Business

5 tips for securing funding – Bill Morrow: Angels Den

March 29, 2011

Bill Morrow, founder of the Angel Network, outlines 5 top tips for entrepreneurs seeking funding from VCs: 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! Outline the pain that your product or [...]

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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 [...]

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Budget 2011 supports digital, technology and creative businesses (mostly!)

March 24, 2011

Yesterday’s Budget speech provided largely good news for entrepreneurs in the digital, technology and creative sectors. George Osborne had promised an “unashamedly” pro-business, pro-growth and pro-aspiration Budget and, although it might be over-flattering to suggest that he achieved this, he certainly made some positive inroads toward addressing some of the roadblocks facing early-stage startups and [...]

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Budget 2011 must support entrepreneurs

March 23, 2011

With a little less than 30 minutes to go until the Budget speech, I am looking forward to a pro-entrepreneur business set of proposals and actions to support growth for the future. Looks like the Institute of Directors (IoD) are too with some of their proposals – here’s one in particular that I like: Introducing [...]

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Budget 2011: How to inform (and engage?) businesses

March 22, 2011

Hmmh, so its this time each year (more than once per year in recent years) that accountants / tax advisers, like myself, scratch our heads and wonder how best we can inform our clients on issues relevant to them that emerge from the Budget speech. This approach is constantly evolving – my plan for tomorrow’s [...]

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Budget 2011 wishes for fast growth digital and tech companies

March 22, 2011

With George Osborne promising an “unashamedly pro-growth, pro-enterprise and pro-aspiration” Budget tomorrow at 12.30pm, I am looking forward to hearing these words turn into solid, workable solutions for UK entrepreneurs. Giving Budget predictions is almost as much fun as delving into the actual Budget announcements afterward so please allow me to indulge myself for just two minutes! [...]

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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 [...]

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Reimagine your business using mobile technology

March 9, 2011

An interesting event this morning on “Redefining the Customer Experience using Mobile” hosted by the Institute of Directors (Young Directors Forum) held at the Alchemist in Manchester’s Spinningfields. In addition to some mind-boggling stats about the proliferation of mobile connections and apps being launched on a daily basis, the overarching message for businesses is that [...]

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Finding your true North

February 9, 2011

Richard North, Managing Director of Wow! Stuff, provides some great advice for entrepreneurs: “You are either an employee and you are prepared not to take risks and end up with a bonus or you become an employer, you take risks but you also end up with the rewards” Despite selling his first business for a [...]

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Preventing potentially expensive business balls-ups!

January 20, 2011

It’s been a busy start to the year so far. It’s nice to see businesses that I’ve been talking to and getting to know for a number of weeks, months (or in some cases years) reach critical points in their business lifecycle in either starting new ventures, seeking and raising funding or selling their businesses. [...]

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