Happy Birthday to me

I am 45 years young today. Hurray!!

I got up and opened my presents. The highlight was a Wii Fit which I think sends a pretty clear message. The clear message it sends is that my son is a great salesman. Having failed to convince me that my wife really wanted a Wii Fit for her birthday, he managed to convince her that I just could not continue without my very own Wii Fit.

So, I jumped on the Wii Fit. It scanned me, weighed me, made me do balancing exercies and then after a drum roll it announced the result.

"Happy Birthday, Tom, your Wii Fit age is 53"

:-(

Oh boy, what a day!

The day started normally enough. Up at 6am. Off to North London for Monday morning Tai Chi. Feel that Chi flowing through me in the morning breeze. Yessssir. Bring it on!

Today was a big day. I mentioned in a recent post that I am back on the fund raising trail. Getting out amongst the VCs, pitching away. Today was a bit different. Unusually I had invited a group of VCs that I am talking to to come and see me as a group. And they had agreed. Wow! VCs leaving their palatial offices to come and see a mere start up guy. Who would have thought it!

Actually, who am I kidding. The guys were not coming to see me. We had arranged for one of the most important figures in technology today to join us for an hour and help us paint a picture of what the future of the online world looks like. This was a risk - getting this group of heavy hitting VCs out of their office and all in the same place for this meeting - so it was critical that it went well, but if it worked and if the guys "got it" it could have a big impact. Game on.

We arrived early for a pre-meet. Me and some of my colleauges plus Big Tech Guy. We spent half an hour chatting through what we were going to cover. I was getting excited. This was going to be one of those "moments" in a company's life. When I write "Garlik - The Book" this meeting would feature. In "Garlik - The Movie", Will Smith (playing me, of course, who did you think?) would be striding around the meeting room holding forth as the VCs looks on awestruck. Ohhh yes. I could see it all.

The VCs started to arrive in ones and twos. Square jawed and steely eyed to a man. We held them in reception as we finised our preparations. Big Tech Guy turned to me, made a final comment, turned sharply to my colleauge and suddenly shouted in pain. Only gone and twisted his back!

Suddenly, like a car crash, everything went in to slow motion (that will happen in the film too). Ambulances called. Health and safety types standing around looking terrified. Brows furrowed. Mice and men aft agleying in all directions. Fierce looking, tobacco chomping VCs milling around in reception wondering what the hells going on. Oh boy. Oh boy.

Well we did the pitch as best we could without poor old Big Tech Guy, who was in real pain. One VC said to me "So what happened to alleged Big Tech Guy, Tom? Eaten by the cat was he, eh? eh?" Another said "Awesome bluff, Tom. That takes some balls".

Oh well, you win some, you lose some. What do you do after a day like that? There is only one thing you can do really. Put on a brave face to everyone and tell them it could have been worse (how exactly may I ask?). Then go home. Put on pyjamas. Eat cornflakes with lots of sugar, turn Heart FM up to full volume, dance around the kitchen to I Will Survive and wait until tomorrow :-)

Knife crime: the day I got stabbed

There is a knife crime crises in London at the moment. Four people were fatally stabbed in London over a 24-hour period last week and there seems to be a new incident every few days. I struggle to understand what is going on here and there is not much in my past to help me get my mind around it, but with a young son nearly of "roaming the streets in a hoodie with his mates" age it worries me a lot.

The only direct experience I have of this issue relates to the time I myself was stabbed in the leg when I was a teenager. That was about 30 years ago but I remember very clearly what happened and I can still see the laughing face of the teenager who did it. Now I will reveal here for the first time ever what really happened.

But first, what on earth is going on in the heads of these young people roaming around with knives tucked away ready to be whipped out, and used at the first sign of "disrespect"? Goodness knows. It's inexcusable and I have a fear that any attempt to try to understand what's going on in their minds feels like one is making excuses for them, which is definitely not the case.

I think one direction to look in is this apparently intense feeling of the need to be respected. There is an assumption that they are not respected or to put it another way, not valued. And I think on the whole that may well be the case. Also I think often they don't respect or value themselves or worse they feel worthless and powerless, leading to anger and resentment. They give up on their own future, they really just don't case.

The smart ones are the most dangerous. Some of those lads you read about in the media wielding the knives will be the clever guys who in a different school, a different life would have been identified as "gifted and talented" but in this setting they emerge as classic and extreme underachievers. Sometimes we help them get there. I was on a stall at a school careers fair. A lad walked up and asked what it was all about. I told him about the IT industry, becoming a programmer, a project manager, a salesman and we got chatting. He was keen and interested. Bright lad. Then his Dad came up, snatched the papers out of his had, threw them back on the table and said to him "this is not for people like you, boy. Come over here to the Sainsbury's stand and let's see if there is a job going in the local shop".

