30 seconds with…

Julie Meyer

	Founder and CEO of Ariadne Capital, Managing Partner of the ACE Fund, and Founder of Entrepreneur Country

Currently working on:

About to launch the Ariadne Capital Entrepreneur Fund (ACE) formalising our "Entrepreneurs Backing Entrepreneurs" model for the financing of entrepreneurship.

I knew I had to pursue this career when:

Is this a career? Good to know. I'm just doing what I love....working with entrepreneurs, helping to craft and shout their stories, breaking through on the strategy points ... it doesn't get better than this. Working with start-ups is the best drug in the world. The entrepreneur *is* the engine of society.

Favourite media product and why:

If I have to choose just one, it would have to be BBC online

Most valued piece of media technology:

Blackberry

Company to watch and why:

Monitise, www.monitise.com, the leader of mobile banking and payments, listed on AIM, and worth £150 million, created a global juggernaut by working with the mobile carriers and retail banks, not threatening to disrupt them. Their business model is to take a cut of every transaction. Importantly, they share the revenue with everyone in the ecosystem who makes each transaction happen. Alastair Lukies, the CEO, has said many times in building his business, "you can't build an ecosystem without humility". I would add to that: "No one does anything which is not in their interest, so make it in their interest to help you succeed." Monitise are the picks and shovels to the mobile commerce revolution which is happening. Once you get your banking sorted such that you can pay from your bank account via your phone - any carrier, any device, any bank - you really have total freedom.

Why the Media festival is so timely:

If the entrepreneur in the late 1990's considered himself David with his slingshot, wanting to topple every Goliath out there - established firms, he knows today that the time of disruptive technologies is over. What's happening now is that social institutions are bedding in those technologies into the way we live our lives. So David and Goliath have to collaborate. Goliath brings scale and distribution, and David brings the business model which will organise the economics for the ecosystem in which they operate - or "Ecosystem Economics". If you are a media firm which is seeking high growth, then you need to understand how to engage with media start-ups, and how to organise the right economics for growth.

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