Today, continuing with my NEF interview series, I speak to Kathryn McGeough as she talks me through her journey so far. Kathryn, a University of Warwick graduate talks about balancing working full-time and starting her own project. Balancing her priorities and making sacrifices both on a personal level and on a professional level.

She also talks about some of the value of being part of the NEF scheme.

This is the full interview below.

Hi Kathryn, Great to have you on YHP, How are you doing today?

Hi Joseph, I am great thanks. Enjoying the New Year and looking forward to the opportunities that it will provide.

Can you give us some brief background information about yourself before we dive into the interview proper?

Sure. I am 25 years old, originally from Devon but moved to London straight from university to work in the city.

Up until last Tuesday (when I resigned), I worked as a derivatives structurer within Lloyds Banking Group. Unfortunately, although I was offered a New Entrepreneurs Foundation placement, at the time I was not in a position to take it. I am one of the few self-funded entrepreneurs on the programme.

So Kathryn, tell me about yourself growing up? What was your ambition? Were you the entrepreneurial – making a quick buck type?

When I was younger I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do. I was very privileged in that from a young age my parents never pushed but always supported the choices of both myself and my siblings and our interest in trying new things. That resulted in a situation where the average Saturday went along the lines of being taken from swimming lessons to gymnastics, then ballet and jazz then on to a swimming gala or martial arts event (thanks mum!). Because of this I was aware from a young age that there were many opportunities available in life and that I was unlikely to have one single career. (This was backed up by the fact that I have an incredibly short attention span).

Later on in life, during my university vacation periods, I worked as an auxiliary nurse and found that I really enjoyed working with people. More specifically, I enjoyed trying to make the patient’s day better and boosting their spirits. I think it was then that, one day, I wanted to run a business that did something to help the average person.

When did you get your first taste of entrepreneurship, what your first business project?

My first business project was actually a project I undertook as part of ‘Young Enterprise’ at school. I was managing director of a company with a group of friends. We decided that our project would be to make cook books for students. We came first in our local area in the competition but unfortunately didn’t make it past regionals.
I actually took one of the books to university with me. Pretty good recipes, if I do say so myself.

Tell me about your university experience? You graduated from the university of Warwick right?

Yes I did. I went to Warwick to study Industrial Economics.I had a great time, although I do feel that I worked a little too hard.I was involved in quite a few different societies whilst I was there, which allowed me to meet so many interesting people with different focuses and different goals. As an example, I was most involved in the Warwick Banking and Finance Society and in the Canoe Polo Society. Most of the Banking and Finance Society are currently employed as bankers or accountants. Most of the Canoe Polo Society are doing science or engineering PhDs. As you can imagine, hanging out with such an eclectic mix of people did not help me to narrow down my career ambitions. However, they are all amazing people and I hope that our friendships last the test of time.

What would you say was some of the biggest lessons you took away from your university experience?

Nothing is ever as bad as it seems. You know when you are taking your final exams or submitting your dissertation and it is the most important thing at that moment and if you fail it the world is over?…. It isn’t and things do always work out and getting stressed about it doesn’t help.
The belief that things will work out has encouraged me to take risks that I probably wouldn’t have considered before and not only that, but to enjoy them.

I know a lot of people who decided to go straight into work or starting their own business instead. What would you say to anyone contemplating between going to university and going straight into work?

I would say do what is right for you but don’t underestimate the value of a formal education. If you are going to university for the sake of it then don’t go, but if you are torn, going to university can be a really valuable exercise. Just pick something that you are interested in and you can’t go far wrong. In fact, even if you don’t want a job and want to start out on your own, whilst you are setting up a company you will probably need to temp or do other part-time work to make money. Having a degree will be beneficial in finding a part time job that pays good money. But, like I said, if you are going for the sake of it don’t bother, it is a lot of effort for not a lot of gain.
I personally see value in having a corporate job before starting your own business. It can teach you technical skills as well as how to shake hands, speak to other business people etc and these are invaluable when starting your own business. However, once again, it is not for everyone. I am not a typical corporate personality, I do not like the hierarchical structure of corporates or the politics involved BUT I appreciate the necessity of learning how to interact in that environment. However, if you don’t think you can hack it don’t do it.

You’re currently working at Lloyds Banking Group, how valuable have you found the experience so far?

Yes, I am still there for a few more weeks. I have really enjoyed my experience at Lloyds Banking Group. I was on a rotation scheme and managed to spend time working in a lot of different teams, such as structuring, inflation trading and corporate finance. This has given me a large breadth of skills and allowed me to work with some really cool people. I was also very privileged in that in some of my placements I was given a lot of responsibility early on and was entrusted to do things that others of my level were not. This really pushed me to learn a lot in a short space of time. I will really miss being a part of the team that I currently work in, they are great guys.

You also working on a project on the side, how tough has it been to keep focused on your job and still find time to develop your project?

It has been a little tough, yes. I think that is less to do with me being employed at the same time as trying to start my own project and more because of the hours I worked. I think that if I had a 9-5 job then I would have found it much easier, so I wouldn’t deter anyone from having a project on the side if that is their situation. As with everything, be aware of what you are letting yourself in for and constantly reevaluate your priorities and what you are able to do. Your priorities are going to change, and that is okay, just be sure of yourself and don’t let anyone pressure you or guilt you into thinking that what you are doing or what you are giving up (because you will have to give up a lot) is wrong. On the other hand, if you realise that you are messing up your priorities don’t be afraid to admit it or apologise to the ones you love. They will be more than happy to help you get your act together and put you back on the right track.

What challenge would you face you are facing setting this up?

Time and good quality resources – there is never enough of both.

So how did you get involve in NEF? How did you find out about it?

I found out about the NEF through an email from Freshmind’s recruitment agency. I thought that the programme was really well considered and structured. Their focus of training people through networking events and workshops really complimented placing people in a company. It also meant that the NEFers could learn skills that would be beneficial to the company as well as the candidate and this seemed like a very good selling point for both the candidates and the companies.

Although you’re not been placed in any company at the moment, what value would you say being part of the NEF programme gives you?

One of the amazing things that the NEF programme allows a young entrepreneur to do is to network with like-minded people at a similar stage in their business career. This interaction is very motivating and inspiring and definitely helps when you are having a down day and feel like your entrepreneurial exploits are not going well.

Additionally, the programme is structured in such a way that the workshops allow you to develop really useful skills and consider problems and strategies in ways that you may not have done before. Even if these learnings do not get used straight away, they are definitely something to take with you on your entrepreneurial journey.

What would you say has been some of the key things that you’ve learnt so far?

The bigger the risk the better the adrenaline rush.

Everyone has their own opinion of what you are doing, not all will be good. Pick and choose the opinions you listen to carefully.

What would you say has been the most challenging part of the whole process?

The most challenging part of the process has been to balance all of the events and workshops that I have been invited to attend, with working on my own project and also working full-time. The balancing of time has been very difficult to achieve and, on occasion, my personal life has suffered for it.

To anyone thinking of joining the programme, what value can they expect to get from it?

The NEF scheme is very much a scheme where you get out of it what you put into it. The NEF staff are great and really work hard to provide us with insightful workshops and events and try and ensure that the placement experience is as valuable as possible. However, they are there to provide a starting point, not to forge your career for you, that is up to you.

Tell us about a difficult time on your journey so far and how you’ve been able to overcome that?

Balancing my priorities and making sacrifices both on a personal level and on a professional level. I try to be honest and open and let people know where they stand. I make my decisions based on the information that I have at the time and for the right reasons at the time. But things change and sometimes you are not right. Learn from it and move on. Also, don’t be afraid to say you are sorry, but when you do say it, mean it.

What has been your most memorable moment up to date?

Attending the Fast Track 100 event at Richard Branson’s house. The Fast Track 100 are the 100 fastest growing companies in the UK. What I found truly inspiring was that all of the business founders and owners were very different. Some were older, some young, obviously a mix of males and females, but there was also an eclectic assortment of where in the UK they were from and the type of background that they had. Entrepreneurs really do come in different shapes and sizes but they all share a passion for their company and such a remarkable level of grit and determination. With enough blood, sweat and tears it can be done.

What can we be expecting from you in the future?

I am not sure exactly but I hope it is big and comes with fireworks!

Writing exclusively for YHP, Brian Hughes, CEO of KILTR, shares the secrets of successfully growing an online community…

Know your niche – It may seem obvious, but it’s important that you know exactly the community of users that you’re looking to attract – and how to reach them. Take the time to identify key online influencers (e.g. bloggers and niche media channels) among your target community and try to get them onside at the earliest opportunity. This will ensure that your initial marketing activity is focused and cost-effective in driving up membership.

Take it from the top – In the age of LinkedIn and Facebook, you need to convince potential community members that it’s worth their while to sign-up to yet another social network. Be sure that you can explain your proposition clearly and succinctly.

When you are at the coalface of an organisation, it can become difficult to offer a precise description of the business without over-loading the summary with confusing details and sidenotes. If you can’t come up with a one-sentence summary of what your community is and what it does, get help from a communications professional.

