David Erasmus

It has been a really interesting couple of weeks @ Cubate.

I started my first meetings with VCs and began to put our embryonic business into the furnace to see if it got incinerated.

I actually really enjoyed it, the VCs I met like Alliot from Octopus Ventures are just quick, smart people who need to understand within 10 minutes what you are doing, why you need help and how they will get their money back quickly.

VC meetings are not suitable for complicated visions or weird company structures.

The Power of getting out of the building and refining your business ideas through conversations with smart people is absolutely invaluable.

In our case nearly ALL the smart investors I have met have really latched on to the Social payments we have been exploring with Givey and soon to be Mosho. They believe this is where our niche value lies.

Through these conversations I have increased the visibility of Social Payment innovation within our model.

Here is another cool example of some guys doing a great job of extracting REAL WORLD VALUE out of Social media.

Pay with a Tweet – Case Study – OMG version from Leif on Vimeo.

In short once you have a good idea and have got it to a place of “Tangibility” so others can see it go and chat to AS MANY smart and some not so smart people to find out what they think and then……….

Reiterate, Reiterate, Reiterate both your product and your communications.

Don’t believe your Product girl or your Marketing guys, they are both as vital as each other.

Once you or one of your creations is released into the public domain you become very quickly aware how small of a pawn you are and how big the chessboard is.

We have been very fortunate that the press have taken kindly to us and GIVEY over the last couple of weeks.

With articles in Mashable, GoMo,The Independent on Sunday, Third Sector and Mobile Marketing all very positive we have been beaming from ear to ear.

But Interestingly right after our Mashable article we got our first small dig in the ribs from a guy called Simon Painter.

The interesting thing is that what he says is not wholly untrue so I can’t write him off as a ‘hater.’

It is obviously one sided and I have retorts however good or bad to answer his points which I won’t bore you with.

It  is simply interesting to note that this is our first public stoning and I doubt very much it will be the last.

In fact I would be gutted if it was as it would probably mean we were not doing anything interesting.

I guess the press and bloggers are always writing for impact and so are rarely incentivised to be encouraging or provide a balanced view.

In all our press so far we have benefited from VERY positive write ups so would be unreasonable to expect something different from the prosecution

I guess it is important that the team and I hear the weaknesses they may present but don’t let the negative aspect affect our progress.

In that respect I guess the same is true with good press; don’t buy into the hype and pedestal but be sensitive to the aspects of our story that the people are buying into to better focus our attention.

Note to self:  In summary; Welcome criticism and praise in equal measure but pan through the dirt for the specs of gold and leave the rest in the dust as we motor forwards!

On Monday I had the privilege of delivering a speech after Steve Moore CEO of the Big Society Network and before the PM David Cameron at the Launch of Nick Hurd’s Launch of the Giving White Paper.

It was the day we launched Givey – The giving identity that allows Gift Aided donations through Twitter and other social apps.

It was a landmark day for all that have been involved in the Givey journey, it was the day we switched the light on and went past go.

Following the ‘Lean start up’ mentality with blood sweat and tears along with a list as long as my arm of amazing people who have given of themselves needlessly to make this needed innovation a reality we managed to get to live day without significant external funding.

Later in the day I checked Givey’s PayPal account to see the following….

We only take 1.25% of donations so this balance represented approximately the first £80 raised through the system.

Now 92p might not seem a lot to you given that my team and I have invested 18 months thousands of pounds, leveraged every relationship we have and cried many tears, but for me it is the moment that we WON.

Turning £00000000.92 into £92,000,000.00 is simply an issue of moving the decimal place.

Now it is live, people can touch it, they believe it and my job is almost complete as there are FAR more competent people than I fit for growing this vision into all it can be – Joe Crome is the man to watch out for.

This is an amazing video from Derek Sivers Via TED

When you watch it look at the length of time between each ‘stage’ of the movements growth.

Our first stage took me and the team 18 months and it produced £1.

What is the betting that stage 2 will take less time and produce at least £2?

This was arguably the most important pound I will ever generate.

Don’t get blinded by NFC payments.

There are going to be many other crazy uses for NFC

Like Lockitron the Y-combinator backed start up.

I am just wondering when they are going to let us put the chip in us?

I am scared about when they are going to force us to have the chip in us.

I wonder if I will take it or not.

The Night before last I spent the evening with my friend Patrick and a bunch of bright sparks from UCL

I have never been so aware of my thickness

There were 2 other Founders speaking that night. Dave from Group spaces who has raised over $1 mill in VC and Rich from Floxx who’s business is hilarious and got him on the TV news!

They both delivered extremely competent business presentations so I stuck to the softer side of business.

The guys at the UCL Enterprise society are EXTREMELY talented and It is very likely that If I or anyone else can persuade them from selling their souls to the corporation then I will be likely to making Seed Investments into a few of them.

Here is my talk – don’t talk to me about the poor camera work – I know it deserves a FAIL award (PJ)

http://vimeo.com/23686112