EU investors: Mark Tluszcz

Mangrove Ventures is one of the emerging top tier of European VC firms. Their recent deals have included Skype, SecureWave and AllPeers (all with Index Ventures). Mark Tluszcz, one of the general partners there, spoke to Matthew Gertner, CTO of AllPeers. Some of the points he makes are:

• European VC is in its infancy (30-40 years behind the US), and finally starting to recover after the dot com fall-out
• There are now 30-40 active VC firms in Europe, which still makes it much smaller than the US
• Skype (even more so than Kelkoo or Ciao) as the first €billion venture backed company has done a lot for the early stage tech industry in Europe
• That company was unusual in that it focused on non-American consumers; it also benefited from the low costs of Eastern European programming talent
• Web2.0 is not another bubble, though there is more capital and hence some froth in the market
• There has not yet been a successful exit for an open source business (except for Red Hat), which makes him sceptical but not cynical

Microsoft ate my screen. Again.

What is it with Microsoft and visual design? Why can't it let its customers fill their own space? There's something deeply arrogant about the company's weirdly compulsive attempts to change design norms at every turn, and for each version to use up more screen real estate than the last.

At some level the company realises it has a problem. The "What if Microsoft designed the iPod" video in fact originated from MS. The video itself is funny because it's true. But what's this with IE7.0? I now have to put up with menu and search bar apparatus that is at least 50% larger than it used to be, and it's less customisable. Why? What possible benefit does that serve? What's happened to my menu bar? Why, given the proven value of convention, has the company decided to branch out again in its own eccentric and inconsiderate fashion?

I find this eagernes to redesign inconsiderately more irritating than anything else the company does. If you must be a monopolist, so be it. But at least spare a thought for the customers who have to follow your cranky and ill-thought-through lead.