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?