52 - Half of something great

"We've all got to work!"

That's something my mum used to say when I'd sit at home not working.

"No one enjoys working!"

That's what she used to say when I bitched about working.

"I never want to work for anyone other than myself!"

That's what I used to say when I thought working for myself would invent itself from thin air. Unfortunately my career happened and here I am, ten years later, making someone else rich panicking about money.

Me and Paul, we've been charging ahead for so many months. It felt like we picked up so much momentum that we didn't really need to try, just had to steer. But now we're at a standstill. We have a half built product and no money. We're frustrated.

I met with this guy called Tom. Tom's the boyfriend of a girl I work with. He's the CEO a web-based company (get this, they've even pitched to Ashton Kutcher, apparently Kutcher was real sharp and pulled apart their proposal - what a guy)

He shared a lot of his experiences which was amazing for me. He said how, for start-ups like us, the culture in London is way different to San Francisco. It would be so much easier if we were over there. And he mentioned this festival in San Francisco where you pitch at a bunch of investors. The deadline was a week ago - I entered anyway.

This is what we need to do now; we have a great idea, we have the talent to turn it into a real thing, like, it almost is a real thing, we just need to step into that world and show those people that we're here and have something great. Well, half of something great.

DOWNLOAD THE STORY APP HERE

51 - Chapter two

Here's where we're at.

Story was approved by Apple on Christmas Eve. We knew it wasn't ready to start shouting about. It's missing huge features that people expect but we ran out of time. We paid Filippo his invoice but ran short on the VAT which we're paying off whenever we get spare money. Filippo's being really cool about it.

Because of the missing features we're only telling our friends about it. We have a feature list to get Story good enough for everyone to use. We're looking into contracting the work overseas to finish it off. We've been in touch with about forty candidates. Although we're still unsure where the money for this will come from.

We've worked so hard on this that it stings to see it stall but we're not stopping now. That would be crazy.

Saw some girl in a gossip column the other morning, some daughter of some F1 guy. Loaded. Her bar tab for the night before was 30k. My face contorted staring at her drunken face just thinking, with 30k, we could change the world.