Thoughts on technology start-ups in Scotland
May 17, 2013 1 Comment
There is a phenomenon I have been observing lately that I’m calling the “Hero Hump”. It concerns the ability of an enterprise to grow beyond its founder, and it’s a question I need to consider in my own business.
The most obvious place I observe it is in small design (and web design) agencies. The process goes like this:
May 8, 2013 Leave a comment
EIE13 takes place in Edinburgh tomorrow, and is one of the biggest investment focussed events we see in Scotland. Some companies will be pitching from the main stage or in one of the specialist areas, and many others will attend to meet and network with investors.
It seems like a good time to point out that I have talked a lot on this blog about the importance of starting to build relationships with investors early on, not least in the Investment Series.
I know I keep linking to posts from Mark Suster, but once again he’s hit the nail on the head in explaining why this is important from the investor perspective too – it’s all about proprietary dealflow!
Good luck to everyone attending EIE13 – it looks like it should be a great day.
May 1, 2013 1 Comment
Did you know that the term ‘market research’ means different things to different people?
If I speak to someone at a networking event I have to be very clear about where my expertise lies, because they may assume that I do one of two very different things.
I find that this can get rather confusing, so I felt it might be useful to set out what we mean by each.
December 20, 2012 Leave a comment
Scottish Enterprise has just published a major report entitled “The Risk Capital Market in Scotland 2009-2011“, which was prepared by Jonathan Harris of Young Company Finance.
I’m pleased to see that the report acknowledges the work done by Salient Point in carrying out the majority of the consultation interviews and presenting findings at a workshop to stimulate debate amongst senior industry figures.
Market Research Associate Ruth Stevenson led the research element of the work, ensuring it was conducted to a high standard and in accordance with Market Research Society guidelines. I used my industry knowledge to help shape the research, carry out interviews, prepare the report, and deliver a presentation on our findings to the workshop.
This was an extremely interesting project to be involved with, and I hope that the output will be of interest to the whole community and will help to shape thinking in the coming years. I’d strongly encourage anyone involved in the Startup sector to take a look!
DOWNLOAD “The Risk Capital Market in Scotland 2009-2011″
November 22, 2012 Leave a comment
I am very pleased to be able to announce that in collaboration with MBM Commercial and Chiene+Tait Chartered Accountants, Salient Point is launching its first eBook:
An entrepreneur’s guide to rewarding staff and paying for services with equity
For a long time I have found it difficult to pull together information on how startups can use equity effectively, as much of the information online is confusing and highly technical. Dug Campbell, David Collier and I have invested time worth thousands of pounds in preparing this guide, and now we are offering it to the startup community for FREE because we believe this information should be easily available to founders and their advisers.
Written and Sponsored By:
November 2, 2012 Leave a comment
Hidden away in the depths of the Royal Society of Edinburgh website is an extremely interesting document – their report entitled The Financing of Business Innovation in Scotland. It sets out a view of the current state of financing for innovative businesses, and discusses some of the issues they face. It also make recommendations for ways in which we could improve.
For anyone involved in investing, raising money, or working with innovative businesses, I’d highly recommend taking the time to read this comprehensive and considered report.
October 24, 2012 Leave a comment
When I was living in California in 2009, I went up to Lake Tahoe for a weekend with my room-mate, and we climbed one of the peaks near the Lake. It was a beautiful walk, on well a trodden path. As I walked up the hill in fact, I was under the impression that there was only one path.
When I started coming back down however, I kept seeing paths that I had not spotted on the way up. This wasn’t because they were hidden and I was suddenly paying more attention. In fact, they were such obvious forks in the path that in some cases I had a real struggle to work out which would take me back to the car park.
The reason these paths were not obvious on the way up is that they joined from behind.
October 16, 2012 2 Comments
There are plenty of websites about valuing a startup using the Venture Capital Method, or Discounted Cash Flow, or Net Present Value. My experience is that none of these are all that relevant to Angel investment in Scotland. In fact, at the Turing Festival Brian Caufield at DJF Esprit (a well respected VC) said that they only use DCFs to sanity check valuations after the fact, not to calculate them in the first place!
I’m going to share some of the thoughts and rules I come across. Of course, the only thing that is certain about rules is that they all have exceptions, but I think it is still worth knowing the rules you might be trying to be an exception to..
September 4, 2012 1 Comment
Event report: Edinburgh International Marketing Festival
Creativity and innovation are fundamentally interlinked. Creativity contributes to innovation, and innovation contributes to creativity.
Edinburgh International Marketing Festival’s Innovation in Marketing and Communications afternoon commenced with the assertion that the marketing sector has a lot to learn from Silicon Valley. These days marketing isn’t all about persuasive adverts and fancy metaphors. These days marketing and branding are intrinsically tied up with the product and the technology. The marketing crowd were told that – like technologists – they need to come up with ‘products’ that are forward looking, commercially focused and always in beta.
August 30, 2012 Leave a comment
A couple of weeks ago I posted a blog entitled A Hard Lesson: Getting the best out of Professional Advisors. This has provoked more response than anything else I have written, and I thought it was worth collecting some of those responses in a separate post for everyone’s benefit – especially as a number of clear themes emerged.
I also want to apologise to those who felt they weren’t represented appropriately, and to those who felt I was attacking their profession as a whole. Neither was ever my intention, and I am sorry.
I said I was posting from the perspective of the founders as it was the perspective I was closest to, and I felt it would be most useful to others this way. I had the permission of the people I worked with to post (I NEVER post client stories otherwise). Of course I also had to anonymise it and leave out some detail to make a blog out of it.
With all these compromises needed, perhaps attempting to write the story was unwise.
Given that I posted the piece and got back many helpful comments and thoughts, I hope that sharing them will prove instructive.
