NB These posts are sadly only making it out several days after they actually happen - it's hectic here.

After a 6:30 start and a lot more walking than was strictly necessary, this morning's meeting was Keith Teare's Open Coffee Club in Palo Alto. There were four or five people there including Mark Birbeck from Forms Player (actually another London company) Keith, Sam Kho and Paul Josefak from Neuhaus Partners venture capital.

Saul and Robin are both investors in Edgeio (as is Mike Arrington) and although I've always found its model interesting I had no idea that the original "listings in blog posts" model was actually not at all what they were about. Edgeio is really the business model that Google Base should be but doesn't bother executing on.

The company is is of course about listings (and other interesting things to come) but more about de-coupling the creation and management of a listing (jobs, cars, houses etc) from its display. If they can beat the other players to the punch they're going to become enormous as a result of it. Keith Teare the CEO clearly knows his stuff - not only does he seem to have put together a great team and a substantial amount of finance behind the business but he really knows the technology too.

After the meetup, a couple of us then headed over with Keith to the Edgeio offices where I was introduced to John Dowd who's doing a lot of work figuring out how to network their display points. We also talked about how we could use the things they've done on the (soon to be launched) Open Coffee Network. For my money, they totally get the space they're in and are going to be pumping out some very interesting tools. John's an extremely smart guy and going to work with us setting up a job board on the (soon to be released) Open Coffee Club Network.

Even in less than 24 hours here it's blindingly incredibly obvious even to Pete, a friend who's come out travelling with me, that there is no point in hanging around in London to do a startup.

The people the technical expertise, the price of living and the weather combine to create an atmosphere of potential here you can almost taste in the air. Visiting San Francisco firmly changes the question from being whether one should come here to how to make it happen.