Techstars London Winter 2014 - Week 4

Week four is here, and some Christmas elves have come and decked out the office.  It looks amazing and a total transformation.

ABOVE: Barry and I are already worrying about how they are ever going to get the spray-on-snow off all that glass!

ABOVE: Yep, the clock is still ticking! This may seem like plenty of time but I am now mentally making adjustments.  We must take off the weekends and adjust for the 14 days we are home for the Christmas break!  Jon has announced that he is going to adjust the clock to increase the pressure some more.  Arghh!

ABOVE: Horray!  For my birthday I got a pair of noise-cancelling headphones from my beautiful (patient, understanding, amazing, hard-working) wife Emma and a bottle of gin from the guys.  I must confess that was at the end of the week, the gin bottle still remains unopened!  I am sure we will get around to trying it one evening but right now there is just too much clear thinking left to do.

This week was all about the final round of mentor meetings - 35-40 mentors during the week.  This time there was a bigger bias towards VCs.  Focus is important in any business, especially one like Rainbird which is a powerful platform with traction in most sectors.  We started the week certain that we needed to focus but still unsure where.  The week ended with much more clarity where we stand (more on that soon).  

The mentor process really is invaluable, although Mentor Fatigue is a very real condition. Each mentor comes in for a single morning where as we do this for 10 days.  It is harder to sound as excited at the end as you were on your first encounter - but this is an important skill to master!  These are all dynamic, successful people who are being very generous with their time - and we appreciated meeting them all.  

They were pretty much all helpful, although is not always always obvious who will add the most value until you actually meet.  

Mentoring is at the heart of Techstars.  It is a golden opportunity to be able to position your business to someone new, every 20 mins, every morning - for a week - and then another week - adjusting as you go.  It drives the thinking, delivers clarity (despite the conflicting advice) and helps you to gain confidence around your model.  

The real take-away for me was this: Most mentors will not tell you what you should do. They will challenge you and make you focus on what matters.  Perhaps most importantly for us, they made us think about what sort of company we wanted to be.  You have to decide yourselves.

ABOVE: 20 minutes goes in a heart-beat.  You have to be careful not to talk too fast but the most important thing is to listen.

ABOVE: This was the healthiest breakfast of the week - porridge with seeds and blueberries.  I did lapse from time to time and grab the occasional bacon roll, but the porridge really helps keep the energy up!

ABOVE: On Wednesday, some of the team went to a networking event at the Emirates Stadium to watch the football. Not being into football (Dom asked if that was the game with the round ball) Dom, Ben and I stayed at the office and worked until midnight. I continued to work on the new website while Ben and Dom made some really significant changes to Rainbird's core inference engine.  The work is really significant and makes Rainbird much faster and more powerful. It enables us to support all types of data and will make connecting to external large data services easier. This was a really important breakthrough and the refactoring should be done in a week.

ABOVE: Thursday again involved us sitting in a circle (note the virtual cohort member on the left) as we each went through our highs and lows for the week.  This week's Founder's Story was Duedil CEO and founder Damian Kimmelman.  He has an amazing story and he is a fantastically honest and compelling presenter.

So, after Friday's final session of mentors, week four is over.  Sometimes it feels like we have been here for four months, and at other times - just four days.  Time distorts at Techstars.    

ABOVE: On the train back home writing this blog (yes, this is an arm-bending selfie!).

Techstars London Winter 2014 - Week 3

This blog is getting shorter and it is taking me longer to get around to doing it.  That's Techstars for you.  There is so much to do and so little time!

Week three looked surprisingly clear in the calendar, a welcome oasis after the Mentor Madness of week two.  Ha!  Appearances can be deceiving and it didn't quite work out that way.  We had a little more time to crack on with our own agenda - but the diary soon filled with more meetings with great people.

ABOVE: The Techstars clock keeps ticking, and still creates a tingle in the spine each time I walk past it, especially on a Monday morning!

ABOVE: Dom, Ben and I like to get in early before the office gets too busy.  Warner Yard is a great working environment but it is quite noisy and intense at times, so it's nice to find a little quiet thought time at the beginning of the day.  I need some headphones!

