Hot and Sticky all over...
A superb evening was hosted at The Ambassador by the delightful team at Moo this evening to celebrate the launch of their funksome stickers. The miserable and unpredictable British weather held off so that a large 200+ strong crowd could gather on the terrace and spill out onto Exmouth Market, much to the disdain of certain car drivers who had chosen that route out onto Farringdon Road. At one stage, it felt a bit like mob rule as the Moo crowd booed and jeered at a car making a rather large racket, in a vain attempt to proceed along Exmouth Market at more than a snail's pace.
We initially made ourselves feel part of the Moo crowd by filling in our name-badge stickers and proudly adorning our chests with a little pink sticker neatly saying, "Yay!" Off we went to mingle and who should we meet but the man who seems to be everyone's friend, Mr. Sam Sethi. We enjoyed a very interesting chat with him about monetisation and also about the business model employed by A Swarm of Angels - the "Cinema 2.0" project and M1NT - the world's first shareholders club. It's certainly worth reading up more about the idea and perhaps offering our Founding Members the opportunity actively to own a share of Mesh.
It was also good to meet Sutha Kamal to whom we explained the concept of Mesh. Of course, the monetisation issue reared its head again and it was good to gauge his interest in our ideas. It's something we are currently working on - brainstorming revenue-making ideas and getting feedback and comments from a variety of people. As Sam correctly pointed out, it may be that you have good ideas for future monetisation, but only when you have got a fair amount of traction. VC's just aren't interested in anything but the rates of return on their investment, so we feel good to have made the decision not to spend our precious time on barking up the wrong VC tree for now. We plan to wait for at least six months and in that time, to really work hard on building a great product. Only then will people invite their friends thereby enabling the community to grow into successful venture.
We also bumped into the Trusted Places crew again and were fortunate to see the most excellent chaps, Raj and Jack from Kwiqq. We plan to share our template designs which are hot off the Zerofee press to gain their feedback and any ideas they may have. We love this way of working - it feels almost as if Mesh is being shaped and moulded by a cross-section of the London Web 2.0 scene. Huzzah!
Last, but by no means least, it was very interesting to meet Brian Murphy from Moo who shared with us plans to launch a Moo API. Now THAT'S something Mesh would love to support. We went along today with the aim of explaining how we want to collaborate with Moo for our launch party:
The way we see it is that our Founding Members would love to have 15 Moo cards with the Mesh logo and their unique access code and name on the reverse. That way, when they are considering who to invite to Mesh, they can physically give out one of their Moo cards rather than just having to send out an email. If they like the product (and we are sure they will), we envisage a large number of the active creative business professionals using Moo cards for their own use (e.g. to promote their work as a DJ or their new book). It has to be said that once you have something in your hand, it's far easier to remember what it is that someone has told you about. I cannot recall the number of times someone has told me something interesting and then I have totally forgotten it later due to a mixture of having several other conversations in an evening and the wicked effects of accidentally falling into an alky-hole. So there you have it... Alicia Zur-Szpiro, if you're reading, I'm coming to beat down your door until you say "YES!" to helping to sponsor the launch party Moo cards! Mesh has got a community of Moo-lovers - they just don't know it yet.
As soon as Jonny can locate a small sliver of time in his hugely hectic schedule of meeting potential Founding Members and directing the development of the website, he's going to do a short piece introducing some of the truly amazing people who are going to become the foundations and cornerstones of Mesh. From lawyers who have published books and released albums to bankers who have made films and showcased their paintings, we have them all... and their numbers are growing by the day. We think we're busy... You should hear about how theses guys manage their time. On that note, it's time for me to get some shut-eye. No sleep makes me into an irrational, irritated and idiotic person... What can I say, perhaps it just brings out the "creative" in me... Goodnight.
