Dr David Bozward

Category: Blog

  • 6 Core Values of an Entrepreneur

    6 Core Values of an Entrepreneur

    Every entrepreneur should have a mantra, a code by which they conduct business and here we set out our “core values” of an Entrepreneur. Its so important to believe in what you are doing and set your path using values which others also work with.

    Partnership

    The success of an entrepreneur is largely due to the partnerships they forge. The intellectual capital and passion entrepreneurs display on a daily basis are key drivers in achieving their partnerships with employees, customers and other businesses. They highly value and respect the people who make up their company and the commitment to excellence. Recruiting, training, and retaining quality people are fundamental objectives an Entrepreneurs’ success.

    Personal Integrity

    Entrepreneurs conduct all matters of business with integrity. Entrepreneurs proudly uphold the values of honesty, truthfulness and sincerity, while remaining fair and ethical in even the most difficult situations.  Entrepreneurs seek to constantly maintain a professional demeanour despite facing critical decisions while conducting business. The time and effort put into every project is true to their mission of delivering superior results in a professional manner.

    Innovation

    Entrepreneurs know in every marketplace, innovative ideas, concepts, and processes are essential to the continued success of any company. Entrepreneurs endeavour to create value, deliver results, and continuously improve all elements of both their business and those of their customers. Entrepreneurs aim to be creative, effective, and efficient within their company to help create inspired, visionary solutions for our business partners.

    Ethics

    Entrepreneurs firmly believes that a strong moral code is a key component towards earning trust in their business, both internally and externally. They strive for all aspects of their company such as people, ideals, functions, and outputs to uphold the highest possible moral competency and responsibility. Entrepreneurs are steadfast in practicing and observing the ethical and moral principles.

    Trust

    Trust is one of the foundation stones of being an Entrepreneurs. It begins with their co-founder, investors, employees and depends on the reliance, partnerships, and successes they share with customers. Trust between our company and customers manifests itself through common goals, respect, and fulfilment of our commitments. Due to the trust they build, both with employees and customers they can not rest easy knowing they have not meet  all of their needs.

    Quality

    Quality is an underlying trait of Entrepreneurs that touches all aspects of their business. The quality of they people and excellence of their operations lead to distinctive outputs for their customers. Quality is achieved through passion, leadership, education, empowerment, responsibility and accountability. These are virtues Entrepreneurs champion  and recognise in the activities of their company.

  • 6 Stages of the Startup

    6 Stages of the Startup

    When we work with start-ups its important to provide an assessment on their journey within the startup lifecycle. Understanding where a startup is in their lifecycle allows us to assess their progress, providing mentoring to the founders and also provide a vision. The startup lifecycle is made of 6 stages of development, where each stage is made up of levels of substages, allowing for more granular assessment which helps pinpoint the main drivers of progress at each stage.

    1) Discovery (or Pre-Seed)

    Goal: This phase is all about discovering and validating whether you are solving a meaningful problem and whether anybody would “hypothetically” be interested in their solution.
    Milestones: Founding team is formed, many customer interviews are conducted, value proposition is found, minimally viable products are created, team joins an accelerator or incubator, Friends and Family financing round, first mentors & advisors come on board.
    Management Team : Founder(s)
    Funding Requirements : £500 – £5,000 (always depends on the business type and technology requirements)
    Business Development Milestones : Validated Problem and potential solution
    Typical Funding Resources : Cash
    Average Valuation : Nil (Typical Technology Start-up)
    Time: 3-6 months (average for all types)

     

    2) Seed

    Goal: Development of a minimum viable product which can be shown to potential customers, sponsors and customers.
    Milestones: Founding team is formed, many customer interviews are conducted, value proposition is found, minimally viable products are created, team joins an accelerator or incubator, Friends and Family financing round, first mentors & advisors come on board.
    Management Team : (Core team) Founders, co-Founders, Mentor,
    Business Development Milestones : Letters of intent or some preliminary relationships
    Funding Requirements : (Seed Capital) £10,000 – £50,000
    Typical Funding Sources : Friends and Family financing round, first mentors & advisors come on board
    Average Valuation : £10,000 – £100,000
    Time: 5-12 months (average for all types)

    3) Validation

    Goal: The Startup is looking to get early validation that people are interested in purchasing their product through orders or pre-orders with deposits.
    Milestones : refinement of core features, initial user growth, metrics and analytics implementation, start-up funding, first key hires, pivots (if necessary), first paying customers, product market fit.
    Management Team : (Entrepreneurial Lieutenants) At least one real manager, Founders, Mentors and Advisors
    Funding Requirements : (Startup Capital) £100,000 – £300,000
    Typical Funding Resources : Business Angels, Grants,
    Business Development Milestones : Paying Customers
    Average Valuation : £1m
    Time: 9 months – 1 year

