Thursday 14th September 2006

A morning train to London. This trainline.com website is amazing, even though it doesn’t look it. Book a couple of days in advance and you’ll be in first class for £28. This is the same as you’d be paying in standard class had you just turned up to the station. The added advantage of this is you get free food and drink served at your seat and so can make back a proportion of this cost there. It’s a great deal and yet they don’t ever seem to advertise it.

The trouble with first class travel is that you can never do back to standard class ever, ever again. There’s an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Elaine are at an airport getting their flights changed but there is only a first class ticket and economy class ticket available for them, them having to decide who gets which.

“I’ve travelled first class before, Elaine.� Says Jerry. “I can’t go back. I wont.�

It’s not the same as getting used to great restaurants, and then going for a meal in a bad one. Because bad food can be a guilty pleasure, there’s no guilty pleasure in sitting in standard class. It’s fine, absolutely fine, until you’ve travelled in first. God knows the difference on planes is even worse. Unless you’re rich, never buy or accept a business class ticket on a plane. Good God. You’ll never want to fly again unless you receive the same treatment and comfort, surely? I am not rich and so do not travel in business or first class on planes, but when I first do, it’s going to have to be goodbye to economy forever. It will have to be. Forever. Forever I say. I can’t go back. I wont.

So it’s a question of becoming rich, and that’s the reason for the journey down to The Smoke, to get Global Hangover off the ground and therefore retire onto my own island with champagne rivers and a staff of nine thousand beautiful women riding around on unicorns in ten years time. I am modest in my ambitions. But the thing about setting up a big website is that it will either fail, or it will be huge and valuable. There is no in between.

Making that happen wont be easy but what Wade and I have is a very good idea, no arguments from anyone about that, and in Wade’s case the connections to make it a reality. His connections are actually sickening, or they would be if I didn’t have access, but now I’m his business partner, I suppose I do. It’s interesting how you can make just one connection, and by association make dozens more.

One of these contacts / friends is called Matt, an investment banker in the city. We walked down to the Monument to meet him, and then onto Leadenhall Market for a drink. The pub was full of city boys, and whilst this would normally make me run a mile, we were here to talk about finance and so it seemed appropriate. Matt hadn’t heard the idea before and so it was a case of pitching it and trying to get as much detail across, and making it sound amazing, in a small amount of time. He really liked it and wants to help. We have to prepare a financial plan for the first six months and if it looks satisfactory he’ll pass it over to a bunch of venture capitalists. This is an enormous help. Matt also warned us that our start-up costs would be considerably higher than whatever we thought, and that we need to consider this.

From there, it was to Liverpool Street Station and a train up to Stoke Newington to meet a potential designer for the site called Nathan. Turns out Matt was right, the prices Nathan was talking about were indeed higher than we imagined, far higher. It seems that the design and coding could get as high as £50,000. I had no idea it could be that high but apparently large companies pay anything up to £250,000 for a build. I think Nathan was giving us a very corporate rate though, we were looking at paying less and using friends, whilst also giving them the option to invest in the business, based on potential.

Anyway it’s all still very possible, even though we can’t pay that sort of money. That said, with the correct investment in the company, we won’t be using our own money anyway. The Catch-22 is that we’ll need to have a product, of some description, before we can get investment. We will work it out.

Wade was off to a birthday party but I headed back to Soho with his house keys and sat in a bar called Freedom. I put my papers on a table and ordered a martini from the bar. Sitting at the table, and having had a sip of my drink, I realised I need to go to the toilet, and so did so, in the toilet, not under the table, washed my hands and returned to the table a minute or so later to find all the papers and my drink gone.

A waiter was passing.

“What happened to my stuff?� I asked.

“Oh, I thought you’d gone.�

“I just went to the toilet.�

“Oh, well your papers are behind the bar.�

“Thanks. And my drink?�

“Well, I thought you’d gone, so I threw it away.�

“I was gone a minute!� I protest.

“Well you should have asked someone to watch it for you.�

“I’m by myself.�

“Then you should have taken your drink to the toilet with you.�

“I should have taken my martini to the toilet with me?� I smile. “I’ll have another drink please.�

I got a gin and tonic after a discussion with the barmaid who asked me how much of my martini I’d drunk before sitting back down. Then the manageress came back over.

“You’re going to have to pay for that.�

“Why?�

“Because it’s a double gin and tonic.�

“And? My martini was destroyed.�

“Well, you’ll have to pay for one shot of the gin.�

I left. I hate Britain. Perhaps we could base Global Hangover abroad. I’d happily be a tax exile. If you are you’re allowed into the UK for 80 days a year. Fine. “You’ll have to pay for one shot.� Show me the way to Japan.

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit