Tag Archives: entrepreneurship

Pioneer Programme 2020: Meet the Finalists 

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Meet the entrepreneurs in the running for the Best Business Pitch and Best Business Idea awards. Winners will be announced at a virtual ceremony in June. 

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As the government, businesses and individuals adapt to a “new normal” in the wake of COVID-19, the case for innovative thinking in the workplace has never been clearer. With this in mind, we’re delighted to introduce this year’s Pioneer Programme finalists.

Pioneer is an extra-curricular course for Birkbeck students looking to develop the knowledge and skills to excel as an entrepreneur. Over seven Saturday sessions, participants learn from a range of entrepreneurs, industry experts and each other to build the skills needed to develop their business idea or scale up an existing business. 

Representing the best entrepreneurial minds in Birkbeck, the finalists are in with a chance of winning either the Best Business Pitch or Best Business Idea award, each worth a £1000 cash prize to support their business, along with a bespoke package of mentoring, coaching and promotion. 

Participants’ achievements will be celebrated at a virtual awards ceremony on Thursday 18 June, with a panel of five independent judges, themselves entrepreneurs and industry leaders in start-ups and innovation. 

Meet the Finalists

Jody Halstead

Jody Halstead
MSc Management with Business Strategy and the Environment
Business: Circular Surrey 

My business, Circular Surrey, is a platform for local business leaders who want to transition to a low carbon circular economy. 

Research shows that more localised solutions are needed in order to make the shift to a low carbon circular economy. Alongside this, business owners and leaders often don’t have the resources to fully apply their time and need some additional support. 

The Purpose of Circular Surrey is to provide clear and tangible support for local businesses to enable them to shift to more sustainable business models and practices whilst continuing to power Surrey’s economy.

 

Alexander Flint Mitchell

Alexander Flint Mitchell 
MSc Business Innovation (specialising in Entrepreneurship) 
Business: Blind Cupid 

Blind Cupid is for people who want lasting love and are frustrated by the time and money wasted dating incompatible people. Blind Cupid offers fast, fail-safe matchmaking. Unlike eHarmony and Hinge, our product matches users with people who share the same values and fundamental way of thinking via a never-before-used science. This creates a fast-track to lasting love. Far from the superficiality of Tinder, profile compatibility is scored and bios are seen before a user chooses which of their matches to reveal photos to. This leads to better dating decision-making. 

You can take Blind Cupid’s ‘Sense of Life’ Questionnaire today and get a very informative report about who you fundamentally are as a person.

I am currently fundraising for Blind Cupid and the product should be on the market within the next three months. 

 

Picture of James Shepherd

James Shepherd 
MSc Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology 
Business: Smart Therapy Tools  

Smart Therapy Tools aims to modernise psychological therapy treatment by providing both therapists and service users with an interactive and engaging smart phone app.  

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), a therapy based on a structured understanding of how mental health issues maintain themselves, is at the forefront of modern mental health treatments and the NHS alone aims to treat over 1.5 million people a year with this approach. To improve the experience of this therapy, I have developed a prototype smartphone app which brings important techniques away from static pen and paper approaches into a more engaging and dynamic domain.

In the future, I aim to put data science at the heart of the app by using statistical modelling to learn from user inputs. As the app is used more often, more information from the heart of the service user/therapist collaboration can be utilised to help understand the complexity of mental health problems and inform new treatments.

 

Picture of Kevin Tsai
Kevin Tsai 
MSc Innovation and Entrepreneurship 
Business: Anywhere Bear 

Anywhere Bear is a vision born from my passion for travelling. However, I have come to realise how damaging air travel is for the environment – even a short haul flight from London to Edinburgh contributes more CO2 to the atmosphere then an individual’s average annual emissions. 

My wife and I recently took a holiday around Italy without flying and we loved the experience of travelling around by train.  We then looked at other holidays around Europe but found it difficult to plan without flying. There is no one go-to site that we trust and find easy to use for our needs, hence the decision to pursue the idea of a travel platform specialising in helping holiday makers to plan and book their holiday around Europe without flying. We want to build a fun and engaged community of people who will enjoy sharing their travel stories and be able to challenge and inspire their network to join them as they go flight free.  