    4) Established / Efficiency

    Goal: The company refines the business model and improves the efficiency of their customer acquisition process. The business should be able to efficiently acquire customers in order to avoid scaling with in-effective processes.
    Milestones: value proposition refined, user experienced overhauled, conversion funnel optimized, viral growth achieved, repeatable sales process and/or scalable customer acquisition channels found.
    Management Team : (Risk takers) At least three real managers, Founders, Mentors and Advisors
    Funding Requirements : (Venture Capital) £300,000 – £500,000
    Typical Funding Resources : Venture Capital
    Business Development Milestones : Profitable customers, Strategic Partners
    Average Valuation : £3m
    Time: 1 – 3 years

    5) Scale

    Goal: Startups step on the marketing drive and drives global growth very aggressively.
    Milestones: massive customer acquisition, back-end scalability improvements, experienced executive team formed, process implementation, establishment of departments.
    Management Team : Executive Board, Management Board, External Advisors
    Funding Requirements : £1.2m – £5m
    Typical Funding Resources : (Bridge Funding)
    Business Development Milestones : Historical results against plan, Focused Business Plan, Strong Processes and Controls,
    Average Valuation : £3-15m
    Time: 3-5 years (average for all types)

     

    6) Sustain

    Goal: Develop a portfolio of customers and products, either based on one technology or a set.
    Milestones: diversification of customers and revenue streams, agile product teams, public and investor relations
    Management Team : Executive Board, Management Board, External Advisors, Product Teams
    Funding Requirements : (IPO) Large A Round
    Typical Funding Resources : IPO
    Business Development Milestones : Multiple Revenue Streams,
    Average Valuation : £10-30m

  • Entrepreneurs don’t like forms

    Entrepreneurs don’t like forms

    When you work with so many universities, you get to see many aspects of Enterprise Education, some good some bad. But there is one aspect which staff and students have issues with and its ERDF funded projects. These projects are designed by someone who normally has long gone to another institution and therefore the narrative is long lost on why they embarked on this journey, however across the sector we see a series of common issues:

    Timing – When a student joins a university and wants to start a business on graduation. They pop over to the enterprise department and see what support is available for graduates and notice its “part funded by the EU”. The one question they forget to ask is “Will this be available in three years when I graduate”. If they did ask, the answer would be “I am not sure as its a three year project that started last year” or something like this. How can the student plan to start a business at that university if the support is not going to be there?  The length of the project is not in line with the academic programme and the University has not committed to provide a portfolio of support for students with or without ERDF funding.

    Journey – The journey through enterprise education and support to create a business is not a linear one. The education is needed at the point of most impact, i.e, just before they need to undergo that task. You need book keeping at the start and completing the business tax return at some point within the first year. Some students require a considerable amount of social media training within the execution of the marketing plan, while others need very very little. These rigid projects can not coup with this approach.

    Support Blocks – The majority of ERDF project require support to be in six hours blocks, signed off by the student on paper (That’s the EU Eco credentials crashing and burning). This requires a fixed “we are going to tell you” how to run a business approach. This limits the support to providing six hours on each subject and forcng everyone to attend every session to build up a set of paper work which evidences the “learning”. Whereby setting the objective to get people to sign forms in person. The majority of staff are only concerned with getting students to sign forms. The use of mixed media and social peer development is important for any long term business development and yet does not fit into these six hour form signing blocks.

    Scope – The requirements of the project requires the scope of the project to be limited, which is understandable. However, a students startup comes in all shapes and sizes, which may not fit within the scope. The money is set out in a way which 2 years ago made sense, but now the economy, technology and business trends have moved on makes little sense to conducts the project with this set scope. The projects need to be able to adapt to the needs to the customer while keeping the aim, to support students in starting a viable business.

    Location – The majority of projects are based around a location, so within the region of the university. The funding for the project comes from two sources, the EU and the students fees. So if the student intends to develop their business back home in another region, then they are not eligible for support under the ERDF project. The university does not offer support in getting them on a project in their region and nor does the university offer to support the student with the part of the funding which they are matching with the EU. So this student loses out.

    One Stop Solution – Students want to go to one person and get all the support available for starting a business. They don’t need several projects which work on different aspects of enterprise and are separate. The supermarkets know this, the government know this (www.gov.uk), so Universities need to understand this and develop the enterprise support personal to be a single team where students meet the first person and can get access to the portfolio of support available at this institution. The ERDF project can not be the only support available and there has to be more offered to ensure the needs of students is met.

