Capgemini has revealed that it will soon have more staff in India than it does in its home market of France – in an indication of the growing power of the subcontinent in the global outsourcing industry. The European IT group is creating a new business information management unit in Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley, which will help increase its workforce in the country to beyond 21,000 people, more than its headcount in France of about 20,000.

Sam Kirby, Capital2’s founder member, is running the Nice-Cannes marathon on the 8th November. He is running in aid of the Heart Foundation, please donate via the following link:
http://www.justgiving.com/Sam-Kirby/

Heads down and crack on for the end of the year!
We’ve gone through a bit of a company reorganisation, couple of leavers, couple of hires in the pipeline.
An eventful couple of months and very bureaucratic, but now that’s done we can concentrate on hiring for our clients!
September was positive – hires made in Germany, Poland, France and Italy.
2009 is paid for – the last quarter is now abou maximising profit.
Good luck all!

Here at Capital2 we try to work with upcoming technology companies across EMEA. These smaller, dynamic organisations are the real drivers behind the entire ‘technology’ market as they bring innovation, new ideas and cutting edge techniques to the wider sector.
However according to the FT article pasted below which appeared on www.ft.com on the 28th August, the Venture Capital market (which supplies the funding for these start-ups), could be in a precarious position.
So, what coul dbe the fall out from this?? Read the article and see!!
Venture capitalists are professional optimists – they have to be. How else could they keep investing in new businesses where the obstacles to success would seem insurmountable to most people?

But sometimes reality just has to be faced, and the reality in front of the VC industry right now is not pretty.

Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital sums it up here: half the industry could be swept away by the current downturn (though as an optimist, he clearly thinks he will end up in the fortunate half).

I confess to being one of those who has (wrongly) anticipated this moment for years – since the tech bust that began the decade, in fact. So why didn’t it happen before, and why will it come now?

The way Gurley, whose past investments include SecondLife, OpenTable and Shopping.com, describes it, the venture capital business is really little more than a cork bobbing about on the turbulent sea of private equity. Forget VC investment returns, which in aggregate have been pretty woeful for years: that didn’t stop the money from continuing to pour in, as institutions continued to “rebalance” their portfolios towards illiquid investments.

I had thought that the glaring over-capacity in VC in the wake of the tech bust would force a shake-out. But in a private market where valuations represent estimates and it can take many years for the final reckoning to arrive, I guess that belief now looks a little naive.

What matters now, as Gurley points out, is the wholesale flight from illiquid investments that has set in. The endowment world has been traumatised by its excessive fondness for private equity and presumably won’t make that mistake again (well, not for a while, anyway). The managers who committed the error have moved on and the next bunch will discover a new fondness for liquidity.

How much does this matter to the technology start-up world?

I continue to believe that a significant reduction in available capital needn’t prevent good businesses from getting backing, or hold back the overall level of innovation in the economy. Silicon Valley revels in the glorious waste that comes from having many entrepreneurs chasing the same business opportunities, on the grounds that this Darwinian mess will eventually yield a handful of successful companies.

But how many online video sites or thin-film solar start-ups does the world need, and why should the funding of marginal players do anything to increase the chances that the best companies will rise to the top? (They would rise to the top anyway, with or without the garbage.)

So, bring on the shake-out.

There’s just one thing, though. Given the nature of the business, Gurley reckons it could take five years or so. It’s probably better not to hold your breath waiting for this one.

Interesting stuff from Reuters.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Job-seeking in this 21st century recession may just have gone viral and mobile.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, about 6.7 million workers have been laid off according to latest statistics — at a time the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have exploded, drawing millions of users per day.

As these sites continue to alter social and cultural landscapes, they are also transforming the job search process, enabling more and more people to connect with potential employers, promote their own skills, set up support groups and search for job leads and contacts.

“Mobile technology and social networking has shifted the whole job search paradigm,” said Susan Joyce, editor of Job-Hunt.Org, a site offering online job search tips. “You don’t need to stay glued to your phone or computer at home anymore.”

With mobile devices playing a bigger role in the social networking phenomenon, any job hopeful with a Web-connected or smartphone can now compose resumes, view job listings and contact prospective employers on the go.

Joyce suggests creating a resume through popular networking site LinkedIn — a business networking site that lets users create a profile, list skills, work history, employment goals and contact details — is among the more secure ways to compile a resume online.

It can be done via Research in Motion Ltd’s Blackberry device or Apple Inc’s iPhone, she added.

“The LinkedIn Profile is really the resume of the future,” Joyce said. “The ‘resume’ on LinkedIn is really the standard LinkedIn Profile, but it’s very popular with recruiters looking for good candidates.

“You could build your whole LinkedIn presence from any Web-enabled phone.”

