The Last Post

This is my Last Post.

I started blogging almost exactly a year ago, on the 4th January 2008 and it has been a fascinating experience. I had to invent a new person - Mr Bojangles - and give that person a voice. (Incidentally, I also gave that person an extra Xmas present, from Tom to Mr Bojangles :) and Mr Bojangles got exactly what you would expect him to get).

I found my voice through Mr Bojangles and I told my story as it happened. I had to find my tempo too. Do you blog every day? Once a week? Once a month? I blogged 73 times in 2008, about 6 times a month and that worked well for me. I think I captured the main events of my year and only missed out one major incident, concerning a pot of glue, a left handed badger and two unusual shades of the colour mauve!

2008 turned out to be an eventful year for me.

• January took me to Davos for the World Economic Forum where I slipped and slid in the snow and rubbed shoulders with the great and good
• February saw me sneak in the doors of Number 10 Downing Street and sneak off to Paris on valentines day without my wife (ohhh, errrr, misses)
• March caught me crooning Sexual Healing to a crowd of "admirers" in Central London
• April had me being strung up from the nearest tree for being black
• May locked me in windowless rooms in Geneva on UN work, then served me eggs sunny side up in Silicon Valley
• June had me battling with the wrong socks and battling with a mid-life crisis
• July beat a confession out of me about having been stabbed as a youth
• August took me back to school to be re-educated and to Wilton Park which is not in Wilton Park
• September stretched my passport, taking me from Silicon Valley to China
• October turned me into a Powerful person
• November opened my eyes to the might of India and saw me taken to Court
• and December caught me half naked in a car park and gave me a prize

What a year. I've had a good year. Garlik has had a good year and this blog has had a good year. But all good things come to an end. So this is my last post...

...for 2008.

See you all in 2009 :)

Happy New Year to you all and best wishes for 2009.

Mr Bojangles

When Geeks Rule The World

A couple of days ago a friend of one of the Garlik team popped in to the office. She was introduced as a Geek Anthropologist. Not Greek. Geek. Anthropologists study humanity and, as I understand it, a geek anthropologist studies that branch of humanity knows as geeks, if that's not a contradiction in terms.

Co-incidentally, we were in the process of putting a new service into public beta, and it's a pretty geeky service at that (if you have never heard of FOAF - do NOT click here). So the office was a bit of a geek-fest, with people shouting syntax across to each other, wearing t-shirts with lines of code proudly displayed across their chest, suddenly and unexpectedly diverting into the detail of obscure films and random gadgets and having an all round good time. Including our friendly geek anthropologist, who blended in like any good ethnographer, whipped out a note book and proceeded to make notes in an unobtrusive "just think of me as a member of the tribe" sort of way.

Now, most of the time I think of myself as a businessman. A "tech entrepreneur" is what I claim to be. But I think underneath this thin veneer there is the heart of a geek pulsating strongly ready to burst out in an Alien-like way (Note: spurious cult movie reference). I think it traces back to my early computing days as a mainframe Assembler programmer. Sure, like any old beast, I have been shoved aside by new thrusting young alpha-geeks in the tribe, but I sit there up on the hill, a proud, old geek has-been picking at my fleas.

I am proud to have geek blood in my veins though, as ultimately geeks will come to rule the world (cue evil genius-like behavour, mwahahahaha), whatever Fiona S thinks.

"Who's Fiona S?" I hear you cry as one. Who indeed. Let's go back about 35 years. I am in a train carriage on the way back from a school trip with the cool kids. You know. Guys like Mark A, David W, Hilary P and of course the class pin-up Fiona S. We are 11 years old. The cool kids decide that, given the absence of a teacher in this particular carriage, we will pair up and do some snogging. Arrgghhhhh ! How did I, one of the class geeks, end up in this carriage? Pairs were quickly formed and there were two people left over. Me and the class pin-up Fiona. She looked disgusted. I looked at my feet. The girls went into a huddle, came to an agreement and Fiona turned to me.

"Oi, Tom", she said "you've got to leave the carriage".

"Oh, oh, okay" I said, dissapointed but quietly pleased that Fiona S, the class pin-up, had actually spoken to me.

"Yes" she said "go down the corridor and find Steve and tell him to come to this carriage for snogging".

You see, that's the lot of the true geek. To be sent away, and not only sent away but told to summon another cool kid for snogging. But our day will come, I tell you. We will rise up and reclaim our place in the carriage. Do the cool kids have their own anthropologists? No way.

And if Fiona S came up to me right now, begged for forgiveness and offered that snog that was so cruelly snatched from my grasp 35 years ago, I would merely snort with derision, quote some really cool movie line and turn away in disgust. Probably.

Caught on film half naked and given a prize

Last night I stripped in a car park in Mayfair. As I stood there in the freezing cold, naked from the waste up, I glanced up and saw a CCTV camera smiling down at me - whoops!

There was a reason for this moment of madness, trust me. Following a days worth of back to back meetings up in London, I had to do a quick change in my car into "black tie" so that I could attend the annual British Computer Society Awards event at the Dorcherster, Park Lane. I was in two minds about attending at all but Garlik was up for awards in two categories and a couple of Garlik colleauges were attending with me so I wrestled with the suit in the back of the car, slipped on the cufflinks and strode out of the carpark, across the road and into the warm embrace of abut 1,000 luminaries of the UK computer industry.

