FORBES
Ewan Spence, Contributor
Writing at the cross-section of technology, media and human nature
Natalie Downe and Simon Willison (Photo credit: adactio)
As a hook for the press, locking yourself away in a bedroom in Morocco during your honeymoon for a week to build a start-up is tough to beat, but that’s exactly whatNatalie Downe and Simon Willison did during August 2010.
Now celebrating its second birthday, Lanyrd is one of the ongoing success stories of the UK tech scene, so Downe and Willison have taken this opportunity to look back on the formative days, weeks, and months of Lanyrd through their tweets, photos, and thoughts during that productive first week in Casablanca.
At the start of the year, I flagged up Lanyrd as one of five UK tech companies to keep an eye on in 2012, and it has certainly built up a good reputation with lots of outreach and engagement with third-party developers to go along with appearances at many notable tech conferences, including SXSW.
They also, in a smart bit of PR, launched a browser plug-in for Twitter users who wanted to strip out any mention of SXSW from their social media stream during March this year.
“It has been an incredible learning experience,” Downe told me as their unique company history went online, “and it continues to be a fascinating and challenging journey.”
After two years, Lanyrd is set to be one of the Web 2.0 winners, as it’s one of the genuinely useful mash-ups of real world and social media data. Thankfully for fans of Lanyrd it looks like the founders are in place for the long haul. Downe has no intentions of being a serial entrepreneur, “I don’t relish the task of organising a second wedding in order to go on another honeymoon and launch another start-up!”
