Left Coast Journey

Downtown San Francisco, 7 a.m. on a Tuesday in March. What a grand time to see the city, stretching, yawning, waking up. The streets were empty, the parking was plenty and the meters did not yet scream for money. The weather was clear and the sun was not just an option. Winter as you know it simply doesn’t happen here. By noon we’d be in shirtsleeves.

Only the early birds in need of their Java drifted into Café Algiers on Beale, arguably the best café and coffee in this part of town. I was standing at the curb, sipping cappuccino and waiting for Malte in his little red rental. Up to that point we were “digital” colleagues, who had worked together across nine time zones. Now we were about to find out how closely photos match reality. A red Versa zipped by, but it didn’t pull over. Then the phone rang. “Uhm, I think I just passed you…” Yes, you did.

But streets in grid patterns don’t require GPS navigation, so a minute later we shook hands and hit 101 South, heading to Palo Alto, for our first meeting in the Valley. Although the notorious commute traffic wasn’t bad, we decided to take 280 to avoid the slow patches around SFO. Malte showed some German driving finesse while getting the hang of operating a car that has no clutch pedal.

Except for a dead Daimler on the off-ramp at Page Mill Road, there was nothing to slow us down. Hence we showed up early for the OpenCoffee Meetup at Deuce France, a French bakery near the Stanford campus. College kids behind MacBooks, moms behind strollers … nobody looked like they were looking for investors. Could it be that we were we the only ones?

Finally we found the meetings’ host, Keith Teare, sitting outside, by himself, quite casual. We introduced ourselves and business cards changed hands. Indeed, iliketotallyloveit was the only outfit present, so finally, we were in the spotlight;-) Then it was time to sit still and listen to a serial entrepreneur who started in the UK with cScape in the 1980s and never stopped. Among many other ventures he was also involved with VeriSign, edgeio, and Techcrunch. Currently he’s president at fotonauts, a new company he declined to discuss in detail, except that it was founded by Jean-Marie Hullot, a French computer scientist, who had worked at Apple and NeXT Software.

Keith knows a thing or two about fundraising, getting companies off the ground, and getting prepped for investor meetings. Good thing we brought note pads and a pencil sharpener. He offered many useful thoughts, but only one message: Think Big. To paraphrase: “This is Silicon Valley, where dreams are huge and competition is fierce. Nobody wants to waste time with peanuts.”

We were lucky to get his undivided attention, because normally he is surrounded by half a dozen (or more) budding entrepreneurs. When we walked away, we didn’t feel stupid, but thought we had learned a few things that might prove helpful as we work to grow iliketotallyloveit into the Next Big Thing. Beside the balmy noontime temperature in Silicon Valley we had other reasons to roll up those shirtsleeves….

Up next: Scouting locations, a German Web entrepreneur, and an angel investor at Starbucks.