And don't underestimate the realities of the environment these guys have grown up in. Why should we be surprised that they are in a constant rage, ready to strike at the slightest dis? I have spent several years involved in inner city education and was a governor of a secondary (high) school in inner London. The stories that I'd hear staggered me. The 14 year old girl who ran away from her mums house because her mums boyfriend was abusing her, so went to a classmates house, until the friends mum's boyfriend started abusing her too. So she went to sleep in a broken down car instead and her friends would bring her food. Yes, here in London! She still came to school though, but you do not want to disrespect her, believe me, because she would lash out so fast you wouldn't even see it coming! The 12 year old lad whose mum had skipped bail and gone to live in Bristol but kept sending him on his own four hours on the train to school in London every day so that no one would raise the alarm that she had gone missing. He would arrive tired, dirty, scared, angry every day. Go on, disrespect him if you dare!

I asked one of the Ghanaian Dad's at the school why the teenage boys of Ghanaian parents,who looked like the same big, tough, black 6 foot 6 tall, hooded lads as all the rest seemed to get through school okay and many go on to university. He said that the parents operate as a tight community, they all know each others sons and they all look out for them and report on them to each other. What's that African saying? "It takes a village to raise a child". That system is alive and well amongst parts of the Ghanaian community in South London.

I said to him "what do you do if one of the lads goes astray". "Ah" he smiled "all us men go together to his house, we sit him in the bath and put bricks on him until he promises to behave". He laughed. I laughed. Oh, how we laughed together. The old "put him in a bath of bricks" strategy. Never fails. Blimey...is that what we mean by getting back to family values?

So you want respect? You want to project power? That "Don't mess with me" look? But why knives? In my day it was boots. Doc Martens to be precise (ok, I admit it "my day" was London in the 70's). We wore them to be seen as "hard" by our mates. We didn't actually expect to have to kick anyone but we'd all stomp about in our "DM's" being "hard". Occasionally someone would get kicked and the result would usually be that they would say "ouch, that hurt a bit, stop it". It's a bit different if the thing that makes you "hard" is a 6 inch knife.

I got my first Doc Martens as hand-me-downs from my big brother. They were a few sizes too big but I stuffed newspaper into the end to keep them on and that worked. With the size of the boots I had to take quite high steps to walk along otherwise the toes caught on the pavement and I'd trip over onto my face. Clowns use the same walking technique. I also had a 5-inch big round Afro. Clowns often wear large, round wigs too. However I was definitely not a clown, ohhhh no, not at all. I was "hard" you see. Don't mess with me. If I could get my huge boot up in time I might do a sort of jabbing motion and try to kick you with it, although that tended to get me off balance so I tried to avoid doing this. I just stood around looking hard. With dark glasses on. Hopefully no photos survived this dark period of my life.

And it was part of this attempt at being seen as "hard" that got me stabbed in the leg. The right leg about 6 inches above the knee. I've still got the scar. Fortunately it wasn't too deep and didn't hit an artery but it still hurt a lot.

In those day young thugs didn't carry knives. I'm not sure I remember why, I think it was because there was some law about not carrying a knife and I think young thugs thought "oh, if that's the law I'd better not carry a knife then". Thugs were very law abiding in those days. Besides we all had hard boots on to make us feel tough. And anyway all the talk was about bottles. The weapon of choice was to smash a bottle on a table or a wall, like in films, and hold it up with the jagged bits pointing at the enemy shouting "come on then, come on then" looking really fierce and praying that the other fella would run away before you had to.

I never actually got into a situation like that and in fact now I think about it no-one I knew every got into that situation, except perhaps "Butch's" legendary elder brother who no-one ever saw. However me and my mate did find a crate of empty bottles round the back of a restaurant one day and decided to try the smashing and shouting "c'mon then..." bit to see what it was like.

The first thing we discovered was that breaking a bottle against a wall is harder than you'd think. They tend to just fly out of your hand when you hit the wall. However if you persist you can get it done, and thus it came to pass that I was standing there with a jagged broken bottle shouting gleefully "c'mon then..." as a furious restaurant owner came charging out the door to find out what the hell was going on. We legged it, laughing like only irritating little snotty nosed teens can. (For those not from the 70's "Legged it" = "ran away as fast as our little legs could carry us"). Unfortunately I had forgotten to throw away my bottle so as I rounded a corner I managed to stab myself in the right leg, about 6 inches above the knee. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. Getting stabbed really hurts you know.

