trendpreneur

27 is my lucky number. Today I turn 28, and the last year has been the most exciting one yet. I have a slight feeling of having passed the top of the rollercoaster, but then I look ahead and realise how unrealistic that is.

In the last year: I ‘graduated’ from EPIS, launched FestBuzz, visited Silicon Valley twice and then moved here, learnt to pitch and spent a lot of time doing it, spoke at TechCrunch, hammered out my business idea and execution in the forges of Astia, Cambridge University, Informatics Ventures/Ken Morse workshops, NESTA, UKTI and countless other events, and had some eye-opening and enlightening moments at various conferences, especially concerning the marketplace and competition.

The high points of the last year encompass all of the above, and more; small achievements (quitting World of Warcraft cold-turkey due to having absolutely no spare time; learning to run and completing two 5Ks) and improvements in my personal life all add up to an amazing year. I couldn’t have asked for more.

Moving to Silicon Valley has been a hectic and interesting experience so far, and it’s set to make my 28th year very interesting indeed. (Or is that 29th? One’s first year is when one is age zero…)

Having so much on the proverbial doorstep is at once overwhelming and inducive of complacency. The echo chamber is intimidating and shallow. And yet there’s something in the air; some ‘zeal’ carried in the water supply. When people ask you at events “What does your startup do?”, not “What do you do?”, it’s strangely liberating.

There’s also a difference in attitude. Everyone here thinks their startup is the next Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. When asked, I have a tendency to hedge and mumble; “Oh, it’s a Scottish social media AI startup, you probably won’t have heard of it”. When I’m truly attuned to the Silicon Valley frequency, I’ll be answering “We’re reinventing information, and if you read TechCrunch you’ve probably read about us”.

I’m hard-pressed to keep a straight face with some of the startups I run into; although Europe is characterised as having a lot of “me-too-in-Deutsch” type companies, me-toos definitely exist in the Bay Area! “We’re Facebook for dog-lovers”, etc. Despite the melting-pot nature of the area, there are also quite a few startups working on very inward-focused areas, jumping on technology bandwagons (though there are plenty of tech-for-techies startups, many funded by YC, that will probably do quite well in their niches).

Plenty of people design for themselves, for their Silicon Valley lifestyle/friends/needs/itches, and don’t look outwards. I haven’t met enough startups to really put a finger on how prevalent this is, but every so often I’ll run into someone and my first thought will be: “This wouldn’t work in Edinburgh”. (This even applies to some of Google’s ideas, it’s not just the small guys). I’m hoping that my experience of living in a country without free wi-fi, prevalent plug outlets, geographic population density/early-adopter critical mass, reliable 3G/GPS, a good public transport and healthcare system, and Topshop (I miss Topshop) will help some people here.

My mind has been buzzing with ideas since I landed, and there’s nothing quite as inspirational as your own personal itches/problems/difficulties as a newbie in a strange land armed with a Linode server and terminal. Being out of my comfort zone and living in a strange country has been an interesting start to the year, and I actually recommend it. It definitely broadens the mind.

Much as I miss Edinburgh and all the wonderful people there, and even the opportunities I’ve given up or walked away from, I believe the connections and knowledge to be had over here are invaluable. Hopefully I can bring a piece of Silicon Valley back!

I love it when other people do work so I don’t have to. This week’s fluffy pink kudos goes to StartupCafe, for their weekly ‘menu’ of startup events in Edinburgh – something I’ve been half-heartedly meaning to get compiling myself, and never quite got around to.

This week’s events can be found here.

I realised a few days ago (but have only just got around to blogging, thanks to a new vow to spend time doing ‘important but not urgent‘ stuff every day) that one of the reasons I love living in Edinburgh at this time of year is to do with Cambridge.

No, really. Even beyond the “it’s-not-Cambridge” aspect!

I adore May Balls. Where else can you happily spend a month’s food budget on a ticket, dress up in a poncy overpriced down with a dapper chap in a tux on your arm, and party for nine glorious hours of decadence? It’s like a kid’s realisation of the ideal grown-up party — even better than the ideal wedding, since there’s none of that legally-binding nonsense, and not that many people end up crying.

(For the uninitiated, a May Ball is a formal end-of-year party, typically held in June; elsewhere in the year they’re called Snow or Spring Balls).

The best thing about the May Ball ‘experience’, for me, was during my second year when I was part of the Ball Committee. We basically spent over a year planning and executing our event — and there are quite a few parallels to startup life to be drawn, but those anecdotes can wait. Things went wrong (the Fun Lovin’ Criminals turned up but refused to play; my role on the committee was publicist. Uh oh.) and things went well.

To get to my somewhat circuitous point, what I loved seeing every year, as I lived in College, was the transformation that happened every May Week. (Again, in June.) The beautiful old buildings featured in so many postcards and tours suddenly got reborn, with lighting and decoration, with sets and furniture, with marquees and fairgrounds and walking performers.

Every year, the set design guys came up with something new, and every year it was amazing to watch the beauty of old, time-worn stone peep out from the dazzling lights. It was like living in a set, especially when I practically lived inside the Ball area in my third year. And yet, on the night — despite having watched everything go up, despite knowing exactly what was going to happen, despite having planned the damn thing for a year — it was like a brand new place. Totally magical.

Living in Edinburgh during July and August is like that, only more so. Venues pop out of nowhere. Inflatable cows appear in a square you usually see full of skateboarders. Parks and courtyards become pubs and stages. The Royal Mile goes from hosting a throng of tourists to… a bigger throng of tourists. Hell, even my street starts sporting some snazzy new flowerboxes!

