This is a blog post in a series written during the first fortnight of our participation in Techstars London 2015.
Welcome to our blog where we will document how pingWHEN takes flight from our participation in the TechStars London Fall 2015 cohort.
What did you do today?
As a US-based company, there was nothing more patriotic that we could think of than jumping on a plane to come across the pond to the United Kingdom on America’s celebration of Independence. On July 4th we began our journey to London for a 100-day accelerator program with TechStars London. We knew we couldn’t start this journey without bringing a few of our cuddle mascots along for the ride (check out how our Penguins took flight across the Atlantic on Twitter).
The last 24 hours before our arrival was a complete and utter whirlwind. A few great highlights included just receiving Julie’s passport a day before departure after much stress and anxiety from the UK Consulate. We tried to book into our flight, but there was a technical glitch on the British Airways website and our bookings completely disappeared. Last, Julie from her nostalgia of growing up as a competitor figure skater, wanted to have a last hurrah by going with her friends to the ice rink. Sam continued to warn Julie of the dangers of ice skating – that she could break her ankle and jeopardize her ability to join the program for the first week. We have a joke that our company’s bus number is 1 – which is an indication of how many people from the team need to get hit by a bus for the company to completely fail. As Sam came around towards Julie he took a graceful, but oh so small tumble to the ice, slicing the bottom of his chin open. He was rushed to the emergency room (ER) for 5 stitches. On her way to the hospital, Julie got quite lost and was pulled over for looking ‘suspicious’ until the cop realized that she was just purely lacking in a sense of direction and pointed her off to the hospital.
Arriving into the UK, we are filled with excitement, curiosity, and just amazement that despite all the craziness that we made it — successfully. We arrived to our hotel which we will call home base until we are able to support a living situation. We did a few quick errands such as dropping off our computers to Warner Yard and walking aimlessly around looking for food, though there was a sufficient place to eat literally across the road.
Tomorrow begins the first official day of TechStars and we are excited to see how this journey unfolds. If anything – we will come out with a ton of lessons learned, failures, good stories, and hopefully insane amounts of laughter as we work to build a startup that sustainably helps to empower women to fill safer in their communities.
What did you learn?
We had a few lessons learned for the day:
- The US duty free does not contain much selection of alcohol
- Julie should have bought an apple computer with her to the UK
Quotes of the Day
Discussion on hiring a pingWHEN ninja to join us for the program:
“Julie, I don’t mean to take the piss – but she seems so young do you think she would actually be valuable and a good worker?”
“Sam, she is a year younger than you and you seem pretty competent.”
“Good point.”
Carrying stuffed Penguins through airport security
“Excuse me sir, where are you coming from and what were you doing? And why do you have a penguin with you?”