It’s all about Content – Online networks devour content at an incredible rate so, where possible, find ways to attract external content producers to your community. Every day thousands of media outlets, industry commentators, bloggers and freelance producers are distributing content that your community would be interested in. Convince as many as possible that your community is a good place for them to share their content and promote their own offerings.

Respond, respond, respond – If you successfully attract members, it’s vital that you respond to any queries or comments about the community quickly and professionally. If you look after your members, they will spread the word and the community will grow. If you take too long to respond to your community, however, they will abandon you, never to return and, what’s more, they will share their negative experience of your community among their contacts.

Keep it coming – It’s important for all online communities to continuously evolve in line with the needs and wishes of their membership. Keep members coming back for more by providing new content, new features, new functionality on a continuous basis.

Roll with it – Having established an online community, the way that community members then choose to use the platform will sometimes surprise you and, perhaps, lead you in a direction you hadn’t considered before. Keep an eye on trends within user behaviour and adjust your strategy and/or offering accordingly.

The Human Factor – Don’t forget that an online community, however large it may become, is simply a collection of individual human beings who, having joined your community, will react in a human, emotional way to any changes that you choose to make. Try to imagine how an individual member of your community – rather than the community as a whole – will respond to the introduction of new functionality or changes to your existing set-up. Don’t be afraid to ask yourself, “Would I like this?” rather than “Would the community like this?” and be brave enough to trust your own instincts.

Speak up – Raising awareness of your new online community is vital. Get comfortable with the idea of being a spokesperson for your community. This means actively networking as well as embracing other nerve-wracking activities such as making presentations and speaking to journalists – if you want your online community to grow, it’s part of the deal whether you’re shy or not!

Brian Hughes is the CEO of KILTR, a professional social network for everyone with an interest in Scotland.

Hot on the heals of the top 20 entrepreneurs to watch, here are my top 20 UK Startups to watch in 2012. Their really are some great companies coming out of the UK right now and these 20 are no different.

Pay As U Gym

Founders: Jamie Ward, Mike Blake, Neil Harmsworth

Gym memberships can be expensive especially if you have to sign up to an annual contract. Well no more is this a problem, Pay As U Gym does ‘exactly as it says on the tin.’

The website allows you to purchase discounted pay as you go gym passes. Although launched only in London at the start of 2011, Pay As U Gym now has over 250 gyms across the UK with no membership, no fees and no inductions.

2012 could be a big year for Pay As U Gym.

Tribesports

Founders: Jenna Anians, David Hickson, Steve Reid, Andrew McDonough

Tribesports is a social network aimed at helping to motivate people to do more in their sports. Setting and sharing goals and having a peer network helps users keep improving on their sporting achievements.

Users in the community can set challenges and users join tribes dedicated around a chosen sport.

Created for sports enthusiasts and powered by sports enthusiasts, Tribesports delivers a social platform supported by a refreshing mix of affiliate marketing and social integration to the under-serviced active sports market.

Picklive

Founder: Tim Morgan

Picklive is a live Fantasy Football game where users make bets in real time. Users can play for free or for cash and basically choose a team and can see live stats for players as they pick up points. The game is split into 5 minute sections and so you can win multiple sections to win overall.

In what is an entertaining and addictive game it can certainly become a big hit as the quickness of the game and continuous live scoring and sections means that users are engaged throughout the game whilst not distracting from the game.

Starting of in football Picklive hope to expand into other countries and sports as they grow. As word spreads I can see Picklive picking up many sports fans over the coming year and expanding into other sports.

Housebites

Founder: Simon Prockter

Housebites allows you to order gourmet takeaway from great chefs in your local area. Any chef can start selling their home cooked meals (after being vetted) on Housebites and even make a living out of it. And all of this can be delivered to your door for the price of a pizza delivery.

The ease of the takeaway, but with the quality of a restaurant meal, delivered to your door, not bad. It also allows you to rate chefs and it’s delivered to your front door via a Housebites courier.

It’s a very cool idea and is backed by Paul & Michael Birch, who sold Bebo for $890m, the startup could take off massively this year.

Adzuna

Founder: Andrew Hunter, Doug Monro

Adzuna is a job search engine. It aggregates jobs from across multiple networks so you can search and apply for jobs from one site. But Adzuna is more than a massive jobsite, it integrates your social connections so that you can leverage your connections to give you an advantage when looking for a job.

Adzuna raised $300,00 from Passion Capital last summer to ramp up and start them on the way to becoming the biggest and best classifieds search engine globally.

Duedil

Founder: Damian Kimmelman

Duedil is a free database of information on companies in the UK.

Drawing on data from Companies House, Intellectual Property Office, Google, Social Networks, basically scraping the internet to pull in multiple data sources to build a company profile with financial records, litigations, director profiles, company credit check, stock information & more.

The fact that it is free and so simple to find so much aggregated data for companies it makes it informative & addictive for those looking for company information. It also has a ton of features and can already claim to be the largest database of free company financials in the world!

Blippar

Founders: Ambarish Mitra, Steve Spencer, Omar Tayeb

Blippar was launched in the summer of 2011 and already it has seen it’s augmented reality app put into the spotlight as they have teamed up some big brands for some cool interactive campaigns. Blippar allows brands to create interactive ads to engage audiences in a way which is more fun than the usual billboard or poster.

Augmented reality regularly comes up as one of the future next tech trends and Blippar is getting on the potential augmented reality advertising bandwagon early.  As it’s popularity increases and more brands take up the idea Blippar is in a good position to grow rapidly as well.

Hailo

Founders: Jay Bregman, Russell Hall, Caspar Woolley, Gary Jackson, Ron Zeghibe, Terry Runham

Hailo was founded in 2010. It’s a network that matches passengers and licensed taxi drivers. I have the app myself and it has been brilliant.

It uses your GPS to find where you are and locate the nearest taxi to you. From there you can hail the  taxi at the touch of a button and choose how you want to pay. The taxi will then get your, umm ‘order’? and come pick you up. When I used it, the taxi driver called me straight away to confirm where I was and that he was on the way.

Jay Bregman partnered with 3 taxi drivers as co founders, as well as two other internet entrepreneurs, and looks to change the way we hail taxis in London, and eventually other cities as the company grows.

Jay has already created a great business in eCourier which will be valuable in making Hailo a similar success.

MarketInvoice Limited

Founders: Anil Stocker & Charles Delingpole

These two university friends escaped the city in 2010 to startup their own company. Anil & Charles launched Marketinvoice, an innovative new cloud-based working capital platform, which enables small businesses to flexibly raise cash from a network of global investors.

They look set to disrupt an industry which has generally been lagging behind when it has come to innovation and have made some great strides in 2011 and the two young, smart entrepreneurs hope to take it to the next level in 2012.

We interviewed the guys back in June, you can take a look here.

UberLife

Founder: Sanchita Saha

With people socialising more and more online Sanchita founded UberLife to help people meet online in order to enable real world community and connections, in what she has coined an ‘Online2Offline’ service.

UberLife allows you to arrange a hangout when you’re doing or want to do something & see who’s free to come join you or you can simply join a hangout.

As we go more and more social online I think this will translate into more offline meetings and Sanchita’s creation, UberLife could go big in 2012 making this happen. It is already getting a large number of the tech startup scene using it, who tend to be the influencers of these kind of apps.

Find out a little more abut Sanchita here.

Crowdcube

Founders: Darren Westlake, Luke Lang

Crowdcube is the brainchild of Darren Westlake & Luke Lang and launched in February 2011 to much fanfare. The idea is that entrepreneurs invest in business ideas in an effort to crowdsource funding. It’s crowdfunding.

The benefit of the model is that those who pitch their ideas and businesses on Crowdcube then promote and share it across their networks and look to help get as many people to share it as possible which in turn brings traffic to the site and helps minimize the amount that the guys need to spend on marketing at this early stage.

With Dragon’s Den bringing the concept of angel investing to the masses, Darren & Luke realised that many people will have watched many ideas come out of the Den without any funding and thought to themselves that they would have put in a bit of money into that.

Now they can, with the ability to invest as little as £10 anyone can now invest in a business idea and see it come to life!

Bantr

Founder: Peter McCormack

Bantr is a social network for football fans. Fans can use Bantr to check-in to games, vote on the action, view live stats and as their name suggests, banter with other fans.

With social networks becoming more and more common in our daily lives, niche sites which cover a topic, especially one as popular and team based such as football will continue to grow as users can share and interact with others with the same common interest rather than the general nature of broader social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

That is why I see Bantr doing well this year, especially fans from older sports forums, from the likes of the BBC, are closing down due to streamlining of their services. They have already now expanded into covering Spanish and Italian leagues and I’m sure many more will follow in the near future.

Check out our interview with Peter here.

Editd

Founders: Geoff Watts and Julia Fowler

What happens when you get a fashion designer and an expert at analysing big data? You get Editd, a fashion intelligence startup. The company based in London is able to offer market intelligence and spot trends using huge amounts of data crawled from multiple sources.

Editd offers customised industry trend data to clients which include retailers, merchandisers, designers and buyers.

They already have 10 high street retailers as customers & having raised their first bit of funding, $1.6million of seed funding they will hope to use that to grow further this year.

CloudBees 

Founder: Sacha Labourey

CloudBees allows you to build, run and manage java applications in the cloud letting companies build and test different user interfaces without having to worry about servers.

With more and more companies moving various IT services over to the cloud, the startup founded in 2010 could be in a good position to make the most of the interest as companies look to become more efficient and save costs.

2012 could be a good year for this cloud company.

Made.com

Founders: Ning Li, Julien Callede

Made.com are a online made to order furniture store. Made allows you to order furniture straight from some of the best furniture makers in the world. What’s best is this cuts out the plethora of middlemen that normal take a cut along the way and put prices up.

By cutting out the middleman made.com can offer very competitive pricing for furniture and with original designs, and the chance for users to vote on new designs to see them commissioned, I think once more people find out about made.com they will just have to worry about scaling the business quick enough.

 Pusher

Founders: Damien Tanner, Max Williams

Another cloud based service, Pusher allows developers to quickly and easily add realtime functionality to webapps. This means that people can create collaborative tools, multiplayer games, chat, realtime dashboards and more.

They raised $1million in seed funding in the last quarter of 2011 and can be confident of further funding at some point as they look to help developers make awesome stuff.

Lanyrd

Founders: Natalie Downe, Simon Willison

Social is everywhere right now, even at this conference directory startup Lanyrd. The directory of conferences, events and speakers allows users to sign in with Twitter to see what events their friends are attending and add their own events or even build a personal speaking profile.

It’s an interesting idea which has lots of potential to grow it’s offering in an attempt to make conferences even more social.

Buffer

Founder: Joel Gascoigne

Buffer is a social media app that allows you to store content in Buffer and schedule it to be posted on your social networks through the day. Just add content that you find, as you find it and add it to Buffer, it will then automatically be shared by Buffer and you can see all the analytics from your tweets inside the app.

Lookk

Founder: Gilbert Wedam, Tamas Locher, Andreas Klinger

Lookk connects designers with consumers. Designers can showcase their fashions building their brand and selling their fashions to an engaged audience.

You can support your a favourite designers and help influence what is in the Lookk store. Is this the future of fashion shopping?

The company raised funding last August led by some great investors in Eden Ventures, Dave McClure and Sherry Coutu.

Righster

Founder: Charlie Muirhead

Rightster is a technology and services company which makes distributing, marketing and monetising digital video content simple.

Digital media strategies are becoming ever more important for companies, including ITN, the British news producer, who are using Rightster to manage its online ad sales platform so that it is unified and Rightster will also syndicate all of ITN’s content online.

This is a big step forward for the startup and they will hope to get bigger deals like this over the course of the next year.

———

Who have I missed? Who do you think are the startups to watch in 2012?

Let us know in the comments we would love to hear from you!

Follow @rishi_chowdhury

Be sure to check out the YHP magazine and subscribe for news and the latest articles from YHP.

Today, continuing with my NEF interview series, I speak to Gordon McQuoid. The Zimbabwe born 28 years old grew up in Harare before moving over to the UK just before his 19th Birthday.

Gordon is currently part of the New Entrepreneurs Foundation, while also pursuing his own startup ‘Jobs in Network’ after selling his shares in a recruitment business he set up a few years ago.

Hi Gordon, Its great to finally have you on YHP, how are you doing today?

I’m great, thanks for the invite. It’s good to be here.

So tell us about how you got into entrepreneurship, what was your inspiration?

I’ve wanted to have my own business for as long as my mother can remember! When I was growing up people would always ask “what do you want to be” and I would always say that I just wanted my own business. It’s always just seemed like the natural path to pursue.

Why did you decide not to go university and head off straight into the working world?

I finished school in Zimbabwe after GCSE’s and went to college for a year. Neither of my parents went to university and it was never something that was pushed. In Zimbabwe going to uni isn’t as accessible as it is over here. I was eager to leave school and start earning money.

You worked for Ezek for over 3 years, how was your experience working for a Head Hunting company?

Ezek was a great place to work; I still regularly keep in touch with the two Directors. They really took a risk employing me and a colleague. We joined them to set up a new area in their business, which was recruiting in the defence industry, which they hadn’t done before. It was exciting and scary but we were given a lot of autonomy to get things done.

What are some of the key things you learnt from working there?

The key thing I learnt was really about was sales. When we started there we were given a computer and a phone, and managed to bring on board some large defence contractors as clients.

How did you know that was the right time to leave?

It was just as the recession really kicked in and the business was being restructured, which meant they we making cut backs. It felt like the right time to set up on our own, so we made a timely approach to the two directors who turned out to be incredibly supportive which definitely made it easier.

Tell me about Latronis then?

Latronis was born following the work I had been doing at Ezek. We focused on recruiting technical engineers and management in the defence industry. The roles we recruited for were quite specialist skill sets, which included Systems Engineers, Software Engineer and Programme Managers.

What would you say was probably the most difficult part of starting the business?

The hardest part was getting the cash flow and pipeline of sales again. I used my savings and borrowed some money from my parents to give us 6 months’ worth of money in the bank – just enough to live on and run the business. We came very close to running out of money. Fortunately we had our first invoice paid just in the nick of time to keep us trading!

What has been some of the key things that you’ve learnt running the business?

Getting those initial few clients is critical for cash flow! It’s an obvious one but until it was my business and I had to deal with it, it became very real. Also having a good accountant makes life so much easier.

Why did you decide to exit the company and how successful was the company?

It depends how you define successful. Deciding to exit wasn’t an easy decision. The New Entrepreneurs Foundation was a catalyst for change. I had been looking at the online recruitment industry for a while and things had started falling into place. I could see an opportunity and was sure that if I didn’t get on with setting up the “Jobs in Network” now then I’d kick myself in a few years.

What has been some of the differences working in a company compared to starting your own business or running a startup?

In your own business you get out what you put in. The harder you work the luckier you get. I guess you are limited when you work for someone else.

Jobs in Network Ltd was Started in March 2011, tell me how the idea came about and what it is?

The Jobs in Network is a company I set up to launch regional and local online job board services, joining job seekers looking for local jobs and employers looking for a cost effective way to recruit online. I had been kicking the idea around for a few years and when I started doing more and more research things started falling into place. It’s nothing revolutionary, but I see an opportunity for a variety of services which no one has really nailed (yet!).

The first job board to launch is Jobs in Cheltenham launched September 2011, how’s it going?

It’s going well, so far we have a number of local agencies using the service and we are delivering applications for jobs posted. I’ve learnt a huge amount and continually improving and tweaking things for the next job board, which will go live in a couple of weeks.

Tell me about NEF, why did you decide this was the next step for you, what was the process?

I saw Oliver Pawle, the founder, and Ed East on Sky News with Jeff Randall discussing the NEF and knew it was something I wanted to be a part of. I found the link to the website the following day via Twitter and sent in an application. It was a pretty intense interview and assessment process.

What opportunity has the NEF programme presented you with?

The NEF has presented all sorts of opportunities; the networking with other entrepreneurs is awesome. They also host speaker events, where we’ve had the likes of Luke Johnson from Risk Capital Partners and Al Lukies from Monitise sharing their experiences which is also very inspiring. Then there’s the training from companies like Deloitte, McLaren and LBS who have hosted events for us.

What would you say has been some of your most memorable moment so far?

There have been lots of memorable moments but one funny one was when Luke Johnson was telling us when he worked for a bank, when he was younger, he used to get so bored he’d go and sleep in the toilets.

What advices would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start their own business?

Get on with it, look for advice and help, there’s plenty of it out there.

What can we be expecting from you in the future?

Lots hopefully. Right now my focus is getting the Jobs in Network off the ground and then I’ll go from there.

If you’d like to follow Gordon on Twitter it’s @gordonmcquoid

APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN! Applications for the 2012-2013 programme opened on 23 January 2011 at 9am. They will close at 12pm on 27 February 2012

Each year we take a look at the young entrepreneurs, based in the UK, who we think are set to have a great year, you can see our 2011 list here, and this year is no different.

So here are 20 entrepreneurs, founders and co founders, who you may want to watch in 2012, there are some great companies here and I’m sure you will be hearing a lot more about them over the next 12 months.

Here they are:

Josh Buckley (MinoMonsters)

Josh Buckley is the CEO and founder of MinoMonsters, a Pokemon type game where you can battle and trade pet monsters. Josh is the youngest CEO to have raised funding from investment giant Andreessen Horowitz at 19 years of age.

The Kent born youngster sold his first company at the age of 15. He created ‘Menewsha’ a community where users create whimsical avatars and interact online for fun. He sold this for a six figures sum while still in school.