There are any number of job-search applications — downloadable programs for your phone — available for the iPhone, for instance, including one piloted by recruitment consultancy Harvey Nash. Others pool information on jobs in travel and in education, among other sectors.

GETTING CREATIVE

With jobs still scarce, many hopefuls are getting creative about getting noticed. Many have begun using Twitter — a microblogging service that allows users to send 140-character messages at a time — to get the word out.

A career is unlikely to be launched on Twitter alone, but candidates are increasingly “tweeting” or posting messages to outline their skills, experiences and career goals. They are pasting links to their resumes on the micro-blogging service.

People can also use Twitter to follow recruiters or companies of interest and learn of networking events.

(From the BBC)
Yahoo and Microsoft have announced a long-rumoured internet search deal that will help the two companies take on chief rival Google.

Microsoft’s search engine will power the Yahoo website and Yahoo will in turn become the advertising sales team for Microsoft’s online offering.

Yahoo has been struggling to make profits in recent years.

But last year it rebuffed several takeover bids from Microsoft in an attempt to go it alone.

Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer said the 10-year deal would provide Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, with the necessary scale to compete.

“Through this agreement with Yahoo, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” said Mr Ballmer.

In return for ceding control of its search engine, Yahoo will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites.

‘New era’

Yahoo said the deal would benefit Yahoo’s users and advertisers.

“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo, our users, and the industry. And I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of internet innovation and development,” said Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz.

The deal became possible after Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down as chief executive of the company late last year.

“Only a Yahoo outsider like Ms Bartz could do such a deal,” said Tim Weber, business editor of the BBC News website.

“She has no sentimental attachment to what was once the core of Yahoo, its search business. Microsoft was helped by the fact that at long last it managed to develop a search engine -Bing – that is a credible alternative to search giant Google.”

Yahoo said the deal would boost annual operating income by $500m and secure $200m in savings.

So Microsoft are challenging Google on the SaaS front now, by making various Office programmes available on-demand. This is widely seen as a reaction to Google launching their own OS recently.
Interesting times ahead if these two giants continue to circle each other!

Q2 is looking much more positive on the hiring front. We will complete assignments in France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands….. and many of our clients are feeling better about market conditions moving forward.

The banking sector remains flat, but technology, particularly among pre IPO companies seems to be keeping its head above water.

Let’s hope this positivity continues!!

PARIS/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Technology executives say they are prepared to cut more costs if the downturn proves more prolonged than expected, but finding places to get further savings won’t be easy.

The obvious place to look is research and development budgets, which are typically the last things to get cut at tech companies that thrive on innovation.

But with no guarantees that an economic revival is on the horizon, there are signs that thinking could change.

Alain Dutheil, chief executive of wireless chip maker ST-Ericsson, said it is difficult for the company to justify its “huge” R&D spending with revenue under so much pressure.

“If this economic situation does not improve, we will take further measures. If we cut, it’s going to be on R&D,” he told the Reuters Global Technology Summit.

Many companies that participated in the summit, which took place in New York, Paris and Tokyo this week, have laid off workers as they weathered the worst economic slowdown in decades. German software maker SAP’s cuts were the first in its 37-year history.

To what extent the recent spending cuts will set innovation back remains unclear. Executives said tech firms can help lift the economy out of recession by creating new products that give consumers and businesses a reason to buy again.

Corning Inc CFO Jim Flaws pointed to new technology like flat panel TVs that are lit by LEDs instead of fluorescent tubes as one of the new innovations that will drive demand for TVs. And he pointed to a new type of glass that Corning developed for touchscreen electronic devices as evidence of the company’s commitment to innovation throughout the downturn.

Corning, the world’s largest maker of glass for LCD panels, has cut costs in its manufacturing operations, mothballing half of its production capacity in December.

Since then, however, Flaws said Corning has begun to bring some of its production lines back on-line and rehire laid off workers to meet demand for flat panels and fiber optic cables.

PAY FREEZES, PARTNERSHIPS

Chip firms SanDisk Corp and ARM Holdings have continued to invest in next-generation products and technology even as they cut costs in other parts of the company, executives said at the summit.

ARM reduced headcount by 3 percent at the start of the year and does not anticipate any more job cuts. CEO Warren East said any further savings will come from “tight financial discipline, pay freezes, restricting all sorts of discretionary expenditures.”

SanDisk has also made multiple rounds of job cuts as it suffers through a severe downturn in the flash memory industry, which has contributed to billions of dollars in losses.

How did the first quarter go??

Well it went OK – enough revenue to keep ticking over, and a decent pipeline going into Q2, things could be much better, but the fact is we are still in a very healthy position as a company….. phew!

On the very positive side, we have increased headcount, with further plans to bring in more senior recruiters during the new quarter – watch this space!

So yeah, a solid 7 out of 10.