The compere was Gyles Brandreth, and he was amazing. Hilarous. I laughed so much, I actually had to clutch my belly with delight. He controlled a crowd of over 1,000 people effortlessly and punctured any pretentious characters, including himself. If you are ever organising a big event - BOOK GYLES ! He's brilliant.

After a good, solid dinner (including mash potato so it couldn't go wrong) the awards part of the evening kicked off. Gyles, who knew nothing about the industry, seemed to be filled with pure joy as the name of every winner was read out. He did tease almost every winner as they went up to get their prize and I had my fingers crossed that we wouldn't win, as I could only image the fun he would have at our expense with a name like Garlik.

So it was with a mixture of surprise, delight and trepidation that I heard him saying "oooohhhh, you'll like the taste of this one" when our first category came up, the best Web-based Technology Project. Sure enough, we WON! Hurray. We strode up, collected our prize and went off to have our official photos taken. What a lovely surprise.

We had only just sat down back at our table when the big prize of the evening, the BT Flagship for Innovation, was being announced. We were down for it, but having won the earlier one, we didn't expect to win this one too. Amazingly, we did! I was genuinely shocked and really, really pleased.

In fact I was so pleased, that I found myself dancing to Abba songs and waving my hands in the air like I just don't care (and so on and so forth). One of my colleagues attempted to down a glass of champagne in one, only to discover that the effect of the bubbles renders this near impossible and quite entertaining. The other colleague regaled me with the benefits of undergarments of a magical nature in the context of award ceremonies.

All in all it was a tremendous evening and a big pat on the back for the Garlik team. We started the year as winners of the World Economic Forum, Davos Technology Pioneer 2008 award and we are ending the year as winners of the British Computer Society's flagship innovation award. We've done okay :)

Of Fast Cars and Celebrities

Yesterday was a day of fast cars and celebrities. It is funny the places that you end up and the people you bump in to as a tech entrepreneur.

In the morning I and a Garlik colleague travelled out to the Oxfordshire countryside to visit the headquarters of the Williams Formula 1 team. The marketing guys there wanted to explore some very innovative branding ideas, a novel way of opening up the massively powerful and international world of Forumla 1 to the VC and start-up community. The 17 F1 races that take place around the globe each year are watched by over 600m fans in 189 countries and attending an F1 meeting is a bit like attending "Davos on wheels" as you get to rub shoulders (and do business) with chief executives of major corporations and take your key clients for a stroll around the pit lane. Anyone interested?

Then we went on a quick tour of the facilities. Wow! Talk about British innovation and engineering excellence. Williams can go from a new car design to a handbuilt formula 1 car on the test tracks in 6 weeks. I held large bits of engine made of special material so light that I could balance it on one hand. They are at the cutting edge of "clean tech" with a flywheel device that stores energy when the car slows and releases it on request. They took us to a huge room containing practically every Formula 1 Williams car going back 30 years. Each car costs about £10m, so I was probably looking at half a billion pounds worth of vehicle! I tried to think of good "bloke" type of questions to ask but could only think of things like "So, does that car go really fast then?" Fortunately my colleauge knew the right questions to ask and I trailed along saying things like "core" and "wow". I also found that if you repeat the last word of a sentence that someone has just said whilst nodding, you can appear very knowledgeable.

In the evening I attended the Medical Futures 2008 Award ceremony. I was a judge on the main prize of the night so sat on a table near the front. Which was good because it was a bit of a UK celeb-fest as Jonathan Ross, Tony Hadley (Spandau Ballet), Andrew Marr, David Mitchell (comedian), Vanessa Feltz (TV and radio), Anthea Turner (presenter), Melanie Sykes (presenter), Mishal Husain (presenter), Michael Buerk (news reader) and Martha Lane Fox (co-founder of Lastminute.com) came up one by one to appeal on behalf of the charities that they are involved in supporting. Jonathan Ross was a big hit with the hundred of doctors in the audience despite his recent problems. In the auction, he offered to leave a personalised message on the answerphone of the highest bidder :)

There was a brief moment of slapstick when an eminent gentleman (who shall remain nameless) turned the wrong way after speaking on the stage, took a step and disappeared off the side of the four foot high platform. Organisers rushed about in a panic (I think this fell into the "what's the worst that could happen" category for the organisers) whilst one of the hosts joked "is there a doctor in the house?"

The lifetime achievement award was won by Sir James Black OM, the Nobel Prize winner and inventor of the beta blocker, a true titan in the medical innovation field. The list of medical innovations coming out of the UK as the awards ceremony progressed was staggering. If the guys at Medical Futures succeed in unleashing the potential of all this talent, a whole new industry will emerge in the UK.

Oh, I should throw in a Royal I suppose, since I'm namedropping. I was nearly mown down by HRH Prince Michael of Kent as I was coming in and he was leaving. It is funny the places that you end up and the people you bump in to as a tech entrepreneur.

