Despite being proud of being a UK-based company achieving success internationally, it was becoming obvious that to take ourselves to the level we wanted to, we needed to set up a physical base in the US. We had resisted for a while – I was hesitant to split our team up over two continents when we have such an incredible chemistry when we are together, and I was reluctant to shake up my life, again, to move to a new country. Because it was inevitably going to be me that had to make the move. My dear co-founder, Joe, is married to my good friend Philippa, who runs a wildly successful fashion PR company in London, and it just wasn’t possible for him to move country without living apart from Philly, or without her giving up her company. Neither were even remotely an option.

On the other hand, I was single, with no commitments… it was inevitably going to be me that moved over to the US. But I resisted, I was scared… of starting again, of living out of a suitcase, of not having my support network of close friends, of not knowing a city intimately like I know London. I have moved country 3 times – Sydney to London, London to Sydney, Sydney to London again – and the thought of doing it again… and leaving my support network and team to embark upon a huge challenge on my own… well, I resisted.

But it was my VP Sales, Jeff Sullivan, who kicked me, necessarily, into action. The challenge of running and working with a remote team while 8 hours timezone away – he said – is hard, but its an overcomeable challenge. The challenge of losing opportunities in the US because we aren’t here, is not overcomeable. It was time, and I was the only one who could do it. So like every superhero/heroine/fantasy character I had ever read about and dreamed I could be like (hey, I’m a geek, of course I do that, you all do!), I prepared to shoulder the burden and fear, and set a date for my departure. I emailed a bunch of my friends to tell them – deliberately, so there was no chickening out. No turning back.

Within a month, I had arrived in San Francisco. Why, I am often asked, did you chose San Francisco over New York that has more publishers and advertisers relevant to my business and was fewer hours apart from London? The answer is that I had ascertained in my previous trips to the US that the kind of deals I wanted to win in San Francisco could only be won if I lived in the Bay Area, and was part of the ‘scene’, whereas the deals I wanted to win in New York I could win just by living in the US, not necessarily in New York. I also had more friends in San Francisco, and it made sense to build buzz amidst the home of geek buzz.

It has now been 3 months since I moved over. To be fair, almost half that time has not been in San Francisco – I’ve been all over the US and back to London, Dublin and Athens in that time, but regardless, this sense of ‘home’ is starting to deliciously creep in. It hits me as I drive down the I-280 amidst those grand rolling volcanic peaks; it hits me as walk down streets of such pretty fanciful facades; it hits me as I continually meet such fascinating friendly people, that make me feel immediately at home.

Hannah and I in a helicopter in Vegas

This whole process has been helped immeasurably by the presence of Hannah, one of my team who a year ago asked me if she could one day move to the US with the company, and I promised her I would do that… a year on, I delivered, and to her surprise and delight she was told her dream was coming true and she was moving to the US. Two night ago Hannah moved out of my apartment to her own flat, but before then, for two months, she and I lived together, worked together and socialised together… and strangely, it was actually fun. We explored the city together, ogled at the city’s cute dogs, acted as wing-women to each other at networking events, made each other laugh as we practised Americanisms we learnt from Jersey Shore and The Rachel Zoe Project… we cushioned the cultural shock for each other, and I can’t thank her enough for being such a wonderful. As Hannah said at one stage “There is a level of loyalty you feel for the startup you work for, especially when you are part of the early team, that other people cannot conceive of.”

So, two days before my first ever Thanksgiving, I thought it pertinent to give thanks to the ease and joy I have felt moving to San Francisco. Thank you to the people who are so willing to open their arms and welcome a stranger into their circle; thank you to the cerebral stimulation I feel at networking events here; thank you to my team back in London who have felt the challenge that distance inevitably adds to our relationship, and still deliver again and again and again. I have no idea what the future holds, where I will be in a year, what adventures, challenges and achievements are ahead of me, but right now, this is right, being in San Francisco and building my team out here, growing my company, giving this whole thing a real and proper go… this is right.  I’m glad I came to America.

Inamo is a new type of restaurant, where instead of a waiter with a notepad, you have a table with a nifty laser control panel you navigate yourself. You fiddle a bit on the table with your finger, and you can do everything, from ordering all your food and wine, seeing what it all looks like before you eat it, watch the chefs cook it via chef cam, and most excitingly, change the illuminated virtual tablecloth with a myriad of colours, patterns and photos. Plus you can play games, view local maps, call cabs, and have full control of your bill. For those who hate trying to catch a waiter’s attention, and who find the process of ordering food almost as much fun as eating it, it very much appeals.

Anyway, Bernie has been involved in designing this interface, so for the past few months I have been hearing about all the challenges he faces… things like, is it obvious enough how to scroll down (as he says “I don’t know what else to do other than a large red pulsing arrow!”), is it obvious that ‘Service’ includes your bill, and many more fascinating user experience issues. Inamo has been in ‘beta’ for the past fortnight, offering half price meals while they iron out their glitches. Eager to both support my friend and to take advantage of a bargain, I decided to take the Skimbit team there for a much deserved team dinner.

