Funding in 2023
Valuing any business can be a complicated and often inexact procedure, but arriving at a valuation for an early-stage business is so much more difficult...
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When considering raising equity finance, most early-stage businesses would often have to turn to angel investors or crowdfunding as was explained in last week’s article...
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Having decided to scale your business and having concluded that the only way to make that happen in a meaningful way is to raise equity funding, there are then some very obvious...
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Pitch decks and business plans are a very common area for discussion amongst founders and early-stage business owners, especially if those businesses are seeking to raise...
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Having made the decision to raise equity funding, and assuming that you know how much you are looking to raise, you must then decide the best place to raise that funding. This...
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Funding for your business can, in theory, come from many different places. It can be self-funded from your own resources, otherwise known as bootstrapping, or you can ask...
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Many hundreds of thousands of new businesses are set up each year in the UK. Indeed, according to Companies House, just over 200,000 new businesses were established in the first...
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Ask any early-stage business owner and they will tell you that getting funding to scale can be tough. Very tough. All will tell you that it takes much more time and effort and take
Read ArticleChallenges & Top Tips
When starting a new business, founders tend to fit into one of two categories. There are founders whose plan it is to scale their new business as aggressively as possible and to...
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If you want to scale your early-stage business, and to grow it quickly, then it is quite possible that you will need to raise investment by selling part of your business to new...
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Most entrepreneurs, and indeed the early-stage businesses themselves, share many of the same challenges and experiences along their journey. This is basically true irrespective...
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These are tough times for many businesses. Rapid inflation and so rising input costs. Rising interest rates leading to increased financial costs. Squeezed consumers buying less...
Read ArticleBack to Basics
It has often been said that cash is king. This does not of course mean cash itself, but the phrase refers to a company’s cash flow and how it manages the flows of payments into...
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Of all the areas of starting and scaling a business that most founders are unsure of, it is raising finance. For some, the questions are more basic, whilst for others the...
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Pitch decks and business plans. Every early-stage business with any thought of expansion, even if only modest expansion, should have them. And every founder of a start-up should...
Read ArticleStart-up to Scale-up
It is true that many people do not like change and shy away from it. But it is equally true that periods of change bring much more opportunity for innovation and for businesses...
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Starting a business is not always easy. But scaling a business, any business, often brings many more challenges than actually starting one. A typical small business is quite...
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When it comes to considering how best to raise pre-seed or seed finance for your business, one of the most commonly asked questions is whether getting investment from business...
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Having decided that you want to scale your business and that you need more money to do this properly, you will then need to carefully consider all the different options available..
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The majority of businesses that are looking to scale in any meaningful way will look to raise funding at some point. As well as the other steps already discussed in this series...
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This article could have been entitled ‘data and financials’ but so many of you would not have got even this far. But the truth is that data and your financials are not just...
Read ArticleThe Next Steps
What exactly is an Advisory Board and why is it so important to growing your business? This is a question that I am often asked by founders of early stage businesses. Thankfully..
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On April 6th 2021 a new Government loan scheme has come into force to help those businesses with the next steps after they have been affected by the economic difficulties and...
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The founders of almost every early stage business will ask themselves on at least one occasion, “Do I need to raise finance in order to grow my business?” For many, the answer...
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It’s official – London is Europe’s global tech city, with London based technology firms having raised more than $10.5bn in new investment from venture capital firms in 2020...
Read ArticleLessons Learned
How much do you know about the Kickstart Scheme that was introduced by the Government in September 2020? If you are a startup or early stage business, my guess would probably be...
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One thing that every early stage business should produce is a pitch deck, whether they are looking to raise external funding or not. A pith deck is typically a 15 to 20 page...
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Founders typically establish a business with one of two game plans in mind. They either want a lifestyle business and one that fits their work life balance, or they want to build..
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It is often said that turnover is vanity and profit is sanity. But, even more importantly, do not forget that cash is king. Put simply, businesses fail because they do not have...
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Taking the plunge and deciding to start your own business can be one of the biggest and most important decisions that many of us will make. Having set out on that course...
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Founders and entrepreneurs need to be many things. They need to be enthusiastic and energetic, intelligent and inventive, resourceful and resilient, tenacious and talented. But...
Read ArticleOverheard in a Startup...
As we are all starting to hope that the end, or at least a temporary reprieve, is in sight, thoughts are starting to turn to how we and our businesses can bounce back. In fact...
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Money most certainly does not buy happiness, but it does make the world go round. And the lack of money can lead to hardship in many ways. A question that I keep overhearing...
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Coronavirus is on everyone’s lips, not literally but figuratively. And for very good reason. It seems so long ago already that the only thing in the news was all things Brexit...
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In any business, at any time, cash is king and cashflow is much more important than turnover, and in the short term it can often even be more important than profit. If turnover...
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Whatever any of us care to call it - funding, finance, getting investors, or any other variation on the theme – obtaining finance remains one of the biggest areas of both concern..
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Some questions in life are more fundamental than others and some are more specific or technical, and so it is in the world of early stage businesses. But for the person asking...
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For anyone starting a business there is that delicious and intoxicating mixture of excitement tinged with fear. That is partly the fear of the unknown but it is also very much...
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In my previous article in this series I set out why I thought that having cash in an instant bank or building society savings account, and especially in a cash ISA, was not good..
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Having started to understand that we owe it to ourselves that we really do need to know a little more about our personal finances it is easy to go one of two ways...
Read ArticleMentor's Journal
Last week was of course the last real working week of the year, but whilst many will have found opportunities to celebrate most will still have been working hard...
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At some stage in the development of a business that wishes to really grow and prosper, the founders or senior management will decide that they need to raise funding...
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In my opening article in this ‘Money Matters!’ series I asked a number of basic questions about personal finance that everyone should be able to answer at least in general terms...
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I have been in and around the financial service sector the whole of my working life and indeed studied Commerce and Economics at school, so I guess that that shapes my view on...
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As a mentor I get involved in a huge cross section of businesses in different sectors and at different stages of their development. As a result I have been involved in many...
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In the last two articles in this series I have looked at various aspects of finance and this time I am going to stay with the financial theme but from a very different angle...
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In this, the second part of looking at the different forms of finance available to a startup, I look specifically at the different types of equity finance and try to summarise...
Read ArticleMentor's Perspective
So far in the series I have looked at some of the different types of assistance that is available to a startup and also about what benefits working with a Mentor can bring and...
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