The Megabuyte Interview: Sherry Coutu
A quick web search will demonstrate the versatile interests of Sherry Coutu, the angel investor who has backed about 45 software companies over the past 12 years. But what it will not do is show you how to contact her. Serial entrepreneur Sherry Coutu CBE is a free agent, sitting on a stack of successes such as LoveFilm (sold to Amazon), New Energy Finance (sold to Bloomberg) and LinkedIn (floated on NYSE), and she has no need to advertise. In the end it is via LinkedIn, which still remains one of Coutu’s charges, that I finally manage to get in touch with her, after the professional network shows me we have a joint contact who agrees to make the introduction. But once you get past the barricades, Coutu is more than approachable, even if we have to reschedule three times to fit out chat into her busy schedule.

“This week has been dominated by a new company that I’m helping to start up, called Founders for Schools. It’s a philanthropic endeavour. We’ve just hired our first employees, and there’s been a lot of meetings with customers and programmers.” Coutu pauses, looking in her diary to see what else she’s been up to lately. Board meetings mostly: Coutu is on a lot of boards, including Care.com, Tyze.com, the Cambridge University Press, Artfinder and DuoFertility. Former appointments include RM, Seedcamp, NESTA, and the Prince’s Trust; she’s currently the co-chair of Silicon Valley Comes to the UK as well – the list goes on.

An entrepreneurial outlook
The companies under Coutu’s charge may seem diverse, but the point where LinkedIn proves its real-life usefulness is an aha-moment which seem to be commonplace when running through the list of her investments. It’s clear she has a knack for backing companies which are addressing an everyday problem. “I think there’s a huge amount of symmetry between everything that I do. I’ll give you an overview. When I floated my company 12 years ago, I felt I hadn’t been spending quite as much time as I would have wanted on giving back to the community,” says Coutu, referring to retail finance services group Interactive Investor, which she founded in 1995 and floated in 2000 for £242m. “I decided I would split up my week in the future, and spend one or two days a week on philanthropy. And because I got a buzz out of business, I would spend three or four on for-profit things. That’s still how I try to run my life.”

Coutu adds between two and four new businesses to her stack every year, but when asked about what motivates her it’s the non-profits that come up first. Still, the vein of technology and entrepreneurship runs through also these elements. Take Cancer Research UK’s Crick Institute, where Coutu focuses on how big data can help solve problems, in this case curing disease; “This isn’t actually any different from what I do in my for-profit businesses, because it involves the utilisation or leveraging of clever new technologies that decrease cost or increase the ability to do something you couldn’t do before.” Coutu also sits on the finance board of Cambridge University, the institution at the heart of the town that’s home for the Canadian native. This is an organisation that needs not be concerned about making payroll, but is still in the market for insights into how to maintain its top position: “The University wanted an entrepreneur to join so they could understand how we view the industry, and that’s partially what I help them do. It’s hard not to see the world from an entrepreneur’s eyes, because that’s definitely what I am.”

The marketplace connection
But back to the technology companies. The theme for Coutu’s interest is the presence of a market place, she says, broadly defined as joining people who want things with people who have things. Take online film rental business LoveFilm: Coutu was an early angel investor in Screenselect, which merged with Video Island and then with LoveFilm, which then exited to Amazon in 2011 for $317m. “We were trying to make it easy for people who wanted our database of DVDs to get them through the post, rather than having to get in their car and go down to Blockbuster.” Coutu joined LinkedIn’s advisory board in 2007, when the group was still only present in the US and wanted to understand how to enter foreign markets. “The companies I formed as CEO were software databases that rolled out very quickly in several different countries, so I’ve got a speciality in market entry. [...] I was interested in LinkedIn because they were a database of people who had skills, and other people, usually employers, who wanted to get access to those skills. That’s how it boils down, to marketplaces.”

Zoopla, which links sellers with buyers, adds property to the list of industries in which Coutu is invested. “So although it may look like LinkedIn is unconnected to DVDs, which are unconnected to selling houses, from a market place and a technology point of view they are very similar. What you’re doing is exploring different methods of monetising the ability to connect those who want things, with those who have things.” Care.com is arguably one of the most intrituing ideas in Coutu’s portfolio: the company provides a database for care providers, be it for seniors, children, tutoring, special needs, pets or housekeeping, previously a word-of-mouth marketplace which is now being organised.

“Care.com is targeting the Sandwich Mums. These are people exactly like me, who have parents on one side who require care in the home because they are getting old and fragile, and at the same time I have three kids who also require quite a few things. As I chose to work, there’s a variety of services that I surround myself with to help ease that,” says Coutu. “Women deploy a huge amount of purchasing power and make [care] decisions every day. I particularly identify with this service because I am squarely in the target market.”

The best problems
While she’s not necessarily a customer of every company she invests in, Coutu is driven to work with “phenomenal entrepreneurs” who are trying to solve problems that matter. “At least in my own mind, all the companies I spend time with make the world a better place from one angle or another. That’s what keeps me from going to bed at night, because I’m so excited about things. And it wakes me up early in the morning because I can’t wait … it’s almost like slaying another dragon. It’s exciting and worth pursuing.”

How much time Coutu spends with each of the companies in her charge depends where they are in their lifecycle. LinkedIn still requires about a day a month from her; Founders for Schools is in an intense phase right now, needing more than a day every week as Coutu gets them up the learning curve “and get the stuff out of my head into their heads”. DuoFertility requires half a day per week, as the founders are working on how to build their team ahead of entering the US market: “When they enter the US I can see a very clear £100m revenue that they can probably get in three years. That’s well worth at least half a day a week. I wish I had more time.”

While she assures me she’s had her fair share of failure, Coutu has faith in creating communities of people from different backgrounds as a means of solving problems. “The trick is to find a problem that other people think is worth solving. If the problem really is worth solving then lots of people want to help you, because it’s a good project to be involved with.” Coutu starts talking about Raspberry Pi, the maker of a $25 computer for education, which is a new board positions she’s very excited about. “All the other people there are basically these very, very deep semiconductor people, and here I am, sort of a … this mother-software-marketplace person.” She laughs. “I asked them why they wanted me there, and they said it’s because I’m really passionate about education. This is a tool for educating billions of people at a tenth of the price they had to pay previously.”

