If Everyone Did

This time last week, we had the pleasure of a six hour trip down to the Big Smoke for a couple of web industry education and schmoozefests; Second Chance Tuesday that evening, and a presentation to investors and other start-ups at Library House the Wednesday morning.

Second Chance Tuesday, hosted by Glasshouse, was the considerably more hi-octane of the pair. Shuffling late into the packed upstairs of the Royal Institute of Physicians (I’d been kicked off the tube earlier due to a bomb scare and walked from King’s Cross to Greet Portland Street) Andy and I met a fair few people looking to invest in web-based businesses, a few chats led to a few lessons learnt.

Then in a wooden lecture theatre that stirred up a bit of University nostalgia, two of the gents from Last.fm told the inspiring story of their business from start-up to their exit to CBS for £180m.

Afterwards I managed to pick up some sagely advice from Last.fm's Martin Stiksel, a millionaire, and a big time Krautrock fan, and a surprisingly nice bloke who was only too keen to give a few pointers on our website.

Thankfully, given how early in the morning it started, the presentation to Library House (you might know it as the company owned by Doug Richards from Dragon’s Den) the morning after proved a lot more laid back. There we met a couple of other similarly promising web start-ups, feefo an ebay-style feedback application for use with businesses, and welovelocal,a community recommendations site that in the words of founder Max is essentially a ‘community Yellow Pages’.

In all the experience was a really useful eye-opener for us, we came back to Sunderland keen to get the website online and have people test it out, but more confident that when we do ask people to take a look at it, they shouldn’t find anything out of date feature-wise.

David