Why I was summoned to the Old Bailey

Throughout my life I have managed to steer clear of the judiciary, the police, the law, the Courts. I have only once given evidence, at a discrimination hearing, and being questioned by a tricky lawyer was not a nice experience.

So it was a bit of a surprise when I found myself "invited" to the Old Bailey, the central criminal Court in England, a couple of weeks ago. But when you get that sort of invitation, you don't turn it down. I put on my most grown up suit and tie and off I went. When I told the taxi driver that I had to be at the Old Bailey at a certain time and could he hurry up please, he asked if I was a lawyer. No, I explained, I am going to be questioned by the judges. "Good luck, mate" he said, looking at me sadly in the mirror as if he didn't expect to see me for a long time.

I had been invited to meet an Old Bailey judge. Actually not just one Old Bailey judge, but ALL the Old Bailey judges at the same time!

The occasion was one of those City of London traditions that stretch back hundreds of years. The daily luncheon at the central criminal court hosted by the City of London, which actually runs the Old Bailey. Two Sheriffs of London (did you know there were still Sheriffs of London?) reside within the Old Bailey building and by tradition they invite all the judges to a three course lunch every day. They also invite a guest or two and on that particular day I was the guest.

So I arrived at a special side door and was ushered up to the Sheriffs apartment, where I was met by a senior City Alderman and a very nice judge. A chap tried to tempt me with a crystal glass of the finest champagne presented on a silver tray but as I don't drink I asked for a plain orange juice instead. Such fineries are wasted on me!

Then we wandered up the corridor to another very ornate room, where I walked into the amazing (to me) scene of a couple of dozen fully wigged and robed Judges, a handful of Justices of the Peace an Alderman and an Under Sherriff who is also known as The Secondary (but nobody seemed to remember why). We sipped tomato juice. I asked if this was another ancient tradition, but it seems the judges just like tomato juice. Unlike me.

Then we were called to lunch and processed two by two to the grand dining room. The chaps in the red robes went first (I think they were the ones called "The Hon. Mr Justice so and so") followed by the Alderman and Guest followed by Judges, JPs, Under Sheriff.

The food and wine was delightful (obviously I didn't eat much of it, having taken my usual precaution when going to posh meals of eating a sandwich beforehand). That's not completely true - we had shepards pie so I ate the mash potato from the top of the shepards pie. Judges are very entertaining lunchtime company, I found. Incredibly smart and slightly other-worldly, with astonishing memories. They chatted about events that happened back in the 60's as if it was yesterday.

The Honourables found me quite an interesting specimen I think. They questioned me forensically about what Garlik does, about the internet, identity fraud and cybercrime. Several of them had tried fraud cases of course so they had a deep knowledge of the law in this area. As my name plate described me as "Dr Tom Ilube", the Honourable opposite me asked me if I was a medical Doctor. I said "No, Doctor of Technology" and he said "Ah ha! Very good. Now, why is my broadband so slow, eh?". Thus began one of those surreal conversations where we talked through his PC settings and broadband provider and I offered advice whilst several other judges listened in nodding wisely.

As we left the hall, I was chatting to a few of the judges about social networking. "It's that Face thing, isn't it?" one of them said. "Facebox?" "Facebag?" "Facebook!". We finally got there. I explained that they could set up a profile on Facebook and keep in touch with the many people they had come into contact with over the years. The Honourables looked at each other slightly horrified and quickly concluded that perhaps they wouldn't be embracing social networking afterall.

They invited me to sit in on some of their cases in the Old Bailey that afternoon, but I decided I had spent enough time inside Court for one day and was a bit wary of being accidentally "sent down", so I made my excuses and left. I must say, this was one of the most fascinating lunches I have been to in a while and I felt very honoured to have been invited.

Gateway of India

I am in Mumbai, India today pitching Garlik to the VC arm of one of those huge Indian corporations that are the size of a small country.

It's my first visit to India and one thing I can say for certain is that there is serious money in this country...and serious poverty too. As I watch the breaking news about India's moon landing satellite and read todays paper with the Forbes list of Indian multi-Billionaires I am reminded again as I was in China a couple of months ago, how the old order is changing.

Mumbai is somehow much more familiar to me than Beijing was. It's the type of developing country I recognise and understand from Africa, with its dust, noise, energy, free-wheeling exuberance and raw ambition. Some people find big Indian cities crazy on their first visit. I just switched into Africa-mode and actually found Mumbai strangely calm, safe and well organised by comparison. Even the traffic lights work here! True, the taxis largly ignore them, but they do work.

I put my Africa-mode mindset to the test in a side street store. The store manager was delighted to see me, positively rubbing his hands with glee as I wandered in. "From England, Mr Tom? Man United eh, Mr Tom? Cricket eh? Just look at this one Sir, don't worry about the price. Look at this one. She will love it. Don't worry about the price, I will make you a fine, special price Sir".

So I asked the price. He looked pained as if I had pointed out an unsightly boil on his nose, but forced himself to tell me. Then the haggling began in earnest. Or rather it didn't, as I adopted a little known technique called SILENCE. I invaded his body space, stared at him quizically and went silent.