I apologise if you think I am trivialising an important issue (it's a true story by the way). I don't mean to. I am just illustrating the point that if you mess around with dangerous things because you want to look tough then someone is going to get hurt and it's a damn good chance it will be you!

How do we tackle it? Understanding the lack of self-worth and the need for respect? Creating real opportunities for the young leaders and opinion formers? Baths full of bricks? I really don't know but we can't let this generation go to waste and we can't lock them all up. We've got to do something. I feel quite helpless.

Where are you?

I got a call out of the blue from one of my VCs yesterday evening.

"Where are you" he barked into the phone, skipping the usual greetings.

Odd question I thought. But hey, he is The Money so if he wants to call me up at random and demand to know my exact whereabouts, that's fine with me.

"Just arriving in London on Eurostar from Paris" I replied.

"So, you are about 30 minutes away" he growled.

"Yes" I said. If you are talking to a VC who has his hands clasped firmly around your money and he asks you a question that you don't understand then "Yes" is generally a good answer. Also, I reasoned, I must be 30 minutes away from something. From happiness? From a disaster? From being kidnapped by dwarfs? Who knows. But "Yes" was clearly not a lie.

Suddenly it struck me. I was supposed to be at a dinner/networking event somewhere in London that evening, so it was just as well I had accidentally caught an early train back from Paris! I had completely forgotten. Actually I hadn't forgotten. What is happening is that my assistant is away on holiday so my diary is slowly decaying into a disorganised messy sludge.

I survived the first week and felt very pleased with myself. But now I realise it was just momentum. Everything was set up so well that I just couldn't fail to be in the right place at the right time. But week two is trickier.

For example, I am back on the fund raising trail, so I am setting up random meetings with VCs around the place. Me, on my own - setting up meetings!!! There were some folk in Paris I was keen to see and they said "When are you over next". I said "As it happens, tomorrow". Great, they said, is 9am good. "Great" I said and then started panicking. How do I get to Paris? Where do I sleep? Help, help.

I did manage to get the Eurostar ticket sorted out and then I looked for hotels. I went for one near the station as I was arriving late. In my defence it looked very nice on the Web.

In real life, it was perhaps the sleaziest hotel I have every stayed in. The room actually had red, velvet material on the walls. Admittedly there wasn't a mirror on the ceiling, but it was crying out for one. The chap on reception seemed a little surprised that I was checking in on my own and indeed using my real name rather than the more standard "Mr and Mrs Smith". It is the first time I have done that thing spies do in films where you put a chair up again the door handle.

My night, however was peaceful, unterrupted only by a text around 1am from my CTO saying "Mines a vodka and tonic" followed rapidly by another one saying "Whoops, wrong number".

Anyway, back to the evening. 30 minutes later I arrived at the dinner/networking event and found I was due to be sitting on a table along with Brent Hoberman of Lastminute.com fame, Robin Murray a 3i bigwig and Baroness Hogg, Chairman of 3i and the speaker for the evening, Richard Rosenblatt the former Chairman of MySpace and founder of a new company, Demand Media. Richard was a really engaging and compelling speaker with great anecdotes such as "when I sold Myspace to NewsCorp I said to Rupert [Murdoch]...." so despite the fact that I was dozing off into my dinner it was definitely worthwhile pitching up. The venue, a restaurant called The Altitude on the 29th floor of Millbank Tower overlooking the House of Commons and the Thames, was pretty cool too.

Staggered back home at about midnight and dragged myself up this morning for another day that I think should be a bit more organised. Check the diary. Oh No! I am supposed to be in a meeting miles away with an important client in about 20 minutes. ARRGGHHHH......

Breaking News

I had to smile yesterday. I tried to feel angry but it didn't work. It must be something about my personality. A tendency to favour the upstart, the cheeky guy, the one man on his own with a mission to change the world. And yesterday I got wacked by just such a character who is clearly on a mission to change the world of PR. Meet "The Embargo Killer" !

Let me explain how public relations (PR) and in particular press releases work, from a tech entrepreneurs perspective. If you are going to be a "start up guy" you need to know about this stuff.

First, if you are serious about PR for your start up, get yourself a decent PR agency. We've got Band and Brown, one of the best in London. Some start up guys try and do their own PR. Forget it, you are on a hiding to nothing. You might get a little coverage here and there on a slow news day but if you want to build a serious company with a solid reputation, you'll need a serious firm to support you.

Next you come up with your idea for a story. It could be based on some research that you have commissioned. It could be something to do with what's happening in your business. Whatever it is, you come up with the story and write your press release.

Press releases seem to come in four parts.

• the headline that grabs the attention


• the issue and the research that supports it


• what should be done about it


• the spokespersons comment

The headline is vital. Try to sit in a newspaper editors shoes. Every morning that he comes in to work, there are 600 shiny new press releases screaming at him "LOOK AT ME. I'VE GOT THE BEST NEW WIDGET EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE". So he skims though hundreds of releases, pressing "delete, delete, delete". The only thing that stops your release getting deleted is your headline. So think long and hard about it.

Okay, let's assume you've got a press release with a great headline. Now you've got to get it out there. So you pick a day when you are going to "break the news".

Now here's the trick. You issue your press release "under embargo". You write on the top of your press release "Embargoed until 00.01 on 25th of Month" and send it out to hundreds of journalist a couple of days before D-Day. And an amazing thing happens. However exciting your news, not one of the journalists prints your story until the embargo date and time has passed. Amazing. There is no law that says they can't print it. They just don't. It's an unwriten rule.

So, you've bought yourself a couple of days to ring, email and generally harrass the editors and journalists saying "did you see our press release? Oh, you've lost it, don't worry, here's another copy". That's called the Sell In.

Everyone obeys the embargo because that's how the industry works.

Everyone that is except for The Embargo Killer.

So last week, we finished off our research into how young people are behaving online. We put the press release together, with a strong headline, wrote in big bold letters "Embargoed until 00.01 Thursday 3rd July" and sent it off to hundreds of journos.

Within hours much to our surprise, up pops the press release on this chaps blog busting the embargo without a care in the world. And not just busting the embargo on Garlik's press release, but busting the entire embargo concept - if it catches on.

Actually what happen in our case is that nothing happened. The mainstream journos stuck to the embago. I spent today doing eleven back to back pre-recorded radio interviews for Thursdays news and the story went in to the planning meetings of most of the national papers. It will be interesting to see what if anything happens in the press at 00.01 on Thursday 3rd July, but it appears that The Embargo Killer has not quite killed off the embargo yet.

I think he might be on to something though. If he gets a steady flow of press releases, if lots of people have google alerts set up on the things they are interested in, if the mainstream press spot that embargoes are being routinely broken putting news straight in to the public domain, then I think the whole concept of embargoes could well break down. Is that a good thing? I don't know. It's just different and the PR and media industry will just have to figure out what it means.

It never ceases to amaze me how much power the web can put in to the hands of a single individual. This one chap could change an entire industry just like that. Amazing.

Departure lounge

Another week, another departure lounge. When I started Garlik I had hoped to be travelling less than in the past as I like being at home (hence my cunning strategy of setting up the office 10 minutes walk from where I live whilst creating a whole cover story about "attractive place to work, good links to London, close to Heathrow"). However here I am on a Sunday afternoon sitting in Gatwick departure lounge waiting for a flight to Warsaw, Poland.

Last week it was Geneva for part two of the UN Agency meetings that I am involved in. We gathered in a different conference room this time (this one had a few small windows but otherwise was identitcal to the last) and we argued for some hours about the difference between "the" and "a", and whether we were within or outside our mandate. I am sensing that my future does not lie in the world of international diplomacy.

Today I am off to Warsaw, Poland to meet with our software partner, Software Mind. At Garlik we decided from the start to adopt a mixed inhouse/outsource development model. We have a very smart core technical team of permanent employees in house and a long term (3 years nearly) partnership with our Polish software partner. That allows us to flex the team up and down as needs be whilst getting the advantage of having access to cost effective, expert software engineers close to hand. Some people worry about how adaptable you can be if you use an offshore developer and I have certainly found with other locations that you have to specify everything to infinite detail before sending it off shore for development. But we use an entirely agile approach and we have found a way of working with our partner that enables this.

I chose Poland and in particular Krakow, which is where Software Mind is based, because their Universities produce excellent mathematicians and computer scientists in quite large numbers and they work incredibly hard.

However there is a lot of competition for the good guys over there and I once asked the Director there what they do if they run out of good people to recruit. He said they have forged some relationships in the Ukraine because their Universities produce excellent mathematicians and computer scientists in quite large numbers and they work incredible hard.

I wonder what they do in the Ukraine when recruitment get tight?

Anyway, off we go again. Sounds like my plane being called....

