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You Cannot Be Serious

I tuned into a recent BBC documentary that follows the fortunes of a group of Scottish entrepreneurs. One advisor was asked to define ‘entrepreneur’. His answer was long on enthusiasm and short on sense: ‘If you think I am one, I am one’.

I wondered what the reaction might be if a doctor in a hospital documentary defined themselves in similar terms. Or take another profession: to become a lawyer requires the aspirant to study for years, but to become an ‘entrepreneur’ you simply need to believe you are one.

But perhaps this narrow line of thinking reflects something of a norm. Many business schools offer add-on courses where start-ups are a topic to be mastered in a week. Incubators and accelerators offer the same ‘sheep-dip’ philosophy.

If only building an entrepreneurial business could be packaged and codified so easily. The reality, of course, is that entrepreneurship demands rigour over time. Identifying new opportunities, making the ‘right’ decisions, and managing growth present challenges that take years of experience and reflection to perfect.

Rather than seeing entrepreneurship as just ‘something to have a go at’, we would be well served as seeing it as a profession in its own right. In this universe, it becomes a core business school discipline; it becomes an activity that can be learnt rather than being mostly a matter of luck. Successful serial entrepreneurs are not merely people who have a knack for winning the lottery over and over again.

Posted by Shields Russell on May 14, 2013 at 10:04 am in Blog, Entrepreneurship | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

         

Startups are an Experiment

The most interesting technology startups, in my experience, are those who are trying to do something new.

In Europe, prior to the Enlightenment, one group of people who tried to do something new were the alchemists. Classically stereotyped as people who sought to create gold from base metal, they were lampooned by Tim McInnerny as Lord Percy Percy with his nugget of purest Green. His depiction was of a group of people who attempted, seemingly at random, to apply treatments and actions in order to create change.

The alchemists were swept away, in part, by the propagation of the scientific method throughout Europe. The scientific methods remains with us today, informing the approaches we take to discovery – and arguably creating innovation cycles that are faster than any could have imagined a thousand years ago.

Do you want to be an alchemist or a scientist? I subscribe to the latter approach over the former – and I believe that those establishing startups should view them through the lens of a scientist, treating them as an experiment

What does this mean? To me it means following an ordered process in order to best understand what you observe and maximise your chances of proving your hypothesis.

Think back to school – hypothesis, methodology, results, conclusion (no, I cannot forget!) – and take the same approach. With reference to startups, I would summarise the scientific method as follows:

• Question – how can consumers and/or businesses most effectively complete an activity?
• Observe – what do they currently do, what are the deficiencies to the approach?  Coupons in magazines in 2008 – why?
• Hypothesise – we believe that businesses / consumers would use coupons more if they were online, promoted on single days
• Create a methodology – build a site, and promote it for those interested in saving money via coupons; get businesses to provide aggressively priced coupon deals on a daily basis
• Analyse the results – are people using my coupon site?  Is the promotion right, are the coupons offering deals in the right industries?
• Interpret – yes, people really like daily coupon sites
• Create a new hypothesis – people are willing to pay a monthly subscription of £15 to access my daily coupon site

New businesses are created by inquisitive minds who ask questions and observe deficiencies. However, just having a great idea (or a hypothesis) does not mean automatic success.

Consider your business – are you sitting in a candle lit room in a pointy hat, creating nuggets of purest green? Or are you a scientist in a laboratory conducting a series of experiments to prove or disprove hypotheses about businesses and consumers? I know which I’d rather be.

Posted by David Gates on April 26, 2013 at 10:09 am in Blog, Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Technology | Permalink | Comments (3) | Trackback (0)

         

Tales of a New Starter

I’m in Dublin, sitting on the tarmac. The plane is ready for take-off, almost two hours late – wind is to blame. I joined RIG nearly 2 weeks ago, and so far I’ve been in the office for just one day.

I’ve stayed in 4 hotels, taken 4 flights (I hate flying), and I’m on the way to being an expert on all things renewable energy and high penetration wind power on Ireland’s electricity grid. Talk to me about TSOs, DSOs, DNOs, ENTSO-E, ROCOF and DS3: I’m down with all the acronyms.

