An exponential day in London

I guess most people would say that flying 21012km to meet up with a group friends is a bit bonkers – to be honest, my quick trip to the UK was definitely worth the effort and way more worth the carbon footprint (to be exact 1.84tCO2 :(, which I have offset through a donation on www.carbonneutral.com ) than a lot of the uncounted business trips I took in my banking career ! On Friday Team Peared (the startup I co-founded in Summer in California) and friends from Singularity re-united at in London at Googles Co working Space in Shoreditch – It was a fitting environment for a whole day of discussions, brainstorming and a bit of table tennis….It was like being in outer space again! There was talk about Ebola, and how current systems don’t work and what incentives should be given to get more aid personal into Africa (lack of aid workers seems and doctors to be much more the problem rather than money – Cuba for example is sending more doctors into West Africa than US & Europe combined). We discussed electronic medical records and how they can be made safer, data management for Apples iHealth and even the newest ventures of Google X. Ideas circulated on how to best integrate the lessons of the summer into educational tools. And it was great to hear the fantastic progress that some of the startups, we had founded over the summer (more on this hopefully soon.) Quite a few new ideas and initiatives where born, all of which will hopefully be firmed up over the next few weeks. As I am now on my second 12hour plane flight in economy class within three days I can see – the pain that this uncomfortable Cathay airplane seat is giving me (Attention business idea: an efficient ergonomic economy class seat!!!) was worth it!!