As the fastest-growing company to ever come out of Cambridge it’s easy to see why Coutu is excited about Raspberry Pi. But, I press, has she ever been wrong when calling a trend? While she won’t come out and say it directly, the answer here is clearly no: “I’m paranoid in terms of evidence of data and trends. My masters degree [at the LSE] was in econometrics, so if I’ve agreed a trend exists, I haven’t been wrong. I would put all of the failures I’ve had down to execution. Or being way ahead of the trend.”

Another dragon
With a plate fuller than most, Coutu still wishes she could do more, to pursue more opportunities and back more companies. “It’s really irritating to only be one person, and only have one life. It would be great if I could focus on one thing, but I’m curious about all sorts. I look at what’s going on in data and I wished I’d studied math better when I was a teenager; I look at some of the things that are being done in hardware and wish I understood physics better. But I think you have to accept that you have to prioritise, [...] and believe in what you are trying to achieve.”

While she spends much of her free time with her three children, Coutu’s leisure activities of choice are mountain-climbing, sailing and swimming: “Every ten years I go climb Kilimanjaro again, because I’m boring, or I like to make sure I can still do it every ten years. In September I usually do the Alcatraz swim, where I jump off the ferry at Alcatraz and swim to San Francisco harbour.”

This is the moment where Coutu tells me she has two minutes left before she has to go; her next appointment has already arrived. I’m still stuck on the fact that she deems her repetition of Kilimanjaro as a somewhat boring pursuit, not to mention how hardened criminals would regularly die while attempting that very same swim. If this fearlessness is the same attitude she takes to her companies, it’s no wonder Coutu has such a strong success rate. “Well, they built a whole prison on Alcatraz on the premise that the swim was really dangerous,” Coutu laughs. “But’s not that far!”

Interview: Lord Mayor of the City of London, Roger Gifford
If the Lord Mayor is the spirit of the City, as Roger Gifford suggests, it is tempting to wonder how his particular brand of banking could stir things up in the City. As the first banker elected Lord Mayor of the City of London since the financial crisis, Roger Gifford lends credence to his motto of ‘City in Society’ by having kept loyal to the same bank for over three decades, without ever needing bonuses to keep him interested:

“Financial services is a means to an end, not an end in itself. They are means to serving society,” says Gifford, now on leave from his position as UK head for Sweden’s SEB. “You could say this is a reaction to five years of difficult times in the City, but for me it is much more a belief. You could say it is a little bit Swedish, actually.”

There is nothing Scandinavian about our surroundings though, as we meet in the Lord Mayor’s office in the Mansion House. The building was indeed designed “to amaze and impress”, confirms Gifford, who can call the grandiose building his home during his year in this unpaid position. An intense schedule of meetings, dinners, travel, receptions and up to four speeches every day means there is much demand for Gifford’s time: “You have to like the sound of your own voice to do this job, to be perfectly honest,” he laughs. We are careful not to spill our teas on the brocade, as Gifford, classically dressed in a deep blue suit and subtle-patterned tie, admits he sometimes nips off to his North London family home so he can put his feet up without fear of ruining a piece of national heritage. “But it is so exciting to be part of such a long tradition. And yet, to be doing it in a very modern world. It is that combination,” says Gifford.

While the Lord Mayor’s mandate is industry-wide, his banking background means Gifford naturally drifts more towards the City’s financial issues. While debates on regulation, as was the topic of Gifford’s breakfast meeting, is high on the agenda, this is however only part of the Lord Mayor’s concern. “The public has, and I think rightly, been confused and disappointed by what they have heard about the banking industry,” says Gifford, pointing specifically to the bank bail-outs, “But we have not been good enough at explaining what banking is all about. For instance, there are 250 foreign banks employing 150,000 people in the UK. That is a massive bit of business has no burden on the UK tax payer at all.”

While issues such as the Libor scandal has done little to reassure the public the problems are in the past, new regulation has already changed UK banking, says Gifford. But did the industry want change?

“Yes, I think they did.” Gifford pauses a moment. “As a banker, I have been really upset about some aspects of the industry. [...] There are aspects around remuneration which I have not liked as an employer, and I am delighted they are changing.” But, notes Gifford, there is a tendency to blame procedures following a crisis, while a big part of the issue has been caused by socio-political trends of consumer over-borrowing: “You cannot really legislate for that, but people are changing regulations because of it. We have said in the City all along: we want the right regulation, not more regulation.”

Having been responsible for SEB’s UK operations for 12 years, the Scandinavian point of view has affected Gifford’s outlook on the current situation. The Swedish banking sector underwent a crisis during its deregulation 20 years ago, which means SEB now has a “more cautious, more conservative” attitude than many UK and European banks: “We have, like the Norwegian and Canadian and Australian banks, a very conservative policy on credit. We are very careful where, how much and how long we lend for. We are very careful about the derivative structured products, and we do very little of it. I have been very affected by working for a Swedish bank for 30 years.”

Gifford has previously stated how the Occupy movement sparked important discussions about what we want capitalism to be. He calls for an increased social awareness in capitalism: “We all prosper more if all parts of society are looked after. You can talk about benefit fraud, excessive social policy or taking away the will to work, but there have to be balances,” says Gifford, who credits Occupy with having made people stop and think. When asked whether this feels like a radical attitude, Gifford counters that it in fact feels very normal. But, I point out, we are sitting in this lavish building, after he as the Lord Mayor was sworn in during a silent ceremony with elaborate costumes and processions. Does the pomp and circumstance add something, or is it a distraction?

“The ceremony side of things is great fun. It is no more than 2% of the total amount of time,” asserts Gifford. “And it adds because it reminds people of the history and tradition that has developed over 800 years. There are reasons why we live the way we do, why we have the kind of government, the kind of Monarchy and the City institutions that we do. We have them because of history and they remind us of our principles, of behaviour, of activity, the direction we are going in, and they remind us that we should live for the long-term.”

There is no doubt Gifford feels is a great honour to be Lord Mayor, but, I press, does the role actually come with power? Gifford thinks for a moment. “I do not feel I have much power, but I maybe have a little bit of influence.” He pauses again. “The Lord Mayor is a representative of the City. He is the spokesman. The position is revered a bit, and that gives you responsibility to think, to behave, to discuss in a certain way. I do not think it is against the sort of person I am, but you feel the responsibility to try to influence in the right way.”

The charities, trusts and clubs where Gifford holds mandates of influence, many of which come with the job, also cross over into his personal interests: “I am really interested in what the City does on the music side. Certainly, I get very involved with the English Chamber Orchestra, the Tenebrae Choir and St Paul’s Cathedral Foundation. [...] I am very interested in the power of music to change and affect people,” asserts Gifford, not to mention how these classical organisations nurture a need for tradition: “People want to belong.”