This afternoon I presented our findings to our client following an interview that we conducted this morning with a high-voltage manager at Ireland’s national DSO. In Wales, we’d say that I did “alright like” (especially given that some rather rowdy individuals from the Irish Student Media Awards were attempting to break into my room at 4am this morning).
I’ve been riding an intense and very steep learning curve for two weeks, but it’s all been very interesting and enjoyable so far. I’ve learnt what Customer Relationship Management is all about, how to create a 3 month plan, and I’m also entering the world of blogging for the very first time.

A few weeks ago, I never would have believed that I would know all about “grid code compliance” or even understood what “spinning reserve” was all about. By now, those are the sorts of things that are filling my dreams each night. It just goes to show you what a fast-paced, engaging and informative industry I’ve found myself working in.

Right, I think we’re finally about to take off. It’s late and I’m on my way back home, and I’m still looking forward to tomorrow.

Posted by Ffion Rolph on April 19, 2013 at 10:39 am in About RIG, Blog, Recruitment | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

         

How to think when building or reviewing your website …. 101

I want to turn the reader’s attention to websites – an object that evokes responses ranging from an obsessive-compulsive requirement to update, to that akin to a toddler who has seen a new pigeon in Trafalgar Square (with the old website being the previous pigeon).

I don’t sit at either extreme, but I do believe that for the vast majority of today’s companies the website is the ‘shop window’. Now everyone knows that a good shop window pulls in customers – provided it is seen – no matter what the size of the organisation behind the shop. The website provides the entrepreneur with the opportunity to present their wares on a level playing field (the internet) against much larger rivals.

“But I am no designer!” you might cry. Irrelevant; I am not talking here about the prettiest shop window aiming to attract the most conscious fashionista.  This is about getting the right message across to the intended reader.

Have a look here; did that site make any sense? Probably not. To its intended reader, it’s spot on – XP Power is one of the fastest growing companies of its type globally.

So, how can the entrepreneur make sure that they are hitting the (right) mark with the company website? I would advocate the creation of a simple grid – on one axis list your stakeholders (the people you want to communicate with), on the other axis list the reasons you believe people are going to come to your website.  Here are some examples of each:

1. Stakeholders:
   • Investors
   • Specific customer sets e.g. middle aged men, human resources directors etc.
   • Journalists
   • Potential employees
2. Reasons for visit:
   • To get contact details
   • Information for an business degree thesis
   • Find out about the company
   • Identify fit between product / service and need

Next, put a cross through each box on the grid that is clearly nonsense, e.g. the box which is at the intersection between the ‘investor’ column and ‘identify fit between product / service and need’ row.

Then review each of the remaining boxes. If you already have a site, match all the pages to the relevant boxes in the grid. Where a page appears in multiple boxes ask yourself ‘can I realistically service all audiences through a single page, or should there actually be multiple pages?’. In some cases, the answer will be ‘no’ – the homepage is the homepage; contact details remain the same for all audiences. In other cases, you might wish to consider creating multiple pages to reflect the differing information requirements of the audiences.

You will also find …. gaps. Be honest with yourself, identifying a gap is a good thing – it shows where you need to put in some work to give your stakeholders the information they need.

A final thought: make sure you are running and reviewing your Google Analytics data. I won’t accept any excuses on this one – Analytics will tell you where your audiences are going, and where you should be focussing your energies when producing content.

Posted by David Gates on April 12, 2013 at 10:53 am in Blog, Demand Generation, Entrepreneurship, Sales, Strategy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

         

Testing, Iterating and Validating Your Business Model Canvas

RIG consultants David Gates and Jessica Tayenjam presented at Escape the City‘s Startup MBA course on Saturday 6 April at The Hub Westminster.

The slides from the presentation are available to view below.

Posted by RIG Admin on April 8, 2013 at 10:49 am in Blog, Strategy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

         

Start digging your moat

Warren Buffett coined the phrase economic moat to describe those aspects of a business that provide competitive advantage. What is often stated within definitions of Buffett’s economic moat is the requirement for the advantage to be ‘sustainable’; as a value investor, Buffett does not want to buy into a company that wins today but loses tomorrow. His objective is long term performance.

I work with technology companies – the vast majority using a significant element of software within their overall offer. How does Buffett’s concept apply, when software is by its nature replicable – often by cheaper resources in other countries? You make the mistakes, others imitate with a much lower cost of establishment. Have a look at the Samwer brothers in Germany for the textbook case study.

