I’ve been critical of the companies selected in the past, so now I have a chance to show that an early stage company with potential can make a great Seedcamp company.

To be honest the terms scared me a bit. I believe the equity we’re giving up if we’re successful is significant, but it’s not about the financial value that we decided to go for it. Seedcamp, like Y Combinator and other projects like this are great for providing a hand up in terms of conversations with customers, partners and other investors.

I’ve met with a lot of potential investors over the past year, it’s been an insane whirlwind or a year. And while many investors take meeting after meeting after meeting without a firm answer and while other “investors” charge customers to pitch. Seedcamp may invest a smaller amount but being able to leverage the network and getting a firm decision quickly is something that you can’t put a price on, especially when you’re at the stage we’re at – really early!

There’s a line I like about a little of something is worth more than a lot of nothing so hopefully Seedcamp will help us turn Ad Avengers into something and that’s why we decided to go for it. Watch this space next week for more on how the process shakes out and wish us luck!

Here’s the corporate blog post as well.

I’m all in favour of the efforts and the investment that the government is putting in; I’d just like to see more encouragement of private investment and of the banking sector to invest in individuals who have the next big idea. The whole idea that the next Facebook or Google can come out of the UK with this framework is not realistic today. There’s a substantial change that needs to happen in angel investment, banking and culture before a big consumer tech company will come out of the UK. The guardian article with comments from Joe White is the only article I’ve read that points this out well.

A company needs much less capital today to get started. While the government looks at raising funds for investment what they really should be doing is passing on tax relief for investors who are investing in truly early stage companies. As well as changing and encouraging the banking sector to lend to early stage companies with solid teams and markets and help take on some of the risk. The UK government has some of the levers in place with the Enterprise Investment Scheme and the Enterprise Finance Guarantee but they’ve made these schemes so convoluted and so complicated that it’s really difficult for anyone to really take advantage of these levers.

The UK culture towards entrepreneurship is changing, but failure is still seen as a bad thing rather than a badge of having the courage to try something new. The media, with it’s programs like Dragon’s Den, doesn’t help this by making 4 entrepreneurs seem like bumbling idiots compared to every 1 who has their head screwed on right.

That being said, I do believe London is one of the top three places in the world to start a company – with the Valley and New York being the other two – and while this is a great step towards ensuring that London continues to compete globally on the technology front, there’s still some work on the other side of the spectrum that the government needs to do to take a leadership position globally.

Eight and a half years ago I came to London with little more then a dollar (actually I came with about 50K CAD in debt, thanks OSAP) and a dream. Even though I’m really looking forward to leaving London, there are a lot of things I will miss, off the top of my head:

• The cool areas and discovering at least one new area every year
• The parks, Hyde, Regents, Primrose Hill, great for picnics, kite watching, and general “veg”- ing out when the weather allowed (which wasn’t often enough)
• Borough market and flower power brownies
• The free museums, especially when the budget was tight or friends were visiting (especially the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, and The V&A)
• The people, Londoners are a special breed; it took me about 16 months before I really felt like one
• Great restaurants, forget whatever you’ve heard about English cuisine, the food is brilliant from the restaurants of big name chefs to the chains to the local cafes.
• The tech, biz and media communities – it may not be wall st or the valley but can’t think of another place that has so many diverse vibrant communities

The not going to miss list is much shorter – the weather. I’ve got the man flu right now and I’m sure it’s because the rain/sunshine mix is so unpredictable. London has two seasons rain and more rain.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel more at home here in London then I have anywhere else in the world. It’ll always have a special place in my life and one that I can’t see being taken.

Kites in the sky

Originally uploaded by farhanlalji
Took this picture yesterday while walking around in Hampstead Heath. It always amazes me how much green space there is in London. You could be in the middle of buildings and yet not be far from a big park. Love it.

After putting our flat on the market in June, getting an offer we accepted in July/beginning of August, and waiting what seemed a lifetime for a report from the council and the mortgage lender on our flat, we finally had everything ready to exchange the flat and complete the sale.  And then the buyer told us she wanted us out in four days or we were going to lose the sale.  With our stuff mostly in boxes we decided to do the impossible, and move out of the home we have stayed in for five years in four days!

Luck has been on our side, we found a short term flat – although we’re paying through the nose for 10 days in a very nice flat.  And just yesterday, we signed an 11 month lease on a flat in West Hampstead.

For the past 7 years I’ve secretly – okay not so secretly – pined to live in the Swiss cottage, Finchley Road, West Hampstead area of London.  It’s a really nice neighborhood, where a number of our friends are living.  We’re “roll out of bed and into the tube station” close to the transport links, and there’s a bunch of nice restaurants and pubs in the area.

After spending 7 years south of the river split between an ex-council property with kids banging on doors and running away (or doing worse) and in a basement studio with dodgy plumbing, I’m ecstatic to be in a neighborhood with families and sane people.  Not to mention to have a toilet that won’t catch fire – don’t ask!

I’m hoping the family and friends who’ve visited the old place will come again, its 2 bedrooms so you’ll have your space still.  And the family and friends who haven’t visited yet the door’s open. We’re home.