"What's the matter Mr Tom? What price do you want? Name your price. Don't be embarrased."

I said "I want the price please".

That is the correct price, he claimed, then grabbed a big calculator, theatrically proded some buttons and showed me a new price that was 10% lower. Look, he said, almost as if he was surprised himself, that is the new price? Okay? Is that okay? Why are you staring at me.

I smiled and stared. I want the price I repeated.

This went on for about half an hour. He dropped his price three more times. He hit the side of his head angrily. Threw the calculator on the floor. Begged me to say something, name a price even if it was zero. Accused me of wasting his time. Advised me to join the police if I was going to stare at people like that. Explained his family circumstances and appealed to my better nature.

Finally he stopped speaking. I stared. He stared. We stood nose to nose in a little upstairs store in a backstreet of Mumbai staring at each other in silence for five minutes. Sweat pouring from his brow. Me, smiling quizically. Then he broke "Okay", he said "take it for this price" and he threw up his hands in disgust. Then the final insult as I handed him the money "You lied. You are not from Britain at all. Where are you really from?". I smiled, invaded his bodyspace one last time and left.

On the way back to the hotel, as dusk drew in, the driver stopped off at the majestic Gateway of India, standing proudly in its faded Mumbai glory with people teeming around its base, selling giant orange balloons (why?). I swaggered around in Africa-mode, pushing past outstretched beggers, waving away balloon sellers, threatening photographers, stopping traffic imperiously as I crossed back over to my car and driver.

That's when I noticed the small boy walking along next to me. About 6 years old I would guess. No shoes. Rags. Silent. Just inside my bodyspace. Staring at me. I stared back and waved him away imperiously, like Emperor Nero. He looked at me. I looked at him and saw my son, a few years ago. I thought about the life this little boy will lead and I thought about our lives. People, if you have a computer and you can read this then you are soooo unbelievably lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky. Recession? Credit crunch? Job security? If we think we have problems, we just have no idea.

As a nearby hotel security guard wandered over with a stick to drive the small boy back into the snarling traffic I did something I never do (in Africa-mode). I reached in to my jacket, pulled out a decent sized note that would mean nothing to me in pounds and handed it over with tears behind my eyes. He looked at the note as if there must be some mistake, looked at me with empty eyes and darted back into the traffic before I changed my mind. As we drove away I looked back across to the Gateway of India. I saw him skipping, yes, skipping along. Like a 6 year old boy. Oh, God. What sort of a messed up world do we live in.

Picked up in a German Bar

It's not all glitz and glamour being a "highflying" venture backed start up guy, let me tell you! Sometimes you need to get down and dirty to make things happen. And so it came to pass that I found myself being picked up in a German bar before returning to a sleazy, backstreet hotel.

Let me explain.

I'm still on the road, fund raising for Garlik. Last week I heard of a couple of German VC firms that might be interested, so I executed my tried and tested "getting a VC meeting at short notice" plan.

Here's how it works. I contact one of the VCs and arrange a 30 minute conference call. Everyone's got 30 mins to spare at short notice and then you have a foot in the diary. Then I contact the other VC and tell them that I happen to be in Germany the next couple of days and, since I'm around, how about I pop in and say hi? I don't trouble them with the detail that at this stage it is only my voice that happens to be in Germany. Armed with this meeting in the diary, I go back to the first VC and say since I am in Germany anyway for a meeting, why don't we turn or 30 minute slot in to a face to face meeting. Bingo - two meetings lined up at short notice with busy VCs.

Now, we try to figure out how to make it happen. That's when I discover that the two VCs that I am now supposed to be seeing on the same day are actually hundreds of miles apart. Never mind, we'll figure something out, so I pack up my toothbrush and head off to the airport.

Check in at Terminal 5 (very smooth, great terminal in my experience). BA flight to Munich (bloke on plane next to me using blackberry when he shouldn't. Do I tell the stewardess on him or snatch it off him and ram it in to his ear? Neither. I adopt the traditional British approach and just "look extremely annoyed"). Nice chat with the German taxi driver on the way to VC number 1 (how many London cabbies could have a chat in German I wonder?). Enter the VCs palatial offices, whip out the laptop. Pitch, pitch, pitch, sell, sell, sell, question, question, question for about 2 hours. Then dash off, jump on a high speed three hour cross country train and off to see VC number 2.

But this is where things go a bit off course. The VC lady has arranged to meet in my hotel lobby at 8pm and grab dinner, so that we could discuss the investment opportunity.

Or to put it another way, I had arranged over the internet to be picked up by a wealthy German lady in a bar, taken to dinner and then ask her for money at the end of the evening. Hmmmmm. People could get the wrong impression. "People" mostly being my wife (who, thankfully doesn't bother to read this blog :)

However, I am a start up guy and right now I am a start up guy in cost cutting mode, so I am not actually staying at the posh hotel in question. I am staying in the cheap and slightly sleazy hotel five minutes walk around the corner.

When we booked it, I did wonder how different a £30/night two star hotel was to a £200/night five star hotel. It turns out the answer is "very different" as became clear when I was buzzed through the security door at my hotel and the receptionist looked like she was going to ask me whether I needed the room for the whole night or just a few hours!

