Bikes work

I’ve been cycling to work pretty much every day for six months now. For some reason I chose one of the coldest, darkest, windiest days of the winter to start and now we’re in a lovely warm stretch with long summer evenings so I’ve seen most things that London can throw at you. A few things I’ve noticed:

  • It really doesn’t rain that much in London especially in the mornings
  • There are some hilariously bad bits of ‘cycle path’ around the city which stop and start without any warning
  • Pumping your tyres up makes a big difference
  • The number of cyclists seems to increase almost every day — the Old Street ‘pelotons’ that build up just before 9am are now often 30–40 bikes strong
  • There’s a lot still to do on safety — and it’s better to choose safe routes over more direct routes in a lot of cases
  • Cycle theft is still a big problem — I’m very lucky that I can store my bike in a secure area at both ends of my commute. Hopefully things like this will help though.

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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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