I’d like to say I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while, except it’s not true. I’m sorry for a lot of things over the past couple of months, but, sadly, not writing is not one of them.

I’m sorry I haven’t been able to see many of my friends, I’m sorry I’ve neglected family, I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk to a lot of people, heck I’m sorry Steve Jobs is dead and I’m sorry that RIM leadership had a total brain fart around it’s outage over the last couple of weeks – seriously RIM, giving people free downloads on your platform as a way of saying your sorry is like hitting me over the head with a hammer and then saying sorry, here’s some free nails. All in all, I’m sorry for a lot but I’m not sorry I haven’t written.

Here’s the thing, being self employed, an entrepreneur, company director, whatever, is hard f’in work. People tend to glorify it, with the success stories (hello Forbes, nice piece on Dropbox), but few people tend to write about how difficult, how stressful and how lonely a process it can be.

Lot’s of writers have written about how to be successful you need to be resilient, stubborn, and kill it with execution but no one seems to shout about how hard that really is. Seriously, the next person who tells me their going to do their own thing I will shake significantly and yell “ARE YOU FREAKING SURE YOU WANT TO F UP YOUR LIFE?” and if they continue to go down the entrepreneurial path, so be it.

I’ve been working on Ad Avengers for over 18 months now and we’ve “pivoted”, we’ve fundraised, we’ve launched, we’ve iterated, we’ve sold sh*t, we’ve resold sh*t, we’ve pounded every inch of resilience we can get out of ourselves. And we’re still not where we forecasted we would be at the end of 6 months let alone 18 months.

On one hand, we’re so close to making significant revenues, so close to having a really good proposition, so close to having what I would call a killer company. On the other hand we’re so close to packing everything in, to saying screw this let’s go work for another big tech company, so close to being so leveraged that you just thing, “Why am I doing this again?”, that makes life really difficult.

There was an interesting post on Hacker news a couple of weeks ago from some kid who shared how difficult life had been as a 20 year old with no degree, a failed start up and living with his parents. Well, it’s just as hard or harder when you have a family and kids to support and you’ve managed to have some success but still can’t turn the curve of the hockey stick fast enough.

I’m reading a great book about math(s) right now, I’ll share more about that later – hopefully this won’t be the only blog post of mine this week. And it’s made me realise that entrepreneurship is a lot like gambling, you have a really small chance of beating the house, but you have to play long enough to see that chance through, and that it can be stressful while the house looks like it’s going to clean your clock. Everyone thinks they can beat the house but few truly do.

So even if I don’t beat the house, at least I’m writing again.

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.

That being said, misspelling my name, especially in an email, annoys me beyond belief. It’s plastered on my linkedin profile, on my twitter page, on facebook and worst of all in the actual email address that people are using to write to me. How do you misspell a name that’s included in an email address? I guess the fact that rarely are people able to say my name correctly makes the fact that people misspell my name so much harder to swallow, when it’s RIGHT THERE for most people. The number of people who continue to do this begs belief. It makes me say “Really?” every time I see an email, that starts off with Fahan, Faran, Fashan, or, as I read today, Farfan. Really, so my aunt, who named me, thought Farfan was a good name (apologies to any Farfan’s out there)?

I vented on twitter and found that I wasn’t alone in this, and while Shana wanted to write a blog post on netiquette I thought I would just tackle the subject of getting the basics right. Note: Steve’s tweet makes me think maybe I’m making a bit much out of it, or at the least I should change my name.

My wife kills me on my grammar and spelling. Being a primary school teacher she finds it super annoying when I use “there” instead of “they’re” or “their”, in my head I know the difference, but I write blog posts like I try to launch product, early and basically. Sometimes I get things wrong. I’m okay with that. While I know a lot of readers probably wince when they see some of the failings I’ve had in the past, I hope I’m getting better. That’s the point of writing for me, to get better.

However, when it comes to someone’s name, this I feel an obligation to spell correctly. For no other reason then I know how it feels to get it wrong. When I do get it wrong I apologize profusely and feel bad for ages. I would hope that people who get my name wrong feel the same way, but when it happens repeatedly sometimes I have a feeling they don’t. Eventually, I hope they’ll get over it, like I usually do. I won’t let it stop a deal or anything of any importance and I hope the same can be said when I’m the one making an error.

So there, it’s out in the open at least and now whenever I see someone has spelt my name incorrectly at least I’ll be able to put this post in the signature and then move on.

1 – Write more; the idea is that every week day after lunch I’ll spend some time writing blog posts, hopefully that means that I’ll publish more than the 3 posts per month (or less) average that I was on towards the end of last year. Three years ago I set out to have 8 posts per month, hopefully this year I can exceed that target.

2 – Read more, between moving countries, travelling, Mira and starting a new company the books read list fell to under 30 for the first time in a while and with a sprint over the last couple of months which included reading the entire millennium trilogy in a week and a couple of other easy reads that number could have been a lot lower. The iPad has been great for reading books on the go and hopefully we’ll start the year strong. I plan on writing a books related post every month, and have put that in my calendar, so hopefully that should help as well.

