Campus London is a Google Space based in Shoreditch that houses a number of start-ups and is known as a hot-bed of entrepreneurial innovation. (I think I stole that from someone, but anyway). Its a place where the founders of start-ups can work on their business ideas while exchanging ideas with other entrepreneurs who may be at a different stage of the business cycle, an eco-system of entrepreneurship. Equally importantly, it introduces many of the budding entrepreneurs to the idea of raising capital to support the possible growth of their businesses by connecting them with potential investors and advisors. It can be seen as the match.com for start-up’s.
One of the interesting things for me is to better understand the process of designing a product or a service that can then be turned into a successful business. I’m less interested in the wonderfully creative idea that isn’t going anywhere. When you boil it down there are 2 inter-linked stages – firstly, the creative process incorporating the idea, the innovation, the build, the feed-back (this is MACE) and secondly, how you turn that idea into a business covering the challenges of scaling-up, raising finance, protecting your business from outsiders who might want to steal, copy your great idea, and getting customers, lots of them (this is a bit of MACE and a lot of Msc in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship).
With this in mind, I attended the grandly-titled Go Fund Yourself: Funding Bootcamp for Start-Up’s at Campus London. An interesting group of attendees including those who were thinking about or had created their start-ups and those or were in the early stages of actually trading. The room had the smell of entrepreneurship (or maybe that was the smell of Rana’s burger).
Below is the blurb;
‘Addressing, Presenting and Speaking to Angel Investors and VCs is and is not straightforward. We are organising a full day of workshops and presentations to introduce key concepts on raising capital. Whether you are raising through VCs or angel investors, by the end of the day you’ll have a better understanding of this process. ‘
We covered how to raise capital for early-stage start-ups, whether from Angels (early stage private investors £25,000-£50,000), to Crowdfunding through to venture capitalists (£250,000+). Understanding what investors are looking for – an entrepreneurial founder with the ability to influence and convince both investors and customers (‘Bet on the Jockey not the horse’) , the creation of a product or service in what is potentially a high-growth sector, the ability to execute a business strategy. We also covered how beneficial mentoring advice can be ie advice from people who had been down this path before and had important networks, contacts and relationships that they could open up for you. Its not all about the money, money, money but if it can be combined with practical advice and experience it can be a better fit for all.
We also covered intellectual property, copyright, patents and trade-marks – what you need to do to protect your brilliant idea be it a computer code, a new form of technology, a new product or a service, when you need to do it and the likely costs.
The third presentation covered tech design and the options available ie do you bring in-house , do you use an external agency, do you outsource to developers in Eastern Europe, India, China or on Mars? What are the likely costs to create and manage your on-line presence, how does this escalate as you obtain traction and more traffic, how do you manage the process of technical innovation in an attempt to stick to a budget and a time-line.
If you’re interested in going to more of these presentations keep an eye on http://www.dreamstake.net and http://www.campuslondon.com
DESIGN THINKING : MY LIGHTBULB MOMENTS 