ABOVE: On Tuesday, Dom very excitedly opened a package that he had ordered.  The picture I took and posted in the previous blog post. This now sits at the end of our desks (I am glad to have been the photographer and not featured!).

ABOVE: Every day the whiteboard next to the clock lists what's on and an inspirational quote from Tak and Mark.

Our deep dive this week featured Jens Lapinski who is Jon Bradford's counterpart in Berlin.  He is massively bright and very experienced.  It's like someone looking at your business with x-ray glasses.  He gave us some good challenge which was really helpful.  We are really focusing in on who our customer is.

ABOVE: On Thursday night, we played spin-the-bottle (not that kind!) where one unfortunate soul gets to stand up and explain another team's business.  This was very amusing but I think we all managed to do a reasonable job of pitching each other's companies.  Each week we state our high's, lows and what we are asking of the other teams.  There is a real feeling that we are all in it together.

ABOVE: Our Founder's Stories this week was Yonatan Raz-Fridman of Kano Computing.  It's a computer that anyone can make for under £100. It was a fantastic story and a brilliant product.  Checkout their award winning website. 

Friday whizzed by as we started work on our new website (it feels like version 43,264!). 

Time to go home!

ABOVE: It was fantastic to get back for the weekend to my home city, and spend some time with the children and celebrate my birthday with them.  Here, my youngest is manning her own stall at the school Christmas fete.

Before long it will soon be time to come run to London again to face another week of mentors (VCs this time), and that dreaded clock!   

Techstars London Winter 2014 - Week 2

I stayed down in London on Friday and Saturday night and Emma joined me. We had a friend's 60th birthday party at the Museum of Water and Steam which was fantastic if a little surreal.  Surrounded by some of the largest and most amazing machinery of the 19th century.

ABOVE: The aforementioned friend Leslie, who does parties in style.

ABOVE: The party boasted a room where we had to do life drawing (this is my old CEO Terry, fortunately fully clothed with a few props),.  There was also a room full of people doing speed-dating and a room full of actors where everyone treated you like a long lost friend.

ABOVE: A hasty train home on Sunday morning to see the girls, and it seemed no time before I was back on the train Monday night (I had a funeral on Monday and so missed Day 1 of Mentor Madness).

ABOVE: Week 2 was full of mentor meetings, a process a little like rapid speed dating with the same odds on finding chemistry. You have just 20 mins per meeting with a rapid change-over marshalled by Techstars own Mark who has an impressive range of hand gestures (all polite) to keep things going.

We expected this process to be somewhat exhausting but found it quite manageable - at least for the first four days. Not every mentor sees every company so you get small breaks to recover.

At the end of each morning, Jon meets up with the mentors in closed session over lunch where they play a gladiator-inspired version of Rock, Paper Scissors. On the count of three, each mentor gives a thumbs up or down to indicate the likelihood that each business will survive. Our aim is to improve day by day.  It think it's fair to say that we have improved as the week has gone on. We found ourselves trying different techniques, almost A/B testing our proposition.  We are getting clearer.

ABOVE: On Tuesday we got a surprise invitation and Ben and I walked to Oxford Street to buy hats, this being the dress-code for a drinks party with a VC relevant to our sector. It was the one thing I had left at home! Ben and I were very unsure that is was the look they were after, but it was a great networking event anyway.

ABOVE: This is us going to grab our usual array of Lunches from the Leather lane pop-up food stalls so a good time to introduce the rest of the team.  The picture looks a little like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - not intentional.

Roll call left to right:  Barry is the tall guy who focuses on marketing and business development. A smooth dresser, always asks for permission to ask a question before asking a question. The man in black at the back is Dom, our CTO. Dom describes himself as "a machine that turns sugar into code". He was clearly born to blog, and is writing a daily post on our Techstars experience. Check it out. The joker at the front is Chris who looks after our users. He works hard on keeping our beta group engaged and stops us from getting too serious.  Next is Ben, CEO and the brains of the bunch. It's his original idea we are all backing.  Ben is one of the nicest vegetarians I know. ;). Finally we have Nathan, coder-extraordinaire who seems to be genuinely unflappable and acts as a calming influence on the rest of the group.