He then moved to Silicon Valley & participated in Y Combinator to help take his company to the next level and take on Pokemon brand. His USP is it is a game for iOS where Pokemon is not available.

Expect to be hearing more of this young CEO as he ventures into the mobile gaming space with no fear.

Nick D’Aloisio (Summly)

Nick D’Aloisio is only 16 years old but he has already managed to raise $250,00 in funding for his startup, Summly. He created an app that offers a simpler way to browse and search the web by automatically summarising search results, web pages and articles to make content easier to sift to and find what is most relevant to you.

In it’s first 4 days after it reached 17k downloads and is now well over 100,000. Still studying for his GCSE’s he had to get special dispensation to delay his mocks while he traveled to San Fransisco.

So to sum it up, he is one to watch in 2012!

James Gill (GoSquared)

James Gill is the CEO and co founder of GoSquared a real time web analytics service which he started during his gap year. rather than taking the year to travel, he decided to build a web app which people would pay for and by the end of the year him and his co founders realised they had done just that.

James now works on GoSquared at White Bear Yard from which GoSquared got their angel funding and they are surrounded by other great startups which will help them as they look to grow and take on their main rivals Chartbeat.

You can see our video interview with James here.

Lucian Tarnowski (Brave New Talent)

Lucian Tarnowski is the founder and CEO of Brave New Talent, a social recruitment network.  The passionate young entrepreneur loves social media and leverages the sharing and engagement inherent in social networks and applies it to job recruitment.

Lucian has also been honored as Europe’s youngest Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum. He is also the youngest  entrepreneur to join UKTI (United Kingdom Trade and Investment) so age isn’t a factor as he goes about his mission to change the face of job recruitment and skills building.

He is a confident leader and looks set to have a big year in 2012.

Maria Constantinescu (Slick Flick)

Maria Constantinescu is the founder of SlickFlick, which allows you to create storyboards on the iPhone using your photos. An ex lawyer Maria left law to start Curious Quests and the Slick Flick app.

Maria is trying to take creativity to the masses and has been get the app out into the film industry and creative industries to get support and name out amongst a sector which will find it used by most. Being based in the heart of Shoreditch she is surrounded by creatives in every direction which should serve her well.

Having secured an association with Apsmart, they have a great partner which can help them continue to improve the app and add weight to their proposal when they go for funding.

Ry Morgan (PleaseCycle)

Ry Morgan (right) is the founder and CEO of PleaseCycle, provides products and services for organisations to encourage cycling within the workplace.

Ry went from being an intern at CURB media (a really cool startup by the way!) to founding PleaseCycle with the founder & CEO of CURB media, Anthony Ganjou (left). A born entrepreneur Ry has gone from top student, to graduate to founder & CEO.

He has a great drive to grow PleaseCycle massively and his determination and vision has helped him build a great experienced team which will in no doubt help see them progress rapidly in 2012.

Find out more about Ry from his guest post on YHP.

Michael Korn (KwickScreen)

Michael Korn is the founder of KwickScreen, a portable, retractable, room divider which provides isolation or privacy solutions. Initially the design was meant to be used in hospitals to act as a privacy barrier between patients and it was perfect for this. It’s small size and easy and quick set up was perfect for the hospital environment.

Michael has now seen the product, which took 4 years of design iterations to get it ready for release, enter new markets and is being used in universities, exhibitions, offices etc…

It is a well thought out design and the ideas has already received recognition. Michael was named Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2011.

Look out for KwickScreens popping up near you in 2012.

Emi Gal (Brainient)

Emi a young Romanian entrepreneur started Brainient in 2009. Brainient is a a video advertising technology company, based in London’s silicon roundabout, and currently has two products. First an interactive video advertising product and second one is a personalised video retargeting platform.

Emi has a lot of experience with startups at his young age, having previously founded two and has also been an advisor or helped out on various other tech startups.

This experience will hold him in good stead and help as Brainient looks to grow further in 2012.

Check out our video interview with Emi here.

Damian Kimmelman (Duedil)

Damian founded Duedil in April 2011 with the aim to make business more transparent, helping executives and entrepreneurs make well-informed business decisions, by allowing users to easily find company information for free.

Damian has pivoted Duedil from a people recommendation system, like a ‘Yelp for people’, to it’s current state as a database of companies.

He has also overseen Duedil raise funding from some of the investors behind Skype, LastFM & Yahoo as well as being chosen as a Microsoft Bizspark company which should help his disruptive startup make big strides in 2012!

Kevin Flood and Mike Harty (Shopow)

Kevin & Mike started the company, a social shopping engine and community, straight out of university raising £830,000 in angel funding.

Founded in early 2010, it was launched in May 2011 and currently works directly with over 22,000 online retailers to help give them the most accurate price comparison.

Currently available in the US & UK they look to grow further in 2012 and with the social nature of the site and strong community it has the ingredients to  rapidly accelerate growth as members share recommendations across there networks.

The company is expecting to surpass £3million in revenue in it’s first year has already seen it’s popularity abroad with 50% of revenues coming from overseas.

It has been dubbed the ‘Facebook of shopping’ & the two founders have already been named in Growing Business Young Guns.

Chris Prescott and Daniel Noz (Fantasy Shopper)

Fantasy Shopper is a social shopping game, only launched in October 2011 and has already seen massive interest. Users spend fantasy currency to buy clothing & create a virtual wardrobe full of different outfits from over 300 real high street shops. It’s a bit like creating a wishlist but what’s great is you can then buy your virtual outfits from the real life stores.

It’s a fantastic idea that Chris dreamt up one night and has proved very popular to date. apparently it is very addictive and it shows. Within 2 weeks of launching, the platform was seeing a fantasy sale every 14 seconds.

One feature that brings users back for more is that every hour you gain more credits, so users login multiple times a day to collect their virtual paydays.

The fact that it is linked to your Facebook also helps increase awareness of it to your network and this social sharing will greatly help with it’s growth.

Chris has come up with a great idea and is described on the Fantasy Shopper site as “having all the traits of a mad inventor… i.e. he’s a little bit nuts!” Which is good right? Even better is he is backed up by Dan, the tech guy who ‘get’s stuff done’.

All this will help Chris & Daniel take Fantasy Shopper to the masses in the next year.

Fiona Wood (Naturally Cool Kids)

As a mum Fiona has had to deal with all sorts of skin allergies which led her to search for natural skincare products for her kids, but to her surprise found a lack of natural skincare products for kids.

She entered the ‘Barclays Take One Small Step’ competition, where she was one of the 10 regional winners, after mum’s across the country voted for her idea. She started the company in July 2010 and has not looked back since.

Fiona spotted a gap in the market and is taking full advantage of this. She has the passion and determination to see her products being sold across the world. After her initial plans to launch two skincare products, she actually launched with six products and has already seen them in over 20 retail stockists, including John Lewis & Tesco Nutri centre, as well as online.

She has big plans ahead and look out for her products across the UK this year as she looks to further expand the number of stockists.

Luke Hood (UKF)

Luke Hood is a 19 year old from Frome, Somerset who is taking Youtube by storm with his UKF channels. After starting putting up his favourite dubstep tunes up on youtube and showcasing fresh new music he found his subscribers rocketed and he was soon over 1 million!

What started as a hobby has become a business. He is super passionate and since this was what he was passionate about in the first place it will help in growing it as a business.

He has started expanding into events and live online events as well so youngsters into dubstep and drum n bass who can’t get into these events can view it from online.

There is lots of scope to grow and he already has the subscribers, maybe in 2012 he can do what Jamal Edwards has done in 2011.

Jack Smith (Vungle)

Jack Smith is the founder of Vungle, a mobile app user acquisition platform focused exclusively on video ads. The company helps those with apps to show the apps full potential through video advertising rather than just text descriptions and user reviews. Using video to help acquire quality users.

Although just 22, Jack has a fair bit of experience having started his first company at the age of 15 and then while at uni, set up ideabox an undergraduate business ideas competition and was MD at Mediaroots.

He has now seen Vungle expand to the US with an office in San Fransisco and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jack get funding for Vungle this year.

Joshua March (Conversocial)

Joshua March is now onto his second business, Conversocial an integrated Social CRM and marketing software which helps companies with marketing and customer support via social media.

With social media becoming a mainstay in our day to day lives it is essential for all businesses to be active on social networks and be able to effectively monitor conversations around your business and industry.

Josh saw this and started Conversocial a couple years ago and has developed it too a position where they can expect to grow rapidly as more and more businesses start realising the potential of social media.

Josh previously founded the first preferred Facebook Development company in the UK with Dan Lester and has lots of experience in the social space from it’s early days.

Helen McAvoy and Naomi Kibble (Rocktails)

Helen & Naomi two Cardiff based young entrepreneurs tapped into the huge popularity of cocktails drunk by the population on nights out. Despite this there isn’t a competitive offering for easily making cocktails at home.

