I’ve been meeting more and more companies attempting to raise significant sums using Crowdfunding sites. The principle of Crowdfunding is brilliant and has evolved the investment community, enabling anybody to take small positions in exciting startup businesses. This in turn has helped created a vibrant startup ecosphere. However, the crowdfunding platform is a competitive industry […]
Our culture is based around brands and protecting IP and patents. We firmly believe, in our culture, that patents, trademarks and IP should protect the holder, even if the practicalities behind it are less than perfect. Yet culturally, China is at complete odds to our protectionist systems. They believe in sharing IP and collaboration. Brands […]
For any readers interested in this series of blogs, I thought I would compile a list of terms used along with explanations. I try as much as possible to avoid using jargon, but just in case I have strayed to the dark side: Bootstrap – Enough money and facilities to get started Seed – […]
I’ve given a lot of advice to founders seeking mentoring or investment. These are generally big ticket items such as valuation or product development and have been covered in my open blog for a couple of years now. So I thought it time to give some insight into the small “tells” that allow me to […]
So, hype and agenda’s aside, here’s what I’ve learned about the EU and the debate. Brussels is a massive European parliament that we are currently a member of. They pass laws that either enter directly into our statute books or indirectly through our parliament on an almost daily basis. However those laws are almost entirely related […]
Are we approaching a singularity and if so what form will that take. {N.B. Singularity in AI is defined as the moment when general artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence. The current median estimate from the combined academic community is the year 2040} While nobody knows any answers to these questions, general assumptions are that […]
I’ve dedicated a lot of articles to valuation and explained in great detail why your startup isn’t worth £1M. A few months ago I met a startup who crashed the ceiling with a self valuation of £3M. Yesterday, however, we hit the stars with a startup self valuing at £5M. Now this company does have […]
I am in serious talks with the founders of a startup. I’m not very interested in their business model, although I think it’s decent, but we do have aligned interests. They require premises to run their business out of and I need to invest some money into property having recently sold a couple of buildings. […]
I have mentioned NDA’s in a lot of separate articles, so I thought I would outline the purpose and features of a good NDA and in so doing, point out the many mistakes everybody (including large corporations) make in constructing them. A non disclosure agreement (or NDA) is a simple legal contract that permits two […]
So, for many technology based startups with intellectual property, patents are an obvious route to go down. However it is not always the correct route and what you might think of as a good form of protection may actually achieve the opposite. Let me explain why: Patents are filed public documents that describe your intellectual […]