The Lord Mayor certainly knows where he belongs, having said at the beginning of our meeting he would go back to SEB after this year: “I have been 30 years with dear old SEB. I will go back to them.” But after the Mansion House experience, will his role there be enough? “I only said I would go back to SEB. I would quite like to do something a little bit else!” Gifford says, with a glint in his eye.

Published in Maura Magazine, March 2013. Original article here.

That first sip of coffee in the morning, that sense of relief hitting the back of my addict throat, the faith in the things that sustain me. It’s all there in the black liquid, the promise that it will restore me as I battle my sleepiness every morning. I’m an owl at heart, in no mood to deal with the world for at least an hour after waking, so until the haze lifts I take refuge in caffeinated drinks, blankets, and the online offerings served up by Google Reader.

So then, I was quite sleepy still when the message first flashed on my screen: “Google Reader will not be available after July 1, 2013.” No apology, no explanation. I was too tired to take it in, at first. Eventually, though, I started to wake up, and I got cranky. “What will they come for next, my cafetiere?” I wailed into the Twitterverse, gravely insulted by Google blatantly violating its own “Don’t be evil” code of conduct. Okay, so maybe this news isn’t exactly evil; no one has died. But my relationship with Google Reader is intimately personal; it’s as close to me as my breakfast drink of choice. And that feeling is exactly what Google – along with Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and other providers of free services on the web – set out to foster in their users. People are encouraged to share stories, make friends, and design their spaces, all while keeping a record of what they’ve browsed and reacted to along the way; these virtual places eventually become just as real as the corner shop. These companies wanted us to fall in love with them, to become indispensable in our lives and it worked: the internet is becoming real life. We feel like we own it, rolling over from sleep to wake our computers to life, hitting our favourite bookmarks where all the things we want to surround ourselves with are waiting. But now Google Reader has a “Closed” sign at the door.

It’s probably not fair to expect web services to stick around forever, especially when they’re free. Not that I wouldn’t pay to keep Google Reader, if they let me. But the impending demise of Google Reader is making me feel confused, and slightly betrayed, as this is the first time I’m losing something online that I actually love. Reader is RSS perfection, and its stark, stripped-back style is part of why I loved it: the content presented line by line, making it easy to be gobbled up quickly and without distraction. Alternatives do exist, including clever reading apps which present content like a sleek magazine. Feedly, which has an option to copy Reader’s viewing experience, arguably looks like the best alternative so far. But using them is like trying to make a restaurant meal using ingredients bought at the supermarket: it’s almost there, but it’s not quite right.

When Apple released the 11-inch MacBook Air, I was thrilled to join the cloud revolution. It’s the paperback of laptops and literally the apple of my eye, yet the Air is a cold, hard shell; none of the software belongs to me, and none of the documents, photos, or thoughts on the machine live inside. I use Twitter for social networking, Gmail for email, Tumblr for blogging, GDrive for document storage, and Flickr for photo sharing. All of these are either extremely useful or lots of fun; they’re also intensely personal, even though they “exist” far away from where I am. But sometimes when I look at my 4000-strong Gmail archive I feel uneasy; I recently emailed a friend something about bedsheets and now ads for bedding follow me around the web. There is a hidden cost: Google crawling through your words, learning who you are and what you want in its quest to know you better than you do yourself. I know friends have abandoned Gmail because of this feature, which is admittedly a tad creepy, but Gmail is the best mail service around – as long as Google wants it to be, at least.

I need Gmail as much as I need the lights to come on in my house. But Google is not a utility, and I certainly have no control over what happens to it next. Case in point: Google launched the note-taking program Keep just days after Reader went up against the wall. But how can Google think people would be willing to trust them to “keep” things? I plugged my iPod into my Mac the other day only to be told I needed to upgrade my iTunes in order to get my devices to sync, leaving me no option but to comply. Ten minutes later, I was battling a new and shiny version of iTunes whose intentions are less about me updating my aging iPod and more about getting me to buy more music – although whether I’ll actually own that music as a result is unclear. Similarly, the place I love more than any other on the internet is also the least rooted: Twitter is just one long stream, and I only am given 140 characters to express myself at a time. I’ve carefully manicured my list of people to follow there, ruthlessly cutting people who might be friends in real life but not adept at microblogging. Meanwhile, tumbleweeds roll across my family-infested Facebook, which I keep mostly for phone book purposes; every couple of weeks I log in and find invites to events long since passed.

I made my usual strong black coffee this morning before clicking the green Feedly icon. It’s not a familiar button yet. For the first week or so I’d interrupt my morning Feedly session to go back to Reader, as it still has a couple of months left on life support, but I’ve stopped doing that. It’s best to make a clean break. Feedly may become a perfectly acceptable Reader substitute at some point; “acceptance” being the opposite of love.

The internet I have in my house right now is practically flawless, piping 24 hours of connection into my beautiful little laptop, which pewters on the edge of my bed at night. It’s the portal to are all the things I love, and it’s personal. But maybe it’s an illusion. I remember the sound made by the old modems, the anticipatory crackling before I connected to the world via Hotmail. The internet never felt like it truly belonged to me back then because the connection was so tenuous; it could be dropped at any moment. I thought things had changed, but maybe I was wrong. The mechanics have improved and we feel like we own it, but the soul of the internet has its own agenda. Something’s at work, and I find myself asking: “Are you there, internet? It’s me, Jess.”

My boyfriend didn’t want a pretzel. What he wanted was to sit at the edge of his seat for the half-hour train ride and urge the engine forward with Jedi powers, before sprinting up to the terminal building. I caught up with him in the security line, where we scowled at each other, casting quiet blame for ending up in this predicament. It matters whose fault it was, you see, because foreign travel has cost me three relationships; four if you include the one I broke up with twice.

The first time it happened the guy wasn’t even there. I’d gone to Athens with a friend who was headed there on a business trip, which meant I often ended up on the roof after dinner, drinking beer alone while she prepared for the next day’s meetings. The night sky was black, the Acropolis was set in lights; I was bored and half-drunk and couldn’t stop thinking about some guy who wasn’t my boyfriend. Fast forward a year or so, past our resulting break-up and us geniously getting back together again, and we found ourselves going on three weekend trips together in a single month. Of course we never lived to tell the tale. Dubrovnik was the straw that broke the camel’s back; the walled city is on the World Heritage list and it was wonderfully sunny, but what I remember best is sitting outside some Renaissance church paying mobile roaming charges to call a friend, trying to put my finger of the feeling that nagged me. My parents went to Dubrovnik too later that year, and when they showed me their holiday photos I pretended I’d never been there.

