1,000 Hours – How Much Expertise Does a Founder Need? Surely 10,000 hours? In the noughties, books like Blink by influential author Malcolm Gladwell explained how anyone could become an expert...
2023 Prediction – Curious Startup Teams Win! Why we need to re-think our startup teams In case you haven’t yet tried ChatGPT from Open AI – take a look here. It writes blogs, articles and answers for...
Why the lean idea of ‘launch fast and iterate’ doesn’t work and what to use instead… In honour of the ground breaking behavioural economics book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, I thought I’d leverage their...
There are ‘only‘ three things that you need to build a successful startup. They are startup team engagement, user engagement and client / customer engagement! Engagement focused on your...
Are you a FORMIDABLE Startup Leader? We’ve been doing some heavy lifting over the past few month’s newsletters – so this time, we’re gonna have some fun! Okay, alright...
Are you asking ‘should I start a startup’? Or even, if you fell into your startup by accident, ‘should I continue’? Well, should you carry on? And what is the best career...
Let’s ask – What makes a Successful Startup? Answer: Data focus (not ‘tech’ focus) Let me explain… If we follow the startup and business media we can fall into the trap...
In the early noughties the idea of ‘move fast, break stuff’ caught hold (see more here). …but things are different now! It was used to break through the morass of dull headed...
Seed fundraising in Europe is exciting and hot – but how do founders tackle seed raises and suceed? Nine Insights into Seed Fundraising in Europe I’ve been building a...
As we saw in my last article – 9 Insights into Seed Fundraising in Europe, we saw that what matters is that your team build traction with users and (if possible) customers. Hence, in this...
Everyone in the startup world talks about your North Star and Magic Moment – but what are they? Why do they matter? And how do you both find your missing piece and use that insight to grow...
Getting your startup pricing strategy right is like cooking – it is neither a science driven by numbers and data, nor is it an art based purely on instinct and ‘inner feelings’; it...
This is the second of a series of three articles on startup pricing strategies. In the previous piece, I raised the notion of a ‘fair’ pricing strategy and the importance making the...
Startup leaders need to be optimistic, forward looking and full of hope. That much goes without saying. But how do you do optimism when times are tough, people are hurting out of loneliness and...
Do you recall the days when the £ sterling was strong and the € euro was weak and on the verge of collapse? And what changed? Well, it was July 2012 when Mario Draghi – the Euro’s ECB...
I have conversations with founders on a daily basis whose persistence and resilience is awe inspiring. However, all startup founder paths to success follow similar patterns – where the...
Actually, spoiler alert – I already have an answer… and they are: Engagement, Engagement and Engagement! Engagement for your users (well, we know about that), but also, engagement with...
How should resilient startup leaders and founders plan their summer break in 2020? Imagine, we’re back in January 2020, Christmas is done and you are sitting down to plan your summer trip! The...
You don’t need anyone to tell you that your revenues depend on digital marketing. Nor do you need reminding that ecommerce sales have (more or less) doubled and virtual sales meetings have replaced...
Coronavirus has reinforced how connected we are to everyone else, and this thread now weaves through nearly everything we do to build our startups…and community. Hence, community building lies at the...
Digital marketing, and in particular, digital advertising is holding up surprisingly well in the coronavirus induced recession. In this article we take a deep dive into why that is the case and the...
Revenue is the new growth! So hack revenue – not growth! VCs have been talking about ‘profit’ since We/ WeWork’s IPO fell apart in summer 2019, but we’re now hearing the...
Why building trust is your ‘go to’ test for emerging safely… Quick take away: if you have only 10 seconds — the secret to firstly survive and then thrive in a time of crisis is to build trust —...
We’ve changed the way we shop and buy since the coronavirus lockdown — in part or in full- so how does selling respond? The shift from problem solving to ‘problem finding’ is a trend that was...
If it takes 30 days to change a habit, 6 weeks of lockdown will change society, work and our economy forever — so what will it be like in The New Normal? If you take just one thing, then choose this...
What stands out when fundraising in a time of crisis is that the behaviour and mindset of the startup or scaleup founder is more important than ever and especially critical to sourcing investment...
How do you build teams when everyone works from home? How do you manage / control complex projects with distributed teams? Different people will face different challenges working from home, how do...
Don’t cut costs — be more radical if your market has suddenly stopped. 12 years ago, I was running a international scaleup as our market got wiped out by the credit crunch. Today, many high growth...
We have a problem. Too many exciting startups get stuck in the ‘growth gap’ and struggle to expand rapidly. From one nation’s cohort of 2019 ‘best in class’ startups, a year later, only one of those...
Myth no. 1 “You need a great idea before you start” No, you need two things a) to start b) a question Preferably a good question – one that makes people stop and think… Myth...
I’m an optimist – despite the horrible politics of the last few years – Trump to Brexit to Orban in Hungry and Putin in Russia – I’m hopeful that the next decade will be a great one! As the saying...
…how well can you answer this question: What pain / worry / fear / concern is your startup solving or removing? But why is this such a hard question to answer? For some reason - we humans seem to be...
If you want to change the world, you could do worse than follow the method of Bill Gates – Microsoft co-founder and now philanthropist who, working with his partner and wife, Melinda Gates, has...
Are you ready to scaleup your startup? Here I’m sharing 11 great coaching questions that our clients have used to transition from the startup to the scaleup phase and speed up and smooth out...
Like many of today’s startup founders, the 15th century architects of Florence began with a vision — an intuition of what was possible and then began the process of trial and error to find out ‘what...
How mission led startups are poised to change the world… “The thing that stands out is the thing that is different” Marc Andreessen Silicon Valley investors have changed track and are looking...
How about we end the struggle of founders creating and building startups? What if we adopt a mission to move from surviving to thriving? No matter what happens to the organisation! Interested? Read...
Here’s a photo of me about to write my Breakthrough Canvas at the start of 2019. Yes, I know, as a team we designed and built The Breakthrough Canvas… …then we tested it –...
…that keeps every entrepreneur awake at night! Whether it is wiser to struggle on in the hope of better fortune Or, to cut your losses and exit now before all capital and Reputation is...