YouNoodle.com is a tool you can use to calculate the value of your startup in three years based on the characteristics of its team.
YouNoodle.com is a tool you can use to calculate the value of your startup in three years based on the characteristics of its team.
Letting someone else write your business plan is almost always unnecessary and almost certainly unwise.
The best Angels help the businesses they invest in immeasurably. They recognize good teams when they see them. They offer mentoring, advice, encouragement and occasionally a harsh word that keeps an entrepreneur focused, effective and motivated. Good angels are few and far between, but they are entirely worth looking for.
Ship Early, Ship Little, Ship Fast. This article explores why startup companies should focus on creating products with a small feature set that is completely integrated with the outside world.
Following the huge success of our seminars around the UK, Doug and the School for Startups team are returning to The Royal Institution. This must-attend event is for aspiring social/ethical entrepreneurs as well as existing small social/ethical businesses wishing to grow and become more successful and sustainable.
Tell me what you think of this story. Last week I wrote about the unethical behaviour of so-called professionals involved in charging companies to help them obtain funding, get investment ready, or write their business plans. I closed by saying if you had head of anyone engaged in such practices to let me know.
This week I received an email from Nikki Hesford, the founder of www.missfituk.com, entitled “Not sure if I was being scammed?” She wrote to say,
“Hi Doug,
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"Just to be clear . . . start-ups should not be charged to pitch their businesses to angel investors. . . . Corporate financiers do not make their money on [upfront] fees but by taking a percentage of the money raised."
I have been writing a series of articles recently entitled “The Price of Money” that grew out of my unease that people neither understood how great the cost of capital is nor the enormous difficulty involved in pricing capital. I was further dis-enchanted by the rhetoric amongst government ministers reciting mantras of entrepreneurship and access to capital as though their wholesale theft of the language of the Schumpterian community absolved them from actually doing anything effective in support of small...
I am supposed to be the investor not the CEO. If I’m solving the problems before the investment, what’s going to happen afterwards?