These two cocktail fans went about changing that spending over £20,000 developing frozen cocktails in a pouch. Great for consumption at home with friends, the two friends managed to secure a six months trial with Sainsburys which could lead to a wider deal.

Helen & Naomi have already secured a big deal early on in the companies life & are ahead of their forecasts, this should hold them in good stead as they look to expand in 2012.

BBOXX’s Founding Partners (left to right, Mansoor Hamayun, Christopher Baker-Brian, Laurent Van Houcke) (BBOXX)

Christopher, Laurent & Mansoor started BBOXX a company which develops methods of distributing renewable energy to developing countries. The three young entrepreneurs have spun off the company from e.quinox, a charity at Imperial College London.

With power consumption growing in developing countries, solutions to cope with the increased demand for energy will be more in demand than ever and these two entrepreneurs are making sure they are in a position to supply a suitable solution in the way of portable solar products.

They will look to rapidly expand on their partnerships in developing countries over the next year.

Emma Sinclair (Target Parking)

Emma Sinclair is a passionate young entrepreneur. She had the high powered, high paid city job but she left it to start Target Parking. After investing in a small car parking firm she set up Target parking which offers services for car parks across Britain. Including cash handling, security & facilities management.

The 29 year old is the youngest person to float a company on the Alternative Investment Market and her business acumen has seen her tie up some big deals which helped the company see revenues of just over £1million and she fully expects that to grow further in 2012.

She is excited to see what the future holds and determined to make the company the best in it’s industry and her background suggests she has what it takes.

Russell Whitter (Rate Your Player)

Russell Whitter (right) is the founder of Rate Your Player (RYP) an online social football network. Having started it after seeing his favorite football forum close it’s doors he has developed the website into a fully fledged social network based around football.

Russell is the brother of footballer Wayne Routeledge (left) and has therefore been able to call on him and his footballer friends to help endorse the site and increase it’s popularity. He was able to call on his friends to help him build the site and keep costs down and hopes to see the site increase in popularity as social networks do. Since this is targeted specifically to football which has more fans than any other sport in the UK he has a large market to tap into.

Russell hopes to expand the network into other sports as well and looks to grow the number of users quickly in 2012 as the social aspect snowballs with more and more users helping it grow further.

Rashid Kasirye – (Link Up TV)

Rashid Kasirye started Link Up TV, an online music and talent platform, straight out of college and has seen it grow from humble beginnings to a strong online community, which sees their YouTube page hitting over a million monthly views and thousands of fans on Facebook and Twitter.

Rashid has already seen the company make music videos for artists on some of the top UK music channels and his popularity is sure to keep growing in the industry. As we journey through 2012 and Link Up TV step up their video production capacity I’m sure you will see even more music videos in the charts made by Rashid and his team.

–

Who have I missed? Who are your young entrepreneurs to watch in 2012?

Let us know in the comments we would love to hear from you!

Follow @rishi_chowdhury

Be sure to check out the YHP magazine and subscribe for news and the latest articles from YHP.

Editor’s Note: Michael Tyrimos is co-founder at Synups and the Cypriot Enterprise Link. He was awarded as the “NACUE President of the Year 2010”, and as a “Leader of Tomorrow” at the 41st St Gallen Symposium. Michael is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Associate of King’s College London.

Picture via Tech City

Over the years there have been several discussions about how hard it is to be an entrepreneur in the UK – pointing at the absence of an appropriate infrastructure to support entrepreneurial clustering and the lack of a risk-taking culture, which can embrace failure as a lesson learned.

Taking a step towards change, last year the British government joined forces with entrepreneurs, students and major corporations, aiming to transform East London into an uprising technology cluster. Following the unveiling of the TechCity map by the Prime Minister in November 2011, the “Digital Capital of Europe” (as it was proclaimed) was now in the spotlight. Would the “Silicon Roundabout” be Europe’s equivalent to Silicon Valley in California, or the new Silicon Alley in New York?

By definition a technology cluster is a place where intelligence is connected and the “knowledge spillovers”, as the Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman describes them, become prominent as a result of the free knowledge exchange by the various local actors (firms, entrepreneurs, supporting institutions, etc.). According to Bresnahan, Gambardella and Saxenian (2001), the development of a cluster divides into the stages of formation and growth. The formation starts with the first investments towards new innovations and the bundling of talent (which is exactly what the government is now trying to achieve), while the growth phase begins when the cluster actually captures its target market and begins to attract more talent and supporting institutions (e.g. VCs, consultants, legal firms) to join it. As a result, the benefits to a single firm are also of benefit to the entire region, hence a greater accumulation of talent and expertise at a local level is creating an unparalleled competitive advantage that “distant rivals cannot match”, Porter (1988) explains.

Despite the general enthusiasm around the Techcity, there have been various concerns regarding its future and long term development in terms of: a) the funding available to the region’s new businesses, b) its geographical location against the organic development and structure of the Silicon Fen (in Cambridge) and the Silicon Glen (in Scotland) (Source: The Guardian, Nov. 2011) and c) the fact that the current development programme, created around the Techcity and provided by Entrepreneur First, is only offered to University graduates. Hence Zuckerberg, Gates, or Jobs would not qualify as a Wall Street Journal article describes – nonetheless there’s a misconception here. Let’s be honest 1) if you launch the next Facebook, Microsoft or Apple, I highly doubt that you will ever need to join any enterprise development programme and 2) for that reason Entrepreneur First is focused on graduates, which don’t see themselves in a corporate environment, yet are looking for an alternative route to help them develop as leaders and put their creativity and skills into practice; to become entrepreneurs. As Matt Clifford (CEO, Entrepreneur First) states: “these are the people most likely to postpone the entrepreneurial dream in favour of something else – only to find that they never find time to make the dream a reality”. Therefore, Entrepreneur First gives you the chance to break away from the conventional career path and work on your ‘thing’. If you ask me, this is awesome to say the least.

Whatever the case, one should not forget that Techcity is currently at “version 1.0” and many upgrades as well as “bug fixes” are expected in the future. We should not fail to acknowledge the bigger picture and connect the dots. In my opinion, here are three (of many) reasons explaining why Techcity matters:

It constitutes the next link to an entrepreneurial chain: As previously mentioned along with Techcity, comes Entrepreneur First – backed by the UK government and launched by McKinsey & Co, Entrepreneur First aims to support talented students, who wish to build and grow their businesses, for a period of up to two years. This could be a significant extension to the tremendous work of NACUE (National Association of College and University Entrepreneurs), which launched in 2009 by students and is now supporting more than 40,000 members in 100 colleges and universities. The two organizations could complement each other at a great extent. Considering NACUE is providing leadership training and student enterprise society support at University level, while Entrepreneur First’s curriculum picks up after graduation by helping students to launch their business and put their ideas to market, the two entities automatically create a continuation in the entrepreneurial path of a student, ultimately contributing to the creation of a new generation of entrepreneurs.

It is a new hub in an entrepreneurial ecosystem: The initiative came to fit in nicely with grand enterprise events, such as ‘Silicon Valley comes to the UK’ (SVc2UK) event series, which was hosted at multiple universities in the UK, as well as Techcity itself (at the SVc2Techcity). Moreover, the Techcity initiative also came to feature the activities of rising British startups, such as Enternships, which connects student and graduate talent to startups and small businesses with more than 3000 companies (including Groupon, Paypal, Huddle and others since 2009), and that now supports the operation of Entrepreneur First’s website. As the region develops, further entrepreneurial collaborations will undoubtedly become prominent.

It bridges two contrasting worlds: To some extent the development of Techcity managed to bridge the two contrasting worlds of entrepreneurs and corporates, via the investments and mentorship of major corporations such as Google, Vodafone, Intel, Cisco and other non-tech related companies, towards the development of the region and its startups. During the creation of Entrepreneur First for instance, it was remarkable to see how the McKinsey associates, engagement managers and even senior partners sat down with other corporate executives (even with competitors), university professors, student leaders and young entrepreneurs, to create a joint plan of action on how the programme’s curriculum should be designed and implemented. Everyone had a say and everyone’s opinion mattered.

In this regard, Techcity as an initiative is not an island, but a powerful addition to an enterprise revolution, which began a few years ago by many contributors – NACUE, Sandbox, Enternships and many other enterprise activity-based hubs (including the website you are currently reading!) As Abraham Lincoln once said “I will prepare and some day my chance will come”. Without a doubt, a new wave of entrepreneurship is now underway in the UK, ready to make its landmark in an ever-dominating global digital economy. The nodes are being connected, the synergies and relations around Techcity are becoming denser, and for the ones prepared to jump in the loop, it looks like the day has come – your chance is now.

I recently interviewed Jens Lapinski, the founder of aiHit, a London-based, VC-backed business information services company and recently one of the new members of the entrepreneur in residence at Forward Internet Group.

In our interview, he shares some of his knowledge and advices on starting a business, raising investment, bootstrapping and advices for aspiring and first-time entrepreneurs.

Hi Jens, thanks for doing this with me, I know you are very busy at the moment

Hi, thanks for having me.