I actually laughed out loud when I went into the room, put the ash trays in the draw to try to get rid of the smokey smell and looked around for the bathroom. I couldn't see one so I assumed with sinking heart that it must be a shared bathroom in the hallway. I opened the cupboard to hang up my coat only to find that there was the smallest shower and toilet tucked away inside that I had ever seen. Ah, the joys of start up life :)

I rushed around the corner hoping to get to the posh hotel before Ms VC but she was there waiting in the lobby when I arrived. "Don't you want to check in?" she asked.

"It's alright, I've got it covered" I said making vague arm sweeping gestures in the direction of the reception area and guided her out of the door. Off we went for dinner.

Posh hotel. Now posh restaurant. Why, why, why? Don't people know I hate posh food. We walked right past a perfectly good Burger King to get to this fancy French place. Octopus. Can you believe, they actually serverd me octopus! When the waitress came to take the plates away she looked annoyed and said "is there a problem with the food, sir?". I felt like saying "Yes, you seem to have given me an octopus instead of real food and I don't know what to do with it."

Instead I said "No, no, no, it's lovely" and quickly took a fork full of octopus. I almost gagged but managed to chew away whilst making "mmmmmm, lovely" type of noises. Then I chopped it up and hid it under my knife. I am a master at this technique. Sometimes people find stuff I have left under a knife many days later.

So, over dinner I pitched, pitched, pitched, sold, sold, sold. Then walked back to the posh hotel. Said my farewells. Made as if to go into posh hotel, then nipped off round the corner to Sleazy and Sons. Lept up at 5.30am, back on the 3 hour train ride to Munich. Back on the BA flight. Back to the UK and got to the office to find a BBC TV crew waiting to interview me about a new type of financial fraud, for tomorrow's BBC breakfast news.

The good news as I sit here typing at 2am is that I get a whole 5 hours sleep in my own bed at home before setting off again tomorrow. This time to Mumbai, India to pitch to some VCs there. I'm not taking chances this time though. I reckon a cheap and sleazy Mumbai hotel would be beyond even my hardy start up guy spirit!

Hurray - we are all racialists now!

Yes We Did!

And I am so pleased that we did. It is unbelievable and it challenges all of us as individuals to stretch further than we thought was possible just a few days ago. I am, as we speak, rethinking my own journey. How far dare I try to go? (Not in to politics, that's for sure - my wife has already told me that if I even think about it she will immediately expose all my secrets to the gutter press!).

But does the fact that I am so pleased that Obama won make me a racialist? Does it make all of us racialists now?

This is a tricky question and one that most people have been carefully steering clear of, lest one makes a careless statement and ends up being accused of racism. Then you are in deep trouble!

Did you notice the slightly awkward word "racialists" rather than the more usual "racists" above? That was deliberate, as according to some authorities in this area, such as Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, they mean different things.

Racialists believe that the human species can be divided up in to different racial groups and that each member of a given racial group has traits and tendencies (not just physical traits) that they share with other members of that same racial group, but not with people outside of that group. Racialists don't necessarily believe that any racial group is better or worse than any other racial group, just that there are differences between racial groups, that are not just based on culture for example, but are part of some sort of "racial essence". Separate but equal is the credo of the racialist.

Meanwhile the non-racialist takes a different view. The non-racialist obviously sees different colours (they are not colour-blind) but the non-racialist does not link any particular traits or tendencies to a person merely because of their external appearance. So to the non-racialist, categorising humans into distinct groups based on their external physical appearance is a meaningless thing to do.

So, if you believe that it makes sense to group people in to racial groups and that black people (wherever they are from) share traits and tendencies beyond their physical appearance with each other as do white people and so on, but you are not saying blacks are better than whites or vice versa, then congratulations - you are a racialist :)

Does that make you are racist, though? To be a full-blown racist, you have to go one step further. A racist, just like a racialist, classifies people into racial groups, ascribes morally relevant tendencies to different races but then RANKS them. The racist concludes that one racial group is better than another and therefore should be treated differently because that first racial group has morally relevant tendencies (courage, intellegence, honesty etc.) that warrant a higher status amongst races.

If you believe this to be the truth then whether you are black, white or yellow, you are a racists and I probably don't like you very much, even if some of your best friends are /insert colour here/.

Professor Appiah pushes the definitions a bit further in a way that I find interesting. He distinguishes between extrinsic racists and intrinsic racists.

The extrinsic racist says that its all about logic. It is obvious that if one racial group is on the whole more honest or more intelligent than another racial group then it makes sense to treat the two groups differently. With the extrinsic racist, if you show him that actually these morally relevant values are not directly connected to different racial groups, then he should (if he is being honest) give up his racist position and revert to merely being a racialist.

The intrinsic racist is a bit trickier. He believes that you should treat people of your own race differently and better that people of another race purely because they are "your own people". It is an extension of how you put your family first just because they are your family. You can give the intrinsic racist all the evidence you like that races don't exist as such, that even if they did the morally relevant traits are evenly distributed, but the intrinsic racist will favour his "own people" anyway.

