I suppose it was at a university.

Wasn’t like that in my time.

My partner in crime at the BLN, Darren Harper and I sat down at the end of last year to plan a programme of events out or the first six months of the year. Darren is by nature more of a planner than I and he and his wife Amy were expecting their first child in June. We thought we should pack some events in between Easter and mid May so that he could kick back a bit, relax and enjoy time with his new child when it arrived. Babies often arrive early (my first arrived one week early when my wife went into labour approximately 23 minutes after we looked at each other and said, ‘Great, everything is ready. Lets enjoy some time together before the onslaught’)

With three events in the next two weeks we were looking forward to a busy time before a relatively quiet time in June.

Appears that things just got busier…

I am delighted that Darren and Amy have acquired an awesome baby Lucas Alexander Harper who was born yesterday afternoon. He is an amazing little man (Lucas not Darren) and mother and baby are doing well. When I saw Darren this morning he almost exploded with pride. I know that you will wish them well.

I hope that he will get a chance to put a picture up to share soon although given Darren’s propensity to tweet and blog, this may take some time.

This does mean that I have a bit of a work crisis on so would ask your indulgence. I will be spinning lots of plates.

• If you are coming to an event I look forward to seeing you there but if you need to return a profile, please don’t make me chase.
• If you are expecting to hear back from Darren on something, please call me if you need an urgent answer (07760 171 929).

Congratulations Amy and Darren. Welcome to the world Lucas. Your parents are great people. X.

Fred Wilson, legendary VC blogger, partner at Union Square Ventures and an early internet investor at Flatiron Partners has done some incredible deals in his career. He knows more than most VCs and has an amazing knack of sharing his knowledge with the world through his blog.

With the news today that Geocities is to be closed by Yahoo! Fred has written an extraordinary piece that artfully demonstrates many of the issues that investors and entrepreneurs have to address when managing their growth. I found it fascinating to put myself in the position of the many parties involved at each stage of the story and consider what I would feel in their postion and what I would try to do.

Fred speaks from experience of the deal. As he says in the post, he said to his partner in 1996 as they did the first round of finance,

‘…”we are about to invest in one of the top ten internet companies in the world at a $10mm valuation.” Not many people understood how big a deal that was back then, but we did.’

Flatiron invested $ 6m for 30% of Geocities in 1996 which was acquired by Yahoo! in 1999 for $3.5 billion (after plenty of other financing activity). 100x return for Flatiron.

This post is unusually candid in articulating the thoughts that went through the investor’s minds and will probably become the basis for many an MBA case study in the future.

More importantly, it should be required reading for anyone who wants to know how venture capital works – from the investor and entrepreneur’s side.

What he doesn’t cover is how, like so many acquisitions, large exits didn’t create huge value for the acquirer. Geocities was shut down by the troubled Yahoo! about 10 years after it’s $ 3.5 billion exit.

Glasses Direct raises £ 10m with existing investors plus Acton Capital who have been active in a lot of recent deals. Nice work,

In my home town and beyond there is a rather insidious meme that states Cambridge is great at doing massively complicated stuff like ‘inventing’ gravity (overhead this weekend on punt), discovering DNA, solving Fermat’s last theorem, designing chips, curing cancer etc.

On the other hand, we are crap at web stuff and software unless it it outrageously complicated. Cambridge brains need something tough to chew.

see more pwn and owned pictures

I have always thought this was nonsense on stilts and it is great to see people like Neil Davidson, founder of Redgate and the Business of Software conference amongst many other things playing such a key role in trying to do something about this.

Looks like the good entrepreneurial people of Cambridge are already starting to do it for themselves though.

I was delighted to see that two Cambridge Software businesses made it to the final of mini Seedcamp held today. This is a great initiative designed to give support and mentoring to some of the most promising early-stage software teams in the land.

How great to hear, and how proud for our little fen town that Mohammed Al-Ubaydli and team at Patients Know Best and Andrew Walkingshaw, Toby White, and Dan Wilson at Timetric not only made it from the 120 or so applicants to the 20 chosen to participate but were in the final 5 chosen to present to the investment committee at the end of the day. (The other worthy three were CityOdds, GymFu and Sentry).

Here is a famous tennis-goer ‘singing’ a song with a hidden message.

Now your hard work really begins. You can all build great companies.

I am not a mathematician but:

• Two finalists out of 20 drawn across Europe = 10% of successful applicants for Mini Seedcamp came from Cambridge.
• Two of five winners of Mini Seedcamp = 40% of winners on the day.
• (These are small numbers but that never stopped us making a headline at Library House).

I know there were other businesses that applied and got very close to being accepted. I also know there are a ton of other people in the town who are working away on a bunch of exciting projects that will stand with the best that hackers across the country and Europe can produce.

Celebratory blue sky and cherry blossom, Llamas Land, Cambridge. (See comment).

Way to go #Camrev.

Happy birthday Neil!