Laws of nature

There are certain immutable laws of nature and the timing of delivery vans is one of them. My new TV was due to arrive today. I was given a 4 hour window. It would arrive sometime between 8am and 12 noon.

I waited and waited. Wife and kids went out. I decided to have a quick shower, knowing perfectly well that the immutable laws of nature dictate that the delivery van would arrive as soon as I stepped in to the shower.

Ah ha! I know how to cheat fate. I put on the shower, took a step in, then jumped back and ran downstairs. But no delivery van. I did this three more times (thank goodness there are no webcams in my house - people would think I was mad). Strangely, still no van. Hmmmm.

Oh well, let's risk it. Stripped off and stepped in to the shower (see picture of me in shower here....).

You back with me yet? Did you really click on that link?

Okay, stepped in to shower. Covered my head in bubbles. And sure enough, a van pulls up, the doorbell goes...

Why does the universe work like that?

All a Board

Yesterday I sat fuming on the big red Number 33 bus as it crawled agonisingly slowly through traffic, conspiring with the workmen digging up the road to make me late for my monthly Board meeting. Ah yes, the dreaded monthly Board meeting. Something for you to look forwards to once you have taken money from external investors!

When I talk to entrepreneurs about raising VC money, one of the things that sometimes puts them off is the idea of having the dreaded monthly board meeting with their VCs. I don’t think VCs realise how much of a hurdle that is for the average start up guy and how for some the heart sinks and stress levels rise as that time comes round again.

The way the entrepreneur sees it, if you have sweated blood and hung your reputation out there to get your company off the ground, hustled and bustled to kick it in to life, ducked and dived to keep it alive, it can be really galling to be sitting opposite some guys who turn up once a month, ask what the name of your company is again and then proceed to tell you everything you are doing wrong.

In reality, the experience depends hugely on you, on how much you prepare, on what your investors are like and what motivates them.

Preparation is key. When you guys were tucked up in your beds last weekend, I was up at 7am on Sunday morning preparing the monthly Board pack. Your Board pack should include a standing agenda, the CEO’s briefing note, the monthly management accounts, last months minutes and a dashboard showing the key metrics that drive your business at a glance. Putting the Board pack together is a team effort.Various people provide their input and I spent about 6 hours a month reviewing it, writing bits and putting it all together. It should be consistent from month to month, professionally put together and delivered to all interested parties on time every month. Don’t “wing it”! Preparation & professionalism will make for positive Board meetings.

I tend to write a 3 page Board briefing note and I find it a useful way to stand back and have a think about what we’ve done and what we aim to do next month. As an entrepreneur, you and the team tend to hustle day to day, jumping from one thing to the next so one of the real advantages of the monthly Board meeting is that it makes you stop and think. You put on your strategic hat. You look at every aspect of your business from micro details to macro trends. You look at all the financials and other key metrics. Board prep is your monthly stock take and it’s very useful.

However despite all this preparation the experience still depends hugely on what your investors are like. Smart or stupid? Aligned with each other or squabbling? Do they do their homework – do they read your Board pack? We had a new investor at yesterdays Board meeting (welcome, Ms NewMoney :-) and shockingly she had actually read my Board note and marked it up in yellow marker with margin notes and so on. Blimey – glance at it by all means, but don’t get carried away!

In a previous company we had a “shouty” investor on the Board. His one tactic was to be calm and level headed and then at some point just turn on someone and start shouting about something, anything. He was very, very smart and very, very successful in his own right but it made for completely useless Board meetings from my perspective. Everyone was stressed in the run up to the Board. Everyone was waiting for him to explode at the start of the meeting. Everyone was angry by the end of the meeting. So if you’ve got one or more of that type of VC on your Board then, boy, you’ve got a problem.

But if you’ve got a good dynamic, like we have, and VCs who know what they are doing then the monthly Board meeting can be really useful for a start up. New ideas and contacts emerge, you are grilled on some points, patted on the back on others. You take stock regularly instead of just rolling from one thing to the next.

So overall, I think start up guys should get in to the habit of having regular, structured monthly Board meetings with at least one outsider on the Board as early in the process as you can. It’s two hours well spent (or in my case one hour thirty minutes because of that blasted big red bus).

Dr. House, Unmasked

So, I took my lovely daughter to the hospital yesterday for a check up. She had an ECG and we sat down with the consultant to talk through the results.

The consultant talked to my daughter whilst I sat in the background, taking a few notes. At one point the consultant said "we will do something called a Tilt-table test".

Ah yes, said my daughter, my Dad has told me about the tilt table test.

