How did that happen? One minute 2020 was back-to-back groundhog days and now we’re about to wave it all goodbye… Which brings to mind how ‘letting go’ is a huge competitive advantage for founders — if you can deploy it — and a better way to approach 2021 New Year’s…

I was there during the 2008/9 credit crunch and lost a £12m business — so I’ve paid close attention ever since and this is what I see… This is a personal view on what the latest bank bailouts means for founders, business owners, job hunters, and, a suggestion on what…

How much expertise does a founder need? Surely 10,000 hours? In the noughties, books like Blink by influential author Malcolm Gladwell explained how anyone could become an expert if they only spent 10,000 (focused) hours on a topic. For instance, Gladwell explained, you could train yourself to spot art fakes or the accuracy…

Why we need to re-think our startup teams In case you haven’t yet tried ChatGPT from Open AI — take a look here. It writes blogs, articles and answers for any question. Is it biased? Yes. Is it misogynistic? Yes, if you ask your question in a slanted way. But…

The LEAN idea of ‘launch fast and iterate’ doesn’t work and what to use instead… and how my new startup taught me to startup better. In honour of the ground breaking behavioural economics book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, I thought I’d leverage their key idea — Starting up, Fast and Slow. However, instead of thinking, fast and slow; I’m Startup-ing, Fast and Slow. This idea captures my insights of the past couple of months, as…

Spoiler: they are engagement, engagement and engagement! Engagement for your users (well, we already know about that), but also, engagement with your top clients (now you can’t take them out for lunch) and, more noticeably, engagement with your team (which used to happen naturally because you were all in the…

Startup leaders and founders are called to set up a vision for a better future — but how do you do that when times are tough? Startup leaders need to be optimistic, forward looking and full of hope. That much goes without saying. But how do you do optimism when…

Startups don’t need anyone to tell you that your revenues depend on digital marketing. Nor do you need reminding that ecommerce sales have (more or less) doubled and virtual sales meetings have replaced physical ones more or less overnight. However, after the urgency of the coronavirus-driven full virtual switch, it…

Coronavirus has re-enforced how interconnected each of us are to everyone else, and this thread now weaves through nearly everything we do to build our startups…and community, and community building lies at its heart. The rapid prioritisation of community even shows up in dating habits too where companionship, not sex…