Can you give us some background information about yourself, were you the entrepreneurial type growing up?

I grew up in Dusseldorf, Germany, which is a city of about 550k inhabitants close to the Dutch border. I wouldn’t say I was massively entrepreneurial in school. The only thing I did was to give maths classes to younger pupils. Mind you that was pretty well paid at 15 Marks per hour (about Euros 7.50). I became more entrepreneurial in University.

Tell me about what you do?

Until the end of 2011, I was the CEO of aiHit, a London-based tech startup, which I co-founded in 2007. I hired a new CEO who started in January 2012 and am now a non-executive director at aiHit. I am very excited to now be working as an Entrepreneur in Residence with Forward Internet Group. Forward has some 250 staff and >£100m revenue. I am working full-time with a small team that is focusing on startup up new products using lean startup techniques.

Tell me about the early days, how did the idea for aiHit came about?

I was working at Library House, a business information and research outfit based in Cambridge. In 2006, I went to Germany to watch WorldCup football with about 10 VCs. Later on, one of them, Simon Cook, the CEO of what is now called DFJ Esprit introduced me to my co-founders. They had the technology to automatically extract from the web the data Library House was generating by hand. My thought was that when somebody can automate what had previously been done by hand, this has the potential to revolutionise any industry, so that is why we started aiHit.

What would you say was the hardest part of starting the business?

Starting a business is easy. The hard part is to get to the point where you have sufficient critical traction with your idea in order to pay all the salaries.

What is aiHit? Tell me how it works?

aiHit is a provider of automated company data to business information companies, credit reference agencies, and business directories. The company uses advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to automatically create feeds of structured company data from unstructured sources on the Web. Our customers use these feeds to improve their existing products at an attractive cost point.

How has your market changed in the past few years?

Our market has accelerated in our direction. When we started selling, we had to continuously justify that data generated from web is a good idea. That has completely stopped in the last 18 months, which has been great.

What would you say has been some of the most crucial things that you’ve done to grow aiHit?

Pivot. We initially had the idea to sell business information to customers in a retail model, but that never worked for us. We then pivoted towards selling the data in a wholesale model and that was much more successful.

Coming back again to investments especially in the UK, a lot of people have talked about how difficult it has been to raise money, how have you seen this change over the few years?

I think this has remained more or less the same. The players have changed. How web savvy they are has changed. But in terms of how hard it is has remained more or less the same.

aiHit has been very successful raising money, What kind of advice could you give to startups looking to raise money, is there a special route or process that you have?

Yes, we did. It is described on my blog here: http://jenslapinski.wordpress.com/vc-fund-raising-manual/
Overall though, I think about this as follows: raising money is all about the confidence investors have in you. This means you either have a strong personal relationship with them or you have actual data from your business that proves your business is worthwhile. If you have neither, you probably won’t raise money (unless you are in a very very frothy market).

What would you like to say to an entrepreneur contemplating bootstrapping or getting investment?

The big difference between bootstrapping and getting investment is where the money comes from. When you bootstrap, it is your money. When you take investment, it is somebody elses money. In any case, just make sure you are realistic as to how long it will take and how much money it will take to get to break even. If you bootstrap, you could be both broke and in debt, so make sure you are building a bridge to somewhere where you can recoup that investment. If you take external money, the same applies. Also, when you deal with external investors, you are in fact bringing them into the company. It is like hiring. So screen your investors with the same routines you would screen employees for.

What is an average workday like for you?

That has changed totally for me! Since November last year, I am a father and now I work with Forward. Give me a few months and I will tell you what my new typical day looks like.

What pieces of advices could you give to aspiring entrepreneurs out there looking to start their business?

I have a list of learnings that is as long as my arm. My key learnings are as follows. There are three things that are important: strategy, people, and execution. What this means is as follows:

1. Strategy: When you start, really make sure that there is a market for what you do, before you do it. Read Steve Blank’s “4 Steps to the Epiphany” and Eric Ries’ “Lean Startup” before you start doing anything. Make sure there are a lot of potential customers and that this market is growing fast.

2. Team: When you build your company, make sure you have a small, dedicated, high quality full time team of people who all sit in the same little room, in the same boat, and work their asses off to get out of that small little room. Get co-founders whom you have worked with for a long time. Get mentors to help you for free (or a bit of equity over time).

3. Once you have product market fit, it is about execution, execution, execution. Hiring will be the most important aspect here, as well as building the right company structures and procedures.

What are you personally looking forward to in 2012?

Working at Forward.

After becoming frustrated with agencies setting him up with work that didn’t quite meet his skill sets, Ryan decided to do the only possible thing – disrupt the construction industry in the UK.

From waking up in the middle of the night screaming “we are going to be rich” to his wife then running down to the kitchen to quickly write down the idea, Ryan knew he had a great opportuntiy to fill a gap in an industry that was broken.

Although things werent rosey at the start, from rejections from bank managers about loans to complications with building the business first website.

In the interview below, You learn more about Ryan’s story: Growing up, how the idea of MyBuilder came about, It’s early beginnings etc..

Can you give you some background information about yourself, were you the entrepreneurial type growing up?

I was born in East Lansing, Michigan, while my parents were at graduate school at Michigan State University. My dad got an engineering job at Getty oil when I was 4 or 5 and relocated the family to Texas. I moved to New York City after University and then to Europe when I was 24.

I’ve always loved art and architecture. I wanted to be an architect when I was about 10, then I decided that I’d be a professional skateboarder, then I realised that art was my true calling. I got a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin and was fairly successful as a painter until I moved to rural France and found it a little bit harder to sell my work.

When I was in France, helping to start an artist’s commune in the Ardeche, the only job opportunity I had was working with a German stonemason and builder. It kept me from starving, but I also really liked it. It combined my love of architecture, the outdoors, and it fit nicely with the part of me that loves working with my hands. There were times when it was just plain hard work, but it was a lot better than most jobs. I was lucky to happen upon it.

I usually did other jobs while trying to make it as an artist. I worked for a few years as a restaurant cook, I did set design on a film (which I hated), I was a substitute high school teacher, I did a few office jobs, was even a lifeguard when I was 17. When I lived in New York City, I did a lot of things to get by. I bought bicycles at police auctions and fixed them up to resell, worked on motorcycles, fixed furniture, and cooked for the hippy commune where I lived on Staten Island.

My wife is English, so when we decided to get married and have kids in 2001, it was pretty apparent that we’d be quitting France and moving to England. I carried on with Stonemasonry in Bristol, and found that I really enjoyed living in England. 11 years and 3 kids later, I’m pretty Anglicised and very happy living in London. When I go back to the states, people are surprised to find out that I’m American. Whether that’s good or bad is another question!

Tell me how the idea for MyBuilder came about?

Since I had a fairly diverse set of experiences, it wasn’t hard for me to see that the construction industry in the UK was broken. This was always a point of frustration for me, so there must have been some sort of script constantly running in the back of my head. One night in 2004 I woke up at about 3AM with an amazing business idea – fully formed. I woke up my wife and said “honey, honey, wake up… I’ve got a great idea. We’re going to be rich!” She told me to shut the hell up and go back to sleep.

Not taking her advice, I went downstairs to the kitchen table and wrote everything down. So MyBuilder was literally born in a dream. I’d never heard of anything like it before, so I felt that I completely owned the idea. I never really had any doubt as to whether I should pursue my idea.

Talk me through the first few months of running the business? What would you say was the hardest part of starting the business?

Though I was utterly and completely driven, I knew nothing at all about web businesses (or business in general, for that matter). It was a long, hard road before I was actually making any tangible progress. Most of the ‘progress’ in the first couple of years was me learning the hard way through repeated failures. I knew nothing about web technology and I’d never hired anyone in my life. I didn’t know anything about accounting. I didn’t know what a Limited Company was and I’d never heard of a VC or angel investor. I went to my bank and asked to borrow £200,000 to start a business. I was surprised when they said no.

Looking back on it now, it wasn’t actually a bad way to go about starting a business for the first time. If you’re so ignorant that you don’t know how long the odds are and how incredibly hard you have to work, you’re more likely to dive right in. And diving right in is the best way to learn – sink or swim. Plus, the stakes are very low when you’re working from your garage and you didn’t have much of a job to quit. All the mistakes you make are small when you’re only burning £200 a month. If my bank had lent me £200k, it would have been a disaster.

The hardest part in the very early days was the constant insecurity of knowing that I knew very little, but not knowing exactly what I needed to learn. I had been working on the business full time for a year and a half before I found the SETsquared startup incubator at the University of Bristol and actually started meeting people who had relevant experience and could mentor me. With people to support and challenge me, a proper working environment and the beginnings of a network, things started to happen.

What is MyBuilder?

