Dot com start-ups will soon be offered advice on how to spend all that lovely crisp cash handed over by eager venture capitalists and e-crazy investors. The Start-Up Forum, planning to make its first appearance this summer, is a new event designed to help young Internet companies get financial advice on how to run their business. Organised by Dimitri Granovsky, MD of the Integrator Forum, it will take place in Monte Carlo from July 10 to 12. The plan is to sign up 150 French Web companies which have recently received lots of wonga to expand their businesses. They will get the opportunity to meet network companies, PC and server vendors, ISPs and companies involved in the Net at the Forum in the Meridien Beach Plaza hotel. Also present will be headhunters, marketing and communications companies and advertising agencies -- to give advice to companies on how best to part with their cash. If the Forum, a series of presentations, workshops and social events, is a success, Granovsky plans to host similar events in the UK and Germany before the end of this year. "When you build a start-up, you don't do it because you know how to run a company, you do it because you have a marketable idea," said Granovsky. "You may have raised the funds, but now you have to learn what to do to make the company grow." Granovsky also outlined the latest plans for this year's Integrator Forum -- for European system builders -- also to be held in Monte Carlo. He is in negotiations to enlist Linux mastermind Linus Torvalds to speak at the event, placing him alongside a heady concoction of big cheeses from Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, AMD and the Gartner Group. More than 140 system integrators have already signed up for the event. ® Related stories: Integrator Forum gears up for 2000