Free Lunch At Club: Hosted by Seed EIS Platform

What are you doing for lunch next Thursday? At about 12:30? Fancy a sandwich? The good people from Seed EIS Platform are coming to Club on Thursday 20th September with a platter of sandwiches and a message for tech startups & investors. 

Sees EIS Platform connects startups and investors. The Platform prides itself on being ‘the meeting place for startups and investors’ who are ‘looking to participate in the Seed EIS Scheme’. 

In other words, if you’re a techy and you think that you’ll be ready for investment in future - or perhaps you’re going on your investment rounds now! - it’s well worth hooking up with the people from Seed EIS Platform. They have all of the advice that you’ll need and a whole bunch of contacts. So please drop into Club Workspace for a sandwich on Thursday 20th, at around 12:30. 

SEIS enables investors to benefit from tax-savings if they invest in startups. Consequently, if investors are benefitting from investing in startups, then the startups benefit too as investors will be more likely to part with their money. I won’t go into the finer details of the SEIS Scheme now, but please check out this vintage blog of ours which was all about the launch of SEIS.

If you’d like to come on the 20th and are new to Club Workspace, not a problem! All are welcome. If you’d like to learn a little more about Club, please find me (Ben!), and I’ll give you the guided tour. Until then, please see this map so you can find your way to our Clerkenwell Club. We’re downstairs!

Andrew Humphries brings his Creative Pioneers to Club Workspace to talk Business Planning

On the evening of Tuesday 4th September, Andrew Humphries brought the Creative Pioneers into Club Workspace. The Pioneers came in force to our Clerkenwell location for a Business Planning workshop. The session was led by Mr. Humphries himself, who was ably assisted by Nick Berry.

The Creative Pioneers Challenge is a competition jointly run by Tech City, The Metro, The IPA and Creative SkillSet. The job of The Challenge is to discover the next generation of creative entrepreneurs. Their website unashamedly states that the purpose of the competition is to find young people who are full of ideas, who are tech-savvy, and who don’t mind getting up bright and early in the morning with a belly full of fuel. Or, in their own words, they want people who ‘can do, can code, and can start’.

Going on what we witnessed at Club Workspace on Tuesday night, the competition has had fulfilled its goals. There were just over 20 young people in-situ, and they were all brimming with ideas and energy. 

The purpose of Tuesday’s session was to undergird the Creative Pioneers’ bright ideas with a sound understanding of business planning. Although some of the creative entrepreneurs had experience in business, others were treading on virgin fields when it came to the finer details of business preparation.

Andrew didn’t go into the minutia of business planning - for a detailed runthrough, please see this vintage blog of ours - instead he set out the foundations for a solid business plan, and helped the collected audience get their heads around the purpose of a business plan.

Do You Understand Your Business? 

An interesting point that Andrew made was that before you write your business plan, you need to know your business. This sounds like a silly point to make - of course you know your own business, it’s yours isn’t it? To counter this point, Andrew asked everyone in the room to describe their business succinctly: it was an eye-opener for many! 

Ask yourself these questions to shape your own impression of your business: what does you business do? What ‘need’ does it fulfill? How big is this need? Who are your customers? If you sell food - your customers aren’t just everyone, they’re people within a certain area, and are they vegetarian?! 

Also, how big is your market? A good way to think of this question is by thinking in terms of distance: how far can your product travel? Who are your competition? Who’s doing what you’re doing? What makes your business different to theirs? What is your USP? Is it you?!

More questions! How much money will your idea make? Over how long? What needs to happen next to put the wheels in motion? Who is going to execute the idea? You or a team? Why are you great, and right for the project? Why is your team great, and right for the project? What do you want to happen in the end? Who do you want to sell to? As the old adage goes, don’t start a business unless you know who’s going to buy it! In other words, consider your acquisition targets long before your startup. 

Sections

After you have finely-tuned your understanding of your business using the questions above, you can then tackle your business plan. Before we relay the ‘sections’ that Andrew suggested that you include in your BP, we shall pass on this advice from Mr. H: your business plan is not inflexible, it is a document that can change and adapt. Don’t be afraid to revise your plan, in fact, actively redress your plan every couple of months. 

The suggested sections for your Business Plan are as follows: Executive Summary - everything that you are about to say, in miniature; The Opportunity - the problem that you’re solving; Business Solution - the solution to said problem; Market Overview - how many people can you sell to, and who are they?; Competitive Analysis - who else is doing what you do? Why are you better? Marketing and Sales - any marketing campaigns that you have planned; Three Year Financial Projections - profit and loss, potentially a cash burn prediction too; Details of Team - who are your guys and why are they the best guys? Expected End Result - what happens when you are a success! 

Thank You

Thank you to Andrew Humphries for bringing his Creative Pioneers into Club Workspace - it was a pleasure to meet them and to host such an interesting and informative event. From everyone at Club Workspace: the very best of luck to all of the Pioneers! 

Congratulations to Versarien! The StartUp Games Come to a Close at Club

From Wednesday to Friday last week, The StartUp Games brought some of the world’s brightest startups to London. After three days of competing, they whole event drew to a triumphant close. After the winners were announced, and taken on a memorable trip to Number 10 Downing Street, the competitors made their way to the Clerkenwell Club Workspace. 

