Having taken the unusual step of re-locating from San Francisco to London, the merits of the city are often on my mind. To risk offending residents of both locations by boiling it down to a sentence: the valley is better at encouraging you to take the leap and build something while London is better for selling things.

The up and downsides of each place are substantially more nuanced, and I’ll try to do it some justice soon. In the meantime though, I just wanted to point out a couple local (well, local to us) companies doing great work with live music, video creation, and social monitoring. And if you’re an entrepreneur hoping to join the growing ranks of global London startups, Seedcamp applications are open (I’ll be there as a mentor — let me know if you’ll be around).

And since the last office picture we posted prominently featured a living room, here’s a quick shot of part of the space we now share with Songkick and some other cool companies.

As you can see, we’re one areca palm closer to being able to seal the windows and never go outside again (although the weather has been quite nice since… Thursday). But until we get our hands on about a hundred more of them (to create a biodome and enjoy the fabled 20% productivity boost), the coffee machine will have to tide us over.