Mar 082013
 
International Women's Day

  So it’s international women’s day. As Adam Roberts says, I’m not so worried about that as there are 364 International Men’s Days. We’ve been thinking about women a lot at Bethnal Green Ventures. We’ve taken the apparently controversial decision to state “We particularly welcome applications from women” during our call for ideas. We’ve received […]

Mar 052013
 

  I’ve been thinking again, about grace as a combination of gratefulness and generosity. Not sure if it holds up, but I think there Generosity With our work at the Social Innovation Camp and Bethnal Green Ventures, we’ve found astoundingly generous people all over the world. From government workers willing to give up their time, […]

Feb 262013
 

  …with, perhaps, some lessons for most everything else. I went to the launch of my old dean Colin Mayer’s new book Firm Commitment a few days ago. I’ve just dipped into the book briefly but the associated lecture (and this article) got me thinking. The brief version of the lecture says, in essence, “The […]

Feb 142013
 
Some fine news for Bethnal Green Ventures

At work we’ve been sitting on some excellent news since before Christmas: Bethnal Green Ventures, our for-profit accelerator programme, is going to be back in 2013, bigger and better than ever. What we’ll be doing, along with our partners the Cabinet Office, Nesta and Nominet Trust, is taking super early stage teams and giving them […]

Mar 012011
 

Difficulty in opportunity | Opportunity in difficulty There’s an old adage that the skeptic sees difficulty in every opportunity, while the entrepreneurs sees opportunity in every difficulty. Think about it. Imagine it’s 1998. Search sucks. Yahoo’s your best bet. Banner ads and the blink tag run rampant across the Internet. Pets.com has just closed its […]

Mar 012011
 

Hi both of you who are still reading this, since I apparently let aaaaages pass without an update. Current status: I’ve stopped consulting… and have a job I’ve been working the past few months with the lovely and talented team at Social Innovation Camp around growing the business that they’ve started and bootstrapped over the […]

Oct 102009
 

I had the pleasure to speak at the Africa Gathering in London this morning. (twitter feed here). There were a number of emerging themes through the conference, and not necessarily the ones you might think– access to finance, more capital, education. Nope. What came up again and again was: TIA This is Africa. Sometimes problems […]

Oct 082009
 

The Hub, York Way King’s X, London 9th-10th Oct, 2009. I’ll be speaking about, in general, the challenges that investors and entrepreneurs face in Africa, with a specific focus on my partner organisation Appfrica Labs. Come out if you can. Details at Africa Gathering and on the EventBrite page. I’m on at 11 AM on […]