It’s a New Year and the entrepreneurial juices are flowing. It’s time to start the business that you’ve been talking about for years. What’s stopping you? Or maybe you’ve already got a business but it’s not growing as fast as you had thought, what has to happen to make this year the year it doubles [...]

1. Get free PR If there was an unlimited amount of money to spend, advertising would be easy, but normally there isn’t. So what can you do? Well this is where free PR comes in. PR is of course short for Public Relations and was the remit of large corporations, but has now become a [...]

I was lucky enough to go to the dress rehearsal of the Olympic Games opening ceremony and was hugely impressed by the hard work, energy and enthusiasm of the volunteer dancers and actors. When the full version of the opening ceremony was shown on Friday the overall story became clearer. Much of the ceremony was [...]

Just back from giving a business plan workshop to a group of MBA students, many of whom were keen to start their own business. So naturally the subject of how to fund a business came up. One of the areas that regularly seems to cause confusion with the students is the difference between Private Equity, [...]

As promised the chancellor has confirmed in his March budget documents that there will be a Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) starting from 6th April 2012, although it didn’t get a mention in his actual speech. Just to clarify for anyone confused by the similarity of SEIS with an existing scheme, there is already an [...]

Am I the only one that is getting confused by the increasing number of initiatives that the government is rolling out to encourage entrepreneurship? Or frustrated because they don’t actually seem to make a difference?   We had Business Link, then we didn’t, except it still exists as a “business advice and guidance service portal”. [...]

I must admit this blog sounds a bit as though I’m standing on a soap-box, but a recent comment by Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, rang true with me. He said: “I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn’t even taught as standard in UK schools,” he said. “Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching [...]

Enterprise Zones are the latest government incentive to get businesses growing. Within the Enterprise Zone you can get superfast broadband, lower rates & taxes, and low levels of regulation & planning controls. That can only be a good thing – right? A great encouragement for younger companies who may otherwise struggle to reach critical mass. [...]

Almost all businesses now days have to have a web site. Even if you don’t sell over the web, your customers will expect to be able to find you on it. If they know your name and it’s fairly unique then you are likely to be found. That’s good, you can give your customers contact [...]

Whenever I hear advice from successful entrepreneurs the most consistent mantra is “always hire the best people you can afford”. But how good is “the best”, how do you measure that? Also, if you are in a young company, with very limited resources, how much can you really afford? Let’s step back for a moment [...]