Essential Web 07

Coming to you live and direct from the immensely comfortable sofas of Shoreditch House where I have been sat for the best part of the day with my developer, Lee, fleshing out some new functionality for phase 1. All this after a hard morning's networking at OpenCoffee where I was fortunate to meet (among others) Conrad Poulson, UK Head of Start-up Business Development, Orange. Conrad is researching new start-up ideas that plan to incorporate mobile application elements. I explained the future mobile organisational tools that we intend to offer Mesh members to assist them to work on projects with greater ease and he seemed keen on where the initiative is going. I very much hope to hear from him in the future.

Thanks to the joys of Facebook, Sam Sethi alerted me last night to the Essential Web 07 after-party held in the foyer of the bfi IMAX cinema. A very enjoyable evening was had by all, although I was far too busy networking every time the tasty morsels of seared beef came round, so had to keep myself from being a drunken idiot whilst my tummy grumbled about the liquid dinner.

It was a great pleasure to meet Mr Sethi of Vecosys fame and one of his new editors of blognation UK, Huw Leslie. Blognation is launching on Monday. In addition, I was very lucky to chat to Nic Brisbourne of Espirit Capital Partners who were one of the first investors in our friends at WAYN.com. At the same time, we talked to Eugene Kouumdjieff of e-man, a strategy consultancy.

After my (slightly inebriated) introduction to Mesh, both agreed that we have a "viable business model", which to us, is a very great accolade indeed. Being completely new to this game and only knowing in great depth the problems facing our target audience, it is always excellent to hear some praise and acknowledgment for what we have set out to do. It makes all the time I spend doing Mesh extra worthwhile and calms my occasional desires to sit and veg out in front of Big Brother.

It was also rather hilarious to step in on the beasting that Stowe Boyd was giving to David of Zubka about the awful name of his website. I didn't know, at points, whether to laugh along or simply make my excuses. David took it all on the chin, like a good British gentleman.

Last but not least, it was brilliant to meet the highly inspirational Errol Damelin of Wonga. Now on his third start-up, Errol's advice was not to approach venture capitalists too early and to remember that a majority of businesses are not built on such funds. He said that if Mesh does well, we could easily rely on debt funding via a sweet-talking of the good old bank manager at the same time as retaining all the shares in Mesh. However, we are still keen to explore venture capital because Mesh is still lacking in the "general commercial advice" field - we could really do with some guidance from someone older and more experienced in the land of Web 2.0 start-ups. At the very least, we would welcome a Non-Executive Director onto the Board to assist us, if we didn't go the whole hog and get VC funding plus a new Director.

In all, I had a superb time at the party and it was a real coup to meet the people I did. I very much look forward to meeting them again or at the very least sharing ideas and suggestion in the virtual manner to which we have all become accustomed. In the mean time, if anyone reading has any contacts for people who may be interested in becoming a Non-Exec of Mesh, please feel free to holler.