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.

Hard work

We’re fully set up for working at Pat’s place now, having been sat at the kitchen table or on the sofa up until now. Mark and Pat cleared out a load of stuff in the garage and after a re-arrange and installation of some heaters it’s a nice and quiet place to get stuff done, although it can still get a bit nippy sometimes.

Work’s going really well – over the last two weeks we’ve gone from pretty much a cold start to teetering on the edge of having something we can show to other people. It’s still ropey and I’ll be really embarased for anyone to see it, but They say that if you aren’t mortified by your own product then you’ve launched too late…

If we get something out there (for limited testing) by Tuesday, out of all the teams on the secret program, we will have started last and finished first. I’m very good at that.

To treat ourselves for all this hard work, we left the house for a reason other than food – the first time since we arrived. We drove down to the Marina District, by the bay on the north side of the San Francisco. It’s the area where they filmed that car chase from Bullitt, and Pat’s car was straining a bit going up the slopes carrying 5 burly computer ninjas.

We went down to the bay with a nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge – I was disappointed to find out only really lives up to a third of its name – and chucked a frisbee about. Obviously, I got the frisbee stuck in a tree, but combined pine cone-throwing efforts saved the day.

New food:

• Jamba Juice fruit smoothies – awesome
• Odwalla Superfood Micronutrient Fruit Juice Drink – looks like pond scum but tastes like the sun rising over a golden meadow on a crisp summer’s morning
• Eggs in the hole – ‘the hole’ is a bored piece of bread, into which you drop an egg
• American bacon – basically, the offcuts of English bacon, burnt to a crisp

The plan for San Fran

My initial trip to the US will be from January 2nd to March 31st, which just about scrapes inside the 90-day limit of my tourist visa..

I’m flying out with one of my co-founders, Amir, and will be staying with the other co-founder, Pat, who has a house in San Francisco here.

The reason we’re going out to the west coast rather than staying here in England is that we’ve got backing from a group of investors out there, who run semiannual programs in which new companies fight it out to get further funding at the end of the three month period.

We think this will be really useful because:

• There’s a competitive aspect to it – we’re trying to be better than the other guys in order to get that funding
• We get regular exposure to the investor community out there, which, on our experience, is more lively and creative than the one over here (with exceptions, obviously…)
• The network of like-minded people we’ll make will be invaluable for cross-pollinating ideas, and help us develop this and any other future ideas we decide to pursue

At the moment, we’re at the stage where we have a vaguely functioning proof of the idea we pitched to the investors, which is a great start considering we really started part-time work about 4 weeks ago! What we are going to be doing in San Francisco to start with is get as much feedback as possible on what we have created, and what we plan to create, then once we’re sure what direction we want to go in, put our heads down and work as hard as we can manage for 10 weeks.

The culmination of the programme is a “demonstration day” where all the teams involved do a show and tell in front of investors and corporate development people from all the interesting tech companies in the bay area. Needless to say, we need to get that right!