The question of who holds the power comes up in every day life. Where there is power there is change. Is the power coming from the electricity companies, well literally! But it also comes from the politicians, the parents, the teachers, the business people, the civil service or is it from the community? The hardest…
Just after re-launching Digital Circle as part of the Raise family, we didn’t let the grass grow under our heels as we headed straight into a Roundtable with the Department of the Economy about the excessive disparity between the demand for digital skills and the supply. The consultation, being hosted by the CBI, recognises that…
Following Stephen Rice, Founder of NI Startup UpSkill Enterprise on his trip to Missouri, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Dallas. A real life example of the hard yards made in an effort to take an innovative edutech software solution Stateside. Day 1 Belfast – St Louis, Missouri via Dublin and Chicago Early alarm for a monster…
By Trevor Blackwell. It’s a useful visualisation tool. “This tool calculates how much funding your startup needs. Assuming your expenses are constant and your revenue is growing, it shows when you’ll reach profitability and how much capital you’ll burn through before then. Once you’re profitable, you control your destiny: you can raise more to grow…
Raise the Glass was the latest in our series of pitching events for founders and investors. Founded itself when there was no way for startups to meet financiers it’s proving to be popular! Last night we had six pitches, half of them going through the Raise programme and half of them independent. It’s important for…
In 2007, industry, academia and government worked together to produce the Northern Ireland Digital Content Strategy – a timely document that paved the way to the Digital Circle collaborative network and several years of rapid growth in our local industry. Timely because it arrived just before a sea change in the market – the advent…
The problem with referees is that they know everything about the rules but nothing about the game – Bill Shankly Itʼs 3.22am on a Friday night. Iʼve woken up regularly at this time for a while now, itʼs peak hour for the swirl of things in my mind Iʼve somehow managed to quieten for another…
In the aftermath of INVENT 2019, we were left with some interesting questions. There was an impression that we only work with the companies we mentor. We work with a lot more. We also spend a lot of time raising the tide; the rising tide lifts all ships. What is Raise? Raise (and Raise Ventures)…
Chilling description of what can happen if you don’t have someone to come to for advice. The term-sheet mentioned (with the 5x Liquidation Preference and the double-dipping) came from the now-defunct e-Synergy – a so-called venture (vulture) capital firm engaged by Invest NI to manage their spin-out fund (NISPO!). The predatory clauses on the term…
Last weeks Raise session was about risk and mitigating risk. The first step was helping our startups identify the risk level they may pose to an investor (and for good measure, this could also apply to early customers, like those who engage via crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter). We have heard before how an investor is…