These are a great bunch of guys to be working with.

ABOVE: On Thursday we had our first show and tell and Ben did really well. I think it sketched in some missing pieces for the rest of the Techstars cohort. It was great to see the remaining teams do their demos too.

By Friday we were once again wrung out. An email from Jon late on Thursday night informed us that most of Friday's mentors were VCs.  That helped to drain the last bit of energy from us. The combination of deeper questioning and tiredness did make Friday's sessions a little harder. However, the extra level of challenge was very useful and left me with a resounding question that stayed with me for the weekend.

"What company do we want to be?"

More on that one in a future post.

On Friday afternoon I hoofed it back to Norwich, calling in on a local 54 hour hackathon www.syncthecity.com that Rainbird was sponsoring before getting home to see Emma and the girls - which was lovely. The highlight of my week is just to flop on the sofa and watch whatever rubbish TV they want to watch. Being away makes these simple pleasures so much more important. 

ABOVE: Family time was cut short this weekend because on Saturday evening I co-judged the Sync the City hackathon (coverage here), but it was another opportunity to spend time with Jon Bradford who kindly came to Norwich to join the judging panel. There were 11 startup teams and some great pitches. Congratulations to all involved.  It was good to spend some more time with Jon.

ABOVE: On a personal note, I have managed to trap a nerve in my neck which was slowly getting worse all week. I got to my Doctor this weekend and have taken the opportunity to stock up on medication (which hopefully I won't need).  I hereby pledge to improve my exercise position, working position and pillow position.

So, as I write this I am on the delayed Monday morning service from Norwich to Liverpool Street - standing room only.

I wonder what week 3 has in store?

Techstars London Winter 2014 - Week 1

I think a picture speaks a thousand words, so I will try and keep my blog heavy on photos.  In order to get a flavour of what Techstars was like, I did a little Googling and found the excellent blog of Techstars Alumni Mick Hagan of Spatch who went through the last London programme. (I have now had the pleasure of meeting Mick in person and I can confirm he is a smart and helpful guy).  Mick's blog helped me get my head around what Techstars might mean to our business as well as to me and my family personally.

Techstars is all about "give first" and one week in, we can feel that sense of community.  Everyone is helpful.  Perhaps this blog might help future cohorts?

In the days leading up to the programme I was full of anticipation and keen to get my head around the place, the people and the plan.

ABOVE: As we moved our stuff to London, I felt pretty melancholy at leaving Norwich.  Whitespace, we will be back!

My apartment was not ready until Tuesday so I spent the first couple of nights in the Malmaison hotel. My wife Emma came down to London with me on Sunday so we got to enjoy a last supper and a couple of drinks with some of the team which was great. A real treat!

The next morning it was a quick breakfast and we were on our way.

ABOVE: My teammates on the first day:  Ben, Barry, Chris, Nathan and Dom.

ABOVE: Getting set up.

ABOVE: Our first briefing with Jon Bradford.

Monday morning, Jon laid out the road ahead and defined what we could expect.  It's nice to be told that we are awesome to have been accepted - but that's the ego-stroking out of the way.  We have an insane amount of work to get done.

ABOVE: The infamous Techstars countdown clock to Demo Day.  This really gets to you and I am already getting an adrenaline boost every time I walk past it!  I am glad we can't see it from our desks.

The afternoon was dedicated to an icebreaker challenge and this was our first chance to meet each other properly.  These are all smart and dynamic people.  We have some great support in the Hackstars and Associates too.

ABOVE: Techstars Associate Helena provides the first clue for our London treasure-hunt.

ABOVE: This seems like a good name for a pub, but no time to stop.

Our teams were mixed up.  Ben's team won and our team came second so a good result.  We all go and have an Indian curry together and finish the first day totally exhausted but happy to be with some great people.

On Tuesday Techstar's own Tak and Mark set some homework which really focuses us on our mission.  It get's us into a lot of debate and we spend time scrutinising our product, market and business in detail.

ABOVE: Ben and I finally get into our apartment and we meet there and work until midnight.