Due to COVID-19, we’ve had to rethink our strategy, as we foresee travel being impacted by this pandemic.  We’re now going to be providing travel inspiration to places around the UK.  We plan to partner with eco-hotels and restaurants and build a platform to allow people to still enjoy their holidays with a minimal carbon footprint.  

Our plan is still at the ideation stage so watch this space as we reinvent the way people holiday!

 

Picture of Hetty Bonney-MercerHetty Bonney-Mercer 
BA Global Politics and International Relations 
Business: FemInStyle Africa 

In the near future, representation of women in Ghana’s politics will be higher, women in Africa will be more financially independent, women who have broken the glass ceiling in their respective fields will be the norm instead of the exception, solo female travel will be safer and gender activism will have reached new heights. 

Because in 2019, two gender activists decided that there weren’t enough publications in the country that really focused on amplifying women’s voices exclusively and in a positive way and decided to do something about it. 

FemInStyle Africa is a magazine for women by women which aims to encourage women to live their full potential. We have five columns dedicated to politics, gender activism, profiling working women, financial advice and travel and style: always written with women as the central focus. FemInStyle Africa aims to mobilise women to bring about lasting changes in the fight for gender equality. 

We are currently building our website, recruiting writers, and finalising our marketing plan with a view to launching in Q3 2020. We welcome you to be a part of our journey.

 

picture of Mukesh Bhatt

Mukesh Bhatt 
PhD Law 
Business: inSTEAD – integrating Space Technologies into the lives of the Elderly and Disabled 

 The inSTEAD project wants to re-purpose, re-innovate and re-invigorate space technologies, which can be used to help the elderly and disabled. Over 700 astronauts in space and returning to Earth are supported by a multi-billion-dollar industry, prototyping and patenting health support and rehabilitation mechanisms. The astronauts suffer from the same health problems as the elderly and disabled on Earth, and yet solutions for the latter are priced beyond their reach. However, anything used by astronauts can also be used by the elderly and disabled because each is human. 

Encouraged by the Birkbeck Pioneer programme, the International Space University and the European Space Agency at its Noordwijk business incubation centre, inSTEAD (AbleSpace Paradigms) aims to translate the hardware and psychological technologies and methods used for astronauts into a form suitable for the support and rehabilitation of the elderly and disabled on Earth. 

The inSTEAD project includes in its mission both commercial and philanthropic aims and objectives for high social impact and making the best use of opportunities for collaboration with national space, technology and development agencies and initiatives. It requires a team of dedicated and impassioned personnel to help make it a success. If you wish to become involved please contact Mukesh. 

Further Information: 

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Why businesses fail: customer acquisition strategy

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Welcome to the Why businesses fail series. This is the third of five blogs that delve into the reasons for businesses failing and offering solutions. This series was launched by Lucy Robinson of Birkbeck Futures and Ghazala Zia from Windsor Swan. In this blog, they share how you can narrow down your customer and find an effective marketing strategy to attract and retain them.  

Lucy Robinson is the Employability Consultant for Business and Enterprise at Birkbeck Futures. She runs the Pioneer programme for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs and hosts an enterprise series on the #FuturesPodcast.

Ghazala Zia is a Venture Capital Advisor at Windsor Swan, a boutique London business advisory firm. She has an extensive legal background, and currently specialises in advising start-ups of all stages on funding, strategy and business analysis.

Once the product or service has been tested, it’s not enough to assume that it will speak for itself. Customers don’t come without being invited. It’s crucial to have a detailed customer acquisition strategy and a relevant, targeted marketing strategy alongside in order to succeed.

Firstly, define your customer. Not just ‘young women’ or ‘professional millennials’, but very specifically identified. Think about gender, age group, location, profession, and more. Similarly, your customer might not be an individual but a service provider themselves. You still need to be specific here. For example, if you want to sell to a university, who do you want to reach within the organisation? The students, the lectures, the staff? Knowing who your customers actually are is vital to the short- and long-term success of your start-up. Conducting market research tests on your intended audience is also a great way to measure if they actually want your product – often, you may be surprised by who your actual customers are.

At the early stages of a start-up, it’s wise to channel funds (even if they’re limited) into a solid marketing strategy. Test your consumer behaviour, determine advertising costs, and determine how many customers you’ll reach. Similarly, build up your brand reputation in order to garner recognition and ultimately, loyalty from your intended audience.

