Letters from Silicon Valley - Week 1: The Necessary Pleasantries

Born and raised in Glasgow, I caught the venture bug at a young age. While I was still at school I was always on the look out with friends, dabbling in such high flying project as importing sunglasses, running discos and even making dish towels.

Some fell flat on their face but some were actually profitable to my parent's amazement.

From there I studied Engineering at Glasgow University which culminated in my design for a netting that mitigated car bombs in the final year.

Following Glasgow I took a trip down to Cambridge to carry out my masters. It was there that I started to get really interested in the science behind entrepreneurship and startups.

For the past few years it has been my ambition to come out and experience the venturing culture that is so abundant in this area of California.

On the back of my studies I have kindly been given a Global Research Award by the Royal Academy of Engineering to research how company's priorities evolve as they grow.

Now believe it or not, this isn't just another piece of academic drivel that will never see the light of day.

I am actually going out to speak to a host of exciting startups, established firms, private venture funds and what I think will be the most interesting - failed ventures.

The chat that I most excited about is with Marc Tarpenning, co-founder of Tesla, the electric car company. His thoughts on the possibilities for small firms to benefit from the growing electric auto infrastructure should prove to be gripping.

In addition to this project I will be spending two and a half months interning with Heyzap.com, a startup with a focus on flash games.

It has just celebrated its 1st birthday, an achievement in itself, after passing through the famous YCombinator incubator.

Other notable graduates of YCom include Loopt and Xobni. However the interesting point with Heyzap is not its current path it is the fact that its two founders are young Brits who refused to set up shop in the UK, instead packing their bags and heading out West.

Surely alarm bells must be ringing that there will be more to follow.

Anyway, I hope I havn't spent too long rambling on about my past and have actually stimulated at least a bit of interest in the future content of the blog.