This neatly fits into two posts by Guy Kawasaki ( The Art of Recruiting and a follow-on confusingly titled The Art of Recruiting. Both were written from an employer point of view but he includes a riposte Nine Questions to Ask a Startup. The bit that was interesting was the part about equity percentages. Most…
(In Part I and Part II, Michael explains the investment process in an attempt to give a realistic depiction of the time it takes to get an investment round through – in this list it’s all about getting it over the final hurdle.) Stage 3 (6 weeks) – Due Diligence and close – dragging deal…
(In the previous posting, Michael describes the first part of the investment process to give an indication of the timescales involved and how it can be difficult and frustrating for founders – but equally how this must be understood.) Stage 2 (10 weeks) – Promoting your Raise The best analogy for this is dating. Work…
(This post was originally sent out to the Digital Circle Mailing List on 26th November but is included here for completeness). Timely to have this in the week of AICon – the inaugural convention on artificial intelligence and machine learning in Northern Ireland. But it’s too late to get a ticket as it’s completely sold…
(This article is in three parts for ease of reading. Subscribe to the blog or to our mailing list if you don’t want to miss them) The timescales involved in raising investment are different for every business and every round they complete. It is also very difficult to control the timescales because power and influence…
Last week, the Department of Finance opened a £30,000 Innovation and Outreach Fund to encourage the use of open data. This fund has been launched to promote the innovative use of open data and to engage the public sector in promoting the Open Data NI Portal as a data source, which are key objectives of…
Continuous learning, stretching the brain, listening to others, taking on board information is so valuable in today’s world. The is so much to learn and keep up with and luckily a lot of good presenters and speakers willing to teach. Out of the events calendar in a year, it’s important to pencil in time for…
The latest Invest NI introduction to Access to Finance session was held last week to announce the “new” equity funds. These are local government backed equity funds; supported by Invest NI, tendered for and then managed by private fund managers. There is a history of government funding in NI that, according to Crescent Capital, extends…
I’ve been ruminating this blog post over the weekend and then an article on Techcrunch just spurred me to put the thoughts into electrons. I’ve been guilty of using the words “startups need” many times. There’s always something they need whether it is access to better talent, better markets, better funding alternatives. A startup is…
Compared to ten years ago, we are in the start of a renaissance in games development. While some courses have fallen away, games support (from our local development agency, NI Screen, has never been better. If you want more information, come and ask….
