Wow what a week! (and its not over yet!)

I was asked to write a piece about mentors and what they mean to start ups. Got two paragraphs into it and then had a whirl wind of a week. You see this week has gone from bust to boom. So mentors – really important but that can wait. Let me tell you:

Day 1 – Made redundant from my job! Guess it’s a bit of cat and mouse. Do you leave pre success or are you leaving pre success? Anyway current climate and family – you don’t take the chance? Or do you. One things for sure I feel well and truly “in the shit!”

Day 2 – Realisation sets in. I have no job. Now the "edge your bets" time has gone! This idea had better work!

Day 3 – Angel funding looks promising. What do you want the £40k for errrrr Me? No can’t say that errrr the business? Which is me! No its not I have partners. Errrr don’t know. You see it’s not really the funding I need but the expertise to come into the business. But what do you say. “hey successful entrepreneur I don’t want your money but your time???"

Day 4 – Only gone and got the mother of all meetings. Still needs to be clarified and set a time but if they buy into the idea then this things gonna rocket. You see they could give us 260,000 client’s a year and the best bit is it’d be for free. Still “softly, softly catchy monkey”

Day 5 – Well that’s tomorrow. But one things for sure. I CAN’T WAIT!

We've hit a delay - But how do you get over the initial frustration?

Staring up is an exciting time. But it’s definitely demanding and at times frustrating.

We have always been keen to launch as soon as possible and take advantage of the recession we are in, as our offering lends itself to saving medium to large organisations a chunk and making for a healthier bottom line.



So we’ve always looked at the end of February 2009 to launch.

But then the best laid plans… We had a meeting last night and then, with the true scale of the functionality we are trying to build, we realised that launch is going to be more like End of May!

Seriously frustrating! (When, you’re eager to launch your new venture.)

Having said that, it makes sense to launch the best possible offering you can. There will always be things that need to be changed after launch, but hopefully not the entire business! So if that means a delay then so be it. Just as long as you don’t miss the boat!

I guess now, we’ve got to make the most of this additional time, to deal with other things. Rather than bang our heads together we can spend more time on the content and look and feel of the site and have it “tip top” by our new launch date.

One thing is for sure when launching a new venture. There is so much to do. So as one thing is delayed you can rest assured another 100 things can fill its place.

Not too disheartened now…….but initially my venture world caved in!

Bring on May 2009!

Recession – opportunity or barrier?

Apparently we should stop our journey now. File away our business plan and keep our heads down. Well so we’re told – we can’t get away from it!

But what real implication does the recession have on a start ups economies of scale. Well here’s the good news. Don’t treat it as a barrier but an opportunity to enter a market just when shifts in trends occur.

We now see the discount grocers such as Aldi and Lidl bucking the trend and not only meeting but exceeding the profit expectations they have set themselves. Now yes I appreciate they are not a “start up” but the principle is the same. Whilst established businesses need to develop new strategies to meet expectations and grow, start ups are in the unique position to work quickly within trends yet also be frugal. As a start up, any capital you may have will always be spent wisely and even more so now. One things for sure you’ll always keep you eye on cash flow.

Starting a business in these times is also less of a punt, as you need to be sure of your idea. It makes no sense in flogging a dead horse and definitely not in a recession. Spend the time on thinking about your idea and be critical. But having said that don’t miss the boat entirely by thinking to much!

It’s always good to assess your idea against the recession. Does it benefit from it? I know that sounds a strange concept but think about it. What if you have a product that is deemed as a luxury but you sell at necessity prices?

Take Pontins breaks, whilst the company diminished in the past they are currently set for refurbishment and increased capacity with a £50m investment and the creation of 2,000 more jobs. Why? Well whilst a holiday is a luxury, switching from overseas to UK holidays will seem a little more palatable through the current climate and UK breaks are set to cash in.

So what does this mean to us? Well were entering into the legal services field at a time when we’ve seen massive shifts in trend. The consumer has always seen legal services as a necessary evil but given the choice would they use them? That’s our challenge. People just feel it’s a minefield they could not possibly navigate through. We’re going to change that and make it easy for the consumer to administer their own legal requirements. As there is an increase need for legal services in a recession were taking the advantage now and making sure we don’t miss that boat.

Show me the money!

