Be it the three F’s (Friends Family & Fools), Grants, Loans, Business Angel Investment and / or Venture Capital the vast majority of startups will need some form of capital to grow. What type of capital you need often depends on what your business does, what stage of growth it’s in and what industry space [...]

2 Sep 2010  Financing

CI? Yes, competitive intelligence.
In today’s rapidly changing marketplace it is pivotal that any new start up keep an eye on the competition. What are they doing that we’re not, what’s their value proposition compared to ours, who is their target customer, who is ours? These along with many other questions are what you should be [...]

Here are just a few ways to completely and utterly dig your startup into the ground, as such read them, and do what you can to avoid them.
1. Have a poorly defined value proposition. Having a poorly defined value proposition will cause you headache after headache when looking at and presenting your business model. You [...]

28 Aug 2010  Entrepreneurship

More than often young entrepreneurs believe that once they have an idea, it in itself is sufficient enough to acquire that Business Angel (BA) investment to get to entrepreneurship Level 2; and while BA’s typically provide billions annually in early stage funding to young companies, they also have a number of set criteria that will [...]

20 Aug 2010  Financing

As the case may be, you walk up to any investor and ask whether they prefer idea or team, and as if previously programmed to do so, virtually all will respond “team”.
But clearly it’s ideas that change the shape of enterprise and industry, innovation and movement forward. Sure, one could say this, but unless those [...]

3 Aug 2010  Entrepreneurship

We recently had the chance to talk with Pablo Villalba from Teambox about how he got started and what advice he has to pass onto new and budding entrepreneurs, better yet, Teambox is now inBloon’s project management solution. The trickle effects of Next Top Startup, but I digress.
So without further ado, the startup feature of [...]

30 Jul 2010  Statups

Consumer internet is still the hottest US VC investment category, swiftly followed by clean tech and energy
The sector was voted the hottest growth area in the industry with 73.5% of those VCs polled backing it. Cleantech and energy is the second hottest growth area in the venture capital industry, according to more than half of (53.1 per cent) venture capital [...]

Back in May we asked Jose Mariano of In Bloon five questions about his startup, being that he entered the Next Top Startup competition we felt it unfair to feature him and not the others, however now with the first edition of the competition well behind us we feel it’s time to publish his answers [...]

20 Jul 2010  Statups

While there are days of the entrepreneur, various government backed incubators initiatives and some absurdly difficult to find money from the EU, the one thing – and possibly the most important thing that is missing Europe-side, are readily accessible mentors. Those seasoned entrepreneurs who are willing to donate their free time to help the future [...]

16 Jul 2010  Entrepreneurship

VCs collude & hate competition to fund good ideas and the worst thing is they are spoilt, so spoilt they invest next to nothing in enhancing dealflow, how many sponsor or educate & participate in conferences freely? Are they trying to innovate or harvest ideas?