Being a catalyst for a break-up doesn’t always result in negative feelings about a place though: I have pretty decent memories of Porto still. My boyfriend and I had been travelling around Portugal for two weeks by train, pulling into Porto as a couple and departing as free agents. This is a long time ago now, but I still remember a stand-off on a street corner where we wanted to go down different roads. I will refrain from making a lazy metaphor. I ended it in the airplane, up in the clouds, thinking maybe it would make it feel lighter. Somehow it worked. Something similar happened in the clouds over San Francisco, again starting in an airport, as I was headed back to London to see my boyfriend after a month apart. I was the last to board, forcing myself to keep walking down the retractable walkway while everyone else were already in their seats. Even when I think about this now, the prevailing memory is the sadness of leaving the foggy city, not the guy.

I’ve been told you’ll know everything you need about a person by how they’d behave if you got to the airport and realised you’d forgot your passport. I think about this every time I search for my passport at the security gate, because I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s not the offending boyfriends that would have failed this test. The common link here is me. I’m the one who looks over at them, the only familiar element in a sea of foreignness, and think, do we fit, even when there’s nothing else tying us together? There’s something menacing about finding yourself in an alien environment with someone, manoeuvering coded transport maps, arbitrary tipping rituals and hunger-induced fights in cultures that like to have dinner at 10pm. Not to mention the feeling of watching the person you love and adore lose their cool and stamp their feet like a five-year-old, because no one understands them when they read French words in a clunky English accent. If the cracks are already there, it culminates in one central, bleak observation: ‘We don’t belong, not here, not together.’

Or possibly something more unkind comes to mind, judging from how my boyfriend was looking at me and my pretzel during the Schönefeld scuffle. I ignored him, licking the salt off my fingers. We reached the gate with a cool ten minutes to spare, and opted to sit separately for the hour-long flight home. We made up once we reached London, hunched over Cornish pasties on a freezing train station, a scenario familiar to us and one in which the two of us made sense. We laugh about it now, as it ended well. But we’ve decided to stay put in our own city for a while, just to be safe.

Interview: Penny Aitken, global head of investment research and partner at FQS Capital
Penny Aitken is not particularly interested in hedge fund managers with so-called good instincts: “I would rather be with somebody who knows why they are good, than with somebody who thinks they know why they are good.” As global head of investment research and partner at FQS Capital, maths are Aitken’s secret weapon to separate the talented from the lucky: “Sometimes a hedge fund manager can think they are doing one thing, but the evidence says they are doing something completely different. When we share our analysis with the funds, it can make for some very interesting discussions!”

Innovative statistical models sit at the core of FQS Capital’s selection process. The company is the brainchild of maths whizz Dr Robert Frey, who headhunted Aitken while on maternity leave to run the company from London. Business-casual in a navy dress and subtle jewellery, Aitken greets me in a meeting room in the company’s City offices, taking a moment to admire the sweeping view over a frozen London. While her stint in accountancy before heading into investment means she is not afraid of numbers, Aitken’s social sciences degree bears witness to a more qualitative approach: “We do not expect our tools to give us answers; we expect them to give us very strong indications of where we should look. Then we go to meet the manager, review the business, consider all the qualitative and soft factors. We want to really test the thesis and make sure it stacks up from all angles.”

In essence, FQS’s data-churning methods are all about identifying alpha: how much of a returns stream is driven by market factors, and how much is driven by skill and expertise. “We can also use these tools to find ways of filtering funds and search for certain criteria among alpha-driven managers, such as managers with a certain volatility profile or behavioural pattern.” Because, stresses Aitken, investors can go out and buy beta performance with a cheap ETF, so you do not want your hedge fund to do that. “What you want is a diversified source of return, preferably one not coming from market factors.” When she finds a manager with this kind of alpha performance, and Aitken admits this is not that easy, she then looks for signs this can be maintained over time: “We find that kind of investment opportunity very compelling.”

By leaning on quantifiable metrics, FQS’s methods adds a clarity to proceedings in what has at times been an industry lacking in transparency. “The maths, and all of Robert’s expertise, provides us with a very robust ability to handle data, and an ability to generate ways of handling that data,” says Aitken. This also has competitive benefits for the firm: “It means we are not wedded to traditional metrics or tools, or to buying things off the shelf. We can generate our own systems and programmes to process data and spit out results.”

The single fund run by FQS Capital is currently fairly modest in size, at less than $150 million, initially established for Dr Frey to manage his own money. While he is still the primary stakeholder, FQS are now looking to add further investors. Established in 2010, the fund was not fully diversified until 2011 and is still evolving. As to the question of performance, Aitken says the fund has matched the industry average over the past year: “But we have done this on half the risk. On that basis we are pleased with that result, because it is proving our point in terms of our balancing of risks, of our understanding of how you diversify these factors in a portfolio context. It is still early.”

Having said that, the fund’s risk mandate is “conservative”, with a focus on capital preservation: “We are talking about long term compounding effects.” In an effort to identify the desired stability, the FQS data models will draw on up to 30 years of data from a variation of sources to understand what a specific hedge fund is likely to yield. Even when the markets are behaving unpredictably, models are still helpful: “Right now we are in a testing environment where you have low growth and low interest rates. So what you can do is calibrate and make tactical tilts.”

While discretionary managers responded to the lack of predictability following the events of 2008 by becoming more conservative, Aitken points out how quantitative managers were much more able to carry on as usual by programming the new risk factors into their models. But if what we are experiencing now is arguably historically unprecedented, I ask, can historical data really reveal the future?

“This is an interesting question, but there are lots of periods in history where we have seen huge transitions and huge intervention by policymakers. This, in itself, is nothing new,” says Aitken. Of course, if the prediction process could be perfected we would all be rich: “But the 2008 period was interesting because it created a huge data set from a risk point of view, a very different data set to what came before and after. For us it is about how you use that data and calibrate it with the other periods around it. We are data junkies!”

