Week 11

Day 71: Chef

Monday, 2nd February 2015 23:11

Today Ben and I got some coaching on presentation skills. This was mainly for Ben’s benefit given he’s delivering our demo day pitch, but is also hugely beneficial for me. I’ve got a number of talks lined up over the next couple of months, including one tomorrow.

Ben is now spending a huge amount of time writing and rewriting the script for demo day, which is why he ended up round at our flat tonight. I cooked (Pad Thai with cashews, and a side of spicy prawns for the carnivores), Ben pitched, and we all agonised over wording, order, and structure.

Given the way the coaching works we - and by we, I mean Ben - need something that is as close to the final script as possible by next week. I can see every night being pitch practice. I may be doing a fair bit of cooking.

Day 72: Drive

Tuesday, 3rd February 2015 23:06

So this morning started badly when I was woken by Chris’ alarm. This can only mean one thing: I’ve overslept. By 75 minutes. My waking thought was a slightly stronger version of “oh crap!”

Interestingly, however, “overslept” is a subjective term. The only person saying I must get up at 6am is me. Part of that is to do with the fact that when I go home 6am is part of my daily routine. Part of it is to do with the fact that I want to nail as much of the day as early as possible.

The key thing is that no-one is telling me I need to be in the office at 7. Not Ben, not Techstars, not our investors. I am driven to be there at that time. Driven to give my best. And I’m not alone. Techstars is full of driven people. It’s why we’re there.

So yes, I overslept. But there is a positive. I got 7 hours sleep instead of 6, so I’m slightly less tired than perhaps I might otherwise have been. Hopefully that equates to more output in the reduced time.

Day 73: Circling the drain

Wednesday, 4th February 2015 18:46

I have the plague. And by plague I mean death. And by death I mean a slight cold. To be honest, it’s not even man-flu. But it’s there and it’s getting worse. Crap diet, no sleep and long days is going to turn it into full blown man-flu if I’m not careful. If I was by myself this weekend I’d not worry, push through it for the next two days and then spend the weekend in bed.

But I’m going home for the first time in nearly a month and I’d like to spend some time with my family. So I’ve left work early - because these days 07.15-17:15 is a half day that I started 15 minutes late…

I may well be in bed by 20:00 which should give me 9+ hours of sleep and see me raring to go tomorrow.

Day 74: Awesome

Thursday, 5th February 2015 22:03

So Nathan has been working on the build pipeline for our front end systems over the past couple of days. Not the most gripping of subjects I’ll admit, especially given the back end build is, to put it mildly, boring as hell (even if you’re into that kind of thing). That said, what he’s put together is bloody amazing. Make a change, bam, it’s there in the browser which is, to my mind, just plain old voodoo.

It’s this kind of thing that makes working in startups so awesome. You get to work with some seriously bright people who are given the chance to try out new things, and they often end up blowing you away. It does make you wonder how much creativity and innovation is stifled at larger organisations as it’s buried under process and rigid standard.

Day 75: Normal For Norfolk

Friday, 6th February 2015 17:39

Norfolk has a hideous reputation as a backward county. Even the largest employer in the area, Aviva, plays on this trope with it’s advertising campaigns. The problem is one of both of location, and transport links. You don’t pass through Norfolk to get to anywhere - other than perhaps the North Norfolk coast for a holiday. If you’re going to Norfolk it’s likely a deliberate journey, and one that’s made difficult due to decisions made in previous centuries regarding road and rail links.

While problematic in the past, location is no longer as much of a concern when it comes to modern, digital business. It’s partly because of this that Norwich finds itself nurturing its very own tech cluster. I know. It’s true! There’s even a report done by TechCity that proves it. While you’re reading that, check out the red bird logo on some of the pages. That’s us. Great, isn’t it?

With groups like nor(DEV): and SyncNorwich, and events like nor(DEV):con and SyncTheCity you also get to realise that it’s a very active tech scene too. Either that, or we get very bored on a night and need to make up things to do. Either way, we’ve managed to attract some top notch speakers over the years.

So for those who have expressed surprised that Rainbird made it into Techstars because they are Norwich based you may want to look again. It’s not really all that surprising at all. To me it was never a question of if a Norfolk company could get it, it was just a question of when.

Incidentally, and this is purely here for anyone who has any sway over these types of things, but a really, really good way to help a burgeoning tech sector, like that found in Norfolk, is to have good, fast, reliable broadband. Hell, some of us would be happy with just band, broad or otherwise. So if you know someone, who could talk to someone, who could put in a good word for us, that would be super. Or, you know, a proper rail link. One that doesn’t involve me going via Billericay on a bus on a weekend when I’m going to London to get a mobile signal. Just a thought.

Day 77: Final Leg

Sunday, 8th February 2015 16:49

So this is it. The final leg until demo day. In 12 days time it will all be pretty much over bar the shouting. We pack up on the 21^st and head home just in time for me to turn 40 on the 22^nd.

It was a little odd coming home this time. I’ve not been there for over a month, and the fact I stayed for less than 48 hours made it more like I was visiting somewhere rather than returning home. This has a lot to do with my being very much in a Techstars mind frame, and the impending deadline that is demo day.

I now face a four hour journey back to London that is conspiring to stop me from doing anything productive. The train to Norwich is a single carriage affair with no free tables and narrow seat pitch (I’m writing this on my iPad while sitting at a very odd angle in my seat). The train to Norwich is actually something like two trains and a bus. I can’t even read on buses without getting motion sickness. As a result I’ve elected to go via Cambridge. It still takes forever, but I’m rather hoping there will be tables, data connections (even if it is just hopping onto the station wifi at each stop) and the ability to get some work done.