3 – Make myself better – Yoga, Spinning, meditation (though we did a bit of this last year) are all called for. A serious back malfunction in November/December has given me a little bit of perspective. I need to do more than go to the gym. I need to try other ways of keeping fit and I need to eat better (though writing this after a KFC lunch shows that this one might be difficult). I’ve started taking Multi-vitamins and have some Yoga classes set up to get me started, hopefully the year will end much better than it’s began for me from a physical perspective.

4 – Take care of my relationships – I’m going to try and be a better husband, friend, grandson, nephew, son, cousin, dad (still feels weird saying I’m a dad). This year I think I did okay in some roles but in others I truly sucked. Let’s hope I show more love to everyone who’s shown me so much love over the years.

5 – Accelerate – I started a couple of projects last year, and slowly took my foot of the brake. It’s time to really push on some projects –particulary Ad Avengers – more on this later.

It’s interesting to see that a couple of my resolutions have been things I’ve been trying to do for years, hopefully this year is the year that things go from on a list to being done.

I’m comparing two ads for two competing products and going to declare a winner. This week it’s Amazon’s Kindle versus Apple’s iPad – not the products, just the ads.

So Amazon has a new lower priced Kindle, that’s nice for someone who wants to read books. It’s light and it’s cheap. Cool. Why oh why have they gone on the attack against the iPad on their latest ad campaign?

The version that’s airing in the UK is a little more subtle, but still makes the case that you can view the kindle screen in bright sunlight.

Great, so in one scenario (bright sun light) you compare an iPad to a Kindle, in one use case. Funny thing is the Apple iPad user in the first ad is on Google, not reading a book. The Kindle user can’t do that even if she wanted too! Doh. Compare the Apple iPad ad that the Bee and I saw on TV last night.

I wasn’t even watching the ad, but the Bee made me rewind it. I later went on the app store and actually downloaded two of the apps that are mentioned in the ad.

Don’t get it twisted, I think the Kindle is probably a nice device and if you wanted to read many books on vacation I’m sure it’s superior, but why would you just use the one use case, bright sun light? Weird.

This is classic defensive versus benefit lead advertising. Don’t show off how you’re better than a competitor in one use case, show how you’re delightful in many. Apple wins this one.

Socially, we’ve met up with friends, gone out without the baby and been spoilt for choice for take away and nights out. The Bee’s made a friend and been invited to a baby group, so it’s been great to be back.

Professionally, I couldn’t be happier. Being at the London Business School entrepreneurship conference last week was definitely a highlight. Meeting potential investors, potential partners and potential clients for the business I’m working on launching was great. Being able to set up meetings all week and get stuff done was awesome. Also not being forced to squeeze a months worth of meetings into two days is such a relief.

I’ve been reading Drive by Daniel Pink, and I totally feel driven right now. Pink talks bout the three pillars of motivation being Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. I wouldn’t say that I was totally deprived of these three over my last three-five years, but I was awfully close. It’s nice to have motivation back.

Finally, I’m back to blogging as well, it’s my intention to blog better and more often then ever before. Wish me luck.

I’ve been hearing lot’s of people talk about how companies can be good or evil. A lot of this goes back to Google’s whole “Don’t be evil” line that was the unofficial motto around the company a while back. Part of it is due to Umair Haque’s manifesto’s and blog posts. Don’t get me wrong, I respect a lot of what Umair writes and I like a lot of what Google does, but I just don’t think it’s that black and white.

Companies are made up of people, and people are at the heart of the organisation’s direction and choices around strategy, marketing, procurement, M&A and everything else. Calling companies good and evil misses out on the spectrum between these extremes.

Google for example has made lot’s of “Good” decisions, for the good of costumers, for the good of partners, for the good of the developer community, but they’ve also made a lot of bad decisions, Buzz integration with Gmail without opt-in, what they did to Dodgeball and whole lot of other stuff could be classified as “Evil” by some people.

Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, Sony almost any media, technology company I can think of has done some things that I would consider good and some things that I wouldn’t. So classifying an entire company as good or evil just leaves me feeling a bit uneasy.

Here’s my suggestion, let’s ditch the whole good and evil and start talking about the character of an organisation. Let’s make it a spectrum and a scale. Are they transparent, sustainable, honest and consistent in their policies and actions? Do they value the community, employees, costumers, partners and the developers who may power their community? Are they closed or open – is that consistent across products and services?

This is separate to the quality and performance of the company’s goods or services. Nestle would probably score really lowly on the character scale but damn if I could resist their KitKats. Apple may also score lowly but I’ll still probably buy an iPad and add this to our suite of Apple products in the house. But at least I know it’s not a company with character, just a company with good products.

