The Brent and Martha show
Posted in Digital, Branwell Johnson, Latest reporters' blogs February 5th, 2008 by Branwell Johnson
The team supreme behind the most successful UK web venture of the last century Brent and Martha, are back together. The older City hands will have tears of nostalgia trickling down their cheeks as they recall how lastminute.com was the darling of the new media world back when all was green, verdant and without pesky users wanting to interact.
Martha Lane Fox used to grab the attention at presentations with her buttoned down but approachable manner – the very fact there was a woman at one of these new-fangled internet things generating lots of column inches in the business press. Brent Hoberman, no slouch at PR himself, brought an entrepreneurial “can do” attitude that allowed lastminute.com to ride the dotcom bust and eventually sell to Sabre Holdings in 2005.
Hoberman is now seen as the keeper of some kind of internet crystal ball that will show what opportunities there are to build a brand online. It’s taken him some time to work his way back to tangible goods after being involved with social networking but he is back with the interior design comparison site mydeco.com.
It seems a no brainer- an aggregator for home furnishings from all those brands we know and love from John Lewis to the Conran Shop with added 21st century interactivity in the form of 3D room modelling technology.
Hoberman is founder and executive chairman while Lane Fox is a non-executive director. Chief executive David Kelly is a former COO of lastminute.com, and head of eBay Europe. It’s a hefty team with some A-list backers, such as Marc Worth of WGSN.
The only pitfall could be the timing as consumer spending begins to slow down in the face of tighter credit controls and anxiety over mortgage payments. But the kind of people this is targeted at are unlikely to be eyeing up dfs sofa offers.
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JRH’s comment is....
Having worked for the gruesome twosome Way Back When, I know that they’re a great team - they know what they’re doing and they will do it well.
But if I were going to back a business idea right now, I don’t think I’d be going for luxury goods or interior design, however high-end it may be. Their target market for lastminute.com - cash rich, time poor - seems to be the same market as mydeco (which is lovely, by the way) - and I’m not sure how long that particular segment of society is going to remain as populous as it is right now.
That said, there are several other ways to monetize the site they’ve built. Just because the business is starting out in this vein, there’s nothing to stop them bringing in multiple revenue streams, adapted to economic circumstances. Part of the reason lastminute succeeded was its agility as a business. I’d be surprised if the model we’re seeing now ends up being the finished product.
Posted February 6th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
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