trendpreneur

The idea of spending a week divided equally between Silicon Valley, London and various international airports might not sound exotic to some people, but for me the last seven days have been quite an adventure.

This time last week was April’s NESTA session, including exercises on blueprint planning (how to visualise/mindmap the path from where you are now to a specific goal), product positioning (are you unique or mass-market? are you cheap or premium?) and a little on cashflow, with a delightfully complicated spreadsheet to complete in our own time.

I then spent Thursday travelling to Palo Alto — despite having visited San Francisco before, this was my first trip to The Valley. Immediately enmeshed in startup culture due to staying at Hacker House, kind of like a frat house for coders (well, not really, but that’s the best one-line description I could come up with) it was already a far cry from Edinburgh’s misty morns.

Friday saw me fulfilling a wonderful stereotype and coding away in a coffee house in Mountain View — which has to be my favourite place ever due to the ubiquitous wifi — as well as discovering that even in the US I have freakish feet. Apparently size 10.5 isn’t something many places stock. Tsk. With cofounder in tow, we got ready for our YC interview the following lunchtime, surrounded by others who had been through it or were about to face it as well.

After the interview (which I’ll write about separately) I had a great time at the Computer History Museum. It’s weird to see stuff in my parents’ attic enshrined in a museum, but nostalgia is fun. We even saw a working PDP-1 with an amazing story behind it; a MIT undergrad, hacking on the machine at night, created a music synthesiser. When restoring the PDP-1 at the museum, they unearthed a box of tapes which turned out to be the music input for this program, but the program itself was long gone… fortunately, the original programmer was involved in the project! 40 years later, he rewrote it and we saw the machine play music. The creator of Spacewar! was also there demonstrating the game. Amazing stuff.

The last big event in the Valley for me was the HN/YC BBQ where a ton of local entrepreneurs, hackers, coders and assorted miscellany turned up and partied the night away. It was pretty nerve-wracking for those of us waiting on a decision from YC, but definitely a great atmosphere in which to be.

I would say that it was a novel, unique type of social event, one where the first question wasn’t “So, what do you do?” but “What does your startup do?”, but let’s fastforward through planes, trains, taxis, shuttles and the Tube to yesterday and Geek’n'Rolla, which had very much the same feel to it.

(We got a no from YC, by the way; but an incredibly valuable experience nonetheless.)

Geek’n'Rolla was an amazing event – both a celebration of startups and a quick-fire crash course in various aspects of making them successful, from user experience to tools to funding. Having just come back from the US, it was also interesting to see the various comments on whether one should launch in the US, how best to do so, etc.

I spoke to at least one young entrepreneur who planned to jump over to Silicon Valley and start a business there, and while I entirely sympathise with the — perhaps somewhat romanticised — notion that going to a place where everyone lives and breathes tech startups is a good idea, I also wouldn’t discount the UK just yet. Events like yesterday’s really give me the same feeling of camaraderie and startup spirit that I got the other side of the pond, and I’ll cheerfully point out programmes like EPIS and the various Governmental initiatives that try to make it easier to get started over here. (Even with all their flaws, at least they exist.)

As of this morning I’m back in Edinburgh, collecting my thoughts, preparing to write more about Geek’n'Rolla — especially a few thoughts on the women panel! — the YC experience and so forth, as well as getting ready to pitch at the Guy Kawasaki event next week. Thanks to everyone who offered comments on my pitch yesterday; I met some fantastic people and it’s definitely made me realise I need to spend more time in London.

Oh joy. More planes.

It’s an unfortunate working habit of mine that when I get deeply involved in one project, things which edge towards ‘vanity’ rather than ‘work’ tend to get left by the wayside for a bit. Even when totally stuck on something, rather than spend time away from the problem on another project, I tend to get furiously depressed and do something entirely different, like play videogames (which I need to stop pretending are real work) or comfort shop.

Apologies over and duly marked for a post about productivity, here’s what kickstarted me back into the real world a little – Paris! Thanks to TechCrunch UK, I’m off to LeWeb this year, something I had already ruled out as being “omgwtfhowmuch?” i.e. well out of my budget. I’m really excited now, the conference seems to combine a lot of really interesting themes, with a heavy emphasis on startups. It’s going to be fun.

Given the timing of LeWeb, I might spend a few days in London beforehand, due to a couple of events on around that time. Somewhat frightening that I can’t remember the last time I was down there, rather than just travelling through. I do, however, have very distinct recollections of Oxford Street Christmas shopping around this time of year. No thanks…

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!