How to sweet talk your way onto the shelves at Harrods August 11, 2013 Annabel Palmer talks trade fairs and sherbet lemons with the founders of premium confectionary company Jealous LUXURY confectionary brand Jealous has been in a year-long hiatus following a modern-day tale of David versus Goliath. Like many startups before it, the company has been tied up in a trademark tangle with a market leader, and [...]
Innovation Diary: The Valley vs the Roundabout: London is starting to close the gap August 11, 2013 WHEN I met David Richards – the British founder of Silicon Valley success story WANDisco – last year, I asked him whether he thought London’s Silicon Roundabout could compete with its San Francisco equivalent. Richards replied: “It would be ridiculous to contrast the two.” Richards – who recently brought his product development team from the [...]
Why sometimes the idea can matter less than the execution August 4, 2013 Annabel Palmer talks home cooking with Deepinder Goyal, founder of online restaurant and nightlife guide Zomato THE key to creating a successful startup often lies with having the idea before anyone else gets there. Countless wannabe entrepreneurs have claimed “I had the idea for Facebook long before Zuckerberg,” yet didn’t deem it worth pursuing. But [...]
Innovation Diary: The lessons in failure our entrepreneurs could learn from the US August 4, 2013 TYPICALLY, nine out of ten entrepreneurship ventures fail. A cursory glance at some of the most inspirational business founders of the past decade – like Peter Thiel, who after founding Paypal saw his hedge fund Clarium Capital lose 90 per cent of its $7bn (£4.58bn) assets – suggests the reality of starting up your own [...]
DRS decisions could damage our careers, fears Rogers August 1, 2013 AUSTRALIA opening batsman Chris Rogers believes persistent umpiring errors in the Ashes series could be career-damaging, after the Decision Review System was again called in to question on the opening day of the third Test at Old Trafford. The tourists, batting first, reached 303-3 at stumps with captain Michael Clarke playing an inspirational unbeaten innings [...]
Making money in Tinseltown is easy: Just pick the right people July 28, 2013 Annabel Palmer talks Twilight with Nicola Horlick, the former City Superwoman who is trying her hand at Hollywood FORMER fund manager Nicola Horlick is in Santa Monica, California. The fabled City Superwoman – a moniker she despises – is working on her newest venture: Derby Street Films. It’s a film development business, currently made up [...]
Innovation Diary: Business school won’t make you an entrepreneur – but it may help July 28, 2013 CAN London Business School (LBS) teach you how to be an entrepreneur? Not exactly. But its entrepreneurship summer school, which has just entered its twelfth year, thinks it can help. Since its inception in 2001, alumni have founded 212 startups. A 2012 survey conducted by LBS found that these firms had revenues of just under [...]
Businessman who woke up and smelt the coffee February 24, 2013 Annabel Palmer talks to Andrew Rugasira, the Ugandan entrepreneur with a new book and a Good African story to tell THE lives of 14,000 farmers in the Ugandan Rwenzori Mountains have been transformed since Andrew Rugasira had his lightbulb moment in 2002. At the time, he was running a prosperous marketing and events company in [...]
Cloud computing could easily save your start-up money February 24, 2013 ACCORDING to technology consultancy IDC and IT firm EMC, the global digital universe will expand tenfold between 2012 and 2020, reaching a difficult to comprehend 40 zettabytes. To put this into perspective, in 2009 the internet was estimated to contain just half a zettabyte. Even then, if that quantity of data were printed and bound [...]
Brave start-up entrepreneurs may be set for a positive 2013 January 7, 2013 LAST year’s employment market was characterised by insecurity, scarcity of supply, and job losses in once buoyant sectors. Previously good reasons for staying in a City job could now be gone. While an uncertain jobs market may not be incentive enough alone for you to take the equally difficult path into entrepreneurship, according to Stuart [...]