Just to mix it up a little:

Filmed on 24/01/08.

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My daily activities over the last few months have largely consisted of sitting at home, watching Scrubs, playing guitar and procrastinating on the Internet in between numerous job interviews and impromptu visits to Oxford! That is until this week, which came as a bit of shock to the body and mind, because for the first time since last summer I have actually become busy again. Tom and I are now working in 5th gear to revitalise his idea and get the project off the ground - there’s a lot to do. Having been out of the start up loop for a while I decided to do a bit of research first to get clued up on what’s going on. I found e-consultancy’s 25 top resources for internet startup founders particularly useful and it’s definitely worth a read if you are considering going down the web start up route and aren’t sure where to begin.

With an idea in hand, the important thing for us now is putting together a complete team. Vishal Kapadia, a fellow Oxford graduate and marketing psychology ace, has joined us this week as the third slice in the pie that is Faceyourcause. We’re relying on Vish to use jedi marketing mind tricks to make faceyourcause viral! This leaves us with one big gaping hole in our team: we still don’t have anyone to build the website. With 3 guys on the business side and no coders we can put together a kick ass business plan but that’s no good without a product so our priority is to get a lead developer on board, which means we have a lot of networking to do.

Using my wit, Tom’s blagging skills and Vish’s powers of persuasion, we were confident we could get a developer who would be willing to work for free in our non existent office and we’ve spent the last few days searching London’s start up community for our man (or woman). Our first port of call was the Facebook Developers Garage, on Wednesday night. This is a monthly gathering of London’s Facebook application developers, consultants and religious followers. After 2 hours of presentations and a shortage of free pizza we left without many leads and a serious case of Facebook fatigue! Thursday morning’s Open Coffee wasn’t much more promising but we did meet the guys at Intruders.tv who gave us some useful tips on how and where to find these elusive developers, who aren’t already working on a project and don’t mind taking equity rather than cash.

They say you can’t beat a founder’s passion but by Thursday evening I definitely felt like it had been beaten out of me! Remaining determined, the three of us headed to PizzaOnRails, a gathering organised by Cominded for London Rails developers. With pizzas in plentiful supply this time around, our luck did finally turn around and we managed to find some developers interested in what we were doing. We also had the privilege of witnessing the launch of yabb.com, which offers users the opportunity to talk to total strangers (on skype) about topics that they share an interest in. In the words of Paul Birch, yabb’s founder, the website is about re-inventing the ‘art’ of conversation, but like Paul, most of us couldn’t work out who would want to use it. One to keep an eye on I think.

Finally on to Minibar on Friday, which I attended on my own because my partners in crime were slacking off! Held every month in Shoreditch, this event had the most buzz out of the few that I had been to. With developers, designers and entrepreneurs in attendance, this was the best event of the week for anyone new to start ups. I accumulated a few more Moo cards and enjoyed some testing conversations and after the re-run of the yabb presentation, it was definitely my cue to leave.

With a few meetings lined up for next week and some really useful feedback, the last few days of networking were productive, despite the slow start. One thing I have noticed is that unlike the nightclubs which my social life had been revolving around, at start up networking events the alcohol is usually free and there’s always a queue outside the Gents.

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I’ve been getting some great feedback from my first post which has been really encouraging so thank you very much!

I feel like I should come clean because I have a little confession to make: Despite stating in my first post that I was in the process of thinking of an idea, the truth is that I’ve already started working on a project which I am very excited about…

Last week I caught up with a friend of mine, Tom Latchford who graduated with me last year and is in a similar situation with wanting to start a company. We met at a bar in Soho which I highly recommend to anyone who is looking for cheap cocktails on a Thursday night, it’s called Zebrano and you can find it just off Regents Street. I had signed up for the free membership a couple of years ago but never claimed my card and free cocktail until last week.

We started running through the ideas that had been accumulated by us independently over the past few months. I find telling someone about my ideas who I can trust will give me honest feedback a very useful way of separating the promising ones from the downright stinkers. The more ideas you have the better and don’t miss any out, you might think some are really silly but with some fresh insight an idea can really take shape. I went through a list of my weird and wonderful ideas which included Facebook apps and plantains and then Tom told me a few of his.

One of Tom’s ideas in particular really stood out and as he explained it to me in more detail and we started talking about its potential I had one of those real hair on the back of your neck stands up moments which can only be triggered by what I call a BIG IDEA.

What is the BIG IDEA?

Well this actually leads on quite neatly to an important point I wanted to make about disclosure on this blog. I am going to try my best to make my posts as informative as possible but I won’t be able to give too much away, especially at this early stage. I’m sure you understand that it is important to protect an idea which while it is still being developed but as we move forward I will be able to reveal more and more until eventually you’ll get sick of me plugging it all the time!

So in answer to the question “What is the BIG IDEA?” - I can divulge the following:

Face Your Cause provides a revolutionary approach to fundraising for charities you support and will change the way people donate to charity.

Keep an eye on this blog for more info on this but for now that’s all I can say.

If you are interested in taking a leap of faith based on this description and would like to get involved please do email me. Tom and I are looking for a lead developer to get on board and I have my eyes set on Ruby on Rails as the preferred environment but more on that in my next post.

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Hello and welcome to my new blog!

Last week after much debate (with myself), I decided I want to have another go at starting an Internet company. This decision came much to my parents’ horror, who were probably hoping I was done with the whole “I want to be an entrepreneur” phase after I left ClickUni - a start-up which I co-founded along with David Langer and Andy Young while doing my BA at Oxford. Convincing my parents, who after all are putting a roof over my head and keeping me fed and watered that this is the right decision was not easy, but it did help me to convince myself that I had thought things through. To be honest I am still only about 75% sure that this what I want to do, but given my somewhat indecisive nature, I think 25% in any direction is pretty promising!

So what has motivated me to blog about this journey I am about to embark on? Well I wanted to share my personal take on starting a company and making it successful, from coming up with the “killer idea” all the way through to launching the product/service and beyond. From my previous experience with ClickUni I know that there are going to be lots of decisions to make and challenges to face along the way and I’m hoping that by blogging regularly I can share my experiences in a way that will be useful to anyone else on the same path or just entertain those that would have known better! I’m also a strong believer in the old adage “A problem shared is a problem halved” so blogging should help me clarify my problems and find some solutions - with your help of course.

Now, I just need to come up with an idea… While I start thinking, you can enjoy watching this amusing video of Bill Gates on his last day at work which I have included purely because I really wanted to have a video in my first post. You are only truly successful when you are friends with Bono.

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