As a new company, FQS Capital has been designed specifically with a concern for survival during a period of industry contraction. This includes keeping a close eye on costs, an issue which Aitken admits may not have been a priority for the industry during the fatter years. FQS also provides advisory services for clients looking to make portfolio decisions, with emphasis on the ability to listen and provide solutions.

A lack of trust in the financial system is still an issue felt across the industry, says Aitken, who believes finance needs to be more transparent: “It needs to be more accessible and it needs to be more accountable. We are trying to do all of those things here. We are trying to not blind people with maths, but to share these mathematical techniques and improve their understanding.”

Cold, hard stats will have the ability to reveal what is really happening in an investment situation, as it is unaffected by the manager’s hopes and dreams. At the beginning of our chat, Aitken references a study (co-authored by London’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging) which suggests the human brain is slightly optimistically wired in terms of processing negative and positive information. In evolutionary terms, this may be healthy to ensure we keep going in the face of adversity, but it is more problematic if you are a hedge fund manager. FQS is attempting to circumvent such bias in its own ranks by keeping records of decisions and assess the outcomes: “We have a huge respect for evidence.”

On that note, Aitken is excited to be building a team and a process at FQS from “a blank sheet”. The opportunity to be part of a developing field is also why she transitioned from traditional asset management to the alternative sector: “With hedge funds you have much more flexibility. You have all these different tools to express yourself. I really enjoyed the challenge of that, and the fact it does not sit still. Hedge funds are constantly evolving at a very rapid rate; you saw that all through the 2000s, all the way up to now when they are probably evolving into a different lifecycle phase. But the challenges do not stop, they just change.”

The Megabuyte interview: Richard Longdon
Often when Richard Longdon meets people at social gatherings they don’t really get what he does for a living, even after it’s been explained to them. After all, what goes on at Aveva, the international engineering design software development company, is hard to compress into a soundbite. Not that this matters all that much to Longdon, though: “What people do is kind of irrelevant really, isn’t it? That’s just their job. You don’t like somebody because they are the CEO of a company. It’s about what they are like as a person.”

This could be an easy thing to say when you are at the top of your field, but Longdon seems to have a knack for listening to people: “My life revolves around talking to people in the business, to our employees, to the customers, and the shareholders and investors.” And this includes his assistant and the receptionist too, who tells me how friendly “Richard” is as I’m waiting for my taxi back to Cambridge train station, after the CEO in charge of 1400 people has drawn me into chatty banter far beyond what should probably go to press.

Longdon is working from his Cambridge office this week, but the international footprint of the world-class player in the software market for the power, plant and marine industries means the CEO is often on the road. “We just had our budget planning week, where the key financial stakeholders in different parts of the business from all over the world tell us what is happening, and what they expect they can do next year. […] It’s an interesting week because you get to speak face to face to each person in each division around the world, about is happening to them, what the critical issues are for them, what people and additional resources they need for next year.”

Balancing innovation
Aveva celebrated its 45th anniversary last year, and Longdon has been at the helm for the last 14. But his history at Aveva goes back to 1984, when he joined the process products divisions, and headed the German office for a while before returning to the UK as part of the 1994 management buyout. Aveva’s solid financial performance is a testament to Longdon’s ability to keep the company innovative, which includes strategic acquisitions. Aveva’s 3D products are now gaining traction, boosted by last year’s acquisition of Bocad for its structural detailing software, Global Majic Software for its visualisation technology, and Z+F for its laser scanning software.

“The exciting thing about global managing, and generally this is true with high-end visualisation too, is that you want to innovate with a small group of people. If you try to do it with a lot of people it will be really slow. You have to keep refreshing your ideas,” says Longdon, before telling the story of how Aveva had a 3D visualisation supercomputer to show customers back in 2000, which at the time felt like a sci-fi as you stepped inside a virtual environment. Except that people hated it: “Customers couldn’t get to grips with it, it made people feel sick, and you needed a million pound computer to make it run fast enough.” But now the technology has improved, cost has come down, and people are more familiar with the general 3D idea: “But while 3D computer graphics you get at home look flashy, it’s just the skin. Our 3D models have got masses of data behind them. […] We are moving objects around, and you can click on one and say, ‘Ok, tell me 100,000 things about that object.’ It’s a different ball game.”

While the initial 3D experiment at Aveva didn’t yield much financial reward at the time, Longdon admits part of the reason they did it was to stir up attention. While the industries buying from Aveva are “really, really conservative”, they face just as much pressure to remain cutting edge. This means Aveva’s job is in part to take customers forward at a pace they can handle, and this may mean introducing a concept such as immersive 3D a decade before the big push: “Customers want us to be innovative, but they don’t want us to give them anything that isn’t tried and tested.” The Cloud is a classic example: when first hearing about it, many of Aveva’s customers would flat out reject the idea of keeping data ‘out there’, but now they are starting to get onboard. “And if we hadn’t been doing any work on it, we wouldn’t be paying the game now. We have to try and predict, tease them with ideas and say, ‘We think this is quite good, what do you reckon?’ And often they will say, ‘No, bad idea, don’t do that!’ Then two years later it will be the best thing since sliced bread.”

So what’s Aveva’s secret to predicting which are the ideas that will kick off in the future? Longdon thinks it’s staying close to the customers. Building a direct sales channel between the company and the customers is one of the things he is most pleased with from his tenure at Aveva, which previously mostly used agents: “We spend a huge amount of time on customer clinics, and workshops with customers trying out our ideas. There has never been a piece of technology where we haven’t had industrial partners working with us before it ever saw the light of day.”

This sort of collaboration can be a lot of fun for Aveva’s employees, and as a former engineer, Longdon understands the value of giving people an amount of creative freedom. Aveva uses innovative work techniques such as Scrum to break through hierarchies, but still, with R&D happening in 15 separate locations, projects need strict managing to make sure they join up at the right time. Longdon acknowledges an ongoing challenge is to foster a feeling of cohesion as the company grows: “We learnt a lesson about this when we first started outsourcing to India, when we didn’t tightly manage the outsourcers. […] I think we have become pretty good at developing products in multiple locations and bringing them all into one unified source.” Video conferencing is a vital tool to achieve this, as was the case during a large marine development that was recently completed by teams in Cambridge, India, Sweden and Korea.

Unfinished business
Anyone who becomes an Aveva employee gets a trip to Cambridge, whether they be a marketing assistant from Beijing or the new head of America. Longdon meets them all during their visit, which includes learning about the company culture and providing feedback to the management. And then they all go to the pub. It must foster loyalty, I point out: “Yes, it shows you care enough to try to make them feel part of the family.” But is loyalty the reason he has been with Aveva for 29 years?

