Philip’s blog

Intersting article in the latest note from Library House that we should all live in high rise flats as they are more energy efficient. Mr Choa claims that New York is the greenest community in the world or perhaps more efficient per household.

On this basis we should adopt the old Soviet style communal housing but with better insulation.

If you cook at home, your garbage fills up with all the packing.  So we should all eat in large canteens as they are greener - perhaps it will be Big Macs for all!!

Communal living, high rise is the most energy efficient way of life and when you have had enough you can jump!!

“By contrast, living in an apartment block can mean having four of those surfaces shared with neighbours, providing a significant level of heat transfer. Since many modern cities have mixed use areas, reducing the need for transportation, and much closer amenities than in the countryside, it can be seen that high-rise living is more environmentally friendly than any country residence could ever be. In fact, Mr Choa controversially asserts, Manhattan is the greenest community on earth.”

This building in Tenison Road caught my eye today.  There are a number of ridge tyles missing on the roof and one is being held back by the chimney.  The third photo shows the building at the back which is need of more than a lick of paint.  I was assured that all was under control.

I missed the leaking gutter which is letting water run down the front RHS.

Prof Vangelis Souitaris has just won an award to study spinouts from universities.  Of course, it is much easier for public sector  workers to enjoy a happy relationship with licensing.  I hope that the Professor finds time to talk to entrepreneurs who find it difficult to work with people who have structured jobs and no incentive to put in the long hours to make a spinout work.  We shall see!

I got in touch with Shikhir who wrote a great dissertation on Venture Capital funding for his theses at the Cass Business School.  He is currently in Silicon Valley.

A quote from his e-mail “I must say I absolutely love EF. I was always looking for a way to explain to people quickly what they can expect upon IPO. A picture really is worth a thousand words. One thing I learned quickly while working on Structuring VC Deals is that you really need to be careful not to oversimplify these things. More that half the CEOs I talked to who were venture backed didn’t even know what anti-dilution was. Very worring! But using your pie charts, we can very easily explain the before and after pictures of these concepts.”

Great evening at CUTEC where we had an open discussion terms from VCs.  The main advice was not to sign the terms until you were sure you could handle the lock-out period when the VC can carry out the due diligence and you cannot talk to anyone else.

Trust, trust and trust are the key words as you only need the documentation when the trust breaks down.  That includes missing your targets!

Peter Jones.tv had decided on the six Tycoons who will be in the show.  We are all told to tell everyone that we are not in the final so there can be a big surprise for the cameras when and if we all meet up.

So you will just have to watch the show in June!

Jessica is writing a new Founders at Work and will be able to draw on the experience of getting start-ups going with Y Combinator.

It is a great idea and must be an amazing environment to start a business.  They have over 50 investments so far.

Do we need something similar in Cambridge, UK?

Geoff Jones sent me a link about this post.

Great post on the Infectious Greed site about Jessica Livingston’s book, “Founders at Work”.  There is a link to YouTube for the talk she gave to Google.  It is really strange hearing an author reading “stories” from a business book. 

The book has some great points but skims over the equity dilution and funding raising rounds required to build some of these businesses.

These are pictures of Wolfson Court, Girton College, Cambridge.  Girton College is one mile north of the centre of Cambridge.  Wolfson Court, not to be confused with Wofson College, is on the west of Cambridge and not far from the Vets School.

Equity Fingeprint gets a new skin as they say in the trade.  There is much to do and hopefully the links will be on soon.  Then it is time to link up with other sites.  We also need a simulation tool linked to the database.  It will happen and Philip will be a Tycoon!  The images are from the hand of Dill.  Next is to build up more EF training tools so that this will be a proper Business Plan Resource.