Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
Many more of us have been shopping online this year, but parents will likely have extra concerns when it’s their children filling the basket.
Inspired by her teenage daughter, Randa Bennett teamed up with Patricia Salume to launch VeeLoop. The online service lets teens put items in a virtual basket which their parents/guardians approve and checkout. This means that teens can shop without giving out their personal details and leaving themselves vulnerable to cybercrime. It’s also a good shout for teens without payment cards.
But as business was picking up, COVID-19 hit. In early lockdown, Randa and Patricia volunteered to do their neighbours’ shopping for them. When they registered, it wasn’t obvious that this would be the source of their next big idea – and another arm to their business.
We caught up with the entrepreneurial pair to find out more about their multi-faceted company and how The Start-Up Series and Worth Capital have been essential for its development.
Tell us more about VeeLoop and how the business came about.
Randa: I have a 17-year-old daughter and since she was 13, she’s been constantly shopping online and following me around with a laptop in my face
Tag Archive for The Start-Up Series
Hot Business News Today
What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Phil Daneshyar, Kanda
by Timothy Adler • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Electrician Richard Fleeman had a problem. As an electrical contractor, a client he’d completed work for had gone bankrupt, leaving him £20,000 out of pocket. Was there a way, he wondered, for tradespeople such as himself to make sure they got paid once the work was done. He talked it over with his cousin, Rob Gallagher, who happened to be studying astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. The pair came up with a digital platform which would be an escrow account for tradespeople using cryptocurrency; the money would be released once the job was completed.
Richard and Rob brought in their friend Phil Daneshyar, who’d already had experience as an entrepreneur, going on Dragon’s Den in 2017 – the year he left the University of York – to pitch a device which monitored your water consumption. Although the dragons held on to their cash, California-based 11 Health licensed the technology to monitor how dehydrated chronically ill patients were.
The trio launched the website Tradesmart last December and, later that month, won £150,000 worth of investment from The Start-Up Series Fund through Worth Capital.
>See also: What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Scott
Hot Business News Today
What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Phil Daneshyar, Kanda
by Timothy Adler • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Electrician Richard Fleeman had a problem. As an electrical contractor, a client he’d completed work for had gone bankrupt, leaving him £20,000 out of pocket. Was there a way, he wondered, for tradespeople such as himself to make sure they got paid once the work was done. He talked it over with his cousin, Rob Gallagher, who happened to be studying astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. The pair came up with a digital platform which would be an escrow account for tradespeople using cryptocurrency; the money would be released once the job was completed.
Richard and Rob brought in their friend Phil Daneshyar, who’d already had experience as an entrepreneur, going on Dragon’s Den in 2017 – the year he left the University of York – to pitch a device which monitored your water consumption. Although the dragons held on to their cash, California-based 11 Health licensed the technology to monitor how dehydrated chronically ill patients were.
The trio launched the website Tradesmart last December and, later that month, won £150,000 worth of investment from The Start-Up Series Fund through Worth Capital.
>See also: What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Scott
Hot Business News Today
Attracting investment: 6 ingredients for building an irresistible team
by Matthew Cushen • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Matthew Cushen on Small Business
There are many components needed for attracting investment — building the right team is one of them.
Just because it is now clichéd doesn’t undermine the truth. For investors, the team is the most important criteria when making an investment. But beyond the headline truth, what makes a founder or a founding team attractive?
For a start, experienced investors have worked out that who you’d recruit into your current or previous business is not the same as who you would back with funding. So it figures that the way you market yourself for investment is going to be different from the way you may have approached job hunting.
Within Worth Capital we, right from an initial piece of paper, through every e-mail, phone call or meeting, are relentless in looking for clues across 6 areas:
1. Battlescars
We value experience in the market space the business is targeting and expertise in the areas needed to make the business model work. For example, when building a new food or beverage brand there are three aspects of the business that are critical: developing a product people will love and want to buy repeatedly; being able to create and nurture a
Hot Business News Today
Win up to £250,000 of funding for your start-up
by Nick Ismail • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Nick Ismail on Small Business
Worth Capital are back on the hunt for start-ups with the return of the Start-Up Series.
After a brief lockdown induced hiatus, we’re thrilled to be re-opening the competition doors once again for the September Series. Continuing our usual monthly cycle, the competition is open for entries from 1st to 14th of each month, where we’ll be hunting for ambitious start-ups with the potential to become much loved brands. Regardless of sector or whether you’re a B2B or B2C business, as long as your start-up is eligible for SEIS or EIS HMRC advance assurance, then we’ll consider your application.
Winners will receive up to £250,000 of equity funding, a minimum of two-years expert support from Worth Capital and media coverage on smallbusiness.co.uk and other channels to promote your business and follow your journey.
See how to enter here.
Hayley Etherington, Business Operations Director of Worth Capital, said: “The Start-Up Series has already invested over £4.2M into some of the UK’s most promising start-ups – which makes us the largest seed funding competition in the UK.
“We’re hoping and expecting that the September Series, and beyond, continues to attract the very best UK entrepreneurial talent for our investors to
Hot Business News Today
Win up to £250,000 of funding for your start-up
by Nick Ismail • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Nick Ismail on Small Business
Worth Capital are back on the hunt for start-ups with the return of the Start-Up Series.