A company that is transparent and clear in it’s financial management and strategy, that has a sustainable policy and tries to operate in a energy efficient manner, which shows obvious care and concern for all their stakeholders and that works in an open manner with open protocols across it’s product suite would be the holy grail of character and would score a 10. Not sure if any company meets this but that should be the aim.
A company that isn’t transparent, doesn’t value stakeholders, is not green in any way shape or form, doesn’t prescribe to open protocols or integration with other services would score really poorly.

This is separate to the quality and performance of the company’s goods or services. Nestle would probably score really lowly on the character scale but damn if I could resist their KitKats. Apple may also score lowly but I’ll still probably buy an iPad and add this to our suite of Apple products in the house. But at least I know it’s not a company with character, just a company with good products. This is what separates discussing awesomeness versus character. Awesomeness can mean great execution, great products, but that doesn’t mean a company is “good”, what talking about character does is it gives us a clear scale and overview of a companies principles.

I originally wanted to call this blog post “Calling Bullsh*t on Good and Evil in Business” but heck who am I to suggest it’s bullsh*t maybe there is a place for it. I just don’t think it gives us as a community enough tools to discuss the principles of an organisation. So let’s try and stop all the good and evil clear cut analysis of decisions and talk about companies with colour, I think this would be more beneficial to the conversations and analysis that is happening about companies today. Just how much character does your company have?

When you set the theme for your year as “learning to do”, you’re in for a long year. It was definitely a long year, but it was a good one. I managed to got a lot done; professionally and personally. I dreamed, planned, pitched, worked hard and I’m not looking to slow that done one bit. The Bee and I welcomed the beautiful Mira into our lives (though the Bee and Mira had a lot more to do on that one, I like to think I played a strong supporting role). Not bad at all for a years work.

Last year, the bee and I joked, was a year of purgatory. Well the year is over and our stay in purgatory is nearly over. Next year’s the resurgence (you have to say it three times, RESURGENCE, RESURGENCE, RESERGENCE), so watch out.

My personal theme is “making things happen” and I can’t wait to make stuff happen and I can’t wait to share it all with everyone on this blog.

Side note: Kind of cool that I was listening to the song “Good Life” as I wrote this post. Totally captures how I’m feeling right now.

Earlier this week I came across this post from Andrew Michael Baron, talking about how Twitter “could lose the game by design” and then today I came across this delightful rant on Metlabdesign about Zappos’ design being great for 1999 (love the idea that their redesign is taking them to 2003).

Ranting about poorly designed big effective sites is not new, Craigslist, Ebay even Amazon aren’t the most visually appealing or best “designed” sites and people have been ranting about them for ages. Only to see them get bigger and bigger and make more and more money. Google uses a lot of data in it’s decision making around design and even then some people would say that Google’s design isn’t great – and Douglas Bowman a great, well respected designer actually left Google to join Twitter!

Here’s the thing, the average user wouldn’t know good design if it bit them on the ass. People make decisions about sites in an instant and in my opinion as long as sites meet the minimum design standard people will use them. The clincher, I think is not in design but in the product being sold, in the service given to the costumer and in the difference between competitors.

You shouldn’t look at a site like Zappos as a stand alone without looking at the other shoe-selling sites on line. Here’s a question, what’s the second best shoe selling site online? I have no idea. So as long as Zappos continues to have a wide range of shoes and great service will they really be killed? Me thinks not. Unless someone comes along and offers the same service, the same simplicity in ordering, returning and customer care as well as the same extensive catalogue of product and then has better design, that’s when Zappos should really worry about it’s design, till then it should pay attention to design but just not as much as some people are saying they should.

Same goes for Twitter, it’s simple, light, open and still growing at an incredible clip. Sure the site could be better for new users but will poor design really cost them the game? Not when Facebook is even more messy, WTF is a poke, I kid, I know what a poke is, imjustsayin the average new comer to these social networks learns quickly and as long as design is too big a hurdle they’re willing to look past it and give it a go. Facebook, Myspace, bebo are all fairly messy themselves so why should twitter being a bit messy hurt them so much?

Again, I want to reiterate, I think design is very important, simplicity and design is probably a good indicator of long term success in a lot of products, I just don’t think poor design, especially online, is as big of a factor as some of these other posts are making it out to be. I know this will strike a nerve with some of the people who read these posts but I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this.

But this brought to my mind an interesting dilemma that I’m sure entrepreneurs’ face all the time, when the numbers say one thing and your gut says something else how do you make the decision of which way to go?

Examples could be development platforms, target markets, suppliers, distribution channels, and many other decisions that entrepreneurs have to make. Decisions aren’t a zero-sum game, but there are definitely times when choosing smaller/less effective paths can have a negative effect on a company’s growth.

This is why you need strong investors with strong technical and business savvy. It’s almost like a gut check of strategy. Unfortunately, the company doesn’t have strong investors, yet, and so they’re relying solely on the entrepreneurs gut. Sure there are entrepreneurs whose guts out perform the market, especially when the relationship between numbers versus gut is pretty close, but this is too few and far between.

If you’re going guts over numbers make sure you know why and be prepared to pay for the consequences.