out for myself how I was going to get ahead. Like it or not, I had to become outgoing and resourceful."

After studying at the Sorbonne, her first job was as a consultant to Hewlett Packard, helping the international sales and marketing team to present their ideas and business plans more effectively. Then she acted as a consultant to other technology corporates such as Motorola and 3Com, before attending INSEAD in 1997.

At INSEAD, she deepened her knowledge of finance and accounting which led her to pursue a venture capital position after graduation. "For me, being a good venture capitalist is not so much about financial skills, it's about backing people, understanding business models, and helping companies succeed."

Michele Appendino of Net Partners gave her the names of two key people to meet in early 1998: Tim Jackson (of QXL) and Brent Hoberman (of Lastminute.com). These introductions led to others, and she was offered a job in the summer of 1998 by New Media Investors (NMI) which, at the time, consisted of three former investment bankers hanging out at Berkeley Square.

From her seat at New Media Investors, she started bringing the London-based Internet and venture capital community together on the first Tuesday of the month. The "cocktail party" grew and grew, and soon entrepreneurs were getting funded through contacts made at the event. This led one VC to offer her money to develop First Tuesday into a proper business. After considerable thought, she accepted the challenge, and left her job. The day she received her bonus cheque from NMI was the day First Tuesday had seed capital.

She threw herself into an international launch across Europe. In the back of her mind was the vision of helping entrepreneurs bring their businesses to life by creating an on-line/off-line exchange of capital, talent, and services. "You shouldn't have to live in Silicon Valley to find smart money and smart people."

What was curious about this Internet start-up is how much of it happened off-line. "People don't do deals with other people they don't know. So they have to meet them and find out something about them."

In 1998, when it was hard to find VCs to invest in the internet in Europe, she went to Silicon Valley in California to look for support and sponsorship, But the big players in the US were only interested in their huge home market.

However, the matchmaking of money to ideas which became First Tuesday took on more momentum in early 1999. "First Tuesday was then a hobby," she says, "but my former employer, NMI, soon felt threatened by First Tuesday, and asked me to shut it down.

"On January 1, 1999, I received an email from the Chairman of NMI telling me that 'we shouldn't be doing First Tuesday', that it was threatening NMI's business model. I sat there and thought about the email for the longest time, and tried to digest how potentially valuable the thing I was sitting on could be. I knew I would have a fight or two in store."

The other founders of First Tuesday were leaving or had left to run their companies in Silicon Valley. "I knew it had come down to me - to whether or not I would take it forward and make it professional and international, and commercialise the community."

She did.

Throughout 1999 and 2000, Julie Meyer was perceived as the brain, voice and face of the organisation. Her co-founders Nick Denton and Adam Gold were board members but otherwise did not play an active role in the company. And John Browning, a writer and sociologist who was brought on board as a partner, did not become fully involved in First Tuesday until autumn 1999.

"I was on an aeroplane almost constantly - certainly three weeks out of four - travelling round Europe, with four people back at head office. It was exhausting," she recalls.

For Christmas 1999, she decided to go to Tel Aviv. This was partly because she was interested in the internet market there and wanted to extend the First Tuesday network into Israel and partly because Israel was one of the few countries not to celebrate Christmas. "In Tel Aviv, I quickly learned that we and Yazam were operating along similar lines.

"So I organised a meeting with Yazam - through Tim Jackson - in January 2000, and I was very impressed by their strength in investment banking and as deal doers. Also they are passionate empire builders. So I wrote a 14-page note to the First Tuesday board, saying that we had to find a way of partying with Yazam."

However, no deal was done for several months.

First Tuesday had severe difficulties closing its funding round despite its raison d'etre - helping start-ups to get funded. The investment community didn't support the CEO that First Tuesday had brought on board. And the non-active, San Francisco-based founders who controlled the Board of Directors were less committed to building a business,and making the necessary sacrifices to do that, than to cashing in and getting out at the first available point. Investors were loathe to invest in a company where the majority of equity was not going to create value, as it was held by inactive shareholders.