And boy was it fun! Matthieu would not stop changing the table-cloth on me, it was pink with flowers one second, then blue stripes another, then a ravishing set of umbrella images… quite the whirlwind. Ciaran successfully played a picture puzzle game, and I salivated over every gorgeous image of food that was projected on my plate.

Apparently you get £10 off for each bug you find, but it was a pretty solid system. The only bugs in the system were the staff who perhaps need to seem a little more excited to be part of such a cool new restaurant, but I guess if you design a whole restaurant based around the premise of the superfluousness of waiters, then perhaps they might feel a bit miffed. They still get a 10% service charge though, and it kinda was a bit funny the 7th time they brought us the wrong thing we ordered, but being part of a young overworked company ourselves, we accepted the glitches as growing pains, and have faith it will improve with time.

The food was fabulous though… the chef is ex-Nobu and Hakkassan, Asian-fusion, rich and delicious. I’d recommend it thoroughly, if for nothing else but to enjoy Bernie’s great system design!

So, due to this crazy busy bee-ness, I’ve missed the last couple of Drink Tank events, the fabulous networking parties hosted by Huddle. But, my sense of duty overwhelmed me (I mean, one owes it to the community to put in a good partying effort every now and then!) and I extricated myself from my computer at the earliest in months in order to head to Bermondsey and attend Drink Tank.

Ciaran, my fabulous Senior Developer, came along, luckily as I always seemed to get a bit disoriented in the caverns of London Bridge station, and he steered me gently to the venue: first the Huddle offices, followed by Village East (a charming bar in Bermondsey).

And as always, I realised the second I arrived that I was doing myself a disservice by skipping previous events, as besides the opportunity to catch up with my ol’ Web Mission pals Andy from Huddle, Andrew from Rummble, Soks from Trusted Places, David from GroupSpaces, Alex from Latitude, Olli… from everywhere I think, I got to catch up with old friends: Nick from Fav.or.it, Nigel from ZygoHubs, Richard from ZebTab, John and Andy from Wigadoo, the generous and amazing Zuzanna from Huddle, and the glowing Yuri from City Amigos… and I got to meet new fabulous people like Emily from Hatch PR, Bindi from Microsoft, and Ian from Psycuity. It was a busy night.

It must be said, the Huddle guys know how to put on a party. At one stage it felt like trying to get into the most exclusive party in town (which I guess, it was) – with queues, door bitches, guestlists, drink tickets, and delicious nibblies. It was heaving and loud and intense, but that’s what you want in a party, so there were few complaints (although Emily and I did sneak into a calm alcove for a proper non-screaming-above-the-noise chat).

It’s funny: I’m currently helping a friend of mine who is about to start his own web start-up, and he is asking about how I built the entrepreneurial social graph I seem to have achieved in under a year of moving back to London to live. It is in describing in detail – after being questioned thoroughly – the steps I have taken to get here… wherever ‘here’ is, that I realise how actively I have pursued it and yet how organically it has happened, this immersion into such a supportive, incestuous, dashing, entertaining, fascinating crowd of entrepreneurs, or as Alex Hoye put it, “The highest density of Twitter users in the UK in one room”. You realise why they say being an ‘entrepreneur’ is more about personality than ability, because it all comes down to who you know, and people like to ‘know’ people they like, if you catch my drift. And I can honestly say that even if my endeavours don’t turn out the way I plan, at the very least I have had (and still am having) the most gloriously entertaining time, being a part of London’s entrepreneurial scene. And its events like Drink Tank that make this happen, so thank you Huddle and the many sponsors of the event for helping build this fabulous ecosystem.

We are continuing our trend towards being a hugely multicultural company: we have an Aussie (me), English (Joe – well, he is kinda Aussie though), Ciaran (Irish), and Matthieu (French). What will our next recruit be?

We are all busily working towards our soon to be launched new design… bet you are all waiting with baited breath to see what we come out with?! We think you will like it – be patient with us, we want to do a good job.

So, when I read that Visit London (a tourism board for London) was putting on an outdoor office, I thought my team utterly deserved a day in the park.

Four of us managed to extricate ourselves from our office, hopped on the tube, and travelled to the other (greener) side of London, to St James’s Park.

And there, to our joy and bemusement, was a fully designed and functional office – complete with paperclips, folders, desk lamps (not plugged into anything, of course!) and desk trinkets! We sat on office chairs, pulled out our laptops, and worked with glorious views of Buckingham Palace, the duck pond, and lush green trees all around us. It was a trifle difficult to read our screens in the bright sunlight, but we didn’t utter a complaint – if only every day could be so inspiring and liberating.

