Secret ambitions, early exits and bootstrapped lessons

* This is the first post by James Devonport Wood, MD of accredited Facebook developer PageHub

There is a significant gap in Europe for early stage funding for startups seeking less than £500,000. While new funds and incubators are starting to emerge, the lack of finance available is leaving European tech businesses at a disadvantage to their North American counterparts.

For many startups, bootstrapping a business is the only method of starting a company although this does have its advantages. Bootstrapped startups are more likely to have a more realistic business model and to be profitable early on. Continue reading

Perhaps PeerPerks Palestinian premieres pack perfect punch

The alliterative headline to this piece was one I submitted for my latest article on TechCrunch and was somewhat prosaically replaced with ‘The limits of social influence? Big Ben is influential on… drugs’.

Still you can’t win them all and while the piece was all about the so-called measurement of influence through social networks, it underlines how people perceive the use of words, and how the words themselves influence people. Continue reading

800 jobs up for grabs at Shoreditch’s Silicon Milkroundabout May weekend

More than 105 start-ups and established brands such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Songkick and Mind Candy are joining 105 start-ups in London’s Shoreditch to offer 800 jobs to the brightest of UK talent.

They will get together over the weekend of May 26/27th 2012 where 3,000 potential applicants will be introduced to a number of companies dedicated to the areas of Product Management, User Experience (UX) Design, Visual Design, and Intelligence/Analytics. Continue reading

800 jobs up for grabs at Shoreditch's Silicon Milkroundabout May weekend

More than 105 start-ups and established brands such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Songkick and Mind Candy are joining 105 start-ups in London’s Shoreditch to offer 800 jobs to the brightest of UK talent.

They will get together over the weekend of May 26/27th 2012 where 3,000 potential applicants will be introduced to a number of companies dedicated to the areas of Product Management, User Experience (UX) Design, Visual Design, and Intelligence/Analytics. Continue reading

Businesses need a five-year plan… and a three-month plan

* This contribution is by Pete Shuttleworth, Executive Director of cool London film company Pretzel Films

Time is an increasingly important factor in every aspect of our lives these days. Time, or the lack of it, leads to the constant need to update our priorities. This in turn leads to the inevitable realisation that if you put buying your wife flowers that far down the priority list then you will never get to it.

In business, timing is crucial. For me this simple understanding came a little late. I started a business almost exactly seven years ago, in March 2005, six months before my first child was born and five months after I was married. Continue reading