Ten Years Ago

I was asked to speak to the Trade Me Commercial team off-site this morning. There are now 35 people in this team - more than in the entire company in 2004, when the commercial team was MOD.

So, please excuse the reminiscent mood:

Ten years ago this week I left New Zealand to live in London.

I had recently sold my startup to Trade Me in return for stock. Trade Me was valued at about $1m in that deal. Shortly after that shareholders were asked to provide loans to keep the company afloat while we waited for the recently introduced success fees to start to cover costs.

I had mixed feelings about leaving. I’d spent a pretty full-on couple of years at Trade Me and was pretty proud of what I’d helped to create. But I was a little jaded too and ready for something new.

I was also just married.

I had organised a sponsored work permit to get into the UK, and can only imagine how that must have looked to the person processing our visa applications.

We had no idea:

We were up for an adventure, but within a couple of months we’d be struggling to find new work post 9/11 and wondering what the hell we’d gotten ourselves into. Partly in an effort to deal with the stress of that situation, I started running.

As it turned out Trade Me and impending parenthood would eventually entice us back, but we returned having fallen in love with London and with a new perspective courtesy of travel to some amazing parts of the world.

It seems like yesterday, until I think about everything that has happened between then and now at which point it seems like half a lifetime ago.