Consultant turns sharply to me as I sit with my notebook in the corner. "Are you in the medical profession?" She asks suspiciously.

"Well, not as such, no errrr errr..." I start to burble and just manage to catch my daughter's eye in time to stop her from revealing that all my medical knowledge comes directly from Series 1, 2 and 3 of House.

My mid-life crisis

I am looking forwards to my mid-life crisis. I am not sure when I am supposed to get started or what it involves exactly, but I got some good ideas at a couple of events I attended this week. On Tuesday I joined Ben Verwaayen, ex-CEO of BT, for lunch and on Thursday I attended a breakfast with the management guru, Charles Handy.

They were quite different events. Lunch with Ben was a serious affair. About 15 of us round a table at a private members club. Suit and ties all round. A 20 minute speech and a well managed Q&A session. Breakfast with Charles was a new age affair. Fifty people lounging around on arm chairs and sofas sipping coffee as Charles wandered about and told stories, a random burst of Italian opera singing (true) from the host and a series of personal photos.

What tied the two events together was the journey of middle aged men transforming their lives and setting off in a new direction. In Ben's case, in his mid 50s and from his perch at the top of BT he discovered "green". As he said, you don't have to have blue hair and have a pin through your nose to be green these days (for the rest of the lunch, he was imprinted on my mind in his suit and tie but with blue hair and a pin through his nose). Ben spoke passionately about saving the planet one step at a time, despite having be very sceptical about it all a few years ago. He has clearly decided that getting business to take action to save the planet is a key part of his future lifes work and he is tackling it in a very focused, business like way.

Charles Handy's message over breakfast was most interesting. He talked about making that transformational step in your life when you are on the up and up, before you have peaked, not when you are on the way out or down. He and his wife, Elizabeth, have a unique approach to helping you work out what really matters in your life through photography. They work with you to create a still-life photo, consisting of five items and a flower. You select just five items that define you plus a flower and you arrange them in a way that reflects who you are and what matters to you. The value comes in the conversations about your items and your arrangement but there is beauty and poetry in the process. Take a look at his new book, The New Philanthropists, where a whole host of successful people have created their still-lives and talked about themselves in this way.

The breakfast was organised by a splendid chap called David Pearl. A former opera singer turned management coach and business consultant, David is a larger than life character. He has created a very interesting year long course, or journey might be a better description, for relatively successful people who want to explore what next in their lives. It involves time away in Italian Villas eating, drinking and exploring life with eminent philosophers, scientists, artists, musicians. It involves exhibitions in London. Chance meetings on street corners with brilliant thinkers. It sounds like a year long adventure in the middle of your life that will help you discover for yourself that next transformational step. Fascinating idea. Not one for me (yet) but it's a fascinating idea nonetheless.

The "five items" thing is quite interesting. Selecting just five items that define you as a person is harder than you would think. As we went in to breakfast we were shown a few tables of what looked like bric-a-brac and invited to pick something that caught our eye. I found it quite challenging to decide what to pick that represented me. After much agonising (as a queue formed behind me) I picked a broken pair of little round glasses, the sort you balance on the end of your nose and look over the top of. I tried them on back in the office and was told I looked like a cross between the Dalai Lama and a Womble. Now they sit next to me on the table, demanding an explanation. Hmmmm.

Peoples explanation can be a bit of a surprise. The attractive, softly spoken young lady sitting next to me had picked a cute looking, tiny pink boxing glove. Why did you pick that, I asked? Because I box for a hobby and boxing let's me externalise the anger, she smiled...

Licence to print money

This evening I had dinner at the famous Ballroom at The Dorchester, Park Lane with some guys who have a licence to print money. I mean these guys are making bundles of cash. Literally. It was the annual dinner of the Diplomatic Corps hosted by De La Rue, a company that prints money, passports, identity cards and other secure documents for about 150 countries worldwide.

I didn't really know who the Diplomatic Corps were until I got there. It turns out that is the collective phrase for the London based Ambassadors of every country in the world. They very rarely all gather together in one place at one time but they did this evening for the 76th annual De La Rue dinner and for some reason that I still don't fully understand I got invited too.

I sat between the Ambassador of El Salvador and the High Commissioner for Mauritius and opposite the Ambassador of Angola. The Ambassador of Myanmar (Burma) was supposed to be opposite too which would have been interesting but the chair was empty. General Sir Mike Jackson GCB CBE DSO DL, former head of the British Army gave the after dinner speech. It was all very "grown up" but once I got in to it, it was a fascinating evening, hanging out with over 100 Ambassadors and High Commissioners. I even tried "small talk".