So are you a non-racialist, a racialist, an extrinstic racist or an intrinsic racist? Go on, really. What are you? You can tell me. I won't tell anyone. It can be our dirty little secret :)

However I am going to let us all off the hook, when it comes to Obama. Something different is going on here. Obama is a reflector. We (who like him) see something in him that transends race. We see Change. Possibility. Rebirth. Relief. Redemption may be. Atonement perhaps. We see all sorts of things, but apart from the intrinsic racists amongst us (you know who you are!) our relationship to his colour is confusing.

Like the Texan couple who were apparently phoned up by Obama pollsters asking who they intended to vote for. The wife says on the phone "Oh, I can't remember his name" and calls out "Honey, who are we going to vote for again?". The man pulls himself away from the ball game for moment and calls across in a deep Texan drawl "Tell them we're gonna vote for the Nigga".

God Bless America.

Saving lives and making money

This Wednesday I was a member of a panel judging the best business ideas emerging from the UK's medical sector, the culmination of the annual Medical Futures innovation awards competition. It was a real eye opener as I knew nothing about the health care sector and unlike so many web ideas that claim to change peoples lives, every one of the ideas I heard really would, literally!

For example, a British chap called Dr A. Brain (yes, it's true) invented the anaesthesists mask in the picture in his bedroom. It's now used in millions of operations around the world and Archie Brain is living in the lap of luxury.

The judging panel was very impressive (present company excepted), Sir Anthony Jolliffe the former Lord Mayor of London, Sir Chris O'Donnell, most recently Chief Executive of Smith & Nephew, Dr Ian Goldin of Oxford University and former Vice President of the World Bank and several others of equal stature.

The handful of pitches we saw were the best of the best of literally hundreds of ideas that have emerged from all corners of the health sector over the past year and been pitched to judging panels up and down the country. It is amazing that this staggering wealth of innovation is going on out there and is largely unrecognised and unharnessed. However, the sector has some real challenges for entrepreneurs.

Firstly, like me, the average entrepreneur has no idea what these Doctors are talking about. I spent several hours squirming away as the Doctors displayed various new devices and explained what was going to go wrong with me and how they could delay my demise by a few years, if only I give them a few £million. Mine you, it's a powerful pitch!

Secondly, in this medical game it seems that you create your proposition and then spend the next two years getting regulators around the world to approve it. Imagine if us tech entrepreneurs had to get someone to approve our propositions for two years before we were even allowed to launch them. We'd all be out of business before we started!

The big problem though is similar to a problem that us UK tech entrepreneurs have. If you want to build a large scale medical business then you have got to get in to the huge USA market as early as possible. Listening to the challenges that these businesses face opening up the US market, its exactly the same as the rest of us, except with higher stakes. I heard pitches involving ideas that are clearly better - as in "will save more lives/relieve more pain" - than what's available now but unless they can get the funding, team, approval to penetrate the US market then these amazing ideas may never see the light of day. It's shocking.

So, good luck to all the medical industry entrepreneurs and I would really encourage the VCs out there to take a good look at what's going on. The easiest way to do that is to get in touch with Medical Futures - they seem to pretty much see every promising idea coming out of the UKs health sector.

And I really hope one of those ideas in particular makes it out in to the market. Then at least I can save my money on answering those junk emails :)

Eat sorbet before your meetings

It is not often that I go to a meeting and experience a technique for running the meeting that I have never come across before. I did yesterday meeting.

A group of us met to discuss some issues related to a large charitable project that I am involved in. There are many stakeholders with multiple agendas. Big money and big reputations at stake and strong, divergent views being expressed in the run up to the meeting. So it had the potential to be a fractious meeting and a lot depended on how it got started.

The Chairman kicked off with an unusual statement, as we rolled up our sleeves, put on our boxing gloves and stuck out our jaws, ready for action. "We are going to start with something that I learnt from Dr Anthony Seldon, the Headmaster of Wellington College" he said. "We will start the meeting with one minutes silence". And sure enough, to everyones astonishment he looked down and fell silent.

Well, everyone fell silent for what seemed like ages. The tension flowed out of the room. People pushed back their chairs. Some doodled. Some reflected quietly. Some looked bemused, even uncomfortable. But at the end of what seemed like several hours, the Chairman looked up and, without further explanation, quietly said "right, back to the agenda".

The meeting flowed smoothly. Issues were raised in measured tones, explored and discussed. Ways forward were found. I can't put it all down to the minutes silence but I can say that there was a definite calm about the room as the meeting started and that seemed to set the tone and create the space for a good dialogue.

Fascinating. Afterwards, someone described the experience as akin to bowing heads and saying a prayer before a Church meeting or eating sorbet to clense the pallet between courses over dinner. But I have never seen it done like this in a heavyweight, high stakes, business meeting before.

Try it !

Shame on you, Sequoia

Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley's A-list venture capital firms seems to have turned in to Jack Jones, that character from Dad's Army who runs around in a moment of crisis shouting "Don't panic Mr Mannering", whilst panicking like crazy, causing everyone else to panic too and achieving precisely nothing.

