trendpreneur

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?

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…