I’m doing the Ignite course in Cambridge this week, sponsored by Informatics Ventures (thanks!). It’s been a mixed bag so far for me, and although checking email during sessions has been banned, I’m going to try and take notes and blog a few things from the course.

Yesterday was about marketing — establishing who your customers are and how you’re going to get them. Businesses typically go through two stages: initially, you are pre product-market fit, so you spend your time figuring out how your product will fit into the market or vice versa. Then, once you have that fit established, it’s time to ’step on the gas’ and sell to the market — and go supernova.

An initial step, though, is to define whether you’re an aspirin or vitamin.

Aspirins cure pain. Vitamins enhance.

There’s room for both, but knowing which you are is important — and not just from an internal point of view, what you’d like to be, but from a customer’s point of view.

Do you solve an acknowledged problem?

Do you solve a problem the customer doesn’t know he has?

Do you make the customer’s life better?

Another interesting division is whether you’re a new idea, or better-faster-cheaper than something that exists. It’s possible to be a bit of both, but the key camps here are ‘very risky, have to establish the market’ versus ‘existing market but competitors’. If the latter, what will your competitors do when you launch? (A side note, something I was told a while ago: very few business plans/presentations consider competitor response as well as simply competitor existence.)

If the former, are you really a new idea? What do people do now? Is your technology disruptive? Is it defensible? If you’re a tech company, can you productise as well, or are you better off licensing? How do you fit into the existing picture?

This is possibly the most valuable part of the course so far, having time to think about the larger scheme of things and where we fit in. Interesting.

A city where nothing ever changes.

A city where, in just over a year, an entire shopping centre can materialise out of nowhere.

A city that goes to sleep at 6pm and, despite a heaving throng of tourists, appears amazingly visitor-unfriendly.

Cambridge is all of these — and more.

Coming back to my old haunts, I realise quite how much of my life here revolved around social activities and my PhD because there really isn’t much going for Cambridge as a city. I’m spoilt now; I’m used to Edinburgh and its coffeeshops that actually stay open, the fact there’s more to do there in the evening than eat and drink.

Nomadic entrepreneurs, web workers, freelancers etc can plug in and get to work anywhere, but it’s hard when the city seems to be actively fighting against you. Plug outlets? Well, I found some in Borders Starbucks, but it closed before I was even a third of the way through my tasks for the day. (OK, argue that I should work normal hours, but this oppressive weather is playing havoc with the old sleep cycle.) Printing? Sure, if you want to pay a near-obscene premium at Starbucks.

Knowing people locally helps — it’s easy enough to scavenge a hotdesk, even — but without an ‘in’ it’s pretty tough. But what do we need? Starbucksen that open late? A city-centre hackerspace in every major UK location? (Yes please.)

I do have a vision for a network of drop-in entrepreneur-friendly business centres that don’t charge the earth — basically cafes with free wifi, printers, tables, power sockets, whiteboards, printing, fax (some people still use it), etc. A room for meetings. Maybe even a relaxation area. Membership of one would guarantee use of all, and a day rate would cover non-members. I even have the location of the first one in mind, in Edinburgh — an office I’ve had my eye on for a while, wishing I could afford.

Ahem. Let’s make the current startup a success first, shall we?