Hi - it's the Stig Mentor here. I'm a serial entrepreneur and I'm about to launch my next BIG thing. In fact, I had a meeting today with a bunch of VC's and I didn't have a business plan or even any idea how much money I wanted; "I dunno - couple of hundred grand should do to start?"

Normally when you go into see potential investors you have to big up how much money you'll make and how well they will do out of it. Well, this time I decided to turn it around on it's head and told them that I was going to create a fabulous multi-million pound business but they should expect a much more modest financial return. Well, I've got form, I can take my pick.....

Guys - if you are setting up a business act like money is the last thing you need - this business will be a success and nothing is going to stop it.

It's all about attitude - and trust me, I know.

Where we’re at - The Business Plan, first knock back and resilience!

You join us very early on in our start up journey. Well I say very early on but I’ve had the idea since November 2006. 22 months of day dreaming….and research of course, and in September 2008 I decided to do something about it.

Why September 2008. Well I had read an article on a seed investor who takes an idea, incubates it and then sends it out to market to accelerate growth. Great I thought! So I contacted the company - Rainmakers and I was then asked for a business plan….business plan of course I have one??

So over September 2008 I set about writing my plan. Took me most of September to write, as I, like the majority of people who want to start their own business tend to have a day job also. So weekends and evenings family permitting I finally got the plan finished.

I was glad I had finally written my plan but why was I sending it to them? What actually did I want? And that was the first lesson I learnt. Just before I sent it I thought of a figure. £50,000, well it was that or £100,000.

Nice and round. Cringe worthy I know. How many angels or VC’s must see the golden £50,000 on a finance request!

Two weeks later I got the ‘as expected’ knock back. To me honest I would have questioned their experience if they had said yes.

The knock back wasn’t too helpful, left with a stock email that didn’t really give me any idea of will it/won’t it work?

“I’m afraid we have decided not to take on any more projects at the moment – partly due to the financial market and also due to constraints of time with existing projects.

I know this will be a disappointment to you but please accept our best wishes for your future and the future of your project”

So I guess that was the first sharp learning curve. Don’t ask for money when you don’t know what it’s for or why you need it. And certainly don’t just pick a figure out of thin air!

Luckily I didn’t take it to heart and thanked them for taking the time to look at the idea. Always thank people for their time you never know, a shift in trend or 6 months down the line it could be a different story. Besides, I now had a business plan of sorts which I would never have got round to doing so soon.

No sooner had I dusted myself down than I met the two guys who were going to become my business partners. It dawned on me what I wanted was either, the money to buy the expertise to make the business work, or the expertise itself.

So after a discussion about the idea, their 'clear to see energetic approach' and some equity sacrifice on my part, the idea now had collective inspiration.

It's great to know the idea now has three people with the drive and creativity to want to make something work. I have the feeling this will be one of many ideas we work on together, but one step at a time.

The Journey has started and i've got two wing men!

This is where it starts. Let me introduce the team. Their's me - Well i'm the business idea man . I came up with the idea for a solution to the issue. I identified the problem and wanted to solve it with clear simple thinking. What is the idea - well we'll get to that soon.

Then we have Our creative superman. Who works on all things looking great on the web, seo, ppc and all things digital. He's great to work with. If you come up with a creative idea nothings impossible. Twitter, facebook, bebo, linkedin..........he's on em all!

Then their's our King of Code -. A true genius in his own tea time! A bit like Charles Xavier to my Wolverine and creatives Rogue. He's building the tools to get the fancy things our creative guy does to work and also set my vision up for true enlightenment or one huge fall. Lets hope he doesn't turn into a Magneto!

On the peripheral is our secret mentor. A bit like secret Santa. You don't know who its from -but hey what a wicked present.

We prefer to call her the "Stig Mentor" . A true entrepreneurial success in her own right, who has already given us some great advice and will hopefully get the time to offer some insight and advice on this very blog. Some say she lives on a cloud of inspiration waiving her guiding light. All we know is she's called.......?

Anyway that’s an overview of us all. I'll be posting soon on our trials and tribulations as we hope to make our business a success. We'll be providing snippets of the design. Help on online stuff and also my own insight into this fantastic journey we are now in the thick of.

Watch out world there is three new young guns on the scene!