The Week That Was - 1

My hope for this blog is to share my experiences as I, along with Finbarr and Chris, build a successful business. I feel a good way to do this will be every Saturday to sum up the week I had and also tell you a bit about my plans for the week ahead.

This week has mainly been about meeting new people. I hate to label things but do believe ‘Networking’ is the term used to describe this week. Chris and I met Kev O’Neil from 29 Studios and Moviecom.tv, was brilliant to hear from someone like minded. Kev has an amazing team and the nicest office I have ever been in. All his advice was excellent but the main thing to take from meeting him was chase the dream not the money. I like this outlook, obviously money is essential to live but its a way thinking I like. Money can taint you decisions to the detriment of your customers.

We also met with Fiona Godsman and Liz Walsh from SIE the Scottish Institute for Enterprise. This was an useful meeting to have the ear of people who are not from a development or tech background. Both Fiona and Liz have a background in Marketing and thinking more of the product. This allowed us to get some useful insight that I feel will prove to be invaluable in the weeks ahead as we develop our product.

We also made the trip over to Edinburgh for Informatics Ventures EIE11 event. This was worth the £25 (yes £25) in rail fares and early start to get over for. We saw some excellent pitches and some not quite as good ones but it was a fantastic opportunity for the team to soak it all up for when it comes to us pitching next year.

Then on Friday I had an excellent opportunity, I went to meet with Steve Young of WeeWorld. Steve has been there from the start and scaled the company up into the successful and profitable organisation it is today. Was great to learn from him and to also get his opinion on where dizeo went wrong. He made a lot of valid points and I’m very grateful he gave me his time.

I feel I have learned a lot in the past year working at Arkly but there is still lots to learn and this week I have been all ears doing so. Although myself and the guys have been busy meeting lots of great people we have also been getting to work on our first service. We are hoping to make an innovative way for people to Mingle online. The week ahead will mainly be spent working on that so more info very soon so stay tuned.