Startup School

We’re slowly dragging ourselves back to meaningful work again, as we follow up with the leads we have to close a funding round in the next few weeks.

There have been a couple of fun things over the last week. On Saturday there was Startup School, organised by Y Combinator – a series of talks from various leading lights in the entrepreneur world. The standout sessions for me were a rabid but well meaning rabble-rouser from DHH (creator of Rails), where he made wild assertions about the Right and Wrong choices for people to make when starting companies, followed by a neat (and I think unplanned) subsequent rebuttal from Paul Buchheit (creator of GMail), who suggested that:

Limited Life Experiences + Overgeneralization = Advice

I actually enjoyed DHH, and agreed with a lot of what he said. Paul Graham was good too.

The only other note-worthy event was randomly meeting June Sarpong in a bar. She was small and less annoying than she seems on T4. The end.

UK trip

Everything went to plan for my trip back to the UK. It’s been a pretty hectic week or two: here’s the route I’ve taken since I arrived:

View Larger Map

It’s been good to catch up with various friends and fams, although despite the circuitous route I still didn’t get to see everyone.

The weekends have been especially fun: for the first one I was at my cousin’s engagement party in the Scottish borders, cutting some serious shapes while the “bin-man by day, karaoke king by night” man sang on.

The weekend just gone I was in London with school friends. On Friday we went to FWD>> in this dingy but amazing club near Old Street, while Saturday started with a massively profitable trip to the casino followed by an evening surrounded by orange hen-partying scousers in a club off Leicester Square. Delicious.

We’re back in San Francisco now, after a flight filled with inebriated Welshmen on their way to a boxing match in Las Vegas.

Back in the UK

I’m back in England a touch earlier than expected: my Grandpa’s funeral was on Monday so I moved my flight forward.

United Airlines have been awesome over the last few months – on the way out we got business class seats plus $1000 vouchers, and on the way back, after some initial quibbling, they pulled out all the stops to get me on the last seat from San Francisco to London, for what seems to be a fair administration fee.

The current plan for my time here is:

• South-west Wales with my sister & family until Friday morning
• Winchester on Friday night to see friends
• Castle Douglas in South-west Scotland on Saturday night for my cousin’s engagement party
• Derbyshire with my other sister & family on Monday
• Sleep
• Split my time between London and Cambridge for about a week, disco-dancing and raising money

The practicalities of getting to Scotland haven’t quite been finalised yet, but it’s on my list of things to do today. Along with playing frisbee golf and going to a breast-feeding group.