So what to do? The obvious answer is legal instruments – patents and the like – but do all companies have the time / energy / finances to both create and protect intellectual property in this manner? I would argue (in a highly successful manner) not. There are enough things to do in the early stages, many of which will be the start of digging your moat, without recourse to lawyers.

Consider the component elements of a company selling software. These can be broken down into two categories:

1. Revenue generation and retention capability
2. Technology capability

When defining and refining your business, think about each category and ask yourself ‘what can I do here to develop my economic moat?’. Some examples might include:

1. Revenue generation and retention
   1. Dominate a specific market – either a vertical (e.g. supermarkets); a horizontal (e.g. human resources); or geographical (e.g. Italy)
   2. Ruthlessly pursue customer retention strategies – a business that does not lose customers grows
   3. Create revenue momentum – a series of wins shows the market you will dominate it
2. Technology
   1. Create network effects – leverage your users to dominate areas through networks (e.g. Facebook – there can be only one personal social network at any one time)
   2. Develop technology which will naturally expand its footprint within the customer, e.g. SAP – it reaches out across the enterprise
   3. Ensure accessibility – if technology is easy to acquire and use, it will stick
   4. Get multilingual quickly – think of the Samwer Brothers

You’ll note as you read through these points that there is significant overlap. Often the technology enables the revenue generation and retention objectives, and conversely the revenue and retention objectives will dictate (to an extent) what technology development must take place. Get out a sheet of paper and write these down for your business. Are they compelling? Do they link back to the objectives you set out?

Reflect on this exercise, and bring the thought processes into your day to day work – an economic moat creates sustainable long term advantage, enabling valuable businesses to be built.

Posted by David Gates on March 28, 2013 at 10:30 am in Blog, Entrepreneurship, Strategy | Permalink | Comments (1) | Trackback (0)

         

Commercials are Secondary

We all need to make a living, but when it comes to entrepreneurship, commercials are secondary to solving real problems. Solve problems — solve big problems — and the money will be there.

It’s important to have the right commercial model in place. Charging £20 for a solution worth several thousand is a mistake. The point is that the value is easy to demonstrate when you can show the solution to a real pain point.

On a person-to-person level, no one wants to deal with someone who is just focused on commercials. People will be much more willing to deal with someone who is passionate about understanding and solving the problems they have. The proposition must be attractive to both sides, and there must be a commercial opportunity for the entrepreneur; but if a real problem can be solved, many of the other issues of a commercial deal can fall into place out of the solution.

Too many entrepreneurs I’ve met are focused on getting huge quantities of money into their business immediately and lose sight of the problems they are purportedly solving. For a young company without a lot of resource, getting money coming in is critical, but the paradoxical truth is that the fastest way to do that is to solve the problems of the target customers.

Posted by Aaron Ralby on March 22, 2013 at 10:00 am in Demand Generation, Entrepreneurship, Sales | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

         

RIG Slides from Escape the City Workshop

RIG consultants David Gates, Jessica Tayenjam, and Simon Jackson presented at Escape the City’s workshop, ‘An Introduction to Building a Startup’ on Saturday 9 March at The Hub Westminster.

Their slides (minus videos) are available to view below.

Please email jessica@rapidinnovation.co.uk with any questions related to the presentation or RIG workshops.

Posted by RIG Admin on March 19, 2013 at 11:44 am in Blog, Entrepreneurship, Sales, Strategy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

         

Jessica T, Internships, and Life at RIG

Jessica Tayenjam studied Modern Languages at Cambridge University. She speaks French and Spanish fluently and has lived and been educated in the US , UK, and France. Jessica started as a RIG intern. Today she runs RIG’s internship programme. She was interviewed by RIG Principal, Shields Russell.

SR: You run the intern programme, so let’s focus for a moment what it is like working at RIG. So tell me this: you could have had your pick of jobs, so why did you elect to work at RIG?

JT: I had the experience of working in the civil service and that was not for me: too bureaucratic, and it took too long to make a difference and make things happen.

Being a good Cambridge girl, I then had three options: banking, law, or consultancy. The first two were easy for me to rule out: 15 hour days and the general opprobrium of the world at large held little appeal, and my family is already riddled with enough lawyers.

