Thoughts in Time

I was on the west coast in the US then back to London and haven’t had a chance to post much - although I’ve got a bunch of topics I’ve got that I want to write about…. in the meantime, I thought I would share a link to this press release which shows the success Higher One had last year.  I’m sure the team there will continue to have simliar success this year and into the future.  Also nice that the business has grown to the point where the team can attract great advisors like Bank of America securities to work with on new growth opportunities.

Here’s the release: Higher One Achieves Record Growth for Fifth Consecutive Year

Stopped by Barclays yesterday to find out about our accounts.  It was amusing - the lady who proposed to “help” us asked how long I was going to be a student here (I guess I still do look young when clean shaven?), and informed me that I couldn’t be premier as I’d have to have £1,000,000… somehow when the premier banking manager finally came out, learned a bit about our background, she got much nicer…. but we still don’t have an account open.  They’re supposed to call us today with an update.  We’ll see.

To follow up on my international e-commerce post, I was pretty excited that today was the day my IKEA stuff was going to be here… or that’s what I thought. As I write this, I’ve just finished speaking to IKEA customer service - who failed to see how they could help us get our stuff any earlier than this saturday after they didn’t deliver it today(between 7AM and 6pm - a tiny delivery window mind you)… and not just that - without telling me when I made the purchase, order had been split into two parts with the key part (the actual wardrobes), now scheduled for delivery in March (what the !”$£”$#?).  Yes sir - you can have your 12 sloppen shlippen baskets, but your hoppen dresser to put them in will be here in 30 days.  Of course you can trek to our massive store near Wembley - they might have them next week - oh, then you’d have to pay for extra delivery… well terribly sorry for the inconvenience…. Someone should compete with IKEA just on the wardrobe side…

Seems like we picked the right week to move to optimize our living standard .

If you’re a student who goes to a Higher One client school, you can open a checking account, have money in it, and be using your MasterCard Debit Card in say 3 to 5 minutes.  Now, we were pretty innovative about how we use online databases, etc. to do CIP documentation.  So, I didn’t expect to be able to do something similar here in the UK.  However, I did expect to be able to go to a branch and get a “current account” (as demand deposit type accounts are called here) in one stop.  Also, I wasn’t going in as a customer off the street to Barclays, I was referred to their premier group, by the premier group at bank of america.  I was able to work with someone at the branch to fill out all the know your customer forms they needed. I had to give copies of my passport, drivers license, sign about 10 times, and after all that I was told that since I wanted it to be a join account, I had to get the same stuff from Kellee.

Monday - the day we got in (afer I didn’t sleep at all on the flight), I took Kel over the branch and after waiting 15 minutes so we could see the same bank employee (I asked another one quickly to help and it was clear that she wouldn not figure it out quickly).  Kellee got everything signed and verified…and …we were told that 5-10 business days from now we would have an account…oh yeah, and for tax planning reasons I’m going to have to go through this again to get accounts for my trust.  wow - I hope that this isn’t the speed with which everything move here!

So, Kellee is here with me in London now (woo hoo), however when she got here we had zero storage - that’s right - 8 suitcases of clothes, and no storage - nada, none.  So, besides stacking them neatly, one of the first orders of business on the home front was to figure out a storage solution.  We decided that we didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so we were delighted to find out that there was an IKEA that delivered to where we live.

IKEA is wonderful…and a headache.  We started around 10pm. We painstakingly measured the spaces we had and figured out which combination of wardrobes would work.  We debated the interior fittings.  We figured out what we needed to order to create a small home office for me… and finally after at least 2 hours, we were ready to complete the transaction.

I hit the “my trolley” -that’s right - not a shopping cart here in the UK… and it took me to the checkout page. Like the US site, it asked for a shipping and billing addres.  Cool I thought, I can use my US address for billing -since I don’t have a U.K banking account yet (more on that later), and ship to my flat in Hampstead.  This logic was perfect until I noticed that I couldn’t choose a country for billing address and couldn’t input a US style zip code.

No worries - I know how to fix this I thought (it was now midnight).   I’ll just call Amex and add this address as an authorized ship to address which will also fix the AVS verification so it’ll go through.  I call Amex and they add the address and say that it should work… Great - except IKEA.co.uk doesn’t take American Express - My life, but my card is not accepted!.
So - I call bank of america about my card. I guess they code our card as part of the premier banking group , so i get through with literally no wait - good thing since I stupidly dialed on my cell rather than skype (it was now about 12:30).  The lady adds my address- she says they can’t change the address to the UK, however she says it should work.  I hang up, go back to IKEA to finish the transaction… and it doesn’t work - REJECTED.  Frustrated I all BofA again. I explain what has happened and the lady connects me to the “authorization” department. She warns me that they don’t have a way to code the transfer as Premier so I’ll probably be on hold for 5-10 minutes. 6 minutes later I get through.  The lady was awesome.  She knew exactly what I wanted to have happen and actually helped me change my address for the card. She waited on the phone while I tried the transaction..and… still rejected!  She asked me to try the checkout process from scratch and I reluctantly agreed - I had like 20 items in my trolley and was worried it might miraculously become empty!