Tom (trying "small talk" with a very experienced Ambassador) "So, have you been following the US primaries"

Ambassador (looks blankly at Tom, pauses, then hoots with laughter) "What do you think?"

I didn't bother much with small talk after that! I just told them jokes instead. That seemed to work better and two of them exchanged cards with me (but what does one do with an Ambassadors card? Do I email them tomorrow and say "Hi there, we hung out last night, remember? Fancy a beer sometime?").

From a business point of view, the evening was an object lesson in managing your franchise in a very British way. De La Rue sell their banknote printing and other services to countries and have done very successfully for nearly 200 years. Their customers are countries and they have established a rock solid franchise. Since 1932 they have hosted this dinner for the assembled masses of the Diplomatic Corps, and it has become established to the extent that it is now a firm fixture on the Diplomatic calendar.

No business is discussed at the dinner. That's not how it's done. The Chairman of De La Rue says a few words but then fades gently in to the background. This is not a hard sell set up. It is just the annual dinner hosted by De La Rue. Gentlemen chatting to gentleman over a very nice dinner (if you like that sort of think. Raw tuna! Yuck. What's that about? Thank goodness I had a big plate of mash potato at home before I went) and a few very nice glasses of wine and port (if you like that sort of thing; I drank orange juice). But De La Rue know what they are doing. It's all about the strengthening the franchise.

You've got to nurture your franchise if you want to build a business for the long term and De La Rue's 200 years illustrates the success of this approach. They don't rush around like headless chickens, chasing the next deal, the new client and forgetting about the old. They invest in, build and nurture the core franchise, year in and year out and sure enough year in and year out business flows.

I remember exactly the same language being used at Goldman Sachs, the worlds most successful investment bank with 125 years of history behind it when I worked there in the mid 90's. The markets were tough. The Partner in charge of our area called us all together and told us to focus on the franchise. It's all about the core franchise. Build it, nurture it and it will look after you through good times and bad. Good advice for Garlik I think.

It's also good advice, sometimes, to ask dumb questions of people who you know just love to talk. After His Excellency had stopped laughing at my silly "USA primaries" question, he and the other two proceeded to give me an Ambassadors view of Obama, Clinton and the sweep of American politics. Fascinating!

The wrong socks

My big sister bought me a pack of socks for my last birthday with the days of the week embroidered on them. Monday’s socks are red. Tuesday’s blue and so on. A pair of socks for each day of the week. Now, I have discovered something quite interesting about myself. I am unable to wear the wrong socks. I have tried and tried but I am completely unable to step out of the house wearing Tuesday’s socks on a Wednesday. Is this wrong?

More importantly, does this disqualify me as an entrepreneur and therefore should I do the right thing, take my embroidered socks to my VCs offices, slap them on the table and declare that I am unfit to be CEO of Garlik? Surely entrepreneurs are innovative, daring, risk-takers? I do not know for certain that anything bad will happen if I walk down the street in the wrong socks but the way I look at it, hey, why take the chance?

People assume that entrepreneurs are extrovert, risk taking, dare devils but actually you can be a successful entrepreneur whatever your personality type. You just have to play it your way. I have a slightly odd personality type. I can’t wear the wrong socks on the wrong day. I yelp with delight when a train arrives exactly on time to the second. I plan my spontaneous, off the cuff jokes sometimes months in advance. I am, in Myers Briggs terminology, an extreme INFJ personality type.

In simple terms this means I am, amongst other things, extremely introvert (if you ever meet me, don’t actually speak to me as it will freak me out) and extremely structured (my “To Do” list has entries on it such as “Plan tomorrow’s To Do list”). These might be considered rather odd traits for an entrepreneur but it just goes to show that you don’t have to be a gregarious, spontaneous type, such as say an ENTP to be an entrepreneur.

Not that there is anything wrong with ENTPs too. Some of my best friends are ENTPs. When I worked at the online bank, Egg plc, I was surrounded by the blighters, rushing around trying to talk to me all the time. My goodness. We used to have meetings and all these ENTPs would just start talking to each other, all at the same time, bouncing from topic to topic, inventing, exploring. I could hardly get a word in edgeways and I could never tell whether the meeting had actually started or whether we were just chatting randomly before the meeting starts.

