I invited Steve Lowy, founder and CEO of Umi Hotels on YHP to share the story behind starting his company and his journey so far building it into a successful business.

Deciding to follow in his dad’s footstep who owned the Lowy Group (formerly known as Vienna Hotel Group) which has hotels and luxury apartments in London and Brighton, Steve fell in love with the hospitality industry during his gap year before University, working in hotels and restaurants.

He eventually followed up his passion by studing for a BA in Hospitality & Tourism Management at the University of Salford but instead of working for his dad, he decided to start his own business.

After spending time travelling the world after university and realising how great the offers and experience in Asia and Oceania were, the idea for Umi Hotels was born, but it wasn’t until his time at Westminster Hotel as the General Manager that the idea began to take shape.

Below is the full interview.

Hi Steve, How are you doing, great to have you on YHP?

Thank you for having me!

Could you quickly give us some background information about yourself? Tell me about yourself growing up?

Well I am a born and bred Londoner. My mother is from Ireland and although my father is British, his parents were from Austria and the Czech Republic. At school I played a lot of sports which allowed me to travel from an early age, at first in the UK but then in Europe and at the age of 16 I went to Australia and New Zealand. I was very fortunate. I was also surrounded by people who loved food growing up and started a bit of home cookery at the age of 6 where I helped my older sister baking and made sure my mums Sunday roast gravy wasn’t lumpy (I hate lumps in gravy!).

I struggled with my A levels and looking back I think I was just bored. I took a gap year before University and got to work in hotels and in a restaurant so I developed a real passion for the hospitality industry. I also travelled to Asia and across Europe inter-railing which reinforced my love of travelling.
I went to the University of Salford where I studied for a BA in Hospitality & Tourism Management. I had a great time there; I learned to love to study again and reinforced my love for the hospitality and tourism industries.

How did you get into business? Were you exposed to entrepreneurship as a child?

Yes, my dad owns the Lowy Group (formerly known as Vienna Hotel Group) which has hotels and luxury apartments in London and Brighton, so I was interested in the hospitality industry from a young age. Then I worked and travelled and became sure I wanted to get into that area of business. I could have probably worked for my dad, but I wanted to do my own thing and put my own unique brand out there. I’m ambitious and I’m always having new ideas; I didn’t want to be restricted.

Who was your inspiration growing up and why?

My parents and my grandma. My grandma (the only grandparent that was alive when I was born) was born in Austria and escaped the Nazis and fled to London, speaking no English. She married my grandfather, had two children and opened her own restaurant in London, where my father and his sister worked as they were growing up. My parents are both inspirations as they each lost their parents at a very early age and they have both worked in the industry starting from the bottom. They worked very hard to get to where they are now. I guess all three family members showed me that no matter what adversity you go through, if you work hard you will achieve your goals.

So tell me about Umi Hotels and how the idea came about?

I was travelling around the world after uni. I was staying in hostels, guesthouses and B&B’s and I just loved the welcoming, fun environment they offered. Particularly in south-east Asia, where the guesthouses I was staying at were $2 a night and I was receiving this warm Asian service where people were genuinely friendly. I thought why can’t a city hotel in the UK offer something like this, something in the mid-range market but with the fun and relaxed atmosphere of the B&Bs and hostels in Asia and Oceania. My business opportunity arose when I was General Manager in the Westminster Hotel and I was able to take on the building to establish my own brand: umi.

What were you doing before you founded Umi Hotels?

I had travelled, trained as a chef and cocktail barman as well as managing a 500 bed backpackers hostel in Paddington , London. Immediately before umi I was managing the Westminster Hotel in London.

What was your biggest challenge during the startup phase?

Getting people to believe in me. I was young (26), in quite an old fashioned industry.

How have you been able to fund the business?

Initially it was by increasing the profitability of the first hotel and since, I have a loan from my father’s company that we are now looking at paying back by getting an external investor.

What are the most crucial things you have done to grow your business?

Focus on staff. You are only as good as the team around you. Creating a loyal and strong team that work towards the same goal and are passionate about their role is so important.

Would you say the business has changed from the first initial idea?

Yes. The core of offering great value mid-range accommodation in a fun and friendly environment hasn’t changed but we have tweaked and changed the brand a bit through the logos, strap lines and the websites. At first I was a little stubborn (some people would say very stubborn) with regards criticism. You will never please everyone but I have learnt to listen more and work with the ideas people have to actually drive the brand forward. I want umi to be a dynamic brand that changes with the times.