Unfortunately, nothing good lasts forever, or in our case, lasts more than an hour. Typically London clouds swept over our sunny sky, we started to shiver a little, but we obstinately stayed at our desks.

We started to feel a trickle of rain, and undeterred, we opened the Visit London umbrellas and huddled underneath as we continued working.

The rain started to get harder…. we persisted stubbornly for as long as we could, but it soon became a mute point. We had to pack our laptops away. But we really believed the rain would pass, so we stayed under our umbrellas for a while, and sure enough, the rain cleared, and the sun re-emerged!

With a quick wipe-down of the tables, we could continue our work in the now sparklingly beautiful afternoon.

It was again a shortlived pleasure. The rain clouds came back, and this time we were conquered. We returned to our indoors office, but with a smile on our faces. What a glorious experience to be out in such inventive playful surroundings!

It’s Day 2 of Web Mission 08, and I have not stopped yet. From the minute we landed in sunny San Francisco, we’ve been schmoozing, networking, visiting, exploring, learning, and, inevitably, drinking. The only thing I haven’t done enough of is sleeping… But what with unavoidable jetlag and a frantically buzzing mind unable to rest as I constantly think of what I should do next, I suppose sleeping can wait.

Our first night saw us welcomed to San Francisco with a cocktail party thrown in our honour by TechCrunch. It was a great opportunity to meet the other 19 start-ups on Web Mission, plus our fabulous sponsors like HSBC, Oracle and UKTI. However, a long and unglamorous flight that day meant we weren’t in top partying condition, so I went to bed early in anticipation of the next day’s revelry.

And revelrous it was indeed, with us all being invited for brunch and a barbecue at the house of Craigslist CEO, Jim Buckmaster. And I literally mean his home: for the first 10 minutes I stood in wonder in his living room perched on a hill in a trendy area of San Francisco, observing his family photos on the mantlepiece, his taste in twentieth century American poets, and his pet poodle.

Jim and his wife had hired caterers and invited the glitterati of the US entrepreneurial scene for a leisurely afternoon sipping Bloody Marys and nibbling prawn salad in his living room. Utterly surreal, and undeniably interesting.

I met YouNoodle’s founder Bob Goodson and heard about his interesting hypotheses; BlogTalkRadio’s John Havens, who interviewed a few of us using his cool interview-via-mobile-phone-to-voicemail technique, at one stage from the boot of a car in German (you had to be there I guess); and Michael Birch, the delightfully unassuming CEO of recently acquired Bebo.

We then scooted off to a party in the Valley at the home of Brian Solis where in the late afternoon dappled sunlight we ate corn on the cob and talked to the founders of Google-acquired Jaiku and Techmeme.com. I kept having moments of delighted shock as I realised I was in the company of so many people I admire.

By the end of that day, we are all exhausted. And it was only Sunday! The week hadn’t even begun yet!

Today started early, with a visit out to Oracle where representatives from Facebook, Amazon and LinkedIn talked about how to internationalise and scale, and Oracle talked about their incredible company history and interesting product strategies.

I feel so privileged to be part of a group that so many inspirational companies think is worthwhile meeting. After a gorgeous lunch in the Oracle executive dining room, I left the group, and went on my own to meet a company I hoped to partner with. The meeting went really well, so you will hear more about this partnership very soon!

Now I am on the way back to San Francisco to attend an evening with Jim Buckmaster and Michael Birch, followed by one of many parties during this week’s Web 2.0 conference.

You see what I mean then? I’ve been here for only 48 hours, and we’ve done all this already! I’m hoping my stamina stays strong as the week continues to unfold its thrilling and lucrative possibilities.

As you may have read, Skimbit was selected for Web Mission 08, a networking, partnering and promotion journey to Silicon Valley with other UK based startups like Huddle, WAYN, Mydeo, Rummble, Trusted Places, and The Filter.

Startups.co.uk asked me to be a guest blogger for the Web Mission journey, so here are my blog posts covering before, during and after the event.

Before the event:

You would think considering I am going to meet the founders of Craigslist, Bebo, Friendster and the Guidewire Group in a few days, I would be panicking about what I was going to say… But no, it seems the only way one’s mind can deal with the enormity of what one is about to embark upon, is to focus on really insignificant things. Like: how am I going to get from Palo Alto to San Francisco on Monday… and, I wish I had prettier business clothes… and, I have no idea how to tip US-style!

Yes, that is right, I am off to Silicon Valley, which strangely makes me think more of breast implants than semi-conductors, but then, I’m a girl. Yes, I’m a girl, who runs a web start-up (which makes me a minority) , based in London (even further in the minority), and off to Silicon Valley for the first time. What’s more, I’m of Spanish heritage, and Australian nationality. So with this mix of cultures, demographics and experiential history, I wonder what adventures shall unfold over the next week!

I am the founder and CEO of Skimbit, a social decision-making tool that helps you research and make decisions online, with the help of others. I was chosen along with 19 other of “UK’s most promising” start-ups, to head over to the US as part of Web Mission 08. There we will network, pitch, schmooze, research, promote, and partner with as many people as possible in what I am increasingly nervous will be an exhausting, exhilarating non-stop week.

I shall document my daily trials, tribulations, triumphs and tirades via this blog, so come and join me on this journey of discovery!

But, in the last month, Skimbit’s traffic has tripled, so suddenly, bugs are a bigger deal, as they can potentially affect more of our users. And I LOVE my users, truly! I can’t describe it… but to have complete strangers want to use, and benefit from, something that I have worked on so crazily hard for so long, is the deepest compliment coupled with the deepest responsibility.

And so, when something goes a little wrong, I can’t abide that people who have put their faith in me and my product are experiencing any type of inconvenience. I am so prepared for them to rush off and never come back, or to be angry, or even worse, to just leave and never come back or think of Skimbit again.

Imagine, then, my joy this week to meet a user who not only has come to my site because he has a genuine need to use it (as opposed as a mild curiousity to see what my site is vaguely about!); but he also notified me of a bug, and helped me solve it. What a blessing!

Yes, there was a slight bug in the way we sent invitations to friends from the Address Book, and it took a while to find out the root cause of the bug. I kept expecting the user to get fed up and throw his hands up in disgust and frustration, which terrified me because he was a true advocate of the solution. But to my immense joy, he not only persisted, helped find the problem, tested it, and kept sending me updates, but he also – bless – apologised for hassling me! What an angel!

Thankfully, we have now corrected the bug, fixed a misunderstanding on the site, and somehow still have the attention of a user who invited 20 of his friends to use the site – what an amazing man. I can’t stop with the superlatives, it just completely blew me away how kind and helpful strangers can be.

It takes me back to those web 2.0 seminars, where all the speakers raved about “Your users will tell you when you are doing something wrong, they will be passionate advocates of your site!” and I kinda doubted it could happen. But, I just experienced the charity of users, and feel even more passionate about doing a good job for them!

There has been lots of interest, great feedback, and thankfully the business is running along steadily so I can dedicate a bit of time to the hunt for funding.

I’m pleased to report I have one large offer already, so hopefully the round can close soon, and I can get on with running my business. Then one hard part ends, and another hard part begins… hiring, expanding, designing, rolling out, selling… the real meat of it all. If anyone knows of a brilliant web applicationi product/project manager or a bright full-of-initiative operations manager who wants to work in an exciting start-up based in central London, please let me know!

What a whirlwind it all is though! I’ve met some extraordinary people, gotten incredible advice, and am full of ambition and plans. I’ve never been happier!

So, just need to push on and close this round, and hopefully 2008 will be the year of Skimbit!

They were both really interesting and different experiences.

I found it fascinating how different views and priorities could be amongst parties that all make their money in similar ways. One party thought I should keep the Skim-in-a-box white-label solution and the other thought it best to divest of it and focus purely on Skimbit.com. One party thought I should focus on profitability and a strong business model and the other thought I should forget a business model until I have a large enough userbase.

Interestingly, I totally agree with both ends of the spectrum. The biggest web start-up sales have been of companies that had no business model and that had only a web site to worry about… certainly focusing on Skim-in-a-box distracts from building a large userbase and the gearing on businesses with white-label sales is much less than on businesses with a large loyal and active userbase.

However, I am convinced that I structure my company so that the Skim-in-a-box sales are managed wholly by a quality Sales & Account Manager, and that product development is not dramatically altered to support this business model at the expense of the free Skimbit.com, that I can make it work. That I can have a solid underlying business that I can build a free web service on top of, which surely will insure me against any major swing in user affinity towards social applications.

The other key reason to retain both sides of the business is the wealth of business intelligence it will produce. By retaining the anonymised aggregated analytical information of a diverse group of individuals and businesses, I surely build a lucrative database of information about what products people like, and what factors drive that decision-making. I dare anyone to say that is not a valuable resource.

Anyway… the journey has only just begun. I am courting investors as we speak. If anyone knows of an Angel or VC that might be interested in investing in Skimbit, please contact me!

I am embarking on an investor roadshow shortly to secure the funding I need to take Skimbit to the next level. To do this, I obviously need a robust budget and business plan. Obviously, I have versions I have done a few months back when seeking funding from the bank, but that budget was based on surviving on £25,000, which meant stripping things back to absolute bare-boned essentials. I could continue to operate in this way, but the truth is, it will kill me, and to get to market faster and make a real impact, I need staff and I need a marketing budget. So I now need a new budget and plan to reflect this alternate path.

The challenge is coming up with customer growth figures. All revenue projections hinge on customer numbers (unique users for www.skimbit.com and new clients for Skim-in-a-box), but I can’t get around the fact that it is all pure estimation. My other entrepreneurial friends who have secured Angel funding say that of course it is, and that I should be prepared to defend wildly optimistic figures as the basis for the kind of revenue projections that will interest Angel investors.

Now, this is where being an inherently honest person gets me into trouble as an entrepreneur. I have trouble saying my site will be used by 20 gazillion trillion people in 3 years, because although it is possible, it is largely luck that determines what site becomes the default for a particular category. You can certainly influence luck, and I absolutely intend to try, but I can’t tell you with certainty that Skimbit will achieve this. I can give sensible estimates based on the uptake similar sites have achieved, but it is still all totally finger in the air stuff.

And with business plans, the advice I have been given is to aspire to deity-like status, which again, I have an issue with. There aren’t many deity-like sites out there, and I am pragmatic enough to accept it may not happen to Skimbit. And it needn’t: a good quality site can still generate a healthy profit without being the new Facebook. And in my opinion, a presentation to investors that stated this, is surely more believable – and therefore I am more believable – than promising what is clearly a wildly overstated estimation created purely to seduce investors. I can’t believe smart successful Angels are so gullible as to believe it, so why state it?

So, I am making a stand. I will propose what are sensible realistic growth numbers, and clearly state that although I might not change the world, at least I will make it a little better, and if you approach that task with integrity and transparency, there are enough people out there that will respect that, and make you profitable. Well, that is my hope anyway.

How do I intend to do this? The trend for social shopping sites seems to be to push products (that of course they have a vested interest in), or to try to alter the way you search (which people find intrinsically suspicious). I have adamantly stated from the beginning that Skimbit won’t alter the way you search: you have your way of searching the internet, which you trust and understand, and I don’t intend to replace that. I do offer an embedded Google search in Skimbit, and I do earn a little money if you click on a sponsored link from the search results page, but everyone knows that, and its a fair and transparent contract between me and the user. Also, there is an advantage to using the Google search embedded in Skimbit, as Google over time works out what sites are more attractive to people that use Skimbit’s embedded search, and over time the results are even more relevant to Skimbit users. Again, nothing surprising or evil in that.

And I do offer advertising on Skimbit: currently its Google ads, but I will soon offer advertorial-type ads directly to advertisers. This will be transparent, relevant, and hopefully useful to the user using Skimbit to research a purchase decision. I will be launching another innovative advertising format (to be announced) with the goal to create unintrusive yet appealing forms of advertising that users are willing to engage with. Its the Holy Grail, of course, but worth aspiring to.

Anyway, wish me luck as I tread along this path of honesty and openness. I may not make as much as other ruthless players, but I do believe I will make more than enough, without compromising my morals.

1. Turned 30

Every woman dreads it. Whilst men seemingly gain wisdom and respectability, woman fear they will lose attractiveness and ‘settle’. Considering that the year saw me still working full time while building Skimbit in Sydney, there was an element of this. I had little money to spend on finery, and Sydney was suffocating me with its ‘settling’ perogative. Then the advent of turning 30 in January sent me in a flurry of ‘shoulds’. I should have been a millionaire by 30 already. I should feel totally happy and fulfilled. It was scary stuff, any one that says otherwise is to be doubted.

Then, I turned 30. And things started to change. I realised I was still as energetic, vibrant, and capable as all those twenty-somethings, but boy did I trump them in terms of experience. I realised you only age when you let yourself, and I was certainly not going to start then. I danced and revelled and twirled and lived extraordinarily, and now realise the gift of 30 is acceptance, less self-hate, and wonderful clarity. Plus a great party on yacht on Sydney harbour!

2. Met my developers

The risk of choosing to have your website developed offshore is that they do not feel part of your organisation. They don’t see you, they don’t hear you, they don’t get paid directly by you. Its near impossible to impart your company’s culture and ideals purely via a Skype chat session. But when you are boot-strapped, you just have to try. So I did… I bought them vouchers to have massages, I gave them bonuses, I even gave them equity, everything I could to make them feel that Skimbit’s success was also their success.

However, the crowning act was booking a flight to see them. That meant flying to literally the other side of the planet, from Sydney to Bucharest: not an inconsequential task. But joyfully done, and the rewards made it worthwhile. You get to bond with your extended team in way that text-based communication can never achieve. You get to know them and what motivates them. You get to understand their work conditions… it all makes a difference in the end, not only to how they feel, but how you communicate with them going forward. I have been back now a second time, to celebrate the launch of Skim-in-a-box launch, which we did in hearty style!

3. Took a break

I had been working so stupidly hard. Can I even begin to impress how hard it is to work a full-time job, and then start a business up in your spare hours, whilst living alone. I had the gift of amazing friends and family, but it was still lonely, tiring work. So, when a few different goals coalesced into a real plan to head around the world for 7 weeks, it seemed like what my soul needed. I felt so stuck in a rut – Skimbit was up and running, but it was in very much an alpha state, and I just didn’t see how things could change. So, I packed my backpack, and headed over to Munich, as you do.

I planned to visit my developers in Romania, reunite with my old home of London, and be bridesmaid at a wedding in Vancouver. So, if I was to buy a round-the-world ticket, I may as well take advantage of it and fit a few other places in. And so I did, also squeezing in Munich, Berchtesgarten, Vienna, Madrid and Ibiza into that mad glorious trip.

That trip represents one of the most significant phases of my life. You know when you feel some divine power has finally decided to cast their eye on you and make things happen that move your soul and test your mettle. Well, this was it. At the end of that trip I felt so intensely alive, blessed, and empowered. It was JUST what I needed, particularly as that trip also led to the biggest change of my life, which was…

4. Moved back to London

During the aforementioned trip, while in London, the wildest set of events happened that led to me presenting the newly conceived concept of Skim-in-a-box to potential clients, who loved it and signed up for it on the spot. As a result of that success, and the adoration I felt being back in London, I made an instant and never-doubted decision to leave my family, friends and life in Sydney, again, and move back to London to pursue what was undeniably a more lucrative and buoyant web application sphere. In the space of one month, literally, I worked full-time, developed the full functional specifications for Skim-in-a-box, started a company in London, sold my car, my furniture, moved out of my flat, packed my entire life up, and attempted to say farewell to my loved ones. It was almost a relief it was so quick – if I had too much time to think about it I might have lost my nerve. I had little money, London is the most expensive city in the world, and I was used to living very comfortably.

But I fought down any doubt, and did it. And you know, the second I landed, I have never felt so joyful. Despite growing up in Sydney, I have realised that London is my home. There is a peace coupled with joyful expectation here I have not felt elsewhere… like anything could happen, and it would be ok if it did. I like that.

5. Given Skimbit my all

2007 is above all the year I decided to give my all to Skimbit. Up until then I was risking only some savings and a bit of spare time. This year, it was a large pile of my savings, and all my time, spare or not spare. And truly, I have loved every second of it. Not being able to buy shoes or handbags… its taught me self-restraint; not being able to go out and party… its saved me money and waistline; working 15 hour days… it will all be worth it in the end. I’m certain of it. I have a fantastic business, people around me that believe and support me, and an unwavering conviction I’m doing the right thing. I’ve never felt so sure and so complete.

Thank you 2007 – you will go down in my life annals as the best year of my life.

There were several challenges of course. The first – and I hate to admit this – is that I had a slight hangover from a Christmas party the night before. Normally I am really confident with presenting, but with my head hurting and having such trouble stringing two words together in the morning, I panicked. I went into practising frenzy mode… convinced that if I tried hard, I could force my brain into submission. It was made even more difficult by the second challenge: the evil 5 minute limit!

Yep, we had been told we had a STRICT 5 minute limit to our presentation, and they weren’t lying. The organisers actually had a stopwatch, and gave warnings at 30 seconds, and then stood up as soon as the 5 minutes was up. I am known for my verbosity (a casual browse through my blog posts will confirm this!) so this stringent limit coupled with my brain’s inability to function made me a bit concerned.

The final panic of the day was that due to only one laptop’s ability to connect to the internet, we had to do our demo on that machine. So I had a few minutes before the conference started to install the button into the laptop’s browser, login to the necessary pages, and ensure it all worked ok, before sitting down to see everyone else’s demo.

Anyway… it was all fine in the end. I presented well (I am told), and I managed to get through most of what I wanted to cover (although when I was given the 30 seconds warning, I literally thought he was joking, and said so in a loud shocked voice mid-presentation, which seemed to cause merriment in the audience).

The best thing though was meeting so many interesting people that seemed to like Skimbit. It seemed to strike a chord with people both as potential users of the site, and by a few investors. And I met some fascinating folk that I hope to learn from and hopefully get further introductions from. All in all, a fabulous result for Skimbit!

So how did I celebrate? I went to the pub with the rest of the conference delegates, and proceeded to recover from my hangover in the best way possible Damn this Silly Season.

Although my client has paid, living in London, hiring a great designer and usability expert, planning PR, and paying myself enough to live and eat, is not cheap. I needed it quickly too, so trying to get Angel funding wasn’t really a solution, as it wouldn’t be ready in time, and if I was clearly desperate and panicky (which I have been), it would not be a good negotiating position to be in.

So my dear incubator friends who are helping me suggested I go for a Small Business Loans Guarantee, which is a government secured loan for small businesses. He had a good working relationship with one of the business banking managers at Barclays, so he arranged the meeting and vouched for me. I presented my proposition, and shared my plans and budget, and they bought into it.

Then began the slow process of getting it approved through the creditors of the bank. And what a terrible time to be seeking bank finance for a web start-up run by a solo woman… with the huge scandals involving bank credit risk, it was always going to be hard. And it was. Initially it was even turned down, to my utter and horrific dismay. How was I going to pay rent? How was I going to pay my suppliers? I had to start asking friends for loans, which made me sick to my stomach.

But some last minute additional work came in, and it swayed the decision-making balance in my favour, and they agreed, based on sight of contracts of the new work (easily done) and on procurement of death insurance (which makes sense – if I die, there is no company). Sweet relief flooded through my veins. I was saved.

Of course, I still need Angel funding – the amount lent to me isn’t a massive amount – but thankfully I won’t have that panicky desperate glint in my eyes that investors and men-avoiding-dating-30-year-old-women so veer away from.

I can pay rent! I can pay my team! I can buy myself a glass of congratulatory wine! I think I will now actually!

Instead, I am loving being back in London. In the dynamic exciting ambience where truly anything can – and generally does – happen. I always used to say that London’s magic stems from the fact that it is the city in the world where more people come to chase their dreams. Everywhere you turn, someone is trying their hardest to achieve something, and these attempts should be even more celebrated because they are doing it amidst such greyness and coldness.

I have left sunny exuberant Sydney just as it gets warm, and am here already wearing scarves and using hot water bottles. And I couldn’t be happier.

I attended the Future of Web Apps conference last week, which was the first major web conference I have been to, and I loved it! This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Sydney. And to be in the midst of such successful inspiring smart people, and to meet other budding entrepreneurs, and some intensely blooming ones, was extraordinarily exciting for me.

My biggest challenge is funding. I have decided to pursue a loan initially rather than seed funding. This is for many reasons:

• delaying diluting my equity til I’ve built the business up more
• there is a chance if my site does well that I won’t need seed funding
• I have a better chance of getting seed funding once I get this loan
• Its a safe way to get a loan

The reason its a safe way is because its not an ordinary loan. The blessed English government, in its efforts to encourage enterprise, gives out loans underwritten by the Small Loans Guarantee. This means the government takes on 85% of the risk of the loan, and the bank takes on the remaining 15%. Plus the bank is arranging a 6 months interest repayment holiday. This makes it an ideal way to finance my business at this early stage. My plan – if/when I get this loan – is to seek seed funding shortly after, so that I have a safety net to repay the loan regardless. It just means I am not in a rush to get funding, and I’m in a strong position for negotiations. All round positive stuff!

So… I will bear the late nights, the lack of social life, the incessant walking past beguiling shoe shops and not walking in… and am enjoying having a very clear focus that I am entirely passionate about. Hopefully it will be short-lived, and at some stage in the not too distant future, I will be able to buy a pair of shoes (not that I need them, but its the ability that counts!)

However, I imagine that most other web applications would have launched much earlier, because they are no doubt much less pedantic than I am. It’s always been a fault of mine: sky-high expectations, ridiculously high ideals, and it means I am holding back launching and promoting my site until I am sure that when I do, no one will come to the site and encounter a major bug or design flaw. Luckily my developers are happy to adopt an iterative style of development, so its worked well for us, but it is very hard to keep momentum going when I keep finding faults that I think must be fixed.

So perhaps I should just launch, and be public with it? I find it hard to do because I know the importance of good first impressions in the web 2.0 world, and when I start promoting, I want to do it confidently and extravagently, not timidly and hoping people will look past the obvious flaws.

I think I will launch at the end of this week. We have a couple of big issues left, and I do think the world might forgive the remaining small faults in the short-term.

Eek… so stressful!!

That means I can tell all of you very patient dear readers what my site actually is!

There are two hard things though:

1. Slight loss of momentum. As I am waiting for the Homepage to launch and the final bugs to be completed, my work load has decreased a little, but with it, the burning desperate urge to push things forward. This is of course a minor relief, but the side-effect is that I feel things have slightly lost a bit of momentum… I’m sure it will get crazy again shortly though, so should enjoy the lull.

2. Vague feedback from friends. As I am in soft-launch, I have shown close friends in the target market the site and asked for their feedback. A few friends have been brilliantly specific: as a result, I have had a copywriter rewrite all the help text on the site, and have redesigned the Homepage, all based on very specific advice. However, a few others have said “I love it, its amazing! But I find it a little difficult to use, in general.” Hmmm…

What do I do with feedback like this? I obviously want to make it brilliantly user-friendly, but the challenge (as, dear readers, you will soon discover) is my site is a rather new concept which many non-techies just don’t get. Social bookmarking is a fairly understood concept by the blogging community, but boy, you would be surprised to find out how many people have never even heard the term, let alone are comfortable with the notion of installing buttons on your browser and using them on other sites. And as my site is further down the notional path of bookmarking, it makes it challenging to explain the concept, let alone make it intuitive. And being told that “in general” its difficult to use is not massively helpful at this stage. OK – I admit, I probably should have shown wireframes to target market users at the outset… but the current site is a world apart from the original wireframes, and I do this for a living, you would think I could skip this step. (Are you sensing my frustration here?)

If nothing else, I am learning humility through this process. I really am not as good at everything as I thought I was…

Anyway… I’ll push on, almost there, the birth of my startup is almost upon us!

Now, my beleaguered developers have an avalanche of issues to deal with (bless them, they are getting through them valiantly), and I can turn my attention to all the writing for the site I have put off til now.

I have to write a Features section, the entire Help guide, and an About us.

I think Features and Help will be relatively easy, as it will still be describing in a relatively logical way what the site does (or should do). But the ‘About us’ is causing me some concern.

Do I write it in first person or in third person? Do I write something factual or something that conveys the tone and idiosyncratic nature of the site? And do I convey the fact that besides my developers in another country, its just me in my living room at the moment?

I’m leaning towards writing something a little silly. My site is relatively utilitarian: its a social site, but its quite practical. So I am inclined to balance the simplicity and forthrightness of the site with something frivolous and self-deprecating in the ‘About us’ section.

But, if its possible a fairy godmother (in the form of a seed capital provider) should come along and read my ‘About us’, surely it would be better if I were conveying Responsibility and Seriousness and Unwavering Certainty and other similar virtues? Or would they giggle to themselves and appreciate the yingyangness of it all? I am hoping the latter.

I guess its unsurprisingly because the Australian VC market for internet companies isn’t as buoyant or risk-taking as the US market. And, it was the first company I approached, it would have been a stroke of inordinate luck if I had been granted funding on my first attempt.

I’m a little disappointed nonetheless. I was avidly ‘manifesting my reality’, as my highly spiritual best friend calls it, so its a bit of a crash to earth to realise that I was dismissed rather readily.

Oh well… I will remain positive. This firm hardly talked about me and my experience and my passion… what do they know about my ability to execute? They sat with me for only one hour! I’ll show them!

Of course, it also unfortunately means for the forseeable future, I will have no life, and dark circles under my eyes, as I attempt to be copyrighter, tester, designer, project manager, business analyst, financier, CEO, marketer, advertiser, and evangalist to my company, whilst working a full time day-job. Urgh. Exhausted at the thought.

You see, I work full-time, and do all the work I need for my business at nights and on weekends. But the last few weeks have driven me to the brink of utter burn-out, and I am a trifle ruffled at the thought of continuing at this pace for the forseeable future. Furthermore, my heart and soul are dedicated to my business, its all I think about, and all I want to do. So its close to torture for me to turn up at work each morning, and pretend to care about someone else’s business. I struggle. I am bored. I feel frustrated. And I feel guilty that I am being paid to work when my mind isn’t really on the job.

I had planned to keep at it for 6 months or so, see if the business had legs before leaving my job, funding it with my own savings, and growing it organically. I was driven largely by greed and pride, I have to admit. Greed in that I thought if I could do it all on my own, I would retain 100% equity and control in my company; and pride, in that I wanted to prove I could do it on my own. So I pushed on, tried to stay focused at work, and tried to work on my business in my spare time.

Then, my boss at my job resigned. I don’t love my job, but I really like working for my boss: he has started, run and sold off three businesses, he is dynamic, smart, and fun to be around. My day was palatable as long as he was around. So when he resigned, my heart and soul sank. The thought of persevering at this job for the forseeable future without him around was inconceivable.

I did a bit of research, and found out about seed capital firms specialising in technology here in Sydney. As previous posts have discussed, the venture capital market in Australia is not as plentiful or risk-willing as in Silicon Valley, and my research validated that. Nevertheless, I found one company that seemed to fit the bill. They had spare capital to invest, had a portfolio of companies that were similar to mine, and seemed to have an investment philosophy that resonated with me. So, I picked up the phone, told them about my business, and they offered to see me in an hour!

I was rather excited! I printed off my business plan and requirement specification, and sped off.
The meeting went well, the investment associate understood my proposition, confirmed it fit well with their portfolio, and saw the benefit it offered. I have to say, after working on this business in one way or another for a year now meant I KNEW my business: its value proposition, its target market, how I wanted to market, how I wanted it to evolve, how much money I needed, etc. Discussing the concept with this investment associate felt comfortable and right.

So, now I am waiting. My concept is being presented to the investors, and I guess they will make a decision as to whether to progress. I am busy visualising them agreeing to invest.

If they do, it will LITERALLY be a dream come true. I can resign from my job, and just work full-time on my business. Of course, I still need to make it successful and profitable, but I feel so much more capable of achieving this if I can dedicate myself fully to the task.

So, please, everyone, wish me luck! Its very presumptuous to assume the first seed capital firm I talk to will want to invest in me, but I don’t have a whole lot of choice here in Sydney, and I have a good feeling about this firm. I’ll keep you all briefed!