MyBuilder is a web marketplace that connects homeowners and tradesmen. At its core is a feedback review system that holds tradesmen accountable and rewards them for excellent work. The website is free for homeowners, who post jobs describing what they need to have done. Tradesmen registered with MyBuilder apply to the jobs they’re interested in and homeowners can shortlist and hire the tradesmen they like. Homeowners can see a tradesman’s entire work history on the site upfront, and read real feedback comments from previous clients who have hired them. We actively protect our feedback system and show every review, warts and all, so that homeowners have a clear and accurate picture of who they’re hiring before they enter into a contract.

Would you say the initial idea for the company, or that your business model has changed since its launch in 2008?

MyBuilder today is fundamentally what I dreamt of back in 2004. I changed the name from Buildersite to MyBuilder in 2008, and the way in which we make money has changed many times, but those things are basically details. Our market is the same. The vision, mission and ambition are the same. I wasn’t a web entrepreneur looking for an idea or a way to make money. I really did and still do care about the construction industry and I want to help make the world a better place. I saw a problem and wanted to solve it. The problem is still there, and luckily my idea was a good one. We are making a difference and there is nothing better I could think of to do with my life.

How big is your team now?

There are 15 of us on the team and we’re currently hiring in Customer Service, Marketing and Tech. We use the Symfony framework, so we’re always looking for talented PHP developers who like or are interested in Symfony and/or PostgreSQL. We’re also doing a recruitment drive to try to convince some of our tradesmen to down tools and join the customer service team. It’s really important for us to get people on the team who understand what it’s like to be a tradesman and have to hustle every day for your bread and butter.

What would you say has been some of the most crucial [things] that you’ve done to build the company to this level now?

Bringing tech in house was by far the single most important thing ever for MyBuilder. As a tech company, outsourcing your tech is a disaster. When I raised a seed round, the first thing I did was hire our CTO. He’s still doing a fantastic job and I never have to worry about our technology. If I want to change something on the site, it just gets done. I’m not exaggerating when I say that prior to having tech in house, small changes could take weeks or months. Something that could have taken a month before might take less than a day now. As an entrepreneur, you get a lot of ideas – some good, some bad. You have to be able to try things out and make changes quickly, to keep up with your pace of thinking and learning. If the development process is gummed up, everything grinds to a halt and the team gets frustrated and negative. Competitors pass you by and the business fails. It’s mostly poor execution rather than poor ideas that kill startups.

If I didn’t realise this, and if I didn’t value tech and work hard to understand it and stay involved in the development process, I’m certain that MyBuilder would not exist today.

What is your business model?

Tradesmen are our customers – we don’t charge homeowners for anything. We have a small membership fee for tradesmen and we make most of our money from ‘shortlist fees’, one of our unique inventions. We charge tradesmen a small fee when they get shortlisted.

Here’s how the site works:
1. Homeowners post their job
2. Tradesmen express interest in the jobs they like
3. Homeowner compares feedback, profiles, work history, etc. and shortlists the tradesmen they like. Shortlisting exchanges contact details and incurs a small fee for the tradesman.
4. Homeowner makes the hiring decision and the work gets done
5. Homeowner leaves feedback for the tradesman when the job is done

Is the business profitable?

Yes, we’ve been profitable on and off since 2009, but now pretty strongly profitable.

How many users do you have now?

We’ve had around 400,000 users register since launch.

What was the experience being one of the winners of seedcamp in 2007 and how have things change since then?

Seedcamp definitely facilitated and represented a big step forward for me and for the company. Though I feel that I benefited more from Seedcamp than any other company in 2007 and possibly even every year since. London was in dotcom mania and Seedcamp was new and very exciting. The press seemed to latch on to my idea because Buildersite was probably the easiest Seedcamp company to understand and relate to… and they loved the fact that I was a stonemason rather than a business school graduate. Shortly after the event, someone rang and told me to buy a copy of the FT. There was a big story on Seedcamp and a half page picture of me leaning out of my office window. The article began with “Ryan Notz…”. Then there was a big story on Buildersite in the Sunday Times and traffic went through the roof. I got a call from the CEO of Travis Perkins and not only did they want a partnership, they wanted to invest in the company. It was quite weird going from zero to hero even though nothing had fundamentally changed. Three years of hard work and hardship paid off all in one go. It was pretty incredible.

You’ve been very successful in raising investments, why? what advice could you give to startups looking to raise finance for their businesses?

Well, I would challenge that statement actually. Trying to raise money for 3 years with only my Dad and brother to show for it is a pretty poor result. It’s more a case of “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. But it’s true that in the end, I was successful at raising money and that’s more than a lot of entrepreneurs can say. Clearly a bit of tenacity is important, but I also credit myself for not getting my priorities the wrong way around. I always saw raising money as a means to an end, or even a means to a means to an end – not a goal in itself. Today I would even go so far as to call raising money a ‘necessary evil’. The goal is to build a business and if you can do it without external cash, that’s fantastic. But if you do need outside cash, you can’t stop working on the business. A lot of entrepreneurs fall into the death spiral of spending so much time trying to raise money that they ignore the business. Investors take their time deliberately – in part to monitor your progress. If the business is stagnating, it gets harder and harder to raise money and they just spend more and more time pitching and then it all falls apart.

When you do finally raise money, it’s not the time to crack open the champagne. It’s time to shit your pants because you’ve now got real responsibility to look after someone else’s money and expectations to perform. But you also can’t let yourself get distracted by every little comment or request from your new shareholders. You have to double down and focus on the business. What really matters is not that you respond to your investors’ emails within 5 minutes, it’s that you deliver a return for them by successfully growing your business. The best way to do that is still to do it your way.

What could you say has been some of the key things you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?

One of my revelations is that business is largely common sense. Don’t let yourself get caught up in complicated logic and business school jargon. Analytical skills are hugely important, but the fundamentals are surprisingly simple. You’ve got to focus on the big picture or you will get lost in the woods. As an artist, I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by how creative business can be. I love problem solving and I truly believe that anything is possible. Well, maybe not time travel… but most of the stuff you want to achieve in a business is definitely possible.

What’s been your most memorable moment so far on your entrepreneurial journey?

Certainly winning Seedcamp was up there. Although earlier on, I won an elevator pitch competition in Bristol, sponsored by HSBC. I remember they pulled out a shiny trophy and a giant plastic cheque for £250. Then came the photo op with the bank manager, both of us holding the big cheque. He shook my hand vigorously and said, “If there’s anything I can do for you, just ask.” I replied, “Actually, there is. Could you give me a loan for £20,000?” He did.

What pieces of advice could you give to aspiring entrepreneurs out there?

Do something that’s meaningful to you; and whatever you do, be the best you can possibly be.

What can we be expecting from you and MyBuilder in 2012?

We will continue to improve, launching new features, improved processes, a new business within our existing business, and we’ll keep gaining market share and demonstrate to even more homeowners that it can be easy to find a builder that you can trust. We’ll also enjoy converting more tradesmen to a new and better way of finding work.

Where do you want the company to be in five years?

I hope that we’ll have more of the same, just bigger and better. But who knows, there could be some big surprises over the next five years that even a time traveller would find difficult to predict. Crap, I’ll be over 40 too!

I briefly caught up with Vladimir Oane, founder of uberVU – uberVU is an end-to-end social intelligence dashboard which is used to track and monitor all social media platforms in real-time.

In our conversation, I ask Vladimir a few questions on his journey so far as an entrepreneur and running uberVU, and how his business has changed over the years.

Hi Vladimir, Thanks for doing this interview with me.

It’s my pleasure.

Can you give you some background information about yourself, were you the entrepreneurial type growing up?

Not at all, I grew up in a small Romanian town. My mom was an engineer and my dad was an history teacher and if I think about it now there was no one around me who started or owned a business. To this day my dad tells me to stop calling myself an entrepreneur because it’s not a proper job and it makes me look jobless.

During my time in high school and university, I studied computer science and never thought of starting a business, I was just passionate and more into computers. My dream job back then was to become a coder and work for Microsoft, it’s funny how things end up.

In my second year of college I decided to start up an interactive agency and later partnered with 3 friends (2 of which are still my cofounders at uberVU). We had no idea what we were doing but we had 3-4 years to learn all about it so why not?. Learning business seemed more interesting than learning how to wire a network.

Tell me how the idea for uberVU came about?

We had an CMS called Bluo (5 years ago everyone had a CMS) and while working on version 2 I had an epiphany moment, at the time we were doing a lot of social media for the company and our clients so I figured out the personal website is loosing its importance.

Facebook and Twitter + all the platforms who were popular back then (remember Delicious or FriendFeed?) were about to steal the thunder of the personal website. So we said: let’s build a CMS for the social web. That was the seed of what has grown to become uberVU.

What is uberVU?

uberVU is an social media intelligence platform. We are a comprehensive end-to-end social media solution helping our clients to monitor anything that’s being said about them, their products or their competitors, to measure and report on key metrics and to engage with their customers or top influencers. Our clients love how easy they can use our services especially the fact that we are a full-package

Talk me through the first few months of running the business? What would you say was the hardest part of starting the business?