So by the process of elimination that left consulting. As ones does, I diligently I submitted my applications and was lucky enough to get a handful of interviews with consultancies. The bigger firms seemed largely concerned by whether a language student could do maths and with the level of my Excel skills.

RIG didn’t ask me any of those questions. They were more interested in who I was and what I could bring to the company. For that reason, I chose RIG. And, of course, it didn’t hurt that one of consultants looked like Robert Pattinson.

SR: How has what you do at RIG changed over time?

JT: Roughly speaking, my work has evolved from doing what I was asked, to getting other people – colleagues and clients – to get things done, and now to thinking about what we should do, and why, and how. We are in a continuous cycle of problem-solving and execution. I used to be a bit player – now I play the whole circuit.

SR: Does working in a small firm present special challenges?

JT: You have to get along with everyone. There is no padding. You will be held accountable and need to hold other people to account, from ‘Why haven’t you washed your mug, Shields?’ to ‘Why haven’t you delivered for your client?’

SR: There is a gender imbalance at RIG that we are trying to address. Is it an important issue for you?

JT: Yes, definitely. Diversity in all its forms – not just in terms of gender – is a strength, as it gives us a range of experiences and opinions to draw upon. This is important because we don’t want to be a firm that just thinks or acts in one way.

SR: We use interns as a low risk way of sourcing and of assessing talent and fit. As the person responsible for running the process what are you looking for in the first instance?

JT: Obviously there is a basic threshold that all serious candidates must attain: they have to be smart, they have to communicate and present themselves well in their application, and they must be diligent.

Beyond that I am looking for people who have something interesting to say in their cover letters. I seriously doubt any university student has a ‘passion’ for consulting (as many claim to). I’d rather hear about something they genuinely are passionate about, and how they can transfer the skills learned there to the work environment. I think it is important for candidates to be involved in and care about something beyond just their academics.

SR: The most important thing about one’s first job is the opportunity to learn and build competence. How does RIG go about this?

JT: It is not a backroom training exercise. You are a key team member in a live client situation. We learn most at risk. There is no one to carry you, so you have to pull your weight, but it also means your contribution has the potential to be significant.

You get the opportunity to follow your interests, but you have to play your part in creating that opportunity. For example, I have developed an interest in B2B2C companies, which I probably know more about now than anyone else in RIG, and I pursue this interest in our client acquisition and marketing activities.

But it’s not all perfect: we need to be better at growing teams and defining team roles. We are a work in progress.

SR: Finish the sentence – People who do well at RIG are…

JT: Smart, open-minded, dynamic, adaptable, and hard working.

SR: People who would not enjoy RIG are …

JT: Unopinionated, timid, and find the idea of being a self-starter a bit of stretch.

SR: What interests do you have outside of work?

JT: I play rugby, I am a compulsive cleaner and a tidy nut (organisation is me), and I love to cook and travel.

SR: Would you say any of these interests have carry over into your work?

JT: For sure – I favour people who are team players and have little time for people who are not and who are reluctant to commit. Team spirit and a positive attitude are traits I value, and I appreciate people who are also willing to step up and lead the team when needed.

SR: What is the biggest lesson you have learnt at RIG?

JT: Always get Shields to buy lunch.

Posted by Shields Russell on March 14, 2013 at 2:06 pm in About RIG, Blog, Recruitment | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

         

Managing the Chicken and the Egg

In starting new ventures, one confronts many chicken-and-egg type problems. Support for development of a new technology cannot be garnered without proven test results; proven test results cannot be demonstrated without development. One cannot build something without clear specifications; but in charting the unknown, one cannot get clear specifications without first showing something to prospective customers.

Managing these types of chicken-and-egg problems can be critical in getting something off the ground. Achieving success in this largely amounts to minimising risk to the point where one or both sides are willing to take the remaining leap of faith. Such a process often comes down to relationships: in the case of a chicken-and-egg problem, one can always fall back on the people involved. Is this entrepreneur someone who inspires confidence in me? Do I trust this team’s ability, even if I cannot see results of their technology?

From the entrepreneur’s standpoint, it’s important to see the risks from the other side. If someone is pitching money into a project, they may not be subject experts, and they may not know the team well personally. It can therefore be difficult to understand why a project will be successful or what its full differentiation will be. These issues must be understood and the entrepreneurs must find effective ways of communicating responses to the natural concerns that arise among investors—responses, not defences. As the entrepreneur, one must seriously ask, “Would I trust me if I were the investor? What would or could establish that trust?”

Managing and overcoming chicken-and-egg problems can be disheartening and frustrating, but will almost invariably involve significant back and forth between the parties involved: a little bit of chicken, a little bit of egg at a time, until there is both a chicken and an egg. Get it really right, and by the time the long and laborious process is over, you’ll have lots of eggs for plenty of chickens in the future (just don’t count them til they’re hatched).

Posted by Aaron Ralby on March 8, 2013 at 10:00 am in Entrepreneurship, Strategy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

         

‘Girls in Tech’ in Review

Yesterday I attended the inaugural Girls in Tech UK breakfast in association with General Assembly. While I’m fully aware of how GA has been expanding, I must admit Girls in Tech has been somewhat more of a mystery to me. Since ‘launching’ in the UK in June last year, I’ve heard essentially nothing from them until now.

Nonetheless, I like their aim – ‘to promote the visibility of women in tech and entrepreneurship’ – so I thought I’d go along and see what their panel of successful females had to say about it.

Apparently me and A LOT of other people. I arrived to GA’s offices to encounter a room packed to the brim with women. It verged on intimidating as I attempted to find a way to hold my tea and yoghurt and muffin and not stand awkwardly in the middle of an existing conversation or further block the already limited access to the spread.

The speakers included Olivia Solon of Wired; Gogobot’s Kelly Lees; Alicia Navarro, Skimlinks founder; and Judith Clegg, angel investor, Tech City advisor, and company founder, among other things.

There didn’t seem to be a set theme of discussion for the event. Rather, it appeared to be open to the speakers to give whatever advice they saw fit to a group of relatively young female professionals in and around ‘tech’ – though, of course, the scope of ‘tech’ is broad, and inevitably the attendees represented a broad swathe of industries and roles.

Olivia was her usual articulate, personable self. Her 5 tips were useful, although ending on ‘don’t be a woofy dog’ was possibly not the strongest closing point she could have made. Nonetheless, she opened the dialogue well, with a strong message about being the catalyst for the change you desire.

Kelly Lees did a fantastic job of dissecting the issues with each component of the name ‘Girls in Tech UK’ – a focus of course being on the ‘Girls’ element, a discussion I have heard before at the Geek Girls unconference. We are adults, for Christ’s sake. Let’s take ownership of that.

Alicia’s talk focused more around her own story and the genesis of Skimlinks. She hit the nail on the head in saying that if someone uses being a woman as a prop, they probably just aren’t good enough.

Judith, fresh off the plane from New York, rounded the talks off with a very positive message, highlighting the need to get out there and make it happen, encouraging other women to follow in our paths as role models.

The general message of the day seemed to be to make being a woman a non-issue. Every speaker highlighted the need for women to stand up and ask for what they want, create the change they want to see, and not be afraid of being openly ambitious. ‘Poor me, I’m a woman’ is a fallacy, and indeed, Alicia noted that for her, being a woman had only ever been an advantage and not something she had considered as an issue.

Of course, these words all come from women who have gone out there and made something happen for themselves; who have had the confidence to fall down, stand up and keep on going towards success. Maybe the rest of us are not as confident, or articulate, or whatever, but there is no doubt that these are the kind of role models needed to build and enhance the female presence within the ‘tech’ industry.

The easier it becomes to see successful women in the industry, the less being a ‘woman’ can in itself be problematised, so that we can instead focus on the more important questions of capability and leadership regardless of gender. Judith Clegg noted the criticality of diversity as a driver of innovation: women clearly need to make themselves more a part of the conversation, though so do other under-represented groups.

Did I enjoy the event? Yes. But I would have liked to see a more clearly defined theme or topic of discussion. General chat about being a woman and the non-issue of being a woman is fairly inane after a fashion.

On a perhaps controversial ending when it comes to the subject of gender (or anything at all), I think Milo Yiannopoulos has summed up the general message of the day in a past article on the topic of women in tech: ‘The best women in tech don’t want your pity and the mediocre ones don’t matter anyway’.

Female role models – Awesome. But if we want more women in tech we need to get out there and do it for ourselves.

Posted by Jessica Tayenjam on March 1, 2013 at 5:41 pm in Blog, Entrepreneurship | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)