100 coffees part 13: Unlucky for some
Apologies, data and conversational grenades
I DID something this week I never thought I’d do (you can make up your own joke here). Something that flies in the face of my community building activities; my networking missions; my coffee and chat quest. Something I’m not proud of (again, insert your own quip!).
I cancelled (or more accurately postponed) a bunch of coffee meetings. It wasn’t my fault, a big boy did it and ran away!
Actually I take full responsibility - my poor calendar management coupled with an unexpectedly positive response to the 100 Coffees quest meant I was flying past the 100 mark and headed into the flat white-infused sunset.
In another time and place this would have been fine. It would have been welcomed, in fact, as my new found love of meeting new people shows no signs of waning.
However, there is work to be done.
When I set out on this caffeine-fuelled odyssey three months ago one of the objectives was to develop a much deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities that lurk in the Scottish entrepreneurial ecosystem. The conversations, I promised myself, would form the basis of a ‘reflection report’ - a summary of all chats had to date. And one which would accurately reflect the insights of everyone with whom I shared an hour or so of our respective lives.
And the only way I can reflect and compile all those amazing insights is to stop having them and allow myself time to digest and present. (The report, not my lunch, although there is one place in Edinburgh I won’t be returning to!).
And so I owe a huge apology to the dozen or so people kind enough to reach out and offer to share their insights over a cappuccino with whom I have had to say: Not yet. But soon. In the next iteration.
The reflection piece of writing should be available in a few weeks, once I’ve stopped shaking enough to type properly.
VERY briefly, I’d like to replace apologies with thanks - thanks to those who took time out of their day to attend either of the first 100 Coffees meetups in Glasgow and Edinburgh over the past week.
I didn’t really know what I wanted to achieve (no change there) with those ‘gatherings’ except to bring a small groups of people together to have a conversation about… life, the universe and coffee. And to that extent, I think I achieved that.
So thanks again. I look forward to having many more group chats in the future.
AS I write this, there are only three more coffees until the magic 100 mark is passed and next week I’ll publish (by request of no-one but my inner data geek) a full summary of the miles travelled, coffees sunk and cafes frequented.
If there any other data that floats your boat and you’d like an insight to, comment below and I’ll share what I’m able to. Want to know how much I’ve spent on train fares? Where I’ve had the best coffee in Edinburgh? How often I’ve embarrassed myself by introducing myself to people I’d previously met? How many coffees I failed to show up for due to the aforementioned diary management skills?
Let me know.
FINALLY, I’m going to toss a conversational hand grenade your way. Whether you quickly pass it on or pull the pin and face it head on (that metaphor didn’t really work, did it?) is entirely up to you. But it’s featured in several conversations recently, where the topic of founder support - in all its forms - has been present.
And that grenade (or hot potato if you prefer something less violent, and you probably should) is that there is too much support for early stage/first time founders - that the amount of support (accelerators, local and national government programmes, incubators, meetups, mentors, funding streams, etc) contributes to the growing numbers of what a recent coffee companion called ‘wantrepreneurs’ (thank you - you know who you are), people who can self-sustain their business for extended periods of time without actually building anything tangible.
Should we - as an ecosystem, the argument went - leave them exposed more to the ‘law of the jungle? ‘ Should we remove the stabilising wheels earlier and allow them to fail faster, to learn quicker and bounce back sooner?
Should they learn quickly that building a start up is maybe not for them?
My thoughts? From my uncomfortable position sitting on the fence, there’s a fine line between providing the support needed to get a founder from zero to one, and building a safety net that is too robust and removes a lot of the jeopardy of building a startup.
Does that make sense? I think I’m saying yes and no to the argument, which, I accept is a Grade A cop-out. But it’s rarely that simple.
Like my high school history teacher would have said: class discuss!