Until a few years ago, it was quite common for us to treat ourselves to brand-new equipment and tick it off our wish list without thinking twice. However, times have changed, and we’ve all had to deal with some hardships along the way. Whether it is job instability or other personal difficulties, we’ve truly started to keep an eye on how purchases affect our finances.

At CES 2022, innovation within the healthcare industry was at the forefront of many conversations, seminars and exhibitors stands.

As Benjamin Franklin famously said, only two things are certain in life: death and taxes. And, as we approach the end of January, all attention turns to the latter. That’s right – it’s time for self-assessment tax returns to be compiled, reviewed and submitted. 

2022 is set to be a bit of a rollercoaster as we galvanise the promises made at COP26, navigate long term hybrid working and continue to deal with COVID-19. 

“Losers quit when they fail”, as they say, “and winners fail until they succeed.” But why risk success? You know the story. Founders brag about their failures but often aren’t even legally allowed to talk about their successes.

The influencer entrepreneur culture is all around us, and it’s exhausting. It expects us to build our businesses and leave a running commentary as we go, creating on-brand content to match each stage in our ‘glamourous’ entrepreneurial journeys. Once we start, it is easy to get into a cycle of chasing likes and prioritising our feed before our wellbeing, and even our businesses.

Scaling is everything. The majority of businesses have to try and do this without incurring extra costs, and it is how good they are at this process that can define the trajectory of most small to medium sized businesses.

Zorka.Agency marketing team together with SOLYANKA conducted “Startup Marketing Research: challenges and opportunities in digital promotion”.

The world is going digital and NFTs are a technology which can provide unique, infallible data for this digital world in industries beyond art. You might be wondering how, as a startup founder, you could take advantage of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)?

I have been founding businesses for over 35 years and over that time I have managed to make almost all the mistakes possible when launching a startup. In the last 10 years I’ve also been involved in mentoring startups in various universities, business schools and incubators. It is clear that founders are still making many obvious mistakes: they continue to do the things they enjoy about a starting a business, rather than the things they need to do to make it successful.

It’s reasonable to say that many of us anticipated 2021 to be a year of recovery. If 2020 was the year that forced us to reset, 2021 has been the year to start again, re-strategise and grow.

In this age of globalisation and e-commerce, expanding your business internationally can be an exciting idea. With just a few clicks, small businesses now have access to a vast global market that can be brimming with new opportunities waiting to be discovered. 

2021 was one for the history books. It’s a year that saw entire workforces shift and adapt to remote working models, transform their product offering and make decisions based on simply staying afloat.

When the opportunity for distraction is rife, startups must empower employees to focus deeply within their home environment.

Gender lens investing has seen impressive growth in recent years, with the Wharton Social Impact Initiative reporting a 58.6% increase in the number of female-led funds - clearing $4.8bn  in capital raised internationally.

With so much change in the workplace over the last couple of years, many employees may have found themselves falling into negative working patterns. These toxic traits - such as working too many hours or skipping a lunch break - could have a huge impact on wellbeing, job satisfaction and productivity.

COVID-19 has forced companies to adapt. Transforming in-house workers into remote employees has become a necessity. It’s estimated that 27% of teams will continue remotely after the pandemic, and, in five years, the number of remote workers will double to over 35 million in the US.

Startups encounter a lot of hurdles on their way to success, one of the biggest is their approach to marketing.

In the era of the digital worker, it’s fair to say that none of us can predict how the world of work will look a few years from now from VoIPs to paperless law offices.

When my co-founders and I decided to seek our next round of investment, we wanted to make sure the funding process brought our community closer to our business, or even, into our business.