Yes, the influx of people is annoying to my ‘local’ eyes. Yes, it’s a pain having to elbow through people to get to work, having to queue for five times as long as usual everywhere, having to beat off flyerers with a glare. But for me, only a resident for eighteen months, I can almost let it all go and just focus on the magic. Almost.

I’ve run across several young entrepreneurs lately who are starting up businesses in Scotland (well, Edinburgh specifically). I keep mentioning the same resources to them, so it’s about time I put it all in one place.

• EPIS at the University of Edinburgh is a great opportunity to get started with a safety net. A loan from Scottish Enterprise, office space and hosting within the University, access to academic resources and mentoring, and tons of help and advice to boot. The programme won’t be accepting new applications for much longer, so get in fast.
• Scottish Enterprise is a fairly hard nut to crack. There’s a lot of support available and I, at least, found it hard to research online. The easiest way to get a rundown of the grants, co-investment and support (mostly financial) available is to get in touch with a human being; you might need to go through Business Gateway, who are dubiously helpful.
• PSYBT, if you’re under 25, is a nice source of very practical advice (eg. a bookkeeping course) as well as grants and loans.
• If you’re doing something disruptive with digital media, 4iP could help. They’re worth contacting to hash out ideas as well as to try and get financial backing.
• 38minutes is 4iP’s social network, which is a great one-stop place to find out what events are on and what’s hot in the world of social media. For example, it tells you about…
• …Edinburgh Coffee Morning, every Friday at Centotre. I am notoriously bad at going to this, but if you want to hobnob with social/digital meeja, startups and web devs, it’s the place to be. You might also enjoy…
• TechMeetup, now in both Edinburgh and Glasgow flavours. A monthly hackerfest with the odd spinoff gathering and a mailing list that cool stuff occasionally floats across.
• If you’re interested in more structured events, Informatics Ventures often throw great educational and networking-heavy events, from courses to expos. Recent highlights have included Guy Kawasaki and Doug Richard.
• A shameless plug for a new site started by startup types here: StartupCafe (which, when I visit it, has as its first post a listing somewhat similar to this one!). Any site with a competition to win pancakes is good in my book.
• Related, Edinburgh Uni’s E-club and Launch.ed — both a little dormant now due to the end of the academic year — are good organisations with great people. Events, networking, advice, support, etc.
• And, totally unrelated to the above, Hacker News is an excellent morning read, and applying to Y Combinator’s funding rounds is a very educational process. There are a couple of Edinburgh startup types in its irc channel (#startups on freenode) and others from the UK.

Enjoy, and do let me know if there’s more stuff I’ve missed!

It’s a worn-out TV cliche, but the sad thing about such catchphrases is that sooner or later they inevitably ring true. This particular adage starts to hit home while travelling; it’s taken the entire morning simply to get to London, while various Twitterers who left after me are already happily settled in Berlin.

It’s not just the inconvenience of travelling from Scotland, though; while time might be valuable, but travelling time often becomes a wonderful opportunity to mull things over and spend time thinking about problems in a new way. The problem comes when you end up being severely limited when it comes to various growth opportunities, simply due to location. While I could fly down to London with today’s Monday morning commuters for the odd meeting or two, it starts to get really messy when there are simply so many events going on — all of which would be both enjoyable and beneficial — and I’m stuck in the wrong country, half a day away.

Moving to Edinburgh was a hugely positive experience for me, but the strain of trying to create an innovative web startup in an environment that likes to deal with the bricks-and-mortar businesses it’s familiar with is going to hit home sooner or later. I’m unsure of the economic implications of taking a Scotland-registered business to London, but my overwhelming instinct is that this is something that will have to happen when the business is at the right stage for it. London opens up access to events, to communities, to employees and to customers who simply don’t exist in Scotland.

A step further than this, though one unattainable without some sort of help [YC LINK HERE], is the ‘ultimate’ destination of a web startup: Silicon Valley. A modest English computer scientist taking America by storm; well, it’s been done, but I’m almost frightened by the macho, bullish, in-your-face attitude from American entrepreneurs. I’d love to experience it and see what the community is like — my experience working in America still ranks as one of the best periods of my life — but in such a sink-or-swim culture, I think I need more than just a cute accent and weird hairstyle to get by.

Of course, one can take an entirely different take on the situation. Instead of moving a Scottish business to London, why not move some of the attractive things about London to Scotland? Networking events can be created; people can be lured up here with promises of a life away from the big smoke; employees and customers can be found. Having experienced the Cambridge entrepreneurship scene and now the Edinburgh one, there are definitely things to take away from Silicon Fen that could create a new Silicon Glen; however, in order to even get to this sort of space, critical mass is very important.

I’m torn between two ultimate aims, but fortunately the route to both starts off the same. Make contacts, organise events or suggest ideas to event organisers, build up links with the London startup community and what there is of the Edinburgh one (I fear I know pretty much all the companies that fall into this category, though firms like design and marketing agencies are technically on the fringe, and I certainly don’t know all of those). Foster a healthy relationship between Edinburgh and Scotland’s technology entrepreneurs, dive into the action and see if there really is potential up here, or if Soho is where it’ll have to end up.

I guess the first question to ask is: who else is working in social media, crowdsourcing, AI, web apps, etc, etc. in Scotland? Watch this space for answers!