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  Location matters for your startup

18 months ago I relocated from my home town of Glasgow, to London, just 400 miles away. An important reason for the move was because I had just started working on my new startup, Teamly, and I know that location matters, even when running an internet business. Don’t kid yourself otherwise, your chance of success is seriously improved when you’re in a startup hub.18 months later and moving to London has proved to be a smart move, for all the expected reasons, as well as  the unexpected recognition by the UK Government of London’s startups with the launch a year ag...

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  SOME LESSONS LEARNED

Note: Google was kind enough to invite me to give a short talk at their Zeitgeist conference earlier this week. It was a really interesting conference and I got a chance to meet a lot of people I admire. For my talk, I decided to use material from some of my blog posts over the years that I thought might appeal to a broader audience. Unfortunately, I was still recovering from a nastly cold/flu so I didn’t deliver the talk as well as I’d like.  Below is the text.Today, I wanted to talk about some of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years from my experie...

1,696 0       EXPERIENCE STARTUP INVESTMENT INVESTOR LESSON


  The Long Grind Before You Become an Overnight Success

“So, what do you do?”Ugh. I hated that question.The truth was that we were trying to start a new venture but we hadn’t really made any progress.But, instead of just muttering something, I would force myself to enthusiastically pitch our current struggling idea. They would nod along but the skepticism on their face was hard to ignore.And, when I was done, they would sometimes hit me with: “So, is that your full-time thing?” Ugh. What that really meant was: you’re trying to tell me that you spend all your time working on that ridiculous idea?The GrindWe left...

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  How much money do you *really* need to start your company?

I keep hearing startup entrepreneurs tell me “We need funding. If we just had $XXXk of investment, we’d be killing it right now.” I press them with one question: what would you do with the money if you had it? Inevitably the question is met with a blank stare. Most of the time people haven’t thought about it. The answers that do come feel a little half-baked:“Buy a bunch of ad words to get people to our site – that’s all we need”“Build the product”“Finish the product”“Hire a bunch of sales guys”Sure you hav...

2,050 0       STARTUP BUSINESS INVESTMENT MONEY AD


  Sequencing the Startup DNA on LinkedIn

What makes entrepreneurs different, and where do they come from? Are they born or taught? Are they unusually mobile in their careers? Does geography play a role? Do mentors and relationships matter?Numerous studies explore these questions by surveying hundreds of entrepreneurs. At LinkedIn, we take a different approach, on a different scale. By sifting through more than 120 million public profiles, we can analyze tens of thousands of startup founders’ [1]profiles – and find common threads linking their careers.Our infographic above shows the top over-represented business sch...

2,860 0       TIPS EXPERIENCE STARTUP LINKEDIN DNA SEQ


  Opinion: Top 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started My Own Business

1. However much money you think you'll need to start a business, you should take that number and double itI thought I had strategically planned every penny when I first started, but I had no idea that there would be so many unanticipated costs. Since we have a home office, I use temporary commercial office space and conference solutions for meetings and demonstrations. We always like to buy lunch for our clients, and we like them to lunch well.By the time everything is factored in, depending on how many people will be at lunch, you could be looking at a cool grand just as a baseline. Being a g...

2,636 0       STARTUP OWN OWNERSHIP BUSINESS CARE