Historically most businesses have been either outside sales businesses with an army of people selling face to face, or inside sales business that sell remotely. The idea of reaching customers remotely is nothing new. The origins of inside sales date back to the 1950s when businesses were using telemarketing. But inside sales has evolved beyond… Read more »
Investor due diligence has one simple objective: to reduce the risk of the venture capital (VC) investor losing their money. In the early stages of a budding relationship between a VC and a founder, due diligence is an informal “get to know you” process. Startups are vetted on the basis of qualities such as the… Read more »
In a year like no other in living memory for most, we asked leaders in the startup and tech community to send 2020 a breakup letter. It’s time to move on. As 2021 gets underway, Right Click Capital partner Ben Chong looks back on a strange relationship Dear 2020, Haven’t we had a strange time… Read more »
Nothing excites investors and markets more than an emerging technology predicted to transform the way we live and work. Cloud accounting, NFC payments, mobile phones and social networking have all been this transformational force. Others have been hailed as the next big thing, to then plateau abruptly, or even fade into obscurity. Amazon’s Kindle is… Read more »
There is a myth about great ideas. It is the fallacy that a winning idea simply sells itself to investors and lenders without too much effort. But what actually matters most is a founder’s ability to take an idea and mould it into a value proposition that is compelling to parties who have capital to… Read more »
How to make an as-a-service business model work. It’s a question that is often pondered by founders. Why is evolving a business model so fraught with difficulty? And why is it often the case that second and third waves of startups with the same idea or technology have a better success rate than previous ones?… Read more »
Silicon Valley veteran Steve Blank was the founding father of one of the most important schools of startup thought and most influential movements in modern business, the theory of the “Lean Startup”. It was through Blank’s observations of founders and startups in Silicon Valley in the nineties that he was able to see a… Read more »
This is the second part in a three-part series on startup growth by venture capital investor Benjamin Chong. Part 1 is here & part 3 will be published next week. Growth marketing has forever changed the way that successful startups approach marketing. It was reportedly made famous by Facebook, who were one of the first… Read more »
This is the first part in a three-part series on startup growth by venture capital investor Benjamin Chong. Parts 2 & 3 will be published over the coming fortnight. The unemployment toll from COVID-19 was 600,000 in April alone, the largest one month increase on record. So concerning is this consequence of COVID-19 that the… Read more »
Startup metrics can be complex and overwhelming for founders, and many have a single-minded focus on revenue. But while revenue can tell a story of sales and success, this in isolation is not the most insightful number that a business reports. Instead it is unit economics that has the power to simplify the way… Read more »
Warby Parker co-CEOs Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa. Founders get their startup inspiration from all kinds of places. You may be trying to solve a problem you’ve faced in your corporate life, tackle an environmental or social problem facing our world, spied a gap in the market as a consumer or have a passion that you want to leave the corporate hamster wheel to pursue. Solving one of your own pain points is an extremely common source… Read more »
A growing number of start-ups are accessing venture debt to fund the growth of their business. With the primary appeal of limiting equity dilution, it’s easy to see why founders might jump on board the venture debt train. But venture debt has been linked to a number of collapsing startups both here and in… Read more »
Most founders are born optimists. Such optimism spurs entrepreneurs to leave the security of their guaranteed salary and abandon four weeks of annual leave and 10 days sick leave to chase a dream of being their own boss and building an empire. Because the odds of success are not exactly compelling, a realist might… Read more »
While thousands of Australian school students took to the streets to demand urgent action against “climate wrecking” projects using fossil fuels, BHP executives on the other side of the world are preparing for a showdown of their own. The world’s largest miner will try to convince shareholders that its climate change plans are an… Read more »
From co-founder break-ups to startup burn-out, the path of the founder can be fraught with stress. A study conducted by American researcher Michael Freeman suggests that even before founders set-up shop they have a pre-existing vulnerability to stress. His 2015 study of 242 entrepreneurs found that a higher proportion of founders reported a lifetime history… Read more »
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