“No, not particularly. It’s more that I still feel there is a lot of opportunity, so it feels like the job is never done. But I had never stayed in a job for more than three years before I came here. […] I knew about the business when I was in engineering, and though that company could be interesting. I took a pay cut, gave up my company car and came here.” But did he think he would have the big seat? “I didn’t think I would be CEO, no!” Longdon laughs. “But it has worked out rather well. It’s different all the time. Always new challenges. Either we’ve got an acquisition opportunity, we are developing a new product, or we have hired a different group of people that bring more diversity to the business. You can see it growing.”

This is Longdon’s key motivation for sticking with Aveva after all this time: “We have taken a company that, when I joined, should have been way more successful than it was. It was a government research laboratory with fantastic technology, but it was massively under-exploited and that was a real frustration for me. We have being playing catch up for a long time. Having got to the position we are in now, I think we could become a much, much bigger company.”

Longdon views Aveva as a classic case of a privatisation done badly, “in terms of giving rights to people that should never have had them to sell the product, which undermined the company and locked us out of key markets as they were starting to really take off”. Our conversation trails off to Cambridge’s start-up arena, where Longdon finds it disappointing that so few make it to the stockmarket: “If I were starting a tech company today it wouldn’t be in the UK. Too much legislation.” Longdon has previously spoken to the press about the possibility of Aveva leaving the UK over the red tape issue, the details of which he will discuss at length. But how serious is he?

“Would we actually move away? We think about it from time to time. We would still have this office in Cambridge together with all the people here, and would just relocate the headquarters. But the company is becoming more and more diverse at management level. […] Businesses like us want to be successful on the global stage. We just happen to be in the UK but it is not a big driver for us. The big driver is Asia.” This is not because Aveva doesn’t want to pay tax, emphasises Longdon, but due to regulation: “Our future competitors are going to be mostly American or Asian businesses, so we want to be in a place where we can be the most competitive.”

In the fast lane
At 58, Longdon will hit his retirement age in four years, but reckons he may keep working: “But my lifestyle is not conducive to living a long time!” He jokes, because he loves cars to the point he is running out of garages. He reluctantly gives me the number of vehicles in his possession, as he doesn’t want to come across as just being in it for the money. There’s a photo of one of the Aston Martins next to the wall of awards, he has a Lamborghini, couple of motorbikes, a boat. He is part-owner in a pub chain, he likes skiing. “I am just mad keen on life, really.”

Longdon reckons he may become a Chairman one day, but it’s not something he spends any time thinking about. Asked about mentors, Longdon notes Aveva alumni Robin Lee, who was part of the MBO, and Richard King, the first Chairman following the MBO: “King is a terrific guy. We naively thought we were picking our Chairman when we went to interview him for the role, but he said, ‘You think you are interviewing me for the job, but I am seeing if you are good enough to have me!’ He saw us through some really difficult situations.” Longdon pauses for a moment. “To be honest, being a CEO can be a lonely job sometimes, because you can’t cry on anybody’s shoulder.” The Chairman is an exception to this, he adds, as long as you have a good one, like Aveva does again now with Phil Aiken. “You have to lead from the front and give the impression that we are going to fix this, even if in that moment you don’t know how. […] You have to be good at being self motivated. You have to get up every day and get back to the fight.”

Katzenjammer: The British invasion
“We love coming to London!” Katzenjammer are all grins and cheer as we meet backstage at the Islington Academy, just an hour before they are due to play the sold-out venue upstairs. There’s little about the cramped, stark dressing room to suggest what a roaring, raunchy show that Anne Marit Bergheim, Marianne Sveen, Solveig Heilo and Turid Jørgensen will deliver in just a moment. The Norwegian band has a Bavarian beerhouse folksy pop sound, with a hint of circus, delivered on a myriad of instruments. And Katzenjammer’s definition-defying brand of quirk is like catnip to the Brits.

“We arrived in London this morning … no, yesterday!” Turid laughs; the group has spent a lot of time in their tour bus lately. Dressed in a white trilby and shiny black leggings, Turid is the tall blonde often found playing various guitars, but the four women continuously swap the dozen-or-so instruments around on stage, and they all take turns as lead singer. Solveig, the guitarist, drummer and sometime trumpeteer, looks a sharp contradiction tonight in her messed-up ice-blonde hair and classic tweed dress: “We feel so welcome in Britain! We’ve got something of a cult following over here, people show up and we sell out venues. Britain is happening for us now – we’re just getting started.”

With Birmingham last night and Oxford tomorrow, Katzenjammer has had a busy tour across the UK, the second this year. But what’s the draw of Britain? “It’s always been sitting there as a tough place to break, but there seems to be an appetite for our music here,” says Anne Marit, the banjo and accordion player. Solveig interjects: “The UK audience seems to really come along with us when we play, no matter which city we are in. Brits are hard to impress because they have seen it all, so they respond in a really honest way.” Marianne, whose powerful voice is complemented by armfuls of tattoos, is a fan of touring in the UK because its diversity complements Katzenjammer’s own: “We really don’t pay attention to what music or style is popular. We just play what we love.”

Katzenjammer will continue to push on with its British invasion, because as Anne Marit says, eyes poking out under a heavy fringe: “The world is a tempting place”. There’s little cheek to be found in the the four friendly and thoughtful women while in the dressing room, but this will change; some sort of transformation is clearly about to happen. Soon Anne Marit will charm the audience with her attempt at Cockney slang, and Solveig will flash her backside to the audience “because now you’ve seen it it’s not interesting anymore”. The same can’t be said for Katzenjammer.

Knit, purl, catharsis
In my garden, I can hear the roar of the London traffic like a constant hum. Even at night, when I look up to count the few stars still visible in the light-polluted sky, the city sounds are there with me, like a constant lullaby. I know this is an odd thing to say about London, which is a metropolis of grit and push, but in my garden I feel it humming around me, like a whisper: “It’s all within reach.”

At a distance, the London creature sounds just the same as the whitewater river where I grew up. I spent so much time wanting to get out of there, to leave the village where everyone was the same and nothing ever happened. One winter, when I was 19, I found myself back there after my first ever journey outward had come to an end, and I slept all day and stayed up all night in jetlagged sadness. My heart was still out there, across the ocean, where life was happening and where I still wanted to be, but instead I had to come back to the village where the river now slept under a sheet of ice and snow. I wondered if any of it had ever happened, that brief moment of life in the city, and I was terrified that maybe I’d dreamed it up.

