Unfortunately, the reaction by the entrepreneurial community has been quite negative. Lots of negative comments on the website that’s apparently at the centre of the campaign. Issues about links to US companies and the execution of the site miss the point.

The point is that entrepreneurship is seen by the government as important and there is an opportunity to harness support, change policies and build networks to help support and give entrepreneurs a better chance at succeeding.

Which is why the cynicism directed at the campaign and the calls for heads for partnering with a US company really annoyed me. I cheekily tweeted that:

“#startupbritain cynicism shows the difference between US/UK! In the US, the response would be cool, let’s get to work.”

To be fair, I don’t think that would be the exact reaction, I just think the US is better at celebrating success and at not paying much attention to failure. As well Americans seem to treat programs that they don’t believe would work with indifference. When the government fails the start up community in the US there’s a powerful movement to solve it. From VCs meeting with heads of state to blog posts that end up turned into op-ed pieces in powerful media outposts. When an entrepreneur does something for the community in the US it seems like the community either helps him make it better or moves on quickly to making their own company a success.

This may be naïve, but I have seen a lot of mud slinging and not a lot of productive feedback. Don’t get me wrong there are some pockets it the UK that are supporting this and are encouraging the movement and there are some really snarky responses to government initiatives in the US as well, I just think the ratio of support : snark / cynicism is reversed and we’re holding our own community here in the UK back as a result of it.

So put aside the cynicism for a second, if you don’t like #startupBritain just move on. If you have a way to improve it give the feedback to the team, and if you’re supportive of the movement carry on. Building great companies in the UK is difficult, we’re going to need all the help we can get and knocking down

It really strikes me as odd that no one is talking about the iPod Touch and how this is a strong seller and growing amongst younger users. Sure, teens love BBM, I’ve seen this on the train repeatedly (where I conduct most of my user observations with people sending me weird looks repeatedly), and this makes a lot of sense as BBM is “cool” and teens like using something their parents aren’t using (parents using iPhones, teens wanting blackberrys). With roughly 2 iPod Touch units sold for every 3 iPhones this is a pretty big user base.

I’m seeing lots of younger teens and kids using iPod touch’s. From as young as our 18 month old (who can unlock, start an app and watch YouTube) to friends’ 4 year olds, 7 year olds to older kids whose parents have deemed these kids as too young to have a phone, an iPod touch is this generation’s game boy. With one exception – it’s still a communication device. As kids get older their using apps as messaging tools.

With recent investments by both Fred Wilson and Mark Suster in “group messaging platforms “(Kik.com and Gogii – which makes textplus.com respectively) and our own in-house use of whatsapp, not to mention Skype, iCall and other messaging applicationsI can see this trend growing.

RIM’s BBM is nice, I’ve long maintained it’s the one killer app that keeps people on BBs, but as this teenage segment becomes young adults and the next generation of teenagers move on from the iPod touch to phones my guess is they’re going to want to stick with an OS they’re familiar with and groups and contacts that move seamlessly from the iPod touch they’ve been using for the past few years, wonder which phones they’ll choose?

That said both of them are missing key points when it comes to social media.

Seth,In Lynchpin, thinks social media is a giant time suck and people would be better served spending their time making stuff happen. Gladwell thinks social media’s reach is limited and that we won’t we see a revolution through a medium like Twitter. They’re both right but they’re wrong as well.

They’re right in that social media CAN be a time suck and that a giant movement needs a lot more channels than twitter, but what their both missing is that social media connects and makes people far more aware than ever before. Being connected and being aware helps inform and create in a way that was not possible a while ago. Gladwell and Godin are not active on twitter or any other social media channel (I’d link to their twitter feeds but their both useless on twitter).

Personally, I think Steven Johnson’s research and thinking on connectedness is bang on, when Steven says “Chance favours the connected mind” that totally resonates with me and my experiences. Do yourself a favour and watch this four-minute video from Steven Johnson about “good ideas”.

The key with social media is to know what you’re using different mediums and channels for. For me personally, Twitter is for building connections and information (reception and distribution), facebook is for interesting personal and social matters, Linkedin is professional contact building and maintaining and so on and so fourth. I don’t look at any of these channels as a time suck or as a revolutionary device, I look at them as channels within a new marketing mix and I think Gladwell and Godin would do well to try and understand the mediums better before waving them off as irrelevant.

I had a conversation with a friend a couple of months ago about how the term “Lifestyle business” get’s such a bad knock in business schools and in the investor/tech entrepreneur communities. The truth is lifestyle businesses should be admired not dissed. If someone can create enough wealth for him or herself and in the process create a few jobs, in this economy especially, we should celebrate their success rather than dismiss them for creating a lifestyle business.