It's Wednesday and we have our first deep dive with Jon and some of the Associates.  We face probing and thoughtful questions and leave the session with a bunch of actions for the week.

ABOVE: Thursday morning Ben and I have just enough time to grab a croissant before we attend a meeting Jon has secured for us.  It was great to see Jon in action.  The meeting went very well and could lead to an amazing project.

ABOVE: On Thursday afternoon we end up in an epic whiteboard session as we work through the gain creators and pain relievers of our product, and really get under the skin of our target market. Rainbird can do so much so we are looking for focus and a clear definition of what we are trying to achieve.  We are tired but are on a roll so we fuel the last hour with a dose of sugar treats and push on through.

By Friday we are all pretty exhausted.  We spend the morning preparing for next week's mentor meetings.  We are really excited to meet these people, share what we are doing and listen to what they have to say.

ABOVE: We grab our usual lunch at the Leather Lane pop-up food stalls round the corner, and rush back to the office to scoff and then crack on with our work.

So how was Week 1?  Frankly, it feels like we have been here for a month but we have just scratched the surface.  We are all looking forward to seeing our families and taking a little bit of time to unwind before we start Week 2.

Bring it on!

James

Mind the Gap between the Business and IT

It as an essential part of any staff induction programme that people are educated about the complex nature of software development, as well as the general chaos that is the internet. Non-technical folk really must understand that building software is not the same as building bridges and know why. Lock them all in a room I say, and do not let them out until they have grasped some basic fundamentals. Make them sign something, and promise never to mumble the questions, “Why is software so difficult?”, “Why is this taking so long?” or “Can we reduce quality a little to get it quicker?”.

I am not saying that asking these questions should be punishable by hanging, at least not for a first offence. But if you hear these phrases - swift action is required.

It really doesn’t help that we refer to programming as software engineering in the first place. The flexibility available in software engineering is much greater than any other form of engineering and nearly everything you build in software is something new.

Let’s say you want to build a bridge - an age old comparison.

In the real world of civil engineering, we have been building bridges for centuries and the basic principles are well understood. You invest in meticulous design, perform numerous calculations, plan in absolute detail and then build. You can bet your bottom dollar that there will be zero opportunities to change the design once you start.

However, if you are building software you are probably creating something quite new so it requires research and exploration with failure and rebuilding being a normal part of the process.

If we were building a bridge in software, we might start by creating some pillars, then add the road, string up some cables. Someone decides it would be cool to add a walkway. Good idea! So we bolt on a path and then add some more pillars and swap out the cables for bigger ones.

This keeps going until the stakeholder's are happy.

Our software bridge was scoped but it lacked the up-front exhaustive design that a real bridge requires, probably because the stakeholder's could not decide to the nth degree what they wanted in advance - this being the first time someone has built a bridge. Even if they did design it in advance and in detail, it would still be like building a bridge where dependencies such as your environment, tools and materials were all changing around you.

I suspect the first bridge was rubbish. I bet that it failed.

One more thing. In software, 99.99% uptime is excellent. With bridges, 99.99% uptime is catastrophic.

Anyway, enough with the bridges and back to the gap.

We live in a world where all software is built this way with numerous connections and interdependencies. Business people need to understand that software (and the internet) work this way. Because of this, the internet it is breaking, everywhere, all the time and all developers really get to do is paper-over the cracks to keep things running.

You might wonder why programmers seem a little bit different to everyone else… Perhaps you even think they are their own special brand of crazy. Read this excellent article by Peter Welch and things might become clearer as to why.

Everyone appreciates the transformative value of technology, but most fail to grasp how hard software is to develop and maintain - and how close it is to breaking. It is my view that this single lack of understanding lies at the heart of any gap that opens up between the business and IT. It results in friction, lost momentum and numerous wasted opportunities.

Although you might expect a gap to be prevalent in large corporations, surely start-ups should be able to avoid this trap? You might hope so but I have seen many early-stage businesses also find themselves caught out.

Most business people have not been software developers or studied the way the internet works - to really comprehend the internal workings of this tangled mess we all rely on. If they did, they would simply run screaming.

