Valley correspondent

Andrew McCalister continues his account of his four month internship in Silicon Valley

Week 2: The Best of British

Apart from my duties at Heyzap, the last week has been taken up shadowing the top 20 U.K Cleantech entrepreneurs around the Valley.

UKTI, with the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and Polecat, was running its annual mission that takes the fastest growing businesses from a specific sector ...

By admin2 18/03/10 14:34

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Trading tales

Matt Crawford, winner of last year’s Make Your Mark in the Markets competition, continues his account of setting up his Carribean food stall Easy ‘Nah

In my last blog I explained how I laid the groundwork to get my business up and running – today I’ll be delving into the build up to our first day’s trading and how we got customers through the door.

After sourcing supplies and organising legalities f...

By admin2 18/03/10 12:48

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Off to the Valley

I find myself writing this introductory blog in the foyer of the Best Western hotel by San Francisco International Airport. After 28 hours travelling I finally arrived in the Bay Area, ready to throw myself into the four months of internships and projects I have undertaken. However, before I discuss the things I'm hoping to get involved with over the next four months I think I should do the polite...

By admin2 04/03/10 10:45

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What does success mean to you?

For most entrepreneurs in the gung-ho pre-credit crunch boom years, success was measured solely in financial terms. It was about sales growth, building client databases, rising profits and what material possessions could be accumulated as quickly as possible. Does this sound familiar? Many 21st century entrepreneurs, however, have a different agenda. Success is seen in terms of work-life balance.

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By admin2 22/02/10 16:28

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Interns: a ticket to profitability?

As has been noted numerous times on this very blog, the key to surviving the downturn for many start-ups is minimising costs and bootstrapping. Unnecessary expenditure can sink a business faster than you can say ‘overdraft’.

However, companies must be ready to expand and not stagnate. Getting an extra staff member on board can be crucial to meeting any increase in demand for your product or service...

By admin2 17/02/10 14:17

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Doing it for the kids

By admin2 05/02/10 10:54

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Preparing grads for the real world

The launch of the Student Placements for Entrepreneurs in Education programme, (SPEED), caused much curiosity amongst university students, but even more so students were keen to get there hands on the £4500 worth of funding available to pursue their business ideas. 

SPEED was a government initiative to encourage more student entrepreneurs to ‘have a go’ at starting a business whilst at university....

By admin2 19/01/10 12:22

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My predictions for ‘The Teens’

The past ten years have confounded expectations and sprung many surprises – both online and in the small business worlds. In December 1999, very few people could have envisioned the advent and huge impact of online social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and their business cousin LinkedIn. Some technological innovations would have been beyond the realms of too. Imagine predicting that millions ...

By admin2 04/01/10 15:16

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Think international from the start

Who says you’ve got to start small? Start at small costs, certainly, but even if you don’t think big, think wide from the very beginning.

Britain is no longer the centre of the universe so even if you judge that the core of your business will come from the UK, you should consider that other markets might welcome your goods or services. If you do your homework, you might even find that there is a gr...

By admin2 20/11/09 12:44

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Pay it forward

While politicians focus on macro-economic financial statements, producing papers most likely to prove embarrassingly wrong or irrelevant in hindsight, entrepreneurs are quietly taking the future into their own hands and embarking upon real practical initiatives to change things.

Entrepreneurship is not for everybody - it's a hard-knocks school, but an excellent way to learn how to survive (and some...

By admin2 09/11/09 10:08

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