At about 1:15AM I got back to the payment page….and it worked! kind of… It went to the next page.  I clicked on a link… and got a page not found. Hit back … page not found “oh crap” I thought.  Luckily a few minutes later, I got the confirmation email.  Now we just have to wait until January 28th for the stuff to actually show up (in nice flat boxes), and then the hours of assembly will commense.  Wish us luck.

Today was pretty much our final moving day.  We had a bunch of stuff that we didn’t ship with the movers (although I now wish we had - more on that later), and we had to pack our last set of clothes into suitcases which we’ll take with us on our flight tomorrow.  We also had to put the final boxes of stuff in our P.O.D.

My parents volunteered to come over and help us.  It was really nice of them. We got off to a good start, getting the final stuff packed (computer monitor, scanner, printer, etc..)  By about 2:30, we’d finished packing all of the boxes (that we didn’t want to go freight) that we wanted to ship to London.  We loaded them all up in the cars, and headed to the UPS store.  Previously, Kellee and I had looked online what it would cost to ship this smaller stuff to the UK.  It hadn’t looked too bad based on our estimates of #s of boxes and weight.  When we got the UPS store, we told the lady what we were doing and started unloading the boxes.  She put one of our smaller boxes (1 of 20) and promptly informed us that that box alone would cost $160 to ship.  One of the larger boxes she estimated would be closer to $500…

I was not going to go forward with that - it was just too expensive.  So, we reloaded all of the boxes into the cars. Now it was closer to 3:30.  We decided to get some lunch.  We got home at about 4 and unpacked everything.  We decided we would call the company who handled our overall move and see what they could do for us. I’m sure it will be a lot less expensive.

My parents took off and Kellee and I started packing our toiletries etc.  With that done, we booked our car to take us to the airport tomorrow.  Then we tried to relax - it’s hard though - we’re really excited and nervous to finally be close to the end (on this side) of this long process!  We definitely would not have gotten this far without the help of my mom and dad so I want to say thanks to them again - they’re always there when we need them (no matter what crazy scheme of mine they’re helping with)…Mom and dad - I love you

Had a great team dinner tonight with Johannes, Logan, Araz, and Per (who’s joining us officially soon).  Represented at the table were Austria, Denmark, Iran, the United States, and South Africa.   Great Indian food and good conversation.  It’s exciting to see more and more of the key team come together as we keep things moving forward.  The place was in Soho - which reminded me very much of soho in NYC (I guess this one came first though?).  regardless, I can understand why most of the media companies in London are based in that area.

I like working with a group with such diverse backgrounds.  It means that we all have different experiences to draw from and thus will challenge one another’s thinking.  As Peter Drucker talks about in “The Effective Executive” - if there’s no disagreement, then the decision hasn’t been thoroughly though through. It is only with differening opinions that one can best think through a problem and come to the best decision.  Having different cultures, backgrounds and experiences I believe is a key input to startup success.   In fact, there was a study I read about at some point that quantitatively measured the heterogeneity of a team and examined whether homogenous teams (simliar people) or heterogeneous teams (different people) were most effective. It found that the teams composed of the most diverse members were the most succesful in rapidly changing industries… which are usually those where startups are focused!

So, i finally go around to creating a FlickR account… Yes, I am way way way behind everyone on this.  Quite honestly, I’ve known about flickr from early on, but for me personally, the value wasnt’ there as I wasn’t taking a ton of pictures that I wanted to be able to easily store online and share.  With the move to London, that’s changed.  I want to be able to catalogue my experience and share it with my friends and family (and co-workers) scattered around the world.  So, I’ve got a Flickr account and will probably be starting to use it quite regularly. Check it out here: Sean Glass’s FlickR Photos.  If you think there’s a startup out there that serves this purpose better than flickr post a comment to let me know.

So I wrote about why I wanted an office and why I believe an open office makes sense for a startup.  In addition to wanting a good space, I didn’t want to waste a lot of time looking for a space - it’s more important that I’m working on getting the business of the ground than touring buildings around London.  So, with agreement from Johannes on a general price range and location (cheap, but easy commute for Per, Araz, and me), I started my search.  As we wanted to find space that we could get on a short term lease, and didn’t want the hassles of getting telecom, broadband, etc we decided to find a serviced office.  I visited a number of sites last night (starting around 10pm). Easy Offices, Instant Offices, Regus…etc..  I found a couple places that seemed pretty well suited - right price range, good central location.  I filled out the online contact forms, hit submit, and went to sleep.

Luckily I didn’t sleep in. At 8:30 AM I received the first call from a rep from one of the services asking for further details (start date, # of people, type of biz). They sent more options and I picked a couple that I thought would work to arrange viewings. One in particular caught my eye - the wonderfully named “utopia village”.  I emailed the agent to see if I could see it today. 2pm - Met araz at Chalk Farm tube stop - closest to the utopia.   We walked around the area.  Shops, pubs,  couple blocks from the park - Nice!   We met Ben - the manager for the property and he gave us a quick tour and showed us what was available.  Great light, right sized space - perfect for our operation…Short negotiation and an hour later we had a deal on an office. We move in Feb 1.  Now I can focus on everything else to get done .