    I know these issues are not entirely placed by the EU, who need to understand why these projects are providing little long term benefits or culture change within the institutions. The majority of the problems lies with those that create the proposals, the managers of the project and their briefs. Basically it needs further development of a working relationship with people who understand enterprise education with those who understand how ERDF projects should and could be run.

  • Besties : Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

    Besties : Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

    I recently watched a few videos featuring Steve Jobs, the first one was his launch of the iPhone (1.0) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hUIxyE2Ns8) which is such a classic. In one hundred years it will be on every history curriculum, but today is a must for how to present a product launch. Then I saw a video “Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together at D5 Conference 2007” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvhW8cp15tk )  which demonstrated the incredible long term relationship between the two tech entrepreneurs.

    They needed each other and understood this from the very beginning. The symbiotic relationship starts with Mircosoft developing a competitor to Lotus Notes on the Mac and supporting Apple with their version of Basic. This allowed Mircosoft to create a well proves et of products which could then be translated to DOS and subsequently Windows. It follows through with Mircosoft providing $150m when Apple needed it the most and Steve Jobs makes the phone call, your dealing with me now.

    They worked together throughout their careers and had direct access to each other. As two CEO’s they knew there was only one other person who could stamp on their legacy, so building a supportive relationship was the only way for their legacy to be timeless. You may not like Mircosoft but they moved our technology forward to such an extent, Bill became the rich man on the planet. There is only one technology company which you want to hold their products in your hand, and Steve created this timeless vision. A global army of open source technology geeks have still not stake Bill out of the park. Sony the only real contender hasn’t got close, while Samsung with multiple products is just missing it, the shame is I have tried their products and they work but, … its just not right, to the extent I had to spend £600 and buy a iPhone. In fact a Nokia/Microsoft phone is better.

    Our double act understood the power of software. When they started out the world was running on hardware and they changed this to software (more importantly now called apps) running on any hardware. Software was the business model which was much more scaleable than hardware. You can sell someone several operating systems.

    They both also understood the power of apps before the rest of the planet know what apps were. Mircosoft Office and Apple iMovie are just apps. You can sell someone several hundred apps which extends the sales cycle and more importantly builds a closer relationship with the customer.

    This is a case of when great entrepreneurs understand that being alone in a global competitive field is not the ideal situation for continued market domination.

    So what should we entrepreneurs learn from this?

    You always need competitors, the stronger the better, local competitors are better that those the other side of the world, competitors whereby the sum our parts is greater that the whole and competitors who you can call by the first name and know if the credit hits the fan they will be there to bail you out. After all, we start businesses to work with people and supplying goods to people.

  • 2014 is the year to try your plans for failure

    As we start 2014 everyone has a lot of optimism for what it brings. This is a great time of year to lay down plans and create ideas for activities and events for the up coming year. Each year we do this, knowing that not all of these will occur, however our understanding is that we could do these resolutions if we so wished.

    The same is true for entrepreneurs, when we create busineses we know that not all of them will be sucessful and failure will provide us with the opportunity to learn. We know that this puts back into a new “year” enterprise start whereby we can move forward again. Each start-up is like a new year, we set down plans, work them through, knowing that not all of these plan are right, will happen and we will have the time to succeed.

    Our traditions provide us with the stability of knowing something is right, having been done for many years. Businesses have been formed for hundreds of years, each year some have failed, so allow these failures to create better understanding of business, starting an enterprise and also your skills in entrepreneurship.

    The holiday period is a time for reflection and this time is important in many ways. Its a chance to socialize with new and old friends, meet the family and grow as people. The important thing about failure is the learning it provides, without which we can not tune our skills and refine our plans and processes.

    So as we start 2014, just remember its ok to fail as log as you can learn from it.

     

     

  • The European Single Market for Entrepreneurs

    The European Single Market for Entrepreneurs

    I had the privilege to meet a number of youth groups this week from around Europe and was amazed at the problems that they face in just starting a business.

    In the UK, if you want to start a business, you have a number of options. The first and easiest is to be self employed by just registering with HMRC (government revenue, http://www.hmrc.gov.uk) which takes about 10 minutes online. Then you just keep them updated using the same online portal.

    The second way is by starting a business, which again takes 10 minutes but you have to pay to register the company, this is through Companies House, http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/ and costs around £15. Again you keep up to date online using the interface provided.

    In both cases you provide final year accounts using a PDF submission process.

