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This week myself, Ale and Clarence are in Seattle for the NetHope summit at the Microsoft Headquarters. Tomorrow we head to San Francisco to meet up with some entrepreneurs and other start-ups in our space to share our product, ideas and get feedback from some of the leaders in the SaaS/Collaboration space.

Myself and Clarence arrived on Saturday in Seattle and were fortunate enough to be introduced to Kabir Shahani from Appature and Ken Kamada from HELM Capital Management through my friend Sri who I worked with in Accenture before I left. We also met up with a very up-and-coming start-up called Gist on Monday morning.

All of the people we met have provided excellent advice and feedback on our start-up and have all been completely willing to sit down and spend time with us during our trip. For example Ken spent almost his entire Monday afternoon looking at SambaJam and advising us on our business direction. T.A. McCann from Gist didn't even know who we were until we emailed him out of the blue last Thursday, allowed us to come to their offices last minute just to say hi without any particular agenda. The next week in San Francisco looks to be the same with a few key people already lined up that have never heard about us before.

It has been humbling for us that so many successful and busy people have taken the time to talk to us and give us really useful advice, and after we have spent almost a year networking around the London start-up community, it is a HUGE difference in attitude. I have to say the advice and people we've met in the last 2 days have been far more approachable and helpful than much of the start-up community back in the UK.

I think this is a key to the success of start-ups here in the US, networking just happens, it is natural and people are open to it. Back in the UK, while we're getting better, I still feel we have a long way to go to match this attitude of openness and approachability that we have seen here the last few days.

What's also surprised us is that many of the entrepreneurs we've met, even in a recession, have started to make money simply selling "paper". They have all got sign-up and even up front cash from companies simply by prototyping an idea on paper before committing any funds to development until they get it right, and through the entire process treat their customers as partners, not clients to push a product on to. I think its hard for people to appreciate that people will pay money for good ideas on paper if they see sustainable value in it for them. It also allows start-ups like ourselves to boostrap our company without requiring huge VC funds to build a product that potentially no one will use in the end.

So far this trip has been well worth the time and money, and we have received some very positive feedback from potential partners we will start to work with collaboratively over the next few months. Next week we'll update you on how our trip to San Francisco goes.