Startups, London

How To Avoid Hiring The Wrong Person For Your Startup

From Mashable: http://mashable.com/2012/01/29/avoid-hiring-the-wrong-person/

Chris Rickborn is the COO and co-founder for Unrabble, a cloud-computing hiring software company that helps busy startups make great hires.

Weekend Video: Marten Mickos on startups, life

Marten, the self-effacing CEO of Eucalyptus talks about startups, being a tech CEO.

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2809

He almost single-handedly validated the sustainable Open Source model, so don’t let his humility deceive you :)

Some holiday reading perhaps? Enjoy…

Smarter Retailing via (Un)conventional Thinking – Harvard Business Review

Tech Leadership: 7 Thoughts on Building Your Start-Up from the Ground Up – Tech.li

What to Do If Your Business Gets Hacked – Entrepreneur

How to Make a Personal Connection with Customers – Entrepreneur

City tech startups give Wall St. run for its money – NY Daily News

Easy to criticize, hard to create – A Smart Bear

How can a startup decide when to start marketing upcoming products? – Task

How To Develop An Effective Market Penetration Strategy – Task

Why crowdfunding may be the future of startups – Techi

[INFOGRAPHIC] Who’s Using Google+ – Tech.li

Tech Startups Need Non-Techies to Succeed – Harvard Business Review

Using Social Networks to Improve Operations – Harvard Business Review

7 Ways Startups Get Tagged as Too Risky by Investors – Startup Professionals Musings

How Do You Set Up Operations In The US And Why? Interview With Microtask CEO – Arctic Startup

This Week’s Startup Events to Watch

There are lots of exciting events occurring across London in the technology startup community - here are a few not to miss this week: 

- Tomorrow: “Want to build something of value? Think of Content, Community and Analytics” by Tech Meetups

- Tuesday: “Developers, Clients, Apps, Ideas” Appsworld & AppsJunction

- Thursday: “Billion Dollar Companies - The role of Private Equity and Venture Capital in Creating Value” by Genius Incubator

I hope you all enjoy! 

Startup Interviews: Nick from Poncho No.8

Yet another of our startup interview with Nick Troen, co-founder of Poncho No.8: 

What made you start Poncho Number 8? 
We’d always wanted to work for ourselves, didn’t have any debt or mortgages, wife or kids so if we thought if we did fail, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It sounds cheesy, but we also felt compelled to do something more productive considering the current economy, and start-ups and small business have always been the key to driving new growth and creating jobs in downturns. As for why Mexican, well Mexican food is so versatile and disparate, you can pretty much fashion it into anything you want, fast food, mid market or full sit down, and still have huge variations within those sectors. The popularity of Mex food was rising and we saw a lot of space to create a premium mid market offering. Our experiences from California and New York and seeing how the Americans had evolved the burrito into a more Western-centric food was a big factor in going in starting Poncho.

What were the first 6 months like as an experience? 
Very tough. But also exhilerating. It was non-stop work while we personally had effectively no salary (all the burritos you can eat does help though). We learnt a heck of a lot that would have been impossible to figure out without getting stuck in on the shop-level, and did all the admin while also working full shifts in the restaurant everday.  

What was the biggest mistake/learning that you made? 
Make sure you can track your figures right from the start. We took a while to get our accounting procedures in place and were just watching our top line increase without paying enough attention to our gross margin and other costs. It’s crucial to make sure that you’re actually making a profit and not just focus on top line sales, but we were so caught up in the excitement of opening (and the huge queues we were getting) we neglected our paperwork. 

What is your ambition? 
With Poncho, to serve the best burritos in London and the UK. Simple as that.

What would you do differently
Our food is all cooked fresh on site, without compromise our recipes have been developed in conjunction with our customers and our Mexican head chef to create a uniquely customised flavour range. Our food takes everything that’s great about Mexican food and brings it up to date with modern contemporary cooking, while making sure it is still affordable and quick.

Do you have any advice for budding entrepreneurs? 
Do your research, quadruple check everything and then go for it if things seem to be pointing in the right direction. Don’t just gamble on something and hope for the best without doing any form of analysis. It’s true that sometimes radical innovations occur (I love Steve Jobs’ eschewing of market analysis, ‘You can’t just ask customers what they want then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new’, but this really doesn’t apply to most of us non-genius types). Many start-ups begin in existing markets, and it is vital you get some idea of what customers would like improved to give yourself a good chance of making it amongst the competition. Fairly straight-forward enough, but done so rarely in practice.

Autumn Events

We are back after a long, but not so hot, summer in London and are planning some events for all of you interested in London-based technology startups. 

If you are an entrepreneur and want to tell your story let us know and get in touch - we would love to have you speak at one of our events. Also, if you have any good ideas about events you would like to see let us know too… 

Looking forward to an exciting few months! 

Startup Lifecycle - Lean to Fat, Launch to Scale - Video

Great post (and video) from Fred Destin - Enjoy

http://www.freddestin.com/blog/2011/08/startup-lifecycle-lean-to-fat-launch-to-scale-video.html