“The best startup in town, we don’t make anything, we just eat.”
Google Schmoogle. Who needs Larry Page or Sergey Brin?
Yeah, I know, everyone’s an entrepreneur. And everyone’s got a startup – from your crazy Uncle Jack who’s always grabbing the breasts of strange women to your potty old Aunt Tillie from Temecula. Hell, even your cousin Ernie with that twitching left eye and the embarrassing case of Tourette’s fancies himself as the next Jeff Bezos. Oh, and let’s not forget all those socially inept internet geeks with Asperger’s (a word of advice, ladies: don’t ever get into a relationship with one of these guys! If you’re not sure who they are, just think Mr. Spock).
In Silicon Valley alone you’ll find yourself tripping over the number of people doing startups, and let’s not forget their little brother on the East Coast, Silicon Alley. Frankly, I’m surprised there are this many things to actually START UP. Admittedly, London is lagging a bit behind its Yankee relatives, but hey, we’re catching up! Of course not every startup king (or queen) has a cunning master plan, but not to worry. If they don’t, they’ll most assuredly have a team all set to go… providing they ever come up with that startup idea they hope will set fire to the world (or, at the very least, set fire to their garage “headquarters” when things go down the pan). I believe this is known in the business as “an escape plan” – ie start up, then get the hell out!
Therefore not to be outdone, here is yet one more startup to add to the fray: KebabCamp. And I’m damned proud to be a founding member of the team.
We don’t need fancy offices in Canary Wharf or some “campus” in Palo Alto full of tykes playing Hide and Seek or frolicking in sandboxes. (Err, wait – that’s for the employees, not their kids!). And we don’t need some grungy garage either. Hell, we don’t even need a business plan! You won’t hear us bandying about terms like “Venture Capitalist” and “Angel Investor” and “Seed Money“. Who needs capitalists and angels and seeds when you’ve got a nice juicy kebab staring you in the face? Nah, we’re above all that stuff.
We hold our meetings over an orgy of food in a Tower Hamlets‘ kebab house. No, I won’t tell you which one, since it’s a bitch to get a table there even if you’ve booked. Mind you, I’m sure we’ll have an easier time of it in future, since last time we were there one of the waiters kept taking a perverse delight in brushing against me whenever we passed one another. (Is that a gun in your pocket…) But hey, if it gets us better service, who am I to complain? I’ve made sacrifices before – what’s one more?
When our team isn’t out kebabing in the East End, we’ll be busy Skypeing, since everyone knows that any startup worth its weight in bootstraps holds meetings on Skype. You’ll find us online day and night, 24/7, rain or shine. No one sleeps. Who has time for sleep when you’ve got a startup to start up? From various locations in and around London, there we’ll be: eyes and fingertips glued to our computers, an ethernet cable stuck up our arses, because baby, we mean business! If things go well, we might even launch an IPO.
So keep an eye out, because KebabCamp may be coming to a ticker tape near you!