I went on strike, once, for one day. It was when I was in the Public Sector, and my job was Internet Manager. The site I was responsible for stayed up, people connected, read information and no one was really inconvenienced or injured. I didn’t get the point of going on strike then, and I don’t get the point of going on strike now. But I was under worked and underpaid (relative to the people around me) and could use a day off, so I took it.

I get the point that sometimes a work force has a problem with management and how management’s running things. But surely there has to be a better way to solve an issue then to flex your muscles and hurt a bunch of people who have nothing to do with the disagreement. No one wins in an action like this, and the costumer, tax payer or whoever is dependent on whatever service loses, and loses big.

I think the final step in a failed negotiation between a work force and management should be independent arbitration rather then workplace action. This should be the case specifically and especially in areas where so many people depend on services running well – like healthcare, education, safety and transport

Mumbai

Originally uploaded by farhanlalji

The Tate Modern has a fantastic exhibit right now, called Global Cites. I finally got a chance to go and see it this weekend. If you’re in London and you’re looking for something to do this week/next weekend, I can’t recommend this exhibit enough.

From the Tate’s website:
“Global Cities looks at the changing faces of ten dynamic international cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo.”

Slightly surreal moment for me when – after I read how Mumbai had 34,000 people per kilometer squared (compared to London which has 4,500 people per kilometer squared), and I used some basic math to deduce that this means about 34 people per m squared in Mumbai – the lady next to me said “there are way too many people at this exhibit”. The density in the exhibit was about 2 people per m squared… maybe.

man_u_teddies

Originally uploaded by farhanlalji

While having lunch today with the wife. These three ladies and their Man United teddy bears joined us. All of a sudden a photo shoot broke out. I resisted the urge to kick one of the teddies into the Thames.

Having watched The Last King of Scotland over the weekend, I revisited the plight of Asians (and Africans) in East Africa during the rule of Idi Amin.  I’ve been fascinated with this period of history for some time now.  As my parents moved from East Africa – Tanzania – to England (my dad) and Canada (my mom), I’ve always felt a connection to East Africa.  In fact as part of my MBA entrance exam I said the three people I would like to invite to my fantasy dinner would be Idi Amin, Pierre Trudeau and my dad.

We also watched Empire’s Children on 4OD this evening, covering the story of Adrian Lester’s travels to Jamaica to trace the steps of his grandfather from St Mary’s to Birmingham.

If that wasn’t enough, the wife is doing an essay for her masters on post colonialism and science fiction.

All of these things make me wonder about our own future travels.  Moving from Canada to England was a bit fluky.  But the future is in our hands now, where do we go from here?  Where is our future?  Is it in England, Canada, the US wherever, or try and make our future by stepping into our past.  Taking a risk and moving to East Africa or even India at some point.  It would be cool to be able to take my family history full circle, from my great grand parents, to my grand parents, to my parents to me, from India to East Africa to England to Canada, and then from Canada to England to Africa and back to India.

In addition, as the wife pointed out, our parents benefited greatly from life in East Africa.  From access to education and the ability to build businesses, our situation would be much different had our ancestors chosen to stay in India.  So it would be pretty cool to go back to Africa and give a little back to the continent.

But then so too would staying in London, enjoying four seasons in one day and British TV be cool.  It’s just a different type of cool.

I used to blog at vox, and while it was a useful blogging tool for someone who was working full time and studying full time – i.e. A chimp could have set it up – the time was right to make a move. So, after a bit of diligence I chose WordPress, picked a pattern, hacked it up a bit, added a couple of widgets and voila, welcome to the life of Farhan, a blog.

To be perfectly honest, my blogging over the past 20 months or so has been pretty weak. I blame it on the stress of doing an executive mba, switching jobs a couple of times and generally being too tired to write anything interesting. Now that I’m done with the mba, at a company I love and a role I’m enjoying things should be different… I hope.

So what am I going to talk about here you ask? Well life in general, life in technology, life in London and other stuff.

My adventures this past weekend are a perfect example of how diverse the topics will be. Friday we went and saw Nitin Sawhney and a bunch of unsigned independent artists put on a great show at the Royal Festival Hall. Rappers, singers, cellists and spoken word artists doing their thing together. Very cool.

Saturday was spent at Borough Market. We’ve recently put our flat on the market and one of the things I’ll miss is the fact that borough market is step counting distance away from us.

Sunday however was a highlight not only of the weekend but possibly the year to date, Yahoo and the beeb organised an open hack day. And as an employee I got the chance to help out. There were great hacks and great people but why go into details when others have done a far better job.

One of the highlights for me was sitting down and chatting with Salim Ismail, another newbie to yahoo. What Salim’s done over the past 10-15 years is pretty incredible, but it’s pretty consistent with the type of people I find myself working with here at Y!

So there you go, first post check. Hopefully you laughed, you cried and you can’t wait to come back. I promise I’ll try not to keep you waiting too long.

Some related stuff:

• more on hackday (plus the Flickr pics – over 4000 pics!)
• while I was writing this, Terry has resigned and Jerry Yang has stepped in as the CEO of the company he helped co-found, my opinion has pretty much been summed up by both Salim and Fred Wilson‘s posts.