    Across the EU, the average time to start a business is 13.3 days (2012 Figures). However, when you look at countries like Spain the average time in 2003 was 114 days and has now come down to 28 days. So things are changing fast. Poland currently takes 32 days, but it’s not about the time taken but the bureaucracy involved. (Take a look at this amazing comparison website http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploretopics/starting-a-business ) For young Entrepreneurs this is a major issue as a mistake at this stage may lead to major costs later on.

    So what is the best practice?

    Singapore has one of the best business setup environments in the world and its provides “A modernized business registration system should have all procedures online, requiring that permits applications should be online and transparent, allowing for general collateral when getting credit, requiring detailed disclosure for investors, taking all tax management and payments online, creating a single window for trade across borders, and creating a specialized court division to enforce contracts.”

    Given that Entrepreneurs within Europe can move where they want to start, maintain or grow their business, we should be creating a system which allows clustering to occur to build these businesses. If you see that its best to be in Romania for bio-tech then “go and be part of this”, should be the moto.

    Also given that the high growth high technology business can transfer assets within minutes from one business to another, most of which are virtual, the only thing stopping them moving to the best location is the bureaucracy involved in closing that business. Living in a global economy means we can move around, its better that way for large and small businesses. I must give credit to Francesco Maurelli for this.

    So maybe we need a way to allow businesses to move around Europe just like our people, as we all know business is about people.

  • Leadership of Enterprising Groups

    Leadership of Enterprising Groups

    A large number of the attributes of a Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) can be directly applied and are applicable to the Peer Led Student Enterprise Groups (PLEG). Organizational theory review also shows a higher degree of complexity for non-profit organisations when compared to profit oriented businesses.

    As for Mizell (2005) and Lubar (2005) emphasize the quality of management as key to volunteer retention as well as volunteer support. This is nonetheless emphasizing the fact that one of the key responsibility of the non-profit organisation is to factor in volunteers’ potential constraints and be proactive about them. Through this research they found that most of the volunteers expected the manager to practice participating leadership. It was highlighted that the management team of non-profits organizations should think about their leadership style, in order to have the volunteers feel more productive and that they belong to the organization.

    According to Trachtenberg (2006), the key importance of values and belief for non-profit organisation is attracting quality volunteers is one of the most important objectives of the NPO; however, it is a task that is often overlooked or performed poorly by NPO managers and administrators Farmer & Fedor (1999). Volunteerism cannot be separated from the motives, values, and beliefs of the volunteer (Wilson, 2000). The three most important strategies that can be drawn from the research include (1) recruiting volunteers based on their interests, qualifications, and how well they fit with the organization; (2) offering training to support the learning and skills development of volunteers, and; (3) acknowledging directly to volunteers the vital role they play in the success of the organization as well as the contributions that they make in generating the capital needed to meet its mission and its goals.

    Despite the growing contribution of the nonprofits to global economies, nonprofits operate in an increasingly competitive environment. Along the same line, Jay (2010) highlights non-profit sustainability necessity but throw an interesting light on the changing non-profit environment and the related risk associated. Nonprofit literature over the last few decades reflects attempts to examine the competitive environment in which NPOs operate and impact their functioning. Several researchers have used the Porter’s five forces model to capture the competitive intensity in the immediate environment. Whilst the parallels to Porter are striking, the system of relationships proposed for NPOs has not been subjected to empirical testing.

    They observe that this trend towards marketization may pose risks for civil society because nonprofits may lose sight of their social Mission. Also, governments and entrepreneurial business initiatives nested within the NPO have provided other important sources of finance for NPOs. Substantial volatility across all these diverse revenue streams forces NPOs to become adept at multiple stakeholder management.

    A NPO must ensure a flow of resources in order to sustain itself which is typically through earned income, governmental support and private donations. Researchers contributing to this stream of literature have suggested several strategies that can be adopted by NPOs to gain financial substantiality: commercially generated revenues (Lundström et al 1997); application of business principles to fundraising ; employing relationship marketing ; identity-based donations (focusing on the salience of the donors’ identity within the relationship) ; and within and cross sector strategic alliances . In addition to revenue enhancing strategies, researchers have suggested a number of strategies to reduce costs: increased volunteerism and its productivity and soliciting in-kind donations.

  • Institutional & Education Enterprise Requirements for Peer-Led Team Learning

    There are numerous studies (Astin (1999) and Terenzini (1996) ) who highlight the advances of peer led learning within the educational institution, creating a strong evidence base for peer led student enterprise groups.