What makes you different from other players in your sector?

I think that we focus on working with young people a lot more than others. I enjoy helping students get into hospitality and find out where their strengths lie. I think our pseudo franchise offering is more flexible and modern for the current needs of mid-range independent hotels than other programs.

What would you say has been the highlight of your entrepreneurial journey so far?

Crikey… that is a hard one. I think being able to travel all over the world and meet some amazing people through my work. Being recognised by industry peers through awards such as the Acorn awards. I think the highlight though was being asked to do a skills exchange in Siem Reap, Cambodia where I was completely inspired by the hard work people are doing there to make the local Khmers life better. I was there for ten days and it had a huge positive impact on me.

What can we be expecting from your company in 2012?

Well.. wouldn’t you like to know! We are hoping to be able to have a few more hotels on board with the umi brand, for umi marketing to keep growing in its own right and producing wonderful design online and offline and with BookItWith, our software… well if we get the external investment, I have some grand plans for that too!

What three pieces of advice would you offer entrepreneurs starting out today?

Be a sponge not a sieve – listen to people. You don’t have to take their advice but really listen to it as it will probably really help you.

Create something that you are passionate about. If you are passionate about the industry you are in or the product you are creating, it rubs off on people and also you will enjoy the day to day aspects a lot more.

Believe!! You have to believe in yourself and aim high! I am a big Liverpool Football fan and Bill Shankly came up with some great quotes in his time. But this one is one that I really believe in “Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor.”

Avner Ronen is the founder and CEO of Boxee, a freeware media player software platform.

Before starting Boxee, Avner founded and sold Odigo, an instant messaging service to Comverse for $20M in 2002 but stayed on with Comverse as the VP Corporate Strategy & Business Development until early 2007 and started Boxee soon after.

I had a quick chat with Avner to find out more about Boxee and the story behind it.

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

I wasn’t an entrepreneur growing up, but I was working at a young age. Since I was 12 years old I was doing odd jobs like delivering papers, cleaning buildings, work in kitchens or restaurants etc.

My first real entrepreneurial experience was in the Israeli Defence Force, when I started an Intranet project in my unit.

Tell me about your experience working with the Odigo team during its early days and some of the key thing you took away from that experience?

Odigo was a unique experience. I believe I learned many important lessons, but I don’t think I was necessary able to implement them when I started Boxee.

Like with any start-up however, I learned a great deal about product, focus, raising money, building a team, etc.

Tell me how the idea for Boxee came about?

My friend Tom Sella and I were playing around with connecting computers and xbox media center to our TVs and we realized we were watching more and more stuff from the Internet rather than from the cable box. Our setup was complicated and very geeky though, and we decided there must be a better, easier way to do it. That’s how the idea for Boxee came about.

What are you trying to solve with Boxee?

We believe many peoples’ video watching habits have completely changed. Today, people are much more active in their video consumption. We are more on-demand driven, watching videos on our computers, tablets and phones, and discovering what to watch via social media, by following friends and influencers on Twitter and Facebook.

Boxee is a product designed with this new consumer behaviour in mind. Rather than pay $75 a month for 200 channels from which you only watch 6-10, with Boxee you can get the major broadcast channels for free and then get the rest of the stuff you want to watch from the Internet, like Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, etc. It is a more relevant, more affordable and better experience than what you’ll get from your traditional pay TV provider.

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

I think like with any idea, the hardest thing is taking the plunge and deciding to really do it; dedicating yourself to it. Probably 99.9% of ideas never pass the stage of talking about them with your friends.

The next major hurdle is assembling the initial team and then getting started on building the product, especially if you need to raise money at that stage.

How were you able to fund the business?

Initially I invested some of my own money and then reached out to friends & family to do a seed round. That phase took a long time until we got venture capital firms to invest.

How has your market changed in the past few years? How has your business changed to keep pace?

The market has really matured favorably in the direction of the Boxee product and vision. Today it is not a question whether TVs will be connected and there is no question that premium content is/will be available over the Internet – there is real consumer demand for it.

This also means there is much more competition and that as a start-up, we need to continue to innovate and build our brand and products.

Would you say the initial idea for the company, or that your business model has changed since starting the company?

The original goal or the vision has not really changed much, which may be a reason for concern.. We didn’t have a clear business model when we got started and I think today we feel much more comfortable about how we are going to build and scale a great business around Boxee.