I remember one meeting that was supposed to last an hour. At the end of the hour I prepared to leave. The Boss asked where I was going. I said, well, the meeting was in my diary for an hour and the hour is up so the meeting must be finished. But, he said, we haven’t finished discussing the issues and besides, did I have another meeting to go to? No I said, but the meeting was an hour and an hour is up. We finally compromised on the basis that the first meeting was over and we were now starting a second, completely different meeting, so I settled back in to my seat and prepared to sit silently and listen to another hour of random, spontaneous, extrovert idea generation.

However whilst any of us can be entrepreneurs it is essential to have a really good mix of personality types in the team. Us introvert entrepreneurs need to be surrounded by extroverts to bring us out, to mix with contacts, to network, to get the brainstorms going. The extroverts need us introverts to absorb all those words flying around and then sit silently and ponder, to think deeply and weigh up all the angles before acting. Us intuitive “big picture” guys need those “sensing” detailed types to delve deep in to the numbers for us, picking over every penny to make sure our numbers add up and they need us to paint visions on huge, global scale of what this company can be. So as an entrepreneur you really need to understand yourself and to put together a complementary team. You need to be wary of surrounding yourself with people like you or you will end up with an oddly shaped company. Have you ever been to a party of all introverts?

The second important thing is to be yourself, not to try to be a stereotype of what you think an entrepreneur is supposed to be. If you are an out going, hand shaking type then that’s great. Go for it and use your extrovert skills to the max to build your business. But if you are a quiet, pondering type then don’t try to do the loud, networking thing as you will just look daft, like an Uncle in a baseball cap. Partner up with one of those outgoing types and leverage your deep thinking skills. The smarter VC will see the strength of the combination and will draw comfort from the balance in the team. The dumber VCs will try to replace you with what they have read in the “How to be a VC” book is a proper type of entrepreneur. Run a mile from these people.

So, entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes and all personality types and if you play it your way and surround yourself with people that complement your type you will build a great team. You need people who always wear Monday’s socks on a Monday and you need, I am told, some of those people who don’t even wear socks at all !

Taking the temperature

I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs. Guys just starting out. Guys up and running. Guys looking for an exit. The general chatter gives you a good feel for what's going on and who's doing what to who. It's a good way to take the temperature and get a feel for the general health of things from an entrepreneurial perspective. And right now I would say the patient has flu like symptoms, although it may just be a common cold.

This is most noticeable amongst the start up guys looking for early stage funding. I have heard from five or six fellow entrepreneurs in the past fortnight that VC deals that looked promising have fallen away and that private investors have gone to ground. Fund raising advisors are telling me that there is still money out there (they would say that wouldn't they) but even they admit that the money is moving towards later stage deals and is being more agressive on valuations.

I talked earlier in the year about how things might start to slow down this year and I think we are seeing the signs of that coming through now. People will still point to a few headline deals, $10m raised here, £8m raised there, to claim that we've never had it so good, but the chatter on the ground is sending out a different message.

If you are fund raising in this environment, the important thing to do is to qualify quickly. You need to know whether the investor is going to come on board or not. If they are not, you need to give yourself breathing space to sort yourself out, not find out at the last moment that it wasn't going anywhere.

The VCs will want to keep options open. So whilst they will be slow to invest, prefering to watch the market and watch their existing companies for signs of weakness before making a move, they will keep talking. Meetings will take a bit longer to set up. Analysts will spend more time asking random questions that they already know the answer to. You will get lots of positive noises ("we like this space and I'm keen to move forwards" I think means "it's useful to have you on the list of companies that I am talking to otherwise it looks like I'm not doing anything so when the partners decide to trim costs, I might get the chop").

A couple of rules of thumb. In this environment, and I expect it to get tougher from a fund raising perspective, assume it will take you 6 month minimum to raise any money. If you get it done quicker, good for you, but work on the assumption that if you start actively looking on 1st June then perhaps you will get some cash in the bank by 31st October earliest! Secondly, you will need to talk to more investors. Assume 20-30 different investors at least and 3-5 conversations, meetings, pitches each. So you will have perhaps 100 funding related conversations over the next six months to get a deal done. That's a lot of hard work but that's what it takes in this environment.

Also in this environment remember that the only money that counts is the money in your bank account. You hear a lot of talk of "smart money". As an entrepreneur the only thing to remember is that smart money is money sitting in your bank account available for you to use. All other money is plain stupid.

So, fellow entrepreneurs, the market is changing and if you listen carefully you can hear and feel what's going on. You can see it in the early stage investing end of things, so if you need more money this year then you'd better get started now.

The good news though is that just like 2001/02 the fair weather entrepreneurs should be giving up soon and heading back for the "safe" corporate jobs, leaving the field clear for the battle scarred street fighting entrepreneurs amongst us.