I guess we had no idea what we were doing. You can see this is becoming like the theme of the interview, But we persevered, started talking to clients and 2 years later we got something people really wanted to use. So I guess this is the hardest part initially: coming up with something people need.

Would you say the initial idea for the company, or that your business model has changed since its launch in 2008?

Yes. Many, many times. We moved from B2B to B2C, then we had an API strategy, etc. We had no idea so everyday we brought another crazy idea to the table and kept persevering.

How big is your team now?

We are almost 30 people.

What is your business model?

We are a SaaS business. That means companies buy access to our software by paying a subscription fee.

Is the business profitable?

Yes.

What was the experience being one of the winners of seedcamp in 2008 and how have things change since then?

Seedcamp changed everything. They helped us transform an idea into a business by putting us into the limelight, exposing us to the right investors and charter customers.

What could you say has been some of the key things you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?

Everything takes longer than you estimated. So you need to have patience.

What pieces of advices could you give to aspiring entrepreneurs out there?

Start charging for whatever it is you’re building.
Start now!

What can we be expecting from you and uberVU in 2012?

We will be expanding in the US. We already have a very cool office in Boston that we opened in 2011. From a product perspective expect some revolutionaries features and a lot of polish. We hope to disrupt the industry.

Where do you want the company to be in five years?

We will be one of the most important players in this space. If not the most important one.

I admit it! I was abit jealous, in some ways I find Arnaud and my path a bit similar – I guess in the whole starting a Housetrip kind of website thingy – I actually did start it, this was before I knew anything about raising money and anything like that in university and ask anyone that has started, thinking of starting, ran an holiday rental website just how competitive and expensive it is if you want to compete or create a big business out of.

Before setting up the interview with Arnaud – I sat down on my bed for a minute browsing through the website- Maybe I was too cautious, maybe I just dint see it as a business then but just as a way to travel around the UK renting apartments, maybe I dint tell enough people or just maybe the better man won, these thoughts ran through my head.

It was impossible for me to ignore Housetrips. I saw what Arnaud had done with Housetrip that I was inspired, excited and jealous all at the same time, It brought some good memories and it made me decide to interview with on YHP about his journey so far.

Here is my interview with Arnaud Bertrand – CEO and Founder of HouseTrip

Can you give us some background information about yourself, were you the entrepreneurial type growing up?

I am 27 years old, grew up in France until I was 18 when I left to study at the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne in Switzerland. I founded HouseTrip with my wife Junjun straight out of university.

My parents are entrepreneurs and so are Junjun’s. From a very young age, I just could not see being anything else other than my own boss.

Tell me how the idea for Housetrip came about?

I remember exactly when and why I got the idea for HouseTrip. My wife and I were driving from London to Lausanne (Switzerland). The car was completely packed with all the stuff we had accumulated during our seven-month internships in London and I was thinking about an incident that had occurred a few weeks before.

We had been given some time off from our internship to enjoy a brief holiday and we decided on renting a property in Scotland as the idea of a little home overlooking the Lochs really appealed to us. If I knew how long it would take me to secure a booking, I would have thought twice about it!

To find a rental, I did what most modern travellers do: I typed “holiday rental Scotland” in Google. Used to booking hotels online, I naturally tried to find a website where I could do so for rentals. I looked for a long time and just couldn’t find one. I was puzzled. I researched a bit further and to my absolute astonishment I found out that there simply was no global website to book holiday rentals online!

Even though some rentals could be found online, it was through classified ads websites; so the actual booking was never done online. Eventually I used a classifieds’ site and called the owners of about 10 rentals until I finally found one that was available for our dates. I had checked availability manually through the phone: so inefficient! I also had to go to a local Western Union agency to send my payment to the host: I lost 2 hours for that when paying for a hotel is of course immediate online. It was also rather dangerous; who was to say that the person who had received my Western Union money was the real owner? Sending money directly to the owner versus using an intermediary (as in the case of hotels) is actually very unsafe. All in all, it had taken me 2 whole days to make an unsafe booking. But – we had found our opportunity!

So we return to the drive from London to Lausanne. As we sat in the car at Dover, waiting to go across the Channel, an idea popped into my head. Why not develop a website for holiday rentals that was safe and easy-to-use? When the idea forming, I remember picturing many images: a map with a lot of properties tagged on it, an online chat between an owner and a tenant, a “book it now” button, and so much more.

Funny how some mental images stay: they are still in my mind today and I often somehow refer to them – to the original HouseTrip vision – when I need to”

What is Housetrip? Tell me how it works?

HouseTrip is Europe’s largest holiday apartment website, offering holidaymakers and homeowners a safe and easy-to-use platform to find, book and list holiday apartments, houses and villas securely online. There are currently over 61,000 properties to choose from in thousands of destinations worldwide, with over 1,000 new listings added each week.

Once you know where you want to go, just browse through the list of properties available, enter your dates and put in your requests. As soon as the booking has been accepted by the host, you simply pay online with a credit card. HouseTrip holds on to your payment until 2 days after you check-in to make it safe for you at all times. Before you complete your booking, you can read reviews of past guests and get a taste of their HouseTrip experience.

Tell us about the first few months of running the business? What would you say was the hardest part of starting the business?

At the beginning of HouseTrip, our home was our office. Junjun and I were (and still are) working very hard. Free weekends were out of question. We were convinced that HouseTrip would succeed if we were 100% dedicated. We then convinced a few people that HouseTrip could revolutionise the way people travel and found our first angel investor. After that, things really kicked off and here we are today.

How have you been able to fund the business?

We had a couple of Angel investors on board in 2010 which allowed us to create the first version of the website. In April 2011, HouseTrip attracted $2.7m in Series-A venture capital funding from Index Ventures, one of the world’s most renowned Internet investors. Then, last November, we announced a $17 million (15M CHF) Series B funding round. The investor consortium, led by major UK venture capital firm Balderton Capital also includes existing investor Index Ventures who re-invested pro-rata.

How has the business evolved comparing to your first year of running it, the business model? Strategy?

The business model is identical to when we started. The strategy is clear and ties up with our vision “to delight guests with a great travel experience in rentals anywhere in the world and act as the partner of choice for individuals or professionals who want to generate income for their properties”. It hasn’t changed. Of course, many other things have changed since the very beginning (for one thing we now have 80 employees, 3 offices, etc.) but the core, the vision and the business model, have remained very consistent.

Have you ever rented one of the properties on the website before?

Of course! Many times! I’ve booked twice for myself already in 2012.

What is your business model?

HouseTrip is a marketplace for people to book and list holiday rentals. When guests book online, we take a commission typically between 10 to 20%

How many customers do you have?

I can tell you that we recently celebrated our 500,000th night booked through HouseTrip since we first launched in January 2010!

How do you ensure that the properties are safe for customers to book?

We transfer the money to the host two days after the guests have checked in to ensure that the properties match guests’ expectations. We also have a quality control team that checks each new property added on the site and ensures all the profiles are accurate and as detailed as possible. On top of that we have a “Fraudbuster” team whose job is to track anything suspicious that occurs on the site.

There is a lot of noise in this space, What makes you different from other competing startups out there?

Two things:

We focus on whole properties (i.e. you get the whole apartment for yourself) whereas other companies have a stronger focus on shared spaces

We are the largest in Europe in terms of number of properties we offer

Raising funding can be such a tricky thing to do for startups, especially in Europe – how have you seen that change over the years?

Honestly we’ve been pretty lucky because – apart from the very beginning – we never really had issues raising money. The funding is there and has always been in our lifetime: it’s all about showing the momentum you have with users and how good an investment opportunity your startup is.

As mentioned, you’ve been very successful in raising finance for the company, what advices would you give to startups looking to raise money?

Focus on proving:

That you can grow thanks to the investment (by showing you’ve done it in the past)
Do not be fuzzy: you need to be super analytical in proving the investment rationale
Have a great team: by having people onboard who’ve already proven they can succeed, you reassure investors
Show that making your company succeed is your team’s sole and only focus, show passion

What could you say has been some of the key things you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?

Focus, focus, focus: better to be excellent at one thing for one audience
Be super analytical
You need to attract the best people
Building a great business takes much more money and effort than I ever imagined

What has been your most memorable moment so far on your entrepreneurial journey?

It might sound very trivial but my absolute best moment was when I helped solved some problems our customer care team in Lisbon was having, as they were really thankful for it. No better feeling for me than making a difference in people’s lives.

What trends, startups, technology are you personally looking forward to in 2012?

I am fascinated by any technological advance that has to do with the human brain (i.e. ability to read our thoughts, making blind people see by making their brain read electronic signals, etc.) so it would be very interesting to see some innovations around that.

What are your other plans for Housetrip in 2012?

Our three key goals for the year are:

Improve the Product (through increased functionality of the website)
Increase Inventory (through additional outreach to holiday apartment hosts)
Reach (through marketing and localisation)

What pieces of advices could you give to aspiring entrepreneurs out there looking to start their business?

Just do it! It’s like swimming for the first time – the most difficult thing is to jump in the pool.