MAR
28
As Business Guru for School for Startups & School for Creative Startups, I have a chance to mentor hundreds of entrepreneurs every year. In a sense I provide technical support for starting a strong new enterprise.
Part of that job is to help people work through Doug Richard’s 10 Questions which is a deceptively simple task. On the one hand it is very easy to come up with answers to 10 simple questions about the enterprise you want to start, but...
MAR
27
If you want to have a successful company, start by having customers for what you sell. For example, someone who has worked for two decades in preschools understands parents and knows several hundred of them. When that person starts a business that targets the parents of preschoolers that business is very likely to do well.
For those of us creating products and services for target markets we don’t know as well, and don’t have much contact with, marketing before the product...
MAR
24
Two years ago, Jason Kincaid wrote a short but influential post titled “The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The Hell You Actually Do.” He said:
During my time at TechCrunch I’ve seen thousands of startups and written about hundreds of them. I sure as hell don’t know all the secrets to building a successful company, but there are a few things I’ve seen that seem like surefire ways to ever-so-slightly grease the road to success. Here’s an...
MAR
20
UK small businesses are overpaying for their energy bills to the tune of £2.5bn according to new figures released today. These figures comprise £1bn on gas bills and £1.5bn on electricity bills.
Small businesses should be saving £2,500 on average a year on their energy bills – more than 30% of a typical annual bill. Many businesses stuck on uncompetitive tariffs could be saving up to 70% on their energy costs.
In response, Huddlebuy.co.uk, the daily deals site for small businesses, and...
MAR
16
If you're starting a new business, do you know what your most effective marketing tool will be? It doesn't cost much to get. Read this article to find out.
NOV
28
Make It Cheaper helps businesses to compare business electricity prices in one quick online search. This means that you can find out, right now, just how much you can save off your current energy costs immediately. It’s often hundreds or thousands of pounds per year.
...
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
26
Claire Young, an apprentice finalist and youth enterprise trail blazer, is launching TeenBiz in November.
TeenBiz is the UK’s first business start up scheme aimed at teens 13-18. It will launch 1st November, to coincide with Global Entrepreneurship Month.
From the 1st January every month one student will receive up to £500 funding (they must match what we give them), a mentor and a start up pack. TeenBiz calls it’Business in a Box’ because it equips students with the items they need...
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...
OCT
18
“The international price for gas, I am afraid, is going up”. Not the words we wanted to hear from Phil Bentley, Managing Director of British Gas this week, but they do reflect the reality of the situation.
Phil Bentley’s comments set the tone for a meeting of the big 6 energy suppliers, Ofgem and government Energy Secretary Chris Huhne to discuss the state of the domestic energy market in the UK.
As a result of this meeting and the drive to make...
