Microsoft Accelerator – Week Nine

November 13, 2013 | Comment

Working from your spare room at home can be a lonely existence and having conversations with colleagues on Skype really is no substitute. It also can be a pretty sedentary life as the distance from my bed to the office is probably less than 20 paces. The distance to the kitchen where the biscuits live is slightly more but not so far as to be a distraction. So all in all home working is not good for your health and fitness.

On the other hand being in an office means you get to see great street art such as that … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week Eight

November 5, 2013 | Comment

There was only one organised session this week and that was on “old school PR”. Unfortunately I had to attend a sales meeting and so wasn’t able to attend. However, what this did mean was that my diary was much clearer for getting on with the day job.

The stage your business is at when you join an accelerator will determine both how much you get out of it and how much of an impact it will have on your working day. When we joined we had already been in business a year and were making early sales. For us … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week Seven

November 1, 2013 | Comment

A busy 7th week was started with an early morning meeting with one of our mentors from Yammer. We met in their offices where the meeting room tables converted to allow you to play table tennis and there was a pop-up sign in reception encouraging people to bring their dogs into work for dog week, which seems like a recipe for disaster to me. We stuck to the meeting and got some sound advice once again.

From Yammer it was straight to TwiloCon Europe, a full days conference organised by Twilo and pretty impressive it was too. I have been … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – The Video!

October 30, 2013 | Comment

If you have been following my adventures on the Microsoft Accelerator programme you can see a short video below of the VC early look evening that took place a couple of weeks ago.

I’m in there about a minute and half in but my time on camera was fortunately short!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt3ewHNHZh8… Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week Six

October 23, 2013 | 1 comment

The observant amongst you will have noticed that weeks four and five are missing. This is because that I have been away on holiday and so haven’t been around to do an update but I am back now and straight back into it.

Of course the accelerator doesn’t stop while I have been away sunning myself so there was some catching up to do along with all the emails and business as usual stuff I would have normally had to do.

Just before I went away we were assigned our mentors. You may remember that early on we had a … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week Three

September 26, 2013 | 2 comments

So this week has turned out to be much quieter than the previous two. For me it is also shorter as I am off on holiday for two weeks from this evening. Consequently I will miss two weeks of the programme, which is a pity, but the leave has been planned a long time. It also means that I won’t be blogging during this period.

Two highlights on the programme this week for me. Firstly we got an opportunity to meet and talk with a number of the other residents of Central Working. It was a an interesting cross section … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week Two

September 23, 2013 | Comment

So week two is over already, a week when the focus was very much on getting the message across to your audience. This was a series of session facilitated by Rob Fitzpatrick author of The Mom Test which, kudos to him, he didn’t push at all.

Here’s the interesting thing you are almost positively encouraged to pitch your idea to anyone that will listen. Family and friends will give you positive feedback because they want you to succeed and others you will want to tell because you think your idea is a great idea. No here’s the funny thing. You … Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Week One

September 16, 2013 | 1 comment

Three weeks ago the company that I am CTO for, SpeakInConfidence, was given the opportunity to join the pilot for Microsoft Ventures’s twelve week UK accelerator programme.

There was much discussion internally about the merits of accepting the offer as the business has reached a stage where we are beginning to see real fruits of our labours and there were question marks over whether this would be a distraction we could do without. On the other hand this was an exceptional opportunity with a chance to tap into resources and learning that we just wouldn’t get anywhere else. We … Read the rest

To Avoid Phishing Please Sing In

September 13, 2013 | Comment

I am occasionally asked by family and friends to give advice on whether an email is genuine.

These are not emails from Nigerian kings looking to transfer out money via your bank account but emails that appear to be from companies and government departments that you would recognise and may have account and dealings with.

Of course this recognition is exactly what phishers are aiming at. You are thrown that your bank has sent you an email requesting that you login and view an important message from them.

There is actually a pretty easy well to tell if the email … Read the rest

Designed by Jony from Chingford

September 6, 2013 | Comment

Opening up the latest Wired magazine yesterday I was struck by the double page ad Apple had placed on the inside cover. The ad was the print version of that shown above highlighting that their products are “designed in California”.

Apple are rightly proud of their Californian roots and I’m sure that plays well in the home market (although “Made in the USA” might be better) but I just don’t get the relevance to anyone outside of the US. Why would I care? Especially when the products are made in China and are actually designed by a team led by … Read the rest