“This developer is telling me that his job is filled with impossible complexity and the mitigation of constant errors. Do I really believe this or are they just not very good?”

I understand your scepticism. If you have never developed software yourself, it is probably hard to believe. I am not undervaluing what you do, but your own job is probably less chaotic with fewer variables at play. As Peter Welch put’s it, working with software can be like, “digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver.” There are more lines of code in some software than there are bricks in a skyscraper or rivets in a bridge.

So what happens in a start-up where this simple facts have not been universally understood?

It starts with an inevitable lack of synchronicity as the business shifts direction and the technology fails to move at quite the required pace. Start-ups are more agile than larger businesses but can also pivot much more dramatically. If you don’t have the right team and if they don’t get these basic principles, frustration can build in the business and when that happens, you can easily enter a subtle spiral of decline.

Business people want certainty and dates and apply pressure when things are not on course. Corners get cut, technical debt is accrued and problems are greased into the future. Things get on the back foot. Pretty soon business people are saying things like, “What do you mean you have to refactor your code." and "I can do it quicker myself!”. In the most serious cases, mission-critical spread-sheets are created, a cancerous growth if ever I saw one.

Why do technical people not stand their ground under this pressure?

Because they generally respect the fact that the technology tail should not be wagging the business dog. It take a strong technical lead to not to buckle under business pressure when pushed hard enough.

You can break them entirely if you try hard enough. You recognise the signs because they will stop fighting back, smile and do what you want - knowing that you will learn the hard way.

In large organisations it’s like the Grand Canyon, with business folks on one side shouting at IT on the other who aren’t shouting back because they gave up ages ago. Both sides feel they are a different sub-species that speak a different language. Each side of the canyon has a valid but very different perspective of the world. But on a clear day, both can see the huge pile of lost opportunities lying on the canyon floor between them.

If the world of software is about controlling and diminishing chaos, how do you create a culture of universal understanding, where business people do not press technical people to do bad things that will make the world worse?

How do you counter this from the outset in a start-up? It’s easy… Just make sure that everyone appreciates that whether you make software or mopeds, sell peanuts or loans - the chances are that you are still a technology business. Make sure everyone knows what this means, from the Chairman to the summer intern. Make sure that technical people are valued stakeholders and trusted advisors. It's that simple.

At Rainbird Technologies, every employee, regardless of their role, has to build a software project - even if it is just a small one. They create a real thing that they have to expose to the outside world and maintain. Everyone reads Peter Welch’s article and many more like it, because apart from anything else it will make them laugh about how horrible code can get. Everyone understands that all our developers are core to what we do. We are a technology-led business and we are proud of it. Our business people and our technology people are on the same page, all the time.

How do we do that? We do many things but here is a simple one. Every Friday lunchtime we all go out to a restaurant and have lunch together. We do this for many reasons, but mainly because we must stay aligned and united. It is easier for us because we are a small company, but any business can make a conscious effort to give everyone an absolute appreciation for the complexity of the technical world we all choose to be part of.

Do schools make innovators?

I feel on thin ice when I talk about education.  What do I know?  While it is highly anecdotal but the school system seems to be constraining students when it comes to innovation.  My brothers are both academics.  They both lecture and are both working on their Phds.  Perhaps it's some attempt to balance the universe because I have no formal education!

Anyway, Dom's students often seem to have had the hunger knocked out of them by the time they get to him.  Many seem to have long since lost their childish thirst for knowledge and are preoccupied with knowing simply how to get the grades.  There is little spirit of enquiry and many have lost the passion to learn for learning's own sake.  

Saul Klein, the Index Ventures VC and founder of Seedcamp summed it up nicely.  

“The brightest kids, the entrepreneurs and the innovators have always taught themselves what they need to know outside of the education system. We need dedicated time where students are free to follow what drives them.”

Something like this has existed since 2008.  The Extended Project Qualification (EPQ).  At a recent business talk I addressed an audience of 75 people - mainly from businesses but some from universities.  Only two people had hear about EPQs, one teacher and one student who had just completed an EPQ.   Over 30,000 six formers submitted EPQs in 2013, nearly as many that took A level physics, but the qualification is only offered at a limited number of schools. 

