NOV
14
To be successful selling products and services to customers, you need to understand the difference between a feature and an advantage.
A feature is a property of a property of service. A product may come in red, green, blue or orange. The service may be delivered morning, noon or night. Those characteristics are features of the product.
As a product or service developer, you may be competing with a dozen products and they may have hundreds of features. Adding any or all...
OCT
20
To be successful, your startup needs to offer a benefit to people that they need or want. In every case the benefit you want to deliver to people has been met by some other product or service before you came along.
Before the cell phone there was the land line, before the land line there was the telegraph, before the telegraph there were letters. If you develop a new brand of laundry detergent you are competing with every existing brand on...
AUG
17
Whether I like to or not, change is afoot at School for Startups, the social enterprise I founded 4 years ago to help people start new businesses in the UK and around the world. Triona, my trusted and loved Marketing Director, is heading back to Australia and she is leaving a very large hole in our business. So we are looking for a new director of Marketing.
If you don’t know much about us, we have trained well over 10,000 people...
MAY
23
Doug Richard, recently interviewed by Facebook, said that the high valuation given to the LinkedIn.com offering was related to investors’ valuation of Facebook. This possibly ill considered willingness to pay a premium price for a much less valuable stock might well be related to a larger bubble in the tech market.
Doug Richard also said that perhaps the next “big thing” was the intersection of broadband and television technology. He stated that collision is likely to be extremely disruptive...
APR
07
To set a price for a new product or service, start by creating a list of competing solutions from other providers. Record the price and then, next to each product, record the advantages each offers to the customer.
Note that your competition is not limited to products that are similar to what you sell. For example, a cheap car competes with motorcycles and the bus as much as it does with other cars.
Add your product to the list and, based on...
JAN
31
With high unemployment, public sectors cuts, and some economists predicting that Britain could now encounter a double-dip recession, there has never been a more important time to foster and encourage entrepreneurialism and small business development.
A few days ago Enterprise Nation founder and editor, Emma Jones, launched her book The Start-up Kit, which contains vital information you need to start and run your own business. From developing a business idea and setting up a company to marketing your business, getting that...
JAN
07
Well, it’s 2011 and, so far as I am concerned, not a day too soon. We at School for Startups have had an eventful last few months with opportunities springing up everywhere. So I thought I would take a few moments and tell you what we have been up to.
First up is School for Startups Romania. We are working in partnership with the Post-Privatisation Foundation to deliver a year-long education and mentoring programme to 200 budding entrepreneurs in Bucharest and...
DEC
07
The UK has one of the highest rates of charitable giving in the world, and the winter holidays are when we give away the most.
NOV
29
My newest angel investment and hot hot startup is looking for key developers. You must be ready to work hard, and be interested (very interested ) in the start up experience.
Please have:
Advanced knowledge of PHP, JavaScript with particular knowledge of the jQuery framework, MySQL and other web dev languages.
Experience with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
Knowledge of Facebook API is preferable.
Creative thinker with good communications skills
Able to work in a fast moving programming environment
Ideal candidate will be hard working, enthusiastic about working with one...
NOV
11
I don’t want to die with the job undone. I can’t stay silent when there’s so much to say and I don’t get why people don’t get what needs to be done.
We are in the middle of a revolution. But we are so accustomed to change that we don’t even notice how fast the change is coming.
Next week is Global Entrepreneurship Week. Across 101 countries in thousands of events people will celebrate the one obvious truth that can change the...
