Hey there! We recently added a new ‘book we love’ and want to share some useful insights with you. The Book: Testing Business Ideas — By David J. Bland & Alex Osterwalder What is it about? The title gives it away… Models and techniques to help confirm the ‘Feasibility, Viability and Desirability’ of a product/service/feature Builds…

Good job raising your pre-seed/seed round! Now the hard work begins… — From the outside, raising capital seems ‘sexy’ — an entrepreneur celebrates on social media after closing their seed-round, ‘great things are on the horizon’! 👏👏👏 The founder should give themselves a pat on the back, raising a pre-seed or seed round is hard work and can be a long process…

“The worst business decision you can make is no decision.” John Peace What is the OODA Loop? Four-step decision-making tool The OODA loop provides a highly iterative approach to rapid decision making, useful for founders Originally developed by military strategies John Boyd for fighter pilots What does ‘OODA’ stand for?

“When there is a lack of clarity, people waste time and energy on the trivial many. When they have sufficient levels of clarity, they are capable of greater breakthroughs and innovations” Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less What is the ICE scoring model? A decision-making tool to help you prioritise ideas Commonly used by…

Don’t read your script from a document whilst presenting online Distracted? Yep, so are we… When reading off your screen during a presentation/pre-recorded video, your eye movement can be very distracting for the audience. It makes us cringe. “As soon as you can tell someone is reading, the content often looses that ‘wow’ factor. It comes across as more rigid…

Use design thinking to help validate your business idea with ‘the three lenses of innovation’. “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn The Three Lenses of Innovation Successful and sustainable business have three factors in common:

What is a startup elevator pitch? An elevator pitch is a brief summary of your business, product or idea. It should be no more than 30 seconds and be easy to understand i.e. no jargon. There will be time for more detail later, this is a teaser to get an investor interested. Keep it short and…

Getting your investor pitch deck right is essential when raising money. Follow our quick and visual guide below to see what slides you should be including in your investor presentation, as well as some golden rules to help focus on what is important. Golden rules for a great investor pitch: Keep it short: aim for at most…

“The entrepreneurial life is one of challenge, work, dedication, perseverance, exhilaration, agony, accomplishment, failure, sacrifice, control, powerlessness…but ultimately, extraordinary satisfaction.” David S. Rose, Venture capitalist, entrepreneur, angel investor You have heard it before, an idea is worthless without execution. Execution is hard and investors know that, so it is critical…