Last week, as has by now been widely reported, the firm called about 100 or so CEOs of its companies together and in outrageously dramatic style, with pictures of tombstones and dead pigs, tried to scare the living daylights out of them about how terrible the market is going to be over the next two years and how people should start slashing and burning their costs now or crash and burn within months.

Talk about playing to the gallery. They must have known that the "story" would end up all over the web, so I guess in that repect it probably achieved its objective.

Now, I'm not saying that times aren't going to get very hard over the next couple of years. Of course they are. Everyone knows that and certainly every entrepreneurial CEO knows that. One would hope that the CEOs who managed to raise money from a firm of Sequoia's quality would know that better than most. I talked about this as far back as February and it has played out exactly as expected. You don't have to be a genius to figure this stuff out.

The actions you take are obvious too. Anyone who was anywhere near the Dot Com crash knows the game. To make a big song and dance about all the facts and figures and then deliver some blindingly obvious action points at the end - well, what was all that about?

I wonder what it was like being one of those CEOs. If any of what was said was any news to you then how on earth did you manage to get money from Sequoia in the first place? If you were the type of CEO who actually ran a company during the dot com crash and came out the other side, then you must have been biting your tongue as these guys strutted around. Perhaps you actually gave the Sequoia guys some advice (although I doubt it, I bet everyone kept their heads down and pretended to take notes as the pearls of wisdom rained down).

If I had been present I might have tried to help by offering the Sequoia guys some advice, from the CEOs perspective. Here are my 5 points (in case anyone bumps in to them over in the Valley :)

1) at a time like this and assuming we both have the same objective of surviving, it's not about YOU (Mr VC) it's about me (Mr CEO). The question you need to ask yourself is "what can I really DO to help your company, Mr CEO?" not "what can I SAY to make me look tough and clever?"

2) last time in the dot com crash, there were hoards of VCs trying to keep busy by engaging extremely busy CEOs in updates, pitching, updates, pitching. Eventually the VCs firms realised this, got rid of the time wasters and everyone's happy. But it took you'all a long time to sort that out last time around. So, Sequoia, this time, cut deep and cut early to keep all those time wasters away from your CEOs who are engaged in hand to hand combat in the market right now.

3) Speaking of cutting, every person lost at a VC firm probably saves at least $250k, so every 4 bodies you can lose at the VC firm frees up an extra $1m and saves another one of your portfolio companies. And please let's not talk about your office space (unless you are going to allow me and my 20 guys to come and take a chunk of it over at no cost for the next 18 months? Now that WOULD be useful).

4) Where's your rolodex now? VC's talk about being "more than money". Well it's easy to be "more than money" when everyone is buying and everyone is doing deals. That's like saying "I'm good at getting wet" when it's raining. Ok, if you are really "more than money" then now is the time to show it. Now is the time when you sit down with your CEO and say "here are the 5 concrete things that I can do for you right now". If you can't do that then leave the poor guy alone and let him do his job.

5) The only reason why companies survive times like this in decent shape is because their leader decides that come hell or high water he or she is going to make it happen. It's about confidence, commitment and bloody-mindedness. It's not about lists of obvious actions. Calm. Grit. Determination. Has anything you have done or the way you have done it helped to instill in your CEO that determination and commitment to survive come what may? Or have you just suceeded in chipping away at it with all your tombstone talk?

I remember being at Goldman Sachs in 1994, in the fixed income area. It was the worst bond market that year that anyone could remember. At one point in the year one of the senior Goldman partners pulled the division together. In a calm, steady tone he laid out the situation. No shocking slides. No shouting and arm waving. Steady, clear, coldly realistic but confident and determined. Expect cuts. Focus on the customer franchise. Hit the singles. Work together. Stay very close. We came out of that meeting as one team, clear, determined, knowing what we had to do. That's class.

And before you go around patronising your own CEOs please remember, just because you are panicking, it doesn't mean we are. We do what we do because we are entrepreneurs, we love it all, the ups, the downs. We are not afraid. We don't panic. This is what we do. As Omar says "It's all in the game, yo".

Gordon Brown thinks I'm a role model

This evening I attended an invitation only meeting in the Locarno Suite at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a informal speech, exhorting me (and 99 other people) to be role models for the black community here in the UK.

The event was the launch of this years 2008 Power List, a compilation of the individuals that the organisers consider to be the 100 most powerful black people in the UK today (50 men, 50 women). By powerful, the organisers actually mean most influential and they are careful to point out that they don't mean richest (that's certainly true!) or celebrity (very few musicians & sports people are on this list). They searched for individuals who are having an influence on their industry and wider and they decided to stick me on the list (that's my smug-looking face stuck behind Lewis Hamilton in the picture).

It was a grand evening at the FCO with. a hundred or more very accomplished individuals, and I think most of us were looking around nervously thinking "what am I doing here with these REALLY powerful people, when will they spot me and turf me out?". Baroness Amos, who chaired the selection committee, spoke first, followed by the Prime Minister. Brown spoke informally and humourously without notes and was well received.

Then a delightful lady, Baroness Scotland, who was listed as Number One on the Ladies list gave a very personal, warm view on what this meant to her. She was followed by the daughter of Mo Ibrahim, the telecoms billionaire, representing her father who was Number One on the mens list.