After a brief lockdown induced hiatus, we’re thrilled to be re-opening the competition doors once again for the September Series. Continuing our usual monthly cycle, the competition is open for entries from 1st to 14th of each month, where we’ll be hunting for ambitious start-ups with the potential to become much loved brands. Regardless of sector or whether you’re a B2B or B2C business, as long as your start-up is eligible for SEIS or EIS HMRC advance assurance, then we’ll consider your application.
Winners will receive up to £250,000 of equity funding, a minimum of two-years expert support from Worth Capital and media coverage on smallbusiness.co.uk and other channels to promote your business and follow your journey.
See how to enter here.
Hayley Etherington, Business Operations Director of Worth Capital, said: “The Start-Up Series has already invested over £4.2M into some of UK’s most promising start-ups – which makes us the largest seed funding competition in the UK.
“We’re hoping and expecting that the September Series, and beyond, continues to attract the very best UK entrepreneurial talent for our investors to back.
Hot Business News Today
Looking for investment? Start obsessing about market need
by Matthew Cushen • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Matthew Cushen on Small Business
What did you have for breakfast this morning? A Pepsi AM? A Cosmo yoghurt? Or a glass of juice fresh from your Juicero?
No, you didn’t. You could have — briefly — in 1990, 1999 and 2017. All are spectacular, financially disastrous and reputationally costly product fails. And we’ve only reached breakfast time.
One of the most misleading clichés around is that ‘there is no such thing as a bad idea’. Complete nonsense and tweak anyone on the nose that says it before they do more damage. The world is littered with bad ideas
They come from the big corporate world as brand extensions within category — such as Pepsi introducing a pointless new variant for which the consumer had no need. Or as responses to an internally generated strategy that has forgotten to understand consumers — such as Cosmopolitan’s logical attempt to move into health & nutrition products but with a product for which their brand had no real relevance in a hugely congested category.
However, corporates rarely bet the farm on one product extension — start-ups do.
The Juicero was a $400 machine that squeezed Juicero packets of diced fruits and vegetables. Presumably, the investors that
Hot Business News Today
Looking for investment? Start obsessing about market need
by Matthew Cushen • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Matthew Cushen on Small Business
What did you have for breakfast this morning? A Pepsi AM? A Cosmo yoghurt? Or a glass of juice fresh from your Juicero?
No, you didn’t. You could have — briefly — in 1990, 1999 and 2017. All are spectacular, financially disastrous and reputationally costly product fails. And we’ve only reached breakfast time.
One of the most misleading clichés around is that ‘there is no such thing as a bad idea’. Complete nonsense and tweak anyone on the nose that says it before they do more damage. The world is littered with bad ideas
They come from the big corporate world as brand extensions within category — such as Pepsi introducing a pointless new variant for which the consumer had no need. Or as responses to an internally generated strategy that has forgotten to understand consumers — such as Cosmopolitan’s logical attempt to move into health & nutrition products but with a product for which their brand had no real relevance in a hugely congested category.
However, corporates rarely bet the farm on one product extension — start-ups do.
The Juicero was a $400 machine that squeezed Juicero packets of diced fruits and vegetables. Presumably, the investors that
Hot Business News Today
What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Scott Lever, Zobi
by Timothy Adler • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
One thing that the coronavirus pandemic has changed is the whole concept of how we work. For many of us, video conferencing tools such as Zoom and Teams means we can work from home. The technology has shown it can work. And many homeworkers are reluctant to go back to the office, with more than one third not believing their employer has done enough to protect their health, according to Aviva.
But businesses are just as vulnerable to homeworkers as vice-versa.
An astonishing 30 per cent of all smart home devices are hacked and right now, over 1.8bn passwords are being sold on the dark web. What this means is that hackers steal passwords, listen in on commercially sensitive conversations and use employees’ home networks to access businesses.
>See also: What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Daniel Verblis, The Moving Home Warehouse
Scott Lever began his career at IBM, and over the last 25 years, his roles included head of infrastructure and end user computing for the Houses of Parliament and chief technology officer for The Royal British Legion.
His background in technology, digital transformations and cybersecurity made him realise how vulnerable we all
Hot Business News Today
What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Scott Lever, Zobi
by Timothy Adler • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
One thing that the coronavirus pandemic has changed is the whole concept of how we work. For many of us, video conferencing tools such as Zoom and Teams means we can work from home. The technology has shown it can work. And many homeworkers are reluctant to go back to the office, with more than one third not believing their employer has done enough to protect their health, according to Aviva.
But businesses are just as vulnerable to homeworkers as vice-versa.
An astonishing 30 per cent of all smart home devices are hacked and right now, over 1.8bn passwords are being sold on the dark web. What this means is that hackers steal passwords, listen in on commercially sensitive conversations and use employees’ home networks to access businesses.
>See also: What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Daniel Verblis, The Moving Home Warehouse
Scott Lever began his career at IBM, and over the last 25 years, his roles included head of infrastructure and end user computing for the Houses of Parliament and chief technology officer for The Royal British Legion.
His background in technology, digital transformations and cybersecurity made him realise how vulnerable we all