It’s been a little while since the submit button was pushed on this page. I’d like to start by wishing all VC Cafe readers a sweet and happy Jewish New Year. May 5769 be full of ample funding and large exits.
Goodbye San Francisco, Hello London
After 2 great years in the heart of the tech world, I’m now married to my amazing wife, and a proud resident of the city of London.
San Francisco has a dear place in my heart. It’s a Mecca for entrepreneurs, it offers great quality of life and if you’re in tech, you have to live there at least once to appreciate the networking opportunities the valley has to offer.
That said, I’m very excited to experience the European startup scene first hand. Europe has a huge amount of 
largely undiscovered talents, I already had an impressive introduction to it by attending Saul Klein’s Seedcamp London as a product management mentor to 23 startups a few weeks ago. I was expecting mostly “me too” companies, but instead I saw lots of bootstrapping, legit entrepreneurs and some truly original ideas.
Seedcamp’s organization and logistics were also something to take note of. After a series of Mini-Camps all over Europe, the finalists were selected to attend a week long conference (and competition) packed with of mentoring sessions by approximately 250 industry professionals in product, technology, inevesments, marketing, hiring and media spheres. The schedule each day was packed with activity and attendance was at capacity if not more (for most of the panel sessions, there were not enough seats). I’ll consolidate my notes from Seedcamp in a future post but in the meanwhile, I recommend watching the videos on the blog and checking out the the official list of Seedcamp 08 winners.
There’s a bunch of events and meetups scheduled in Europe in the next couple of months including FOWA, Le Web 2008, OpenCoffee London, Minibar and more.
VC Cafe will likely add another alternative to the mix. Stay tuned.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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