Customers show loyalty to authenticity, and your marketing should reflect a strong and consistent brand identity that is honest to the product itself. If you have a flashy marketing campaign but the product itself doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, you risk being slated online and by word of mouth. This is why the marketing strategy itself only holds up when the product does – which bring us back to the importance of understanding the problem you’re solving, and carrying out extensive testing on your intended audience.

Within your customer acquisition strategy, you should be familiar with certain metrics. How will you acquire your customers? What is your cost of acquisition? How much marketing do you need to spend to acquire one customer? How are you going to retain that customer?

Read about how to identify a need in the market and attract investors in the first two blogs of the series.

 

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Why businesses fail: Being unattractive to investors

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Welcome to Why businesses fail, the second of five blogs that delves into the reasons for businesses failing and offering solutions. This series was launched by Lucy Robinson of Birkbeck Futures and Ghazala Zia from Windsor Swan. In this blog, they share some practical tips to get investors to demonstrate traction in your business and attract potential investors.

Lucy Robinson is the Employability Consultant for Business and Enterprise at Birkbeck Futures. She runs the Pioneer programme for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs and hosts an enterprise series on the #FuturesPodcast.

Ghazala Zia is a Venture Capital Advisor at Windsor Swan, a boutique London business advisory firm. She has an extensive legal background and currently specialises in advising start-ups of all stages on funding, strategy and business analysis.

Being unattractive to investors is a primary reason why some start-ups fail, and there’s a few pitfalls to avoid here. One big one is not showing traction.

Having a strong and evidenced market need for your product or service is the best way to demonstrate traction. By traction, we don’t mean a few thousand likes or free users – that’s not enough for an investor. It needs to be clear that this engagement is converting into paying customers, which is a trackable and easily identifiable metric. Engagement without custom isn’t traction or validation of your product. It could be a sign that you’ve got great marketing or that you’ve got a particularly active customer base, but if they’re not actually buying your product it suggests they don’t really need it.

One metric you should always know as part of your financial model is how many customers you need to stay viable. Before you start pouring hours into creating content, or spending time and money adding new features to your product, ask yourself: “What value am I adding?”. If the effort, energy and resources you use won’t actually convert to more sales, you should consider if it’s really necessary.

Investors vary with the level of traction they’d like to see, and different types of investors look for different amounts. For example, if you’re an early-stage start-up you’re likely looking at individual investors like Angels. Angels want to get involved at an early stage and take a punt on your business, if they see something in you. At a later stage, when you’re in revenue, you might use Seed Investors. Seed Investors get involved when you can demonstrate more growth that they want to get on board with. Generally speaking, investors want to make ten times return on their investment. This means you need to demonstrate traction which suggests they’ll be able to achieve this by investing in you.

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Why businesses fail: Identifying market need

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Welcome to Why businesses fail, five blogs that delve into the reasons why businesses fail and offering solutions. This series was launched by Lucy Robinson of Birkbeck Futures and Ghazala Zia from Windsor Swan.

Lucy Robinson is the Employability Consultant for Business and Enterprise at Birkbeck Futures. She runs the Pioneer programme for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs and hosts an enterprise series on the #FuturesPodcast.

Ghazala Zia is a Venture Capital Advisor at Windsor Swan, a boutique London business advisory firm. She has an extensive legal background and currently specialises in advising start-ups of all stages on funding, strategy and business analysis.

According to CB Insights in their 2019 update on a post-mortem of over 300 failed start-ups, “No Market Need” is the most common and significant reason for young business failure. A start-up can have the best team and a truly great product, but it can still fail if no customers need it.

The key mistake here is entrepreneurs going straight into their solution, and basing that solution on a perceived problem rooted in their own assumptions. In short, not properly identifying the problem they’re actually solving. Basing a business idea on untested and often biased assumptions is the quickest way for a product to fail.

Without a real problem to solve, the product won’t be offering a solution that customers want to buy. Without customers, sales won’t come. Without sales, a product will have no traction. Finally, without traction, investors won’t touch the business with a 10-foot pole.

Luckily, this is a failure that can be avoided by putting in the right work at an early stage. The three most important things an entrepreneur can do at the ideation stage of their business? Test, test, and test again!

A good way to start testing is through surveys, from which you can get an idea of your intended audience’s perceptions and priorities. Following this, you can create a beta version or prototype – this is your MVP (Minimum Viable Product). With this, start with just one or two features so you know exactly what you’re measuring a reaction to. Once you’ve got your MVP, consider offering the product or service for free to some users to gather feedback, data and insights.

Always be focusing on moving towards paid users, but don’t discount the value of free users for the valuable insights you can gain. Once you’ve got the data you need on your customer-base, it should be clear what problem your business is solving. Free users give you insight, paid users give you traction.

In short: don’t assume the way you experience a problem is the same as the way everyone experiences it. Test it objectively.

 

This is the first in the Why Businesses Fail series. Come back next week to find out how to appeal to investors.

Further information:

 

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What is intrapreneurship and how can it help your career?

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The life of an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone, but you can still reap the career benefits by embracing an enterprising spirit in the workplace.

Brainstorming, Business, Cheerful, Clap Hands

I don’t know about you, but a pretty clear picture springs to mind when I hear the word entrepreneur: suited and booted, firm handshake, these are the people who can talk to anyone, are interested in everything and have a remarkably persuasive knack of bringing people on board with their ideas.

While the risk-averse among us may want to steer clear of the career path of an entrepreneur, you might be surprised at how much there is to gain from embracing an entrepreneurial spirit from within an organisation.

That’s where intrapreneurs come in.

What is intrapreneurship?

Intrapreneurship involves developing the skills and mindset of an entrepreneur, but using these to benefit the company you currently work in, rather than starting up your own business.

Intrapreneurs are recognisable in organisations as the people who are confident, question how things are done and are willing to try new approaches in search of better outcomes.

What’s in it for you?

Adopting an enterprising attitude in the workplace might sound like a lot of hard work, but it’s a smart career move. Putting forward suggestions and championing new ideas allows you to put more of your own personality and interest into your role, making it ultimately more satisfying. We also know that increased autonomy at work is one of the keys to staying motivated.

Entrepreneurship develops skills that are transferable in any workplace, such as emotional intelligence, innovative thinking and leadership. Plus, any suggestions that you make and work on can be used as concrete examples of your achievements when you’re looking for your next opportunity.

What’s in it for your employer?

Although the concept of intrapreneurship has been around since the 70s, it’s becoming increasingly relevant in today’s world. Creative thinking, emotional intelligence and the ability to embrace and adapt to change, all key skills of an entrepreneur, are becoming essential in the modern workplace and are where humans differentiate themselves from artificial intelligence.

Employers value team members who are proactive, resilient and who can offer creative solutions to the challenges their business is facing.

Enterprise at Birkbeck

At Birkbeck, there are many ways to get involved with enterprise to suit any level of ability and time commitment.

  • Pioneer

Pioneer is a fantastic way to launch your enterprise journey, and applications for this year’s programme are now open. Birkbeck’s flagship enterprise course is open to Birkbeck students and recent graduates from any discipline who are looking to develop their entrepreneurial skills.

  • Workshops and Events

Birkbeck Futures host events throughout the year focusing on a different aspect of enterprise.

  • Courses in Enterprise

Birkbeck’s School of Business, Economics and Informatics has a strong reputation for research excellence and innovation and offers a range of programmes where students can prepare themselves for the modern workplace.

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Community: The Mother of Invention

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This post was contributed by Matthew Jayes, Business Development, Communication and Enterprise Manager in the School of Business, Economics and Informatics

A report into student entrepreneurship compiled by Public and Corporate Economic Consultants (PACEC) identified independence and flexibility of self-employment as the major pull for graduates to seize the opportunity to become their own bosses. But from what or from whom do they gain independence? Does workplace employability restrict flexibility, despite the right to request flexible working?

Most responsible businesses communicate their impact on their respective environment, stakeholders and employees. How, then, should universities frame the concept of student entrepreneurship? Negatively, as the freedom from external restraint on the individual’s actions; or positively, as the ability of an individual to act upon free will, providing the outcome does not harm others?

enterprise-300pxwIn all likelihood, it remains the role of the university to clearly articulate the known options and help students to navigate their chosen path. For this reason, Birkbeck offers unique support to students interested in developing new ideas (Enterprise), and new businesses (Entrepreneurship), in the form of Enterprise Pathways. Many Birkbeck students have commitments beyond their study, in the form of work, care, societies or volunteering. To accommodate these constraints the pathways on offer allow different students to engage in different ways, from a variety of starting points.

Every academic year, we offer the Boot Camp pathway, which brings together students from different organisations to work in small groups to develop new ideas on a given theme. The autumn 2016 Boot Camp will be held at Runway East in partnership with Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, Goldsmiths, University of London, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. The theme is Future of Media and will be facilitated by invited guests such as Kirsty Styles, Programme Lead, Talent and Skills, Tech North.

Students interested in a longer path have joined the Birkbeck Enterprise Community, Competitions and Awards (BECCA) course, running from November to July. These students, from various courses at Birkbeck, build networks and develop their ideas as part of a supportive community augmented by external facilitators. The first session in November 2016 featured Damola Timeyin, Strategist, BBH London, leading the Saturday morning meeting on “Creativity”, where he urged the audience to fully embrace diverse opportunities, experiences and communities.

The first BECCA session

The first BECCA session

Birkbeck students hoping to develop ideas independently are encouraged to follow the digital pathways online. Simply Do Ideas offers an online idea testing tool, through which students can directly access support from the Enterprise Pathways team. Enterprise Pathways has also partnered with The Digital Garage from Google – a digital skills training platform assisting students to grow their business, career and confidence.

So –where do these pathways lead? Each has its own distinctive outcome; however by forming a strong community and deep understanding of our students, Enterprise Pathways helps to map a bespoke route to future destinations. At the heart of London, a global creative city, we help our students to identify what could enhance their enterprise journey. Enterprise Pathways empower Birkbeck students to make a positive impact on society by thinking differently.

Notes

  • Places for Birkbeck students at the Future of Media Boot Camp have now been allocated, however please email Enterprise Pathways to join the waiting list.
  • The full BECCA programme is available online. While the course is at capacity, interested students should contact Matthew at the earliest opportunity.
  • Links to Simply Do Ideas and The Digital Garage from Google are for enrolled students only, available on the Enterprise Pathways website.

Further Reading

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A Time for Entrepreneurs

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Andrew Atter, Birkbeck’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence, writes about the current opportunities for entrepreneurship in London.

As we draw to an end of Global Enterpreneurship Week, you might be forgiven for being overwhelmed by all the hype. Everywhere you look there are conferences and workshops. President Clinton delivers his key note speech at Entrepreneurs 2012 today. And, as you flick through papers, millionaires promise to share their secrets of success. Who said there’s no free lunch!

What does all this mean?

Well, behind the entire buzz, is a very serious point. As anyone who has seen the expression on Mervyn King’s face will have realized, as a society we face years of stagnation and low growth.

This means for students and alumni, work opportunities, job prospects and career growth through traditional corporate structures will be far more limited than in the past. As both an economy, and as individuals, we will all need to access new markets and create new products and services. This is what Entrepreneurs do: they take initiatives that create wealth and opportunity, for themselves and the society around them.

Looked at through the lens of an entrepreneur, the conditions for starting new businesses are good. According to the FT, new company formations rose by 2% last year, and HEFCE report that knowledge transfer from universities increased by 7% in 2010-11. The UK economy overall might be stagnant, but that is not true for London, and certainly not true for the M11 and M40 corridors linking London to Cambridge and Oxford.

Entrepreneurs with sharp business plans, focused on early sales growth, can get funding. And, the good news is that businesses formed in recession tend to be leaner, meaner and more sustainable that fanciful creations funded by bank debt in boom times. I speak from experience.  A business I founded in the post dot.com crash is still going strong, whereas a business launched at the peak in 2007 became an out of control, over complicated monster, and had to have the plug pulled out.

So, beware of the hype generated by charlatans and snake oil salesman, but also don’t be out off by the Mervyn Kings of the world.

Birkbeck students are situated at the nexus of the greatest concentration of financial, technical and creative resources on the planet, in one of the world’s most entrepreneurial societies. To prove it, next time you have a Dhall Curry at the farmers market in Torrington Square, just reflect on the simple fact that someone put the formula Students+Curry+Lunch = Opportunity together before you did. In other words, someone ate your lunch.

To avoid that happening again, simply join the Birkbeck Enterprise Hub (aka Starts Hub), join a Coaching Seminar, attend a CEO Workshop, and start making things happen for yourself and those around you!

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