On April 9th 2012 Facebook announced that it would acquire Instagram for $1bn. An impressive sum for a company less than 2 years old and with fewer than a dozen employees. An even more impressive sum when you realise that Instagram had no clear revenue plan. According to some reports Instagram co founder and CEO [...]

So you’ve come this far, you’ve done all the hard work, had the signs made and erected, unpacked the stock and placed it on the shelves, but now is not the time to take your foot off the peddle.  The day the doors open and you start trading. Whether you’re a virtual business or a [...]

On Day 7 we talked about how to create a Marketing Plan. In today’s post we talk about how to execute it. Contrary to popular opinion, marketing is an activity which starts before the business starts trading. The idea is to create excitement prior to your business launch, so that on launch day you start [...]

This is the eighth part of the 10 Days to Start Up series. In case you missed the previous articles in the series you can catch up here. In this post we are going to talk about  creating an Advisory Board. Even if you’re a one person start up, you can’t do it all yourself [...]

This is the seventh part of the 10 days to starting a business series. In case you missed the earlier articles in the series you can catch up here. Today we’re going to focus on Marketing, the essential ingredient to letting people know that you’re open and ready for business. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve [...]

This is the sixth part of the 10 days to starting a business series. In case you missed the earlier articles in the series you can catch up here. In today’s article we’re going to focus on financing your startup beyond the usual maxing out your credit cards, loans from friends and family or remortgaging [...]

The other day I posted on Twitter: “What’s the biggest Problem facing Your business” and I got the following response from a follower  – “Honestly? Cashflow!”. Great timing. In this post we are going to look at costs and understanding how much cash you’ll need when starting your business. This is day 5 of the [...]

Many people think that starting a business in the midst of a recession is a crazy thing to do.  But the truth of the matter is that if what your have to offer your potential target market is truly a need or at a lower price than the existing players in the market then your [...]