"There were two or three months in the summer of 2000 when I was working 100 hours a week, and I was losing sleep because I did not know whether the company would come good or go into liquidation. It was hell. The VC that had given us a bridge loan in January 2000 was daily threatening to throw us into liquidation.

"I never doubted my ability to drive the business or raise the money. But I'm far too consensual by nature, and I am always looking for ways of investing in others' success and building teams and empowering people. Business, though, is about securing your position and controlling your destiny."

That first party at the Alphabet Bar in London's Soho in October 1998 had taken about a month to organise. As Julie Meyer was standing at the door of the bar seeing guests out, no one could have imagined how much of her energies and how successful the organisation would become - from a single bar to the 98 cities that she visits in the network. "There was no way we could have envisaged the viral organic growth of the concept. We were simply in the right place in the right time."

First Tuesday now has 250,000 members, growing at 20% a month, and has established itself with networking events in 100 cities worldwide. Venture capitalists who have been brought in as investors include Goldman Sachs, N M Rothschild, New Media Spark, Nomura, and Atlas Venture

And the start-up companies helped by First Tuesday are based as far afield as Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Prague, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Toronto, the UK, and the US.

Clients include MobileView.de, the Berlin-based wireless applications provider; InThink.com, a software company from Arizona; VentureBay.com, a leading Belgian incubator; Timebase.com.au, a principal Australian law firm; boysstuff.co.uk, the first etailer of men's gadgets and gizmos; peoplesound.com, one of Europe's main web providers of free music; and other sites for clothes, sport, recruitment, training, ecommerce, eprocurement, and much more.

Where does the internet and ecommerce go next? "We're at the end of the beginning of Europe.com," Julie Meyer replied. "Access to capital is no longer a problem, as it was when I set up First Tuesday.

"The problems that need solving today include: How do internet companies attract the strategic corporates that can give them weight and credibility? How does a start-up expand efficiently across 12 countries in Europe.com? And how does one continue to incentivise people for the 3-5 years that it takes to build a great company?

"It will all happen differently in Europe.com than it did in North America. But the impact that one individual can have is decidedly more important here than there."

And what about her own future? Will she eventually return to the US? "Oh no," she said quickly. "I love London and I can get anywhere I like in Europe very quickly. There are great opportunities in Europe right now and I think my future and my opportunity is here. Besides, Silicon Valley is a mature and saturated market."

Her mind remains focused on the building of Europe.com, and helping to develop an efficient marketplace for start-ups. "I've got a number of new projects that are in development. At the moment, First Tuesday still operates like single cells in different business islands.

"There is big money around today but we have to find a way to leverage it within an eco-net. As yet there is no personalised network which can help make Europe a better marketplace. And I believe that our experience will be valid in helping Europe achieve this."

Helping companies with more than just money is the problem today. "The problem with VCs is that they are essentially asset managers and their whole time is spent scouring for deals - they are deal junkies, if you like. But they don't have the skills to make a company work."

The incubator model is flawed, as far as Julie Meyer is concerned, because of their heavy overhead "with huge staffs and the lack of the public markets' endorsement of them".

A naturally hard worker, she says that she has not watched TV for 12 years. Her hobbies are reading (particularly Ayn Rand), writing and cats.

And in the brave new world of the internet and global technology, she admires the likes of Tim Jackson, because he is among "a new brand of VCs in ecommerce"; Ernesto Schmitt (of peoplesound.com); Kate Buggelan, an American who is picking up the pieces of boo.com's damaged brand; Frank Gelardin, a private investor based in New York City; and Sonia Lo, the "businesslike" founder of ezoka.com.

Julie Meyer has come a long way in a short time. With her charm, hard work, business acumen and good looks, she will continue to go far, and deservedly so.

Interview for The City magazine, published in January 2001