I didn’t question it that much when I was in business school. I took entrepreneurship classes that focused on building big businesses, looking at scalability, looking at exits, and investment classes that looked at bottom lines and quickly showed which investments would have a trajectory that would land them into public markets or in a valuable trade sale, I can’t remember once ever looking at the amount of jobs created or the amount of wealth for an individual in a simple but effective business. Although my guess is that a significant portion of successful businesses are in fact lifestyle businesses.

I used to work for a lifestyle business and one of the reasons I left was that the business wasn’t scaling and wasn’t trying to be a really big business. In hindsight, so what? The company had created jobs for over 20 people and the founder was making a significant income for himself. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. In fact in this economy we need more people creating companies like this.

As the economy contracts, as getting listed on public markets is getting more difficult, maybe it’s the right time for business schools, investors, people and banks (I’m leaving the investment for smaller businesses rant for another day) to take another more favourable look at “lifestyle” businesses.

Here’s the thing, all websites either sell something or match up parties. Dating websites sell their audiences but they differ in how wide or deep they want those audiences to be engaged. I think the spectrum goes from a site like plentyoffish.com at the low end, dead easy, low bells and whistles really simple and you get what the tin tells you plenty of fish. On the other end you have a site like okcupid which markets itself as a matchmaker asking deeper questions to help you find your match. I’m not in the market for dating websites (thankfully being married to the greatest wife ever means I don’t have to visit sites like these) but even I was interested in OK Cupid’s blog post on the real stuff white people like. I had come across this post just before my conversation with Josh so it helped me see the common line between dating websites and the rest of the web. The question is; are you a plenty of fish or an Ok Cupid? Or rather are you a for the masses or a for the value site.

Let’s look at social networks, Facebook is a for the masses, everyone’s on it and it’s connections are madness, Linkedin is a value where there’s deeper engagement. Question and answer sites, Yahoo! Answers is a for the masses, Quora is a value rich model. Other social networks like Twitter, and Q&A sites like Mahalo, fall inbetween.

Knowing which end of the spectrum you want to be can help you dictate content and marketing strategy. Questions like should you invest more in SEO or in Buzz and PR can be answered by know what kind of dating site you are.
It’s an interesting concept and I wonder what others think.

1 – Great teams and entrepreneurs, it was so great to see some companies from across Europe (and indeed the world) doing some great things. I personally got to see Editd, Hypezoo, Getagreatboss.com, GIS Cloud, Cognition, Financeacar.co.uk and Garmz and all of them had a spark and all, all of them also had revenue and costumers of some sort. On average the quality of teams was high.

2 – Great mentors, not to toot my own horn, but almost everyone I met yesterday was really impressive. There was a great number of people that I had either met in the last couple of months or had tried to meet since moving back to London. My mentoring team was pretty impressive with Alex Hunter (angel investor and ex-Virgin dude), Lisa Rodwell (Moo VP and ex-Yahoo), Rachel Bremer (Spark PR) and me. Everyone added some value to almost all the groups and I have no reason to believe this wasn’t the case with most of the mentoring groups.

3 – Great flow, the day was balanced with a good mix of networking opportunities with other mentors, workshops and mentoring the teams. This was key for me, as someone who can add some value to the teams (I hope) but is also starting his own company, it was great to get a chance to meet other people and get some mentoring and connections myself.

As much as I enjoyed the day there were three things I would have loved to have seen:

1 – Less mentoring sessions with more time, seeing seven groups in one day was a bit extreme, there were some sessions where we could have given the team a lot more information and feedback and there were some sessions were 45 minutes or 30 minutes might have been enough.

2 – More preparation and feedback as a mentor, would have been great to have more structure around the mentoring sessions. I ‘m not sure if the Seedcamp team did this with the teams, but I would have preferred not to have spent more than half the time going through the business proposition and the company’s performance. Some teams were definitely more prepared than others. There were two occasions where I stopped entrepreneurs and said, “okay, we get it, what do you need, how can we help”. Would have preferred the entrepreneurs to be prepared and have more information about us so they could be more prepared for the mentor session. Think this might go back to point 1.

3 – Some really early stage companies – every company (or at least all the companies I met), had product out and had either investment or revenue. It would have been great to meet some companies that were team, idea, prototype stage so you could be really creative and add some serious value to a potential company. It’s hard to convince a company that’s been going for 2 years, with revenues that they need to pivot, it’s easier to meet teams earlier in their start up lives and say “have you thought about this market”.

