Letters to the Editor Complaints dept.

‘You have a very limited memory’

In February, our readers contacted us about Apple, seed-stage investors, entrepreneurs’ organisations, Seatwave and pornography.

A BITE OF REALITY

SIR — In your newsletter, under The Week in Brief, you say “we have Apple. Has any company ever been so far ahead of its competitors?” All you are really showing is that you have a very limited memory. In the late 80′s and most of the 90′s Microsoft was a long way ahead of any competition. In fact there were rumours it was propping up Apple so it could claim there was some competition and ward of the the sort of investigation and draconian remedial measure which had been wrought on IBM, the previous behemoth of the high tech industry.
— Graham Patterson

LETHAL INTERJECTION

Re: The Age of AngelList

SIR — You forget Eden. We have done over 20 seed deals in last few years and this is core to our strategy – before it became fashionable. And there are a few in your list who I know for a fact don’t do seed.
— Ben Tompkins

SECT ASIDE

SIR — You referred to Entrepreneurs’ Organisation UK in issue 5 of The Nutshell. Far from cynically capitalising on the current buzz around entrepreneurship, EO in 2012 is celebrating its 25th anniversary. EO is a not-for-profit, member led organisation, and has more than 8,000 members in more than 40 countries. To be eligible for membership one must have at least $1 million in annual turnover, must be founder or co-founder of one’s own company, and must be invited to join. There are a number of organisations founded more recently to capitalise on the buzz around entrepreneurship. With a quarter century of history, EO is not one of them.
— Evan Rudowski

SAUCY

SIR — In your Nutshell of 3 February, you refer to an “adult entertainment” business I am alleged to be founding with an unnamed Alcatel executive. This is absolutely untrue.
— Andrew J Scott

MYSTIC MUG

Re: Seatwave: Channel 4 will fail to land a punch

Having watched the programme last night, it would appear several punches were landed, fairly hard. Viagogo came out of it much worse, but Seatwave isn’t exactly smelling of roses this morning either. Putting aside the debate of whether it is right that tickets are resold at a higher markup (quite frankly why anyone would even pay the face value for a lot of them is beyond me), the clear takeaway from the programme was that these sites are primarily an outlet for “brokers” (or “touts” to give them their traditional name) and if they relied purely on “genuine fans” who plans had changed, they would have very few tickets to sell. On the other hand, I agree the programme was very one sided and made no attempt to put the case for such sites, or the infinitely worse problem of scam ticket sellers and so on. The use of a law professor from Hul (one of the great universities, no less) who looked like he was there on work experience, was not particularly impressive either.

— Danvers Baillieu

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