When choosing to ‘go it alone’ as entrepreneur, there are numerous financial, operational hurdles in the way. Starting a new business from scratch is not easy, often requiring huge amounts of time and personal investment.

You've rehearsed your pitch within an inch of your life. Your slides are well designed, hit all the relevant points and your timing was spot on at three minutes.

When anyone is considering doing anything important and potentially life changing in their lives it always pays to think hard, do as much research and gather as much information as you can, and also to speak to as many people as possible. 

The world constantly embraces new technologies - as does our education system. Since the changes in the UK curriculum in September 2014, kids as young as five have begun to embrace branches of education that seem completely alien to many adults.

One of the UK’s largest universities has put sustainability firmly on the agenda, by measuring one of the most ambitious sustainability programmes in higher education and seen staff make significant societal and environmental savings.

More than 200,000 small companies have been created in 2019, according to the Federation of Small Businesses, and each and every one of these businesses will have their own story to tell. So, what’s yours?  

Whether it’s a member of your senior team getting poached, seeing your cash run out sooner than you were expecting, or facing a crisis situation, such as a data breach or privacy issue, startups will always face moments when the world seems to be conspiring against them.

The Paybase team recently launched the Founders’ Workshop - a community of early-stage and established business founders in the platform economy. The latest event focused on the pressing issue of disintermediation and user retention: when users connect on a platform but transact independently outside it.

This guest post comes from Caroline Macdonald, CEO and founder of OggaDoon, the guerrilla comms business. If you have no idea what tone of voice is, head to Twitter and scroll through Innocent Drinks’ feed. Then come back here. Done it? Great. 

As a three-time entrepreneur, I’ve been on the difficult journey of scaling from founder to big-company CEO. In one of my ventures I went from an idea on a whiteboard to a publicly trading entity in eight years, and it isn’t just one big celebration – it is hard to keep up with your company.

For anyone starting a business there is that delicious and intoxicating mixture of excitement tinged with fear. That is partly the fear of the unknown but it is also very much the fear of failure. 

I have always believed in the power of accelerators and, as a founder of my own startup, I experienced how beneficial they can be.

Taking place on the 11th and 12th March at the Smart IoT show, part of the London Tech Show and co-located with a number of other events, is the Digital Catapult's Future Networks Lab Challenge, which is an opportunity for IoT startups will respond and pitch directly to industry challenges set by leading partners Siemens and Arrow Electronics. 

John Armstrong co-created Custom Planet with his friend Andrew Dark in 2008, while they were both at university. The company has since grown to become one of the UK's leading printwear specialists. Here, he gives his expert tips for startups wanting to create their own merchandise for a podcast.

The average startup creates twice as many jobs as the average SME in our country. Nearly nine out of ten SMEs are sole traders, within startups that is only 1.4%

The Central Research Laboratory (CRL) has announced the launch of its 7th world leading accelerator programme, which celebrates five years supporting early growth stage product pioneers.

Lancashire-based Get Work, a service that generates local leads for tradespeople, has received a £100k loan from NPIF – BFS & MSIF Microfinance, a product managed by GC Business Finance & MSIF and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF).

 

Some questions in life are more fundamental than others and some are more specific or technical, and so it is in the world of early stage businesses. But for the person asking the question, each carries the same weight, and each is of the same importance because at the time of asking it is that point that is not understood. 

Virtually every startup thinks of itself as innovative, but are they really? Every day I help companies claim cash for innovative activities through the R&D tax credit scheme. Most of these companies are somewhat innovative, however, to be truly innovative is really tough. In this column, I want to explore what innovation means and how you might apply it to your business.

Founded in Singapore in 2017 by Magnus Grimeland and a team of Google, Spotify, MIT and Harvard alumni, Antler is a global startup generator and early stage VC that is building the next big wave of tech.