    Astin, (1999) Proposes a student involvement theory whereby the High Education institution could use to measure ‘student involvement’ using a metric which refers to the quantity and quality of the physical and psychological energy that students invest in their experience whilst at the institution. This involvement may take many forms, such as absorption in academic work, participation in extracurricular activities, and interaction with faculty and other institutional personnel. According to the theory, the greater the student’s involvement in college, the greater will be the amount of student learning and personal development.

    Terenzini (1996) states that, students’ out-of-class experiences appear to be far more influential in students’ academic and intellectual development than many faculty members and academic and student affairs administrators think

    Slavin (1996) notes that the motivationalist critique of traditional classroom organization holds that the competitive grading and informal reward system of the classroom creates peer norms opposing academic efforts. Since one student’s success decreases the chances that others will succeed, students are likely to express norms that high achievement is for “nerds” or teachers’ pets. Such work restriction norms are familiar in industry, where the “rate buster” is scorned by his or her fellow workers Vroom (1969). However, by having students work together toward a common goal, they may be motivated to express norms favoring academic achievement, to reinforce one another for academic efforts.

    As a learning pedagogical, Peer-Led Team Learning, whether project-based learning (PBL), game-based learning (GBL), Understanding by Design (UbD), or authentic literacy. Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is a specific form of small group learning recognized by Project Kaleidoscope as best practice pedagogy (Varma Nelson et al 2004). PLTL was first developed by Woodward, Gosser,and Weiner (1993) as an integrated method that promoted discourse and creative problem solving Evaluation of the successful implementations of PLTL have suggested six critical components which fits well within our student led enterprise groups, especially within the further education sector:

    • Peer-Led Team Learning in integral to the course.
    • Peer-leaders are trained in leadership skills.
    • Faculty or Subject areas are involved.
    • Materials for workshops are challenging and promote collaborative effort.
    • Space and noise level acceptable for group discussion and work.
    • Peer-Led Team Learning is integrated into the institutional structure.

    The institutional enterprise strategy will determine the characteristics of the Peer-Led group and the empowerment student are provided.

  • Finding a Social Entrepreneur

    Finding a Social Entrepreneur

    The development of social enterprise over the last few years has lead to a wider appeal and also an increase in students looking at enterprise as a career option. These students are looking at the problems within their society and developing innovative solutions to the problems of today. This will be one of the core legacies of this recession as the young have seen how corporate greed can and does lead to a range of social and ethical issues.

    We can not rely on bankers to mess up the economy so we can create greater social entrepreneurs.

    So what are the core characteristics and triggers for social enterprise and entrepreneurs ?

    Social enterprise is not new, so there is much evidence into its impact and development.  (Zahra et al). So reviewing some of the literature we essential have three types of social entrepreneur.

    1. Social Bricoleur : who is focused on small scale local social needs
    2. Social Constructionist : who exploits opportunities and market failures in order to introduce reforms in “broader” social system
    3. Social Engineer : who recognizes systemic failures and addresses them by introducing revolutionary change

    Once we understand these three types, the development of the civic, social system and revolutionary change means we can identify a number of personal characteristics or attributes which the social entrepreneurs should hold, (Brooks pp12)

    • Innovativeness
    • Achievement Orientation
    • Independence
    • Sense of control over destiny
    • Low risk-aversion
    • Tolerance for ambiguity
    • Community awareness and social concerns

    The first six are standard entrepreneurial attributes which you can find in the majority of literature and also entrepreneur tests, with the the seven being the community  aspect which introduces the social aspect of the entrepreneur.

    These characteristics allow a level of entrepreneurship to exists when triggered. These trigger points are important (e.g. Banking Crisis). There are five entrepreneur trigger points which (Brooks, pp9).

    • Environment
    • Resources
    • Perturbation / Displacement
    • Personal Traits
    • Preparation

    The majority of universities now have greater support for social enterprise, through partnerships with UnLtd and charitable organizations. These help create the right environment and provide the much needed resources to develop the idea. The education preparation for social entrepreneurship has been embedded into our education system for many years. Within the HE sector, we can see great examples from RAG, ENACTUS to formal Volunteering.

    The social entrepreneur provides an opportunity to work with a real local issue and develop an eco system which ensures  real role models and local engagement for a wider set of students throughout their degrees. This is important in developing and maintaining our local economies.

    By understanding the trigger points for social enterprise, we can help develop the skills and personal characteristics within our education system for successful social entrepreneurs.

  • New term, New version of Enterprise

    For the student entrepreneur there is a great amount of support out there. However, this support is not well co-ordinated by the suppliers or by the university or college. Of course if you google “enterprise support” you get (Enterprise Support Services UK Ltd are a cleaning company based in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire)

    However is a great list all students should take a look at: