Tag Archive for The Start-Up Series

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Winning The Start-Up Series – Adrian Lawson, The Preference Hub

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Originally written by Small Business Team on Small Business
An increasingly common sight when you answer your front door to take delivery of an online order is the delivery person scanning your parcel with a handheld device. Or doing an inventory stocktake in a supermarket.
Businesses increasingly rely on these handheld devices to keep on top of things, but how do businesses track these critical handheld devices? What if they’re faulty? Or if they get lost?
Adrian Lawson has 25 years’ experience in mobile technology, having worked for Hewlett Packard, Honeywell and Phones4U, among others. The Preference Hub is the platform he has developed to help businesses responsible for dozens if not hundreds of handheld devices keep tabs on them.
Only launching last spring at the height of lockdown, The Preference Hub already counts Zebra Technologies and Honeywell as partners.

What is your background as a tech entrepreneur?
I’ve mainly worked in the IT and telecoms sector in a range of sales and marketing roles. Most recently, I was the MD of a tech company in Bristol. They provided managed services for organisations with large quantities of mobile devices, mainly in the retail and supply chain sectors.
‘Entering The Start-Up Series competition was really a no-brainer’
Can

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Hot Business News Today

Winning The Start-Up Series – Adrian Lawson, The Preference Hub

by  •  • 0 Comments

Originally written by Small Business Team on Small Business
An increasingly common sight when you answer your front door to take delivery of an online order is the delivery person scanning your parcel with a handheld device. Or doing an inventory stocktake in a supermarket.
Businesses increasingly rely on these handheld devices to keep on top of things, but how do businesses track these critical handheld devices? What if they’re faulty? Or if they get lost?
Adrian Lawson has 25 years’ experience in mobile technology, having worked for Hewlett Packard, Honeywell and Phones4U, among others. The Preference Hub is the platform he has developed to help businesses responsible for dozens if not hundreds of handheld devices keep tabs on them.
Only launching last spring at the height of lockdown, The Preference Hub already counts Zebra Technologies and Honeywell as partners.

What is your background as a tech entrepreneur?
I’ve mainly worked in the IT and telecoms sector in a range of sales and marketing roles. Most recently, I was the MD of a tech company in Bristol. They provided managed services for organisations with large quantities of mobile devices, mainly in the retail and supply chain sectors.
‘Entering The Start-Up Series competition was really a no-brainer’
Can

Read more...

Hot Business News Today

What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Matt Oldham, Unizest

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Originally written by Small Business Team on Small Business
Thousands of foreign students and migrant workers are deterred from coming to Britain because of the difficulty of obtaining a UK bank account. Often you need a UK bank account to rent somewhere to live or have your earnings paid into it, yet the rigmarole involved in setting up with a high street bank is off-putting.
Matt Oldham, CEO of Unizest, has created an e-account for overseas workers and students coming to Britain. It solves a huge problem for recruiters of the 1.5m contingent workers who come to the UK each year.
Although it hasn’t even launched yet, the Unizest team have been handpicked as one of eight winners in the latest round of The Start-Up Series Competition, sharing £1.1m between them.

Where did the idea for Unizest come from? What is the problem that it’s solving?
The idea came from some work that Tony Shawcross, one of our co-founders, and I were doing with one of our clients at the time, a large CRM organisation working in the recruitment space. They framed the challenge they had getting non-UK workers seamlessly into Britain. The problem they encountered was that it was very difficult for those workers

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Hot Business News Today

What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Matt Oldham, Unizest

by  •  • 0 Comments

Originally written by Small Business Team on Small Business
Thousands of foreign students and migrant workers are deterred from coming to Britain because of the difficulty of obtaining a UK bank account. Often you need a UK bank account to rent somewhere to live or have your earnings paid into it, yet the rigmarole involved in setting up with a high street bank is off-putting.
Matt Oldham, CEO of Unizest, has created an e-account for overseas workers and students coming to Britain. It solves a huge problem for recruiters of the 1.5m contingent workers who come to the UK each year.
Although it hasn’t even launched yet, the Unizest team have been handpicked as one of eight winners in the latest round of The Start-Up Series Competition, sharing £1.1m between them.

Where did the idea for Unizest come from? What is the problem that it’s solving?
The idea came from some work that Tony Shawcross, one of our co-founders, and I were doing with one of our clients at the time, a large CRM organisation working in the recruitment space. They framed the challenge they had getting non-UK workers seamlessly into Britain. The problem they encountered was that it was very difficult for those workers

Read more...

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The Start-Up Series competition – over £1 million invested in latest winners

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Originally written by Nick Ismail on Small Business
In September 2020, Small Business and Worth Capital partnered to re-launch The Start-Up Series – the UK’s largest seed funding competition.
Since then, five new winners have received a combined total of over £800,000 of equity investment from The Start-Up Series Fund and private investors. Three former winners have also gone on to receive over £300,000 of follow-on funding from the same source after achieving their impressive growth targets. All investments were subject to further due diligence carried out by Fund Manager, Amersham Investment Management.
Following the latest investment round completed in early April, Hayley Etherington, Business Operations Director of Worth Capital, said: “As the Start-Up Series approaches its 5th birthday later this year, we take great pride in having meticulously selected and crowned 25 competition winners from thousands of applications across the UK. They’ve received over £5.3 million in SEIS & EIS equity investment — that’s real cash, creating real innovation and jobs, and building loved brands.
“We welcome these latest five ambitious start-up businesses to the Worth Capital family with great optimism. As always, we’ll be working hard alongside the talented founding teams over the coming months and years, helping them to avoid risks

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Hot Business News Today

The Start-Up Series competition – over £1 million invested in latest winners

by  •  • 0 Comments

Originally written by Nick Ismail on Small Business
In September 2020, Small Business and Worth Capital partnered to re-launch The Start-Up Series – the UK’s largest seed funding competition.
Since then, five new winners have received a combined total of over £800,000 of equity investment from The Start-Up Series Fund and private investors. Three former winners have also gone on to receive over £300,000 of follow-on funding from the same source after achieving their impressive growth targets. All investments were subject to further due diligence carried out by Fund Manager, Amersham Investment Management.
Following the latest investment round completed in early April, Hayley Etherington, Business Operations Director of Worth Capital, said: “As the Start-Up Series approaches its 5th birthday later this year, we take great pride in having meticulously selected and crowned 25 competition winners from thousands of applications across the UK. They’ve received over £5.3 million in SEIS & EIS equity investment — that’s real cash, creating real innovation and jobs, and building loved brands.
“We welcome these latest five ambitious start-up businesses to the Worth Capital family with great optimism. As always, we’ll be working hard alongside the talented founding teams over the coming months and years, helping them to avoid risks

Read more...

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How can you assess a Seed EIS investment manager?

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Originally written by Lawrence Gosling on Small Business
Checking the track records of a Seed EIS investment manager for professional advisers, investors or companies looking for funding can be very difficult because of the lack of independent data.
Although there are a number of research groups analysing the managers, they all tend to look at different elements of the groups and no-one tracks the actual investment returns.
So if a professional adviser or investor are doing their own research what should they be looking for?
Matthew Cushen, one of the founders of Worth Capital, acknowledges the challenge, particularly if the adviser is just looking for the number of companies the investment manager has successfully exited.
He says: “SEIS is much younger than EIS, which has been around for over 25 years and a number of groups can point to realised returns from exit, either with or without including tax breaks. Seed EIS is less than decade old, and by their nature many of the businesses we invest in are younger and are sometimes pre-revenue.
“At Worth we source investee companies through our Start-up Series where we offer successful companies up to £250,000 in the form of an equity injection, and these companies are at all stages

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Hot Business News Today

How can you assess a Seed EIS investment manager?

by  •  • 0 Comments

Originally written by Lawrence Gosling on Small Business
Checking the track records of a Seed EIS investment manager for professional advisers, investors or companies looking for funding can be very difficult because of the lack of independent data.
Although there are a number of research groups analysing the managers, they all tend to look at different elements of the groups and no-one tracks the actual investment returns.
So if a professional adviser or investor are doing their own research what should they be looking for?
Matthew Cushen, one of the founders of Worth Capital, acknowledges the challenge, particularly if the adviser is just looking for the number of companies the investment manager has successfully exited.
He says: “SEIS is much younger than EIS, which has been around for over 25 years and a number of groups can point to realised returns from exit, either with or without including tax breaks. Seed EIS is less than decade old, and by their nature many of the businesses we invest in are younger and are sometimes pre-revenue.
“At Worth we source investee companies through our Start-up Series where we offer successful companies up to £250,000 in the form of an equity injection, and these companies are at all stages

Read more...

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Starting a business during changing times: danger and opportunity

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Originally written by Matthew Cushen on Small Business
The Chinese word for ‘crisis’ is ‘wēijī’ in the latin alphabet. It’s become (after JFK used it in a speech) a cliché that it’s made up of two Chinese characters signifying ‘danger’ (wēi) and ‘opportunity’ (jī).
The second character is part of the Chinese word for ‘opportunity’ (jīhuì), but that has multiple meanings, in isolation it means something more like ‘change point’.
Another cliché is that recessions are great time to start businesses. The poster children are Uber and Airbnb, both set up during the global financial crisis around 2007. Further back General Motors launched in 1908, after another financial crisis and McDonald’s was founded during the second world war and grew into the efficient franchise model just after (whilst being joined by arch competitor Burger King). I could go on.
But, more to the point, you could name any year and any context and there would be examples of the birth of great businesses.
Whilst the generalisation is unhelpful, thinking about whether you are stronger or weaker over time or more relative than your competition is always helpful and especially so when we are at a change point (‘ji’).
Nature gives us a couple of examples. Think

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Hot Business News Today

Starting a business during changing times: danger and opportunity

by  •  • 0 Comments

Originally written by Matthew Cushen on Small Business
The Chinese word for ‘crisis’ is ‘wēijī’ in the latin alphabet. It’s become (after JFK used it in a speech) a cliché that it’s made up of two Chinese characters signifying ‘danger’ (wēi) and ‘opportunity’ (jī).
The second character is part of the Chinese word for ‘opportunity’ (jīhuì), but that has multiple meanings, in isolation it means something more like ‘change point’.
Another cliché is that recessions are great time to start businesses. The poster children are Uber and Airbnb, both set up during the global financial crisis around 2007. Further back General Motors launched in 1908, after another financial crisis and McDonald’s was founded during the second world war and grew into the efficient franchise model just after (whilst being joined by arch competitor Burger King). I could go on.
But, more to the point, you could name any year and any context and there would be examples of the birth of great businesses.
Whilst the generalisation is unhelpful, thinking about whether you are stronger or weaker over time or more relative than your competition is always helpful and especially so when we are at a change point (‘ji’).
Nature gives us a couple of examples. Think

Read more...