I don’t remember much from that winter except for one thing: I made a quilt. Unable to sleep at night I skulked around until I found patches of fabric in my mother’s cupboards, each reminiscent of a different time: a floral blouse, my childhood curtain, a doll’s dress, some worn-out sheets. I started cutting, measuring the pieces into careful squares, before I started sewing, making strips, adjusting each row using a ruler to get clean corners. When I ran out of patches I went to my grandma’s house, looking for more fabric with another set of memories: an old cushion, grandpa’s worn-out shirt, a threadbare flannel nightdress. I kept making rows of patches and when I had enough, I sewed them together into a blanket. I wanted it to be finished so I could cover myself in these feelings, these stories from a time when I was small enough for the village to be big enough for me. And I never wanted it to be finished because I needed this task; it was my crutch as I staggered through the winter, bewildered by clocks and maps and no longer believing my own memories.

Now that craft has gone from a life skill to a hobby, there is something wonderfully liberating about this activity. Whether it be quilting, sewing, brewing or baking, there is something amazingly simple and refreshing about letting the brain rest while doing something with our hands. Picking up the knitting needles to make my own socks to go inside my winter boots becomes a meditation, a gesture of order because here is something I can control entirely. A friend of mine found a cookbook in a drawer last year and ended up making something from it almost every night for months, deciphering hand-scrawled recipes of boiled puddings and obscure cuts of meat. It became the thing she did instead of dating, which had gone from uninspiring to upsetting fast. Another girl I know once knitted a massive jumper during a bout of extreme sadness that couldn’t be explained by life just being a bit rubbish anymore. The counting of the complex pattern created something else to focus on, something other to do than to wonder where her life had gone. She found the jumper again recently, folded up neatly in the bottom of a drawer, but instead of it being a symbol of her illness it seemed to carry a message: “It gets better.”

I thought about my quilt earlier this autumn, as my friend Peter and I combed the blackthorns along the brook that runs behind his house. Peter had just split up with his girlfriend, who’d taken the toaster and the soft furnishings and left the man to live with a bare-walled flat and a nagging question about the point of committing, if this is all it’s worth. Our bucket filled with sloes as Peter explained how he wasn’t planning to make jam, nor gin, with them, but how he wanted to harvest the wild yeast living on the fruits to make beer. Brewing equipment had taken over his living room, replacing the girl, and one day the beer will be ready for drinking. And someday, maybe a little later, Peter will be ready to make another promise.

I stand in my London garden and close my eyes, and for a moment I think it’s the whitewater river in the village that rustles around me, before I look up and see that I’m in the city that I love. I came here because this is where I want to be. Inside, on the wall over my bed, my quilt hangs as proof of the things that pass.

Yellow fever
Gold is the ultimate rock in the storm for investors in times of crisis. Recent highs in the gold price has led to intensified speculation that we may be in a bubble, but at the same time, the case for gold remains as solid as ever. We take look at what drives the demand for the yellow stuff.

In times of economic turbulence there is usually one thing we can rely on: gold. When inflation takes a swing at the buying power of our hard-earned cash, and threatens the value of property and other investments, gold has proven highly resilient. And it is not a new phenomenon: during the reign of Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar 2500 years ago, it is believed an ounce of gold would buy 350 loaves of bread – just as it does today.

The gold price has enjoyed an incredible bull run over the past decade, having seen a value increase of around 600%. Over the course of this year alone, the price has risen by 30%, and the slump experienced earlier this autumn has since been recovered, courtesy of the troubles in the eurozone. Recent economic events are a prime example of the kind of circumstance that fuels the gold price: uncertainty punishes stocks and currencies, so nervous investors run towards a safe haven. But now the big question is: can this price level be sustained?

The currency push
“A key driver for the rise in the gold price is the desire for people invested in currencies to diversify,” says Charlie Long, analyst at Singer Capital Markets. Currencies like the US dollar are traditionally seen as a safe pair of hands, but this is no longer such a clear-cut case as Western economies having a hard time. Consequently their currencies come under pressure, and investors start to look for alternatives. “In hedging your exposure to western paper currencies, gold is seen as a good bet. Bear in mind, gold has been the major currency throughout history, whilst an unbacked US dollar has only been around since 1971,” says Long.

The ongoing surge in the gold price has led to speculation that we could be in the middle of a price bubble, especially in light of the wobbles experienced in recent months. Still, there is no way to tell for sure where the price is headed; alongside talk of over-inflation we also see speculation of new record highs up ahead for gold. Consequently, each investor needs to consider both sides of the argument and use their best judgment.

“There are good arguments that gold will stay strong, or at least that it will not collapse,” says Long. “It seems to me the fundamental reasons for people buying gold will continue for at least the next couple of years.’

Gold under the mattress
The downside to investing in gold is that the asset class has no income, nor does it yield dividends. Another point to note is that while there are industrial uses for gold, demand is primarily driven by the financial markets. This is why gold is different from the other main metals, these being silver, platinum and palladium, where demand mainly comes from the industrial sector. Consequently, these metals have not enjoyed the same uptick as gold, as their price drivers are different.

As a gold investor, one option is to buy bars and stuff them under your mattress, but a better alternative for those keen to own the physical metal will probably be to buy a certificate for gold stored in a vault. Those wanting assurance they can get their hands on their gold in case of an economic meltdown should make sure to get an allocated account, as this would mean owning a specific pot of gold rather than an anonymous share of a general inventory.

A less radical approach is to buy a gold tracker, such as an exchange-traded fund (ETF). This will be designed to mimic the overall performance of gold for its investors. There are a number of gold ETFs to choose from, depending on whether an investor wants to track the commodity price, the futures price, or if you are bearish on gold, go short. A more risky approach is gold spreadbetting or contracts for difference (CDFs), or investors could buy into an investment trust specialising in the metal. Trusts and funds usually own shares in gold miners, which is another key approach to tapping in on the fortunes of the yellow stuff, but first a fair warning: gold mining is risky business.

Up from the ground
“One point most gold miners have been aware of for some time, but has somewhat been ignored by the commodity markets, is that the cost of mining an ounce of gold has been increasing at a similar rate to the growth of the gold price,” said Duncan Hughes, mining analyst at Ambrian Capital, in a report on the sector.

