Paolo Valdemarin's blog – since 2002
I just endorsed the Contract for the web because it seems the right thing to do. Of course it’s not enough, but it’s a very good and visible beacon to point people to when you try to describe how things should be instead of how they are.
Now back to try to put some of these principles in practice.
If we are in any way connected on social media it’s likely that you have already heard this: I’m co-hosting a new podcast/video series titled “Investor Series“, where we meet different kinds of early stage startup investors and try get useful information for founders trying to raise capital and for new investors on the exciting London investment scene.
I have some great partners in this adventure.
I’m hosting the show with Stephanie Forrest, founder of T/F/D, the marketing agency I have been working with for several years both with Activate and State of the Net (the best agency I have worked with).
Behind the scenes the awesome Victoria Medina and Sofia Pelúcio are in charge of pre-production work, social media management and most importantly are keeping all of us on schedule. Bhavesh Gorasia operates behind the cameras as director, camera man and best boy.
I’m having a lot of fun on the technicalities. After trying some other cameras, we are now shooting everything on iPhones and iPads. I am learning to use Final Cut Pro (it has been 25 years since I worked in video production, things have changed a bit), and I even played with a few loops on Garage Band to create the titles music. It’s incredible how much can be done with the tools available today.
We are still figuring out how to make the best of the dual distribution: the podcast containing the full interview (the length is between 20 and 40 minutes) and the shorter videos on YouTube containing bite-sized advice. I think that both formats are useful and they scratch two different types of itches, I’m curious to see how they will perform in time, once a few episodes start to stack up.
For this first “season” we have recorded five interviews, which will be releasing until the end of the year. As you can imagine I have had the opportunity to listen to all of them multiple times, at first hosting, then editing them, and I’m quite happy with the results: I found a number of interesting ideas, observations and stories in each and every one of them.
This week’s episode is a bit special: Greg Rice is the founder of Activate. This was the first interview we recorded, and at points we are clearly still trying to find our pace, but Greg did a great job as our first guest and there are quite a few good bits. Have a look and let me know what you think.
At Activate, of all the questions we get from startup founders, those that feel most urgent are all about fund raising and approaching investors. So we thought that it would have been interesting to approach some investors, ask them a few questions and make a podcast and a video!
We worked with the amazingly good team of T/F/D to organise the show, find the right people and put the whole production together.
The idea is simple: over a few weeks Stephanie Forrest and myself will be asking the same questions to a bunch of different types of investors. Some basic stuff (what made you become an investor?), some challenging stuff (what investment do you regret?) some low hanging fruits (what is the top tip for a startup pitch?).
We then chat about other topics: what it means to invest in the UK, how much should an investor get involved in a startup, what kind of startups do different investors prefer.
In this first… uh… season we are starting with five investors, starting on Thursday 7th. You can subscribe to the podcast on the web site, or you can follow our YouTube channel. Enjoy.
Since blogging is one of the key topics of this episode, I’m posting this here first.
In this episode we chat about the 50th anniversary of UNIX, problems at Google, the stories that we tell ourselves and how the world thinks. We hear about Euan’s intention to leave Facebook and how attractive the idea of going back to blogging is, preparing for a blogging renaissance.
And here’s a link to Euan’s brand new blog!
You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, using the good ol’ feed, or you can just click play below.
Expensive (well… it was Whole Foods), but as good as home. You can go ahead with brexit now, we’ll be just fine.
First Euan said: “Social media isn’t broken, people are.” And then we started discussing about the most recent news, how social media shapes conversations and conversations shape social media, how Filipinos influence everything we see, how India and Africa are evolving, and we finish by revealing the way to happiness.
First episode of 2019, recorded on the day of the Macintosh 35th anniversary, this episode is all about Euan and myself: the Apple fan boys. From experiences through this long stretch of history of computing, to the usual complaining about how things could be better, to the incredibly still fresh amazement for how technology changes our life every day.
