Farhan’s Life

So I attended the SeedCamp Interview Day yesterday, and I have to say it was a real eye-opener…

I managed to arrive at the right building, in time, and found that the interviews were running a little late.  That bought me a bit of extra time to get to know some of the folks that were there before me, and also to find out a bit about Michael Orland, one of the hosts of SeedCamp.

Calm, mentally prepared, and ready to pitch BillionInAYear.com I stepped into the room full of all the Investors from the SeedCamp Selection Panel, and got thrown a little by the fact that my presentation hadn’t been received.. Though I was sure I had sent it, and I’d gotten an acknowledgement from one of the Seedcamp folks, I’d foolishly not put the presentation on a memory stick, and was invited to start, whilst Reshma frantically tried to find the presentation slides, and get them onto the screen.  Ironic really, that the start to my presentation was a perfect example of how BillionInAYear.com was a solution to the problem that had just occurred.  Of an email, being sent, and received, and not being readily visible, in the information streams, of the intended recipient.  How often do you get an email from someone, that’s important to your work at that moment, and it gets lost in the stream of email flows coming at you?

Well, fortunately, I recovered from the start, communicated the essence of the idea, answered all the questions that came at me, and before I knew it, the ten minutes were over, and I was invited to step outside..   I guess sometimes, time really does fly when you’re having fun. I just hope all the Selection Panel enjoyed themselves as much as I did.  The body language in the room seemed very closed, and dis-interested to begin with, though that might have been as much to do with trying to hide their true interest, or just a ploy to feign dis-interest.  By contrast, by the time I left the room, I could see some visible indications from some of the audience, of a real interest, and I think I had managed to get some people’s curiosity a little further aroused, but then that could have just been my own imagination!!  I guess once the results of the SeedCamp Interview Day are published, with the finalists for SeedCamp week being announced, then I’ll know just how much interest there really was.  Fortunately, the whole experience got me thinking a little more pro-actively about how I might go about raising funding, and actually taking the time to review the websites of some of the investment companies, that are involved with SeedCamp.   I guess now I really have to keep pushing outwards, and pursuing potential avenues, and sources of funding, to see if I can finally secure a proper seed development budget to build a prototype of BillionInAYear.com – since I really don’t want to be the one to have to write the code for the system myself (mainly since programming is not my real passion, or strength).  There’s been plenty of people who have made offers of support along the way, perhaps now I need to start bringing those people together, and raising some seed funding through those sources, if I don’t get funding through SeedCamp this year.

Well, after the ten minute interview, I had a real eye-opener, when chatting with fellow attendees at the Interview.  One team, who had applied to SeedCamp, weren’t even on Facebook – another preferred to use Xing instead of Facebook, and I slowly started to realise, how the entire web 2.0 world doesn’t revolve around facebook, and twitter, and blogging, as much as I thought it might have done.  In fact, trying to find an online presence for each of the members of the selection panel made me realise how people use these online tools in diversely different ways.  So much so, that to presume that all of the people in SeedCamp are all in Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Twitter would be a huge mistake.. In fact some of the members of the SeedCamp Selection panel, don’t even have a website, like Mark Esiri, and Venrex.  (At least they don’t have any website that I’ve been able to find as yet.. though I’m still looking!)

I’ve come to realise that whilst there are certain tools and services out there that are more popular in certain countries, and less popular in others, Web technologies, and web2.0 startups can exist completely under the radar, Investment Funds can exist without any visible online presence, and the whole world of Technology Startups, is at a significantly different state of play, compared to the bleeding edge technologies, and early adopters.  The fact that colleagues at each of the last two companies I’ve worked with are all on Facebook, illustrate the widespread mainstream adoption of certain technologies by specific demographics, or cross sections of society.  Why, even my dad has joined Facebook, to stay up-to date with photos, and family happenings, seeing as both my sisters live abroad, and our family is distributed across three continents. But even as tech savvy as he is, he’s still only a small percentage of the people in my family who use Facebook.  Some would argue that Facebook is the way forward, but I would have to argue otherwise.  I think inherently we should only ever see online social networks, for the publishing and storing mediums that they are, allowing, us as individuals to express what we want to through the net, or get our message out, to the people that we want to communicate with.  But to see it as a way of staying in touch with others, or staying informed as to what’s happening in other people’s lives is an assumption.  The assumption being, that others are using the same tools to publish information about their lives.  Except when they’re not.  Then we have to create a new login, start a new profile, and succumb to another login, and another URL. Until such a time comes as we can go to one place, find everything we need, and be able to not be overwhelmed by all the information.  FriendFeed does a great job of helping bring people and their content together, but unfortunately, if you’re friend hasn’t signed up, or is a member, you might not be able to see everything they’re publishing.  And when you find a friend writing a blog and being published elsewhere, you won’t be able to use FriendFeed’s service to add it to your friends profile… I don’t think anyone’s yet that forward thinking apart from BillionInAYear.com  But then I could be mistaken.  I’d love to be proven wrong, if you know otherwise, just let me know through the comments!

So, lesson of the day, most people have email, but not all.  Most people are online, and use a social network, but not all. And Web 2.0 is about using the technology, not necessarily being on all the social networks!!

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