While the price of gold itself is largely driven by demand from the financial market, the value of shares in gold miners will be affected by a whole host of more down to earth concerns. This includes the cost of digging through less pure deposits, competition for workers, rising prices of associated costs such as fuel, plus the overhanging risk that mines come up short of their initial promises. All this means the value of gold shares have not enjoyed the same good fortune as the pure metal, but, says Hughes, if the gold commodity prices keep rising, the mining stocks should start to catch up.

As the fate of gold miners is tied to the performance of the overall market, there are however no guarantees: “If the global economy suffers a more prolonged recession, or if countries start defaulting on their debts, then gold equities will go down alongside other equities,” says Singer’s Long. “But if the gold price stays high, then gold producers will continue to generate huge amounts of cash. This will force analysts to upgrade forecasts and gold shares should rise. How many other sectors are seeing upgrades to forecasts?”

Ultrabooks: the ultimate computer?
Sleek, light and powerful – the ultrabook knows how to seduce. We take a look at this up-and-coming class of laptops, and consider some of the products launching this year.

Combining elegant design with power and portability, the ultrabook makes an attractive proposition. Dozens of contenders in this new technology category are set for launch this year, each one seemingly better than the last. As the ultrabook brings together the best elements of laptops and tablets, is this the future for portable computers?

Just consider the evidence: not only are ultrabooks beautiful to look at, with their sleek, elegant exteriors, but they are also incredibly thin and light. Traditionally these features have come at the expense of power, but ultrabooks boast both superior performance and impressive battery stamina. The only niggle is that they are a bit pricey, launching around the $1000-mark, however technology cost trends suggest this should come down over time.

Thin and light
“This is an extraordinarily interesting new area,” says Peter Winkle, director of product marketing at Dell Europe. Dell, one of the world’s leading computer manufacturers, is launching its XPS 13 Ultrabook in the UK in March. “Media and high performance were the focus areas when we designed the XPS, but ultimately we wanted it to be thin and light,” says Winkle. “It is targeted at the professional user, who looks for speed, power, design, portability and battery life.”

A key feature of an ultrabook is a solid-state drive, which makes for a powerful and quick machine. In addition there is a energy-stingy Intel processor, ensuring an impressive battery life of six to eight hours. Most of the ultrabooks are set in slim aluminium cases, weighting three pounds or less.

“The ultrabook very much fits in with the trend of IT consumerisation. It is a product that people are proud of owning; they can use it at home or while travelling but it also fits in at work,” says Winkle. Employees are increasingly bringing their own computers into the office, and the Dell ultrabook is set up for this with the option of additional security measures and the option of pro-support.

“The way we use computers are a reflection on the way we live and work,” says Mike Jeremy, head of equity research at Daniel Stewart. “The ultrabook sits in the sweet spot between work and play, between fashion and the clunky laptop format.”

A key enabler of the ultrabook trend is the proliferation of the internet, which means we can get connectivity almost anywhere. This is significant because the ultrabook comes with only a fraction of the memory of traditional laptops; this is the price to pay for a fast and light machine with an all-day battery life. “But people are increasingly comfortable using the internet to store data, download new software or stream film or music,” says Jeremy. With the ultrabook, the selling point is not how much memory we can keep in our laps, but how seamlessly the gadget hooks up to the internet and the data stored there.

Work and play
Ultrabooks were the talk of the town at January’s CES conference, the annual consumer technology fair where manufacturers present the year’s gadgets. Last year it was all about tablet computers, a category with plenty of mileage still left. While forecasts from Juniper Research has ultrabooks growing three times faster than tablets over the next five years, to 178 million shipped, tablet volumes will still be higher, at 253 million in 2016. Where ultrabooks trump tablets is for people who want a computer they can use for work, not just primarily for play. As pretty as tablets are, it is near impossible to do any real typing on them, let alone work up a spreadsheet or presentation.

Ultrabooks also have several advantages compared to its other competitors, the classic laptop and the netbook. While the netbook is better for price, the mini-laptop has little to write home about when it comes to processing power and battery life. Price and storage are the key reasons traditional laptops will stick around as well, but as we are increasingly carrying our computers with us, to work at home, on the train, or in a café, a feather-light machine with an all-day battery capacity should start to sound increasingly compelling.

‘Ultrabook’ is a trademark owned by Intel, whose chips sit at the core of all the devices in the category, but it was arguably Apple who invented the actual concept. Just as the 2010 launch of the iPad spawned a whole industry of tablet computers, it would be the MacBook Air that is responsible for inspiring the ultrabook trend. The Air lacked certain features which people had become accustomed to in a laptop, such as a disc-drive, but a lot has happened since the Air saw the light of day in 2008. As the maturation of the internet means media content can be streamed, consumers are becoming less worried about not being able to run discs on laptops. In the same vein, users are increasingly accessing data remotely, meaning we are less bothered about memory capacity when the internet can be used for unlimited storage.

“While Intel’s control of the brand ensures that ultrabooks stand out from traditional notebooks, vendors face a balancing act in terms of product strategy,” said Daniel Ashdown, analyst at Juniper Research. In his report on the growth of the ultrabook, Ashdown pointed out how it is difficult for any manufacturer to elbow in on an area pioneered by the mighty Apple without offering something significant, either in terms of features or price. This is the main problem with the challengers to the MacBook Air: “Several of today’s ultrabooks are too expensive for many consumers.”

Best of several worlds
In all likelihood, ultrabooks will co-exist with laptops, netbooks and tablets for a while to come, because these products meet four different user needs.

“Take tablets, they are doing very well at the moment, but there are still ten times as many laptops being sold,” says Dell’s Winkle. While companies are starting to incorporate iPads and other Apple products into their office IT systems, Winkle points out that ultrabooks are easier to integrate because they run on the Windows operating system, which is used by the vast majority of businesses.

“Ultrabooks are not replacing the laptop, because they have traded reduced features for power,” says Daniel Stewart’s Jeremy. “While people are getting used to tablets, they are mostly for media access and viewing content. Ultrabooks have keyboards, meaning you can use them to work.”

But already there is a convergence at play. A few ultrabooks already incorporate touchscreens, and Winkle expects touch to become a prominent feature as this niche develops. Voice and gesture will likely to be next in line for integration; these technologies have already popped up in mobile phones and games consoles and should make their way into the next generation of laptops. Concludes Winkle: “Ultrabooks are solving several of the problems the industry have been keen to fix.”