The very last action of the StartUp Games was the ‘Club Workspace Barbecue’. To clear up one misnomer, the cooking per-se wasn’t performed downstairs at Club Workspace, as we hear that naked flames and basements aren’t a marriage made in heaven. Instead, we decamped upstairs to our gorgeous courtyard space.

The Clerkenwell Kitchen - our fantastic and award winning neighbours - did all of the hard work. They sizzled the sausages and flipped the steaks. As ever, they did so with aplomb. One of the StartUp Games competitors took to the Twittersphere to announce, “if Heineken did bbqs, they still woundn’t be as good as yours!” Why thank you, Neil Ricketts, that brings a tear to the eye - but I’m sure that Carslberg’s ad agency aren’t quite so flattered!

But that’s enough about sausages and tv - here’s who left the competition victorious! As you may know, as victors, they also left with 6 months free Club Workspace membership! The winner was... Versarien! Versarien won the overall prize at the StartUp Games. Tuizzi came second and MediaDevil took the bronze. Two of these triumverate of startup talent come from the UK, with Tuizzi putting in a strong showing on Portugal’s behalf. This is a great sign for the UK, and also for the rest of Europe, who were strong and ran our guys very close.

Thank you very much to all of the StartUp Games competitors, you have been a joy to get to know. Thank you to Andrew Humphries and to Oli Barrett for the effort they put in to planning the StartUp Games, and to Tech City UK and StartUp Britain for their support. The final word must be another congratulations to Verasien! See you soon at Club!

Songkick CTO Dan Crow Shares his Tech Secrets at the StartUp Games

The evening of the Wednesday 29th of September saw the launch of the StartUpGames. The StartUp Games is a Tech City initiative that reconfirms London’s position as one of the world’s leading centres of technological enterprise. Last night’s event kicked off the first of three days of startup gaming.

As you will have seen in our previous blog, Club Workspace is delighted to be working with the StartUp Games. We’re providing prizes and a bbq venue, amongst other things!

The StartUp Games was launched on the twelfth floor of the impressive Team GB House. The event handily coincided with the launch of the Paralympic Games. From this high vantage point, the StartUp Games competitors were able to observe the world’s paralympians take to their stage.

Dan Crow of Songkick

There were several speakers on show at the StartUp Games’ launch night. After Andrew Humphries and Oli Barrett - stars of stage and screen - had warmed up the crowd, Deputy Mayor of London for Business and Enterprise Kit Malthouse gave an address that had the audience rippling with laughter. It was Dan Crow, however, the CTO of the internationally successful app Songkick, who stole the show. 

Dan spoke about his experiences in tech, and about how Songkick, a brilliantly original app, has taken the world by storm. Needless to say, the large audience listened intently to Dan, as he removed the lid from his box of tricks. 

Dan’s first tip was this: Events and meetups are extremely important for entrepreneurs of all kinds. Even if you have achieved massive traction online, there’s no substitute for getting out there and meeting likeminded people. You never know who you’ll meet at a meetup. You could come out of a two-hour session with an armoury of new users, new brand advocates, or new testers.

‘The internet allows you to go global from day one’, Dan continued, ‘you can reach everyone everywhere.’ Dan, of course, practices what he preaches with this particular axiom. Songkick demonstrates that there is no need to be parochial with tech. If your idea is relevant to the world at large, then do all you can make it go global.

Dan then echoed the sentiment of our friend Bob Dorf by declaring that techies should use customers & users to test their products. Testing is all important when creating a new app or online service. It would be a waste of your time and money to develop something that is difficult or cumbersome to use. Who can tell you if your app needs some tweaks? The users.

The last piece of advice that Dan shared was about entrepreneurship in general. He explained that ‘entrepreneurship is not about ideas, it’s about execution.’ Dan explained that it is more than likely that someone, somewhere has an idea that is very similar to yours. Your job, as an entrepreneur, is to execute your idea better than anyone else. 

Thank you

Thanks to Team GB House for letting us all in, to Andrew, Oli and Kit for opening the show with such panache, to all the StartUp Gamers for being so keen, and, of course, to Dan for sharing his wisdom.

Club Workspace and The StartUp Games

Here at Club Workspace we are delighted to be involved with The StartUp Games. The StartUp Games runs from Wednesday 29th August until Friday 31st, and will bring tech startups & entrepreneurs from around the world to London in order to compete for honour, respect and recognition. 

Club Workspace looking forward to working with the StartUp Games in several ways. Firstly, we are offering a Club Workspace membership to the winning startup! As you know, Club Workspace is growing at a stunning rate that reflects the power and vibrancy of the London startup scene. We’ve got a handful of new venues due before Christmas, and more to follow soonafter. We can’t wait to welcome the StartUp Games champion to the Club.

Secondly, we’re running 10 minute ‘Energiser’ talks in between sessions on Thursday 30th. This means that we’re returning to Hackney House! During tomorrow's visit, we'll spread the world about Club's plans to make a bigger mark on the capital, to all of the StartUp Games competitors about Club.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we know that all work and no play makes Jack a dull startup. Therefore, we’ve teamed up with our neighbours, The Clerkenwell Kitchen, in order to host the Friday evening barbecue. After three days of hard competing, the ‘Very British Barbecue, hosted by Club Workspace’, will enable the ensemble of international startups to let their hair down, with the courtyard at the Clerkenwell Workshops providing the perfect backdrop. Nothing says startup fun like sausages and sun.