Product Management
Entrepreneur / Startup gatherings - beneficial or distracting?
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- Written by angusf
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Yesterday I had two new 'business development' activities in my calendar.
OpenCoffee - My rating, waste of time
First 'opencoffee' which is billed at www.opencoffeeclub.org as part of a worldwide collection of events where you are likely to meet other entrepreneurs and some investors -- if not, at least you can work in peace.
This was held at UCL coffee lobby in their new building opposite what used to be Dillons and is now Waterstones near Goodge Street Tube.
Its a part of London I never tire of, Tottenham Court Road doesnt seem to have the Akihabara cutting edge anymore but always its worth a look in my favourite shops, Morgan Computers (actually in New Oxford Street) and Computer Exchange next door to Goodge Street so I was early enough to do that.
So what of the coffee morning. Well I cant find much to write about it as I didnt engage with anyone. I know you know me and know thats probably my own fault, but I was kind of sort of hoping that there might be some structure or at least something for the new. Nope. So I sat in the middle of the room with Tweetdeck on and posted 'anyone want to talk to me about startups, product creation and product management in software companies' Nothing. I cut my losses and left, heading off to do half a day at one of my clients.
@bootstrapcamp - My rating worth spending time on
Second, in the afternoon was the first @bootstrapcamp meeting sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. Billed as a kind of matchmaking exchange skills in the startup community the idea being that you OFFER everyone something SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and timely) in terms of skills that you have, and you state a NEED again something SMART.
The cute idea being that its a kind of exchange where you dont necessarily find direct one-for-one matching, but that you might have three or more people involved in the 'transaction'.
The promise was for some direct 1-1 matchmaking but in order to get there the room had to agree how this thing would work. And therein lies the problem. For @bootstrap camp to work it has to be mind numbingly simple, and very timely. But this wasnt a simple community it was Londons startup software cognoscenti. I sensed we were losing the momentum when the organisers said ‘right then were agreed the basic unit of barter is the hour’ and someone from the audience said ‘i think we should say thats the one basic thing we are not agreed on’ I paraphrase but you get the point.
There were so many people jumping to technical solutions before defining the problem that I was reminded of the movie Galaxy Quest where the techie in attempting to give advice on a solution to a problem says “Look around you. Can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?”
To me the idyll of multi way bartering is what Money is for, and I guess (at the time of writing) that money is the best medium for that.
A direct ‘Swap Shop’ type of approach has simplicity and timelieness at its heart, as well as the immediacy of a single phone number (long lost 811 8055 I seem to remember) and the value of the deal is between two people who simply want to exchange skills and resources right now on the phone.
It worked for Noel Edmonds all those years ago and 6 year old kids could get the hang of it. It seems to me that it needs to be similarly constructed or doomed to complexity and obscurity.
My plan is to engage with @bootstrapcamp and invest time and resources in it. But my hope is that is becomes simplicity itself to deal with. Twitter is surely the equivalent of the phone number to do a deal 'right now'...
Lets see.