It sets aside 120 hours of work on a project of the student’s choosing.  It has been praised by universities for developing independent research skills, bridging the gap between higher and further education.  However, from my limited research it seems that six forms have constrained EPQs to academic dissertations which kind of misses the point doesn't it? The student who attended my talk did her EPQ by writing a thesis on 19th century french politics.  Really, was that of the student's choosing?

By pursuing their own ideas, students will learn how to plan a project, anticipate challenges, take criticism, take risks, fail and then pick themselves up and try again.  Perhaps we should make EPQs available to all teenagers and perhaps 6 forms ought not to constrain them?

I’ve seen the light! - Why I've invested in big data

I have recently made investments in businesses that are set on tackling the world’s biggest data challenges. Why? Because the insight that will eventually be gained from big data will undoubtably change the world. 

Big data may currently be the most over-used buzz phrase in circulation, but the topic is being discussed everywhere, despite being misunderstood by many.  Pretty much everyone has their own definition.  

While the technology giants Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and others have all recruited the brightest minds in an attempt to find patterns in the social media chaos, big data is about much more than them.   

In 2012, Gartner updated their definition of big data to “...high volume, high velocity, and/or high variety information assets that require new forms of processing to enable enhanced decision making, insight discovery and process optimization".

While its a mouthful, I like this 'three v' definition.  It highlights that big data is about much more than data volume.  Perhaps more relevant is data velocity, the speed of the data flow.  This represents a bigger challenge because when data is in flux, the window to extract usable knowledge is smaller. The final ‘v’ is about managing a variety of data types, something that represents challenges to current technology.

The Gartner definition recognises that completely new forms of processing are required and neatly captures the purpose of big data.  It’s about gaining new insights, and discoveries which will result in new ways of seeing our world.  I hope it will enable us to make some critical decisions that doubtless await us and our children.  But, we just can’t get to where we want to be by building more of the same. Fresh thinking is needed.  

I am intrigued by the developments being made to advance our data analysis capabilities, that is, new methods of searching through the vast data that we have already accumulated and new AI tools have an exciting role to play here.  I also believe our future lies in engineering totally new methods of analysing truly massive volumes of flowing data too vast to ever imagine consider being stored.  

Big data analysis methods are designed to balance speed and function and everything is always a compromise. What if radically different technology could enabled us to analyse everything, miss nothing and learn the exciting new truths as a result?

There is big data and then there is BIG data.  Consider the volume of data involved in running the Large Hadron Collider.  If all of the data were to be captured from its 150m sensors it would equate to 500 exabytes per day.  That’s almost 200 times more than the rest of the world’s sources combined.  The new Square Kilometre Array being built in Australia will require bandwidth bigger than the entire current global internet. Significant compromise is made in Computational Fluid Dynamics, a field of engineering that is used to predict the weather, model aerodynamics and calculate how other gas and fluids flow through a system. Huge amounts of data is discarded in an MRI machine because it cannot be stored or processed.  These sophisticated machines dump much of the data and still resort to printing an image for a Doctor to 'eyeball' in order to make a diagnosis.  What could be achieved if all of this data could be analysed?

To search seriously big data we need some seriously new technology.  Advances are being made in both quantum and optical computing and I think the next generation of computing might just be optical.  

We can all comprehend that you can encode a lot of data into a single beam of light.  A single optical fiber can already hold three million concurrent phone calls or 90,000 TV channels.  Why then is light not the answer to our processing needs?  It has been recognised since the 1960’s that it is possible to perform mathematical equations with light.  Optical processing could also be very low energy, unlike quantum computing which involves cooling components close to absolute zero.  For example, Optalysys aims to build a computer 1,000 times faster than any supercomputer that exists today capable of being run on a domestic power supply - achievable in part because you can parallel process with light in a way that you cannot with electricity.

Big Data is becoming increasingly relevant to all aspects of our lives but our ability to process is not even close to being on the right scale.  Our ambitions are tempered by the very real limits of electronic processing. However, advances are coming fast and there is no doubt that big data is driving it.  The answers will certainly have big implications for our future.