Overall, this was one of my best days since moving back to London, the caliber, organization and execution was exceptional and I think Saul, Reshma, Phil and the rest of the Seedcamp team are doing a phenomenal job and are helping the European start up community beyond words. I can’t wait for next year!

p.s. – For more on seedcamp here’s an angel’s view and the techcrunch article

I’m not going to comment on whether or not extending this service would have saved Yahoo!’s search business (I lie, it wouldn’t), but I do want to comment on the idea of going big.  Google is launching this service on the main search results; everyone at some point or another will see Google instant – as long as you’re on a supported browser.  This is pretty ingenious for two reasons.

First the users who don’t want this functionality are likely to be on one of the unsupported browsers (you know who you are IE7 and IE6 users).

Secondly they’re launching this big.  I love the fact that they’re not launching this off some subdomain, like google.com/reallyfastresults or something of that ilk.

If you really believe in something going big is an indication of your belief.  It shows the market that you really believe that this is a game changer and something you’re willing to back with all your resources.

Going big is a great signal, it’s also something that Google doesn’t do with all it’s innovations and it’s a great indicator of what things they believe in and what things are pet projects.

But having lunch in Covent Garden inspired me today.  While out there I watched a group of three people taking on pledges/donations for the NSPCC.  I watched person after person turn them away, say they were too busy or do what I did (avoid, duck and swerve).  Don’t get me wrong, I think the NSPCC is a great cause and should be supported, I just hate having to discuss my charitable giving with a stranger on the street.  This brought back memories of my days doing telemarketing, I lasted a week, but I do believe everyone should spend some time doing a job like this.

Not because jobs like this are bad, which they are, but I truly believe jobs like this build resilience.  They help individuals not take no for an answer, or to not take rejection personal.  I was terrible at telemarketing, I’m okay with that, but hearing no so much has definitely made me stronger to when things aren’t go absolutely swimmingly.  This is a skill you definitely need in a start up, doing sales for an unknown product or the gajillion other tasks you have to do as an entrepreneur.  So you’ll excuse me as I put my shoulder back to the grindstone.

There’s a parallel here with basketball, lot’s of free agents in the NBA this year are figuring out where they want to play next year. It’s interesting to watch as a fan because you’ll see if players value winning, they’ll go to a team that is set up to win or can get other free agents and become successful, or if they value making maximum dollars.

Knowing why you do something is really important to doing it right / well. When I graduated from B school, I focused on the commute, focused on the location and the brand of the company I wanted to join and that meant a big US company, so I applied for and got a job at one. It looked great on paper and on Linkedin but I wasn’t really happy. I didn’t have the “why” right. Now I know I want to create something, make a difference, create some jobs, and build something that makes an impact, so I know the “why” and I’m much happier professionally.

Don’t get me wrong, there are basic needs like a salary or the availability of a job in a location, but aside from the life basics I think real happiness comes from knowing why you’re doing something. So before you take on the next job, move to a different place or whatever it is you do, make sure you know why you’re doing it.

Here’s the thing, it’s nothing new! Sony Ericsson had a video calling phone more than a few years ago. A colleague at Yahoo! reminded everyone about this with his tweet and link to some Germans on YouTube making avideo call using the Sony Ericsson k-800.

The difference is that the experience is way better now than it was then. The resolution, the camera’s and wifi mean that you’re not dependent on network access and it can be a pretty good experience. That’s all pretty big. Overall the technology is ready for mainstreaming, and Apple is great at releasing a technology when it’s ready for mainstreaming.

Launch a service too early and it’s restricted to the UberGeeks’s of the world. I have friends who had Sony Ericsson phones with video calling capability, problem was as most of us weren’t ready for the calling capability these friends spent most of their time using the phone and texting rather than video calling. It’s like people using email in 1991, facebook in 2001, twitter in 2008 etc. If the network isn’t ready for the technology it’s not going to really get adopted. I call this my technology mainstreaming theory and I’ve drawn up a little visual explaining the principle and how this might apply to video calls. Apple is potentially right on the money, launching right when the technology is ready for mainstream, I expect Android to follow suit quickly, and the fine folks at RIM, Windows to lag a bit – don’t even get me started as to when Nokia and Samsung will catch on.

(Note – if you have trouble seeing this, click on it for notes on the flickr page)

This seems to be a general trait with Sony Ericsson, they seem to be great at creating things when the technology is there, rather than when the technology has matured to a point where it becomes a really good experience. Which is what Apple’s doing here and done since their foray into smart phones.

As well, by launching Facetime as an open standard Apple’s hoping other phone manufacturers will build on it, but I’m sure they’re banking on most people wanting to buy and use the video calling capabilities on the iPhone 4. Not a bad bet by Apple.