A reprentative of Thompson Reuters, who sponsored the evening, said a few words before Michael Eboda, the chap who compiled the list with his team, stood up to cheers and rounded off the evening with a host of thank yous. Michael was actually one of the most influential people in the room, given his ability to sit at the nexus of such a powerful network of individuals, and clearly should be at the top of his own list, if modesty didn't stand in his way. Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned dictatorship? Does Michael think that Kim Jong-Il would have left himself off his own power list? No way!

One speaker asked how many people in the room were happy to be seen as "role models" to the younger generation. Surprisingly, in the entire room of perhaps 150 people, only about 3 hands went up. I thought that was interesting but understandable. It is quite pressurised being looked up to as a role model. You feel additional pressure to suceed, to behave "like a role model" to "be inspirational" at the drop of a hat. So, most folks avoid being a role model and just get on with the daily grind of doing what we do. It can even make you more risk adverse. You don't want to fail and let everyone down, so you start to play it safe.

But do you have an obligation to be a role model to a wider community who look up to you, even when you haven't asked them to? It's a tough question and I think ultimately it has to be a purely personal decision.

Personally, I don't mind too much. If it helps young people to look at what I've done and say to themselves "well, if that half-wit can do it then I certainly can" that's fine with me. Anyway I can rely on my family to keep my feet on the ground. I told my son this evening that I had appeared on this list and he said "why are you on there, Daddy, you're just an average sort of man and you're only my Dad".

So long as everyone understands that in reality I am just an average sort of man who will continue to play my own game full on, contine to be a risk-taker and may suceed and justify my presence on the list or may fail and crash ignominously out of next years 2009 list, then its all good. It's all in the game.

Speaking to strangers

I am puzzled by the reaction I have to the prospect of speaking to strangers. Note I say the "prospect of speaking". The actual act of speaking to strangers is fine but it's my reaaction to the the prospect that I find interesting.

For example, on Tuesday morning I was a keynote speaker at a conference in London, Innovate08. This was a high profile conference with an audience of about 1,000 executives. I shared the stage with Richard Farleigh, one of the "Dragons" on BBCs Dragons Den, Iain Gray, Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board and the event was compared by BBC Newsnight's Kirsty Wark. Mine and Richard's keynote speeches were followed by an address by the Government Minister, John Denham MP.

I was fully prepared for my 25 minute keynote. Remember the rules? 4 minutes per slide, so I had just 6 punchy slides. I had practiced, practiced, practiced with a stopwatch so I was complete fluent and had the timing down to the second. However as I sat there on the stage, staring out at 1,000 (mostly) men in grey suits, and Kirsty introduced me I felt my heart accelerating and thumping harder and harder. As I was wearing a microphone I wondered whether there was a sound engineer at the back somewhere fiddling with his equipment, wondering what the hell was going on.

Strangely I didn't actually feel nervous at all. I was quite relaxed. But my body decided that it was going to accelerate my heartbeat anyway. How odd. I found as I was sitting there that if I focused on it I seemed to be able to slow the beat down or speed it up, but I couldn't stop it happening in the first place. I decided to monitor this again later in the day.

The speech and the Q&A seemed to go fine and I got good feedback, and then I dashed off to my next meeting - a pitch for Garlik to a venture capital firm in West London. This was a reasonably high stakes, tough meeting with one of those lazer eyed VCs who delights in disrupting the flow of your pitch, jumping around from point to point with a series of machine gun delivered questions and not letting you get in to your stride, but this was someone I have met a couple of times in the past. I checked. Not a stranger. No accelerated heart rate. Interesting.

On the underground to my next meeting, I found myself standing next to a lady in a tweed skirt. I noticed she had a random label stuck to her skirt that shouldn't be there. She hadn't spotted this. So, I thought "someone should tell her". But no one else had noticed. Just me. Suddenly I realised that I might have to tell her. My heart rate started to accelerate again. I was going to have to speak to a stranger again! Oh No. I tried to ignore the label. I tried vaguely making eye contact and then looking down towards the label but this just seemed to make her scowl and edge away. Finally as she started to leave the tube at her stop, I pounced "errr, errrr, label, errr, errr" I stuttered pointing. "Oh, thank you very much" she beamed and left the train as I collapsed onto a seat in a heap, drained, heart thumping.

I arrived at my final meeting of the day, which was a dinner for a handful of folk with Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty. It was an interesting group of fellow diners, including the Channel 4/ITN TV presenter, Jon Snow and the man who brought the Big Brother TV show to the UK, Peter Bazalgette. After Shami's erudite comments, we got in to a free flowing Q&A session about privacy an civil liberties issues. I knew I would be called upon to make a comment or two. But despite the fact that it was a small, informal group, as the host started to point in my direction, my heart leapt into life and started to accelerate again. Thump, thump, thump. I was completely relaxed, as far as I could tell, and I made my comments which seemed to land well, but despite considerable will-power I could not stop my heart thumping away.

So, come on. What's all this about then? Does it happen to anyone else or is it just me?