Tag: Google

Cakes and computers — remembering LEO

Google very kindly invited all the new BGV teams over to their London HQ yesterday evening for a ‘Celebration of the UK’s Computing Heritage’ which was great fun. We got to hear from many of the people who brought the internet into the world both from the US (Vint Cerf, one of the creators of TCP/IP) as well as the teams at the National Physical Laboratory and UCL in the UK.

I think my favourite story though was that of LEO or the Lyons Electronic Office which was the world’d first business computer back in 1951. Many of the team that built it were there last night and they justifiably got a standing ovation.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Lrn24SdW64I

Changing sides of the table

Long time no blog. Sorry about that. It’s mainly because my routine has changed as I’ve made the switch from founder to being an investor (of sorts). We’ve just started with the 2012 cohort of six Bethnal Green Ventures teams and over the past few weeks I’ve found myself much more ‘on call’ than before.

I’ll hopefully be blogging a bit more from now on — partly as a way of straightening out some of the issues we face in my own head but also to get feedback on what we’re doing and the approaches we’re developing. I’ve found the blogs of a lot of investors very helpful and while I’m not sure I can manage getting up at 5am everyday, hopefully I can share what we’re up to in a useful way. There’s a lot of hype and criticism of accelerator programmes going on at the moment and I think I can give an honest insider’s view.

So far we seem to be getting it right. The teams have given very positive feedback on the programme side of things and they’re all getting on with one another. I’m also very happy that Google came on board with the project because having our own space at Campus has made everything so much easier. As well as our own wonderful mentors, we’ve had lots of interesting people stick their head around the door.
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