From the category archives:

Startups

Pitching for Management – Manchester – 12 October 2011

by Steve Livingston on October 4, 2011

Do you want to take your business onto its next stage of growth? Do you need to find some senior talent to help you do this?

We are partnering with AngelNews for its latest Pitching for Management event in Manchester on 12th October. This will be the perfect event for exciting businesses to find senior people to help them build their teams at no cash cost and for executives to identify interesting early stage businesses that would value their expertise.

Pitching for Management is a live event series which runs in 18 cities across the UK. It will be held at Brown Shipley’s offices in Spinningfields from 4.00pm to 7.30pm. As well as the pitches there are plenty of networking opportunities at the event and canapés and drinks will be served during the evening.

The Pitching for Management concept is simple. Make a short pitch to an audience of senior executives who have come to see if they can offer their services to help you.

These executives are willing to work for sweat equity, bonuses, commissions and/or share options. So pitching companies do not need to pay high salaries until they are delivering the results you require.

You can read all about Pitching for Management at www.pitching4management.com.

We are expecting between 30 – 50 relevant senior executives will attend the event. Past events in the series have shown that pitching companies have a good chance of finding someone that suits.

AngelNews is holding a competition for the best pitch of this series of Pitching for Management. The winning pitch at the Manchester event will go through to the final in Bristol on 13th December. The winner of the final will receive a £2,000 cheque.

To find out more about this opportunity, please call Caroline Sage at AngelNews on 01761 452 248 or email her on caroline[at]angelnews.co[dot]uk or contact me.

You can find booking details here.

Hopefully see you there!

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5 tips for securing funding – Bill Morrow: Angels Den

by Steve Livingston on March 29, 2011

Bill Morrow, founder of the Angel Network, outlines 5 top tips for entrepreneurs seeking funding from VCs:

  1. Make sure you can explain your business quickly and succinctly. If it takes you more than 5 minutes, then you’ve yet to get it nailed. Back to the drawing-board for you!
  2. Outline the pain that your product or service will solve.
  3. Explain how your business will solve this pain.
  4. Enthuse investors with the opportunity for growth and how you will achieve this – how will your business scale to achieve the 5x + return on investment for your investors?
  5. Set out clearly how you will spend the money that you are requesting.

Morrow also explains how it helps for entrepreneurs to “humanise” interactions with potential investors, where possible. If you can build rapport by indulging in a bit of chit-chat about the cricket or football etc then this helps build relationships beyond business.  After all, you may have to work with each other over a number of years, so its important that you can get on outside of business-talk.

Good advice. Listen to this podcast in full over at Smallbiz pod.

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Crowdcube: A useful funding option for UK startups and fast growth companies?

March 28, 2011

Crowdcube presents an interesting angle on an idea I’ve been pondering for a while:
“How can we open the door for armchair investors to (partially) fill the funding gap suffered by UK startup businesses whilst providing a more interesting and varied investment opportunity compared to say traditional pension or ISA investment offerings?”
Business angel investor networks are [...]

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We love start-ups!

March 15, 2011

I put this poster on my office wall today.
Few things beat working with an exciting new start up business.
This helps remind me.
Get more inspiring mind grenades and artwork from gaping void.

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Employee shares headaches for early stage companies

March 14, 2011

Cash is often tight for early stage start-ups.
So often, as well as the founders taking little or no cash out of the business as salary in its early days, the first (brave!) employees also end up having to share this pain.
To help ease this, it is common for employees to be offered shares in the [...]

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How to get to grips with your business finances

December 9, 2010

It is easy to get caught up in ‘doing’ rather than ‘running’ your business.
So many business owners find themselves running simply to stand still – finding new customers, taking and fulfilling orders and addressing (hopefully not too many) customer complaints.
Sometimes its difficult to see the wood for the trees:
I’m really busy so I must be [...]

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Why do most companies have a 31 December financial year end?

December 7, 2010

Most companies have 31 December financial year ends.

Yet you have a choice as to when your company accounting period runs to in the UK – unlike in some other countries – so there is no obligation to follow the crowd. Actually, there are some quite compelling reasons why you should opt NOT to have a [...]

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VAT growing pains for virtual UK business

November 16, 2010

Interesting comments from Ryan Carson of Carsonified in response to questions regarding hidden challenges lurking in global business via the excellent Duct Tape Marketing. He singled out dealing with VAT as one of the single biggest challenges in growing his UK training business to become a global player commenting:

Image via CrunchBase

The laws surrounding tax [...]

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IPOs for technology companies – Key learning points

November 8, 2010

Yet another insightful Techcelerate event this evening in Manchester chewed over whether ‘initial public offerings’ (IPOs) or ‘stock market listings’ are the right capital raising vehicle for growing technology businesses and the process required should they choose to go down this route.
Marcus Stuttard (AIM CEO) delivered a concise analysis of the advantages of listing on [...]

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A key reason why many start-up businesses fail

September 30, 2010

Here my short (impromptu) video on why I believe many business start-ups fail.
The old adage that “cash is king” remains as true as ever today, however, there is something else that I am increasingly seeing that can put the future survival of new businesses in jeopardy.
This issue is that: many startups fail to define upfront the market [...]

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