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

I would say the most crucial thing we have done was to have a vision for the product that we stayed focused on and executed on it to build a brand and a fan base without spending too much on marketing.

Is the business profitable? What is your business model?

We are not profitable. We are going to get to profitability by converting Boxee users to premium, paying users.

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

Hard to tell one specific moment, but I think the greatest joy has been making my mother proud and happy.

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

I feel anything I will say has been said before… there are many paths to success and you can easily get great, completely contradictory advice on almost every subject, so probably most important is to follow your gut/heart and try to have fun along the way.

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

We have big plans for 2012, but at this point they are all top secret Stay tuned…

Zendit is a server software platform that offers users a new way to create, store and engage with digital content.

I invited its founder Kevin Bradshaw over to talk about the company, how the idea came about, changes made along the way and advices for entrepreneurs and much more.

This is our full conversation below.

Hi Kevin, How are you doing, great to have you on YHP?

Thank you! Delighted to meet you.

Could you quickly give us some background information about yourself?

Of course. Raised in Fife, now living in the US, I’m a serial, obsessive digital media entrepreneur. Started my first company in 1998, since have been involved in 4 other startups.

How did you get involved in entrepreneurship? Were you exposed to entrepreneurship as a child?

Not that I can really remember, other than the Young Enterprise program at high school. I’m from a pretty typical Fife family – Dad was in the navy, away a lot, Mum brought us up and worked too for most of my childhood. So, nothing really very extraordinary. My Auntie had a sweetshop, so I guess that was pretty entrepreneurial! (And quite excellent when you are six.)

So tell me about Zendit and how the idea came about?

Steve and I first worked together a decade ago at i-play. A few years ago, as Facebook was really growing, we felt there would be an opportunity to build another platform company, to explore a bunch of different aspects of the emerging “social cloud” – the complex mish mash of apps, websites and other services which we saw users engaging with.

What is Zendit and how does it work?

At heart, Zendit is a server software platform, upon which our partners create and operate two types of service – some that create a lot of social activity data (e.g. www.beerdog.com) and some that observe and analyze it (e.g. www.blether.co).

It’s much like any other platform – has various APIs, UI and other frameworks and an SDK – which abstract a lot of the complex, repeatable coding tasks needed to build highly scalable services which can be accessed via browsers, iPhone apps and so on. We just make it a lot easier to build the service, and much more cost-effective to run it. We can help monetize it too.

What is your business model?

We are paid for three things : developing or assisting with development of platform services, operating such services, and monetizing the data that the services create.

What makes Zendit different from any service out there? What problem does Zendit solve?

We like to think Zendit is very different because it allows a service creator to retain total control of their data and user interface versus existing social networks.

The best contrast we can make is probably with Facebook. Brands and others creating Facebook pages etc give a lot of valuable data to Facebook and effectively lose control of it. Their services are also very deeply entwined with Facebook’s UI. We basically break such a service apart and offer our partners much more flexibly of interaction with their users and much finer grain control over the data their users create.

What are the most crucial things you have done to grow your business?

Hiring people. The critical decisions are almost always related to hiring talent before the cash is visible to pay for it! We’ve done a good job of this – we are profitable and growing despite having had to date zero external investment.

Would you say the business has changed from the first initial idea?

In some ways yes – the way we talk about ourselves has changed quite a bit. But, really, I don’t think what we’ve set out to do – enable the creation of some very innovative new services – has really change that much since day one.

Who are your competitors?

That’s a bit of a tricky one – it depends on how fine grain the comparison should be J. You could say we compete with some very large networks such as Facebook, but really we complement them. You could say we compete with a few companies with cloud service development platforms (www.kickapps.com is a good example), but the way we’ve designed out platform is quite unique as far as we know at this time, so it’s hard to point out too many direct competitors.

What were you doing before you founded Zendit?

I’ve been in the US for almost ten years now, involved in a few different aspects of the digital content industry – from I-Play to Playphone to Limewire to Zendit – all of which in one way or another have explored the edges of consumer interaction on new digital devices or with digital content.

How have you been able to fund the business?

From the beginning we have been paid for our work by our partners.

What can we be expecting from your company in 2012?

Some great stuff! Look out for “The Beerdog” on the iPhone and a B2B social media brand monitoring service called “Blether” in a month or so.

What three pieces of advice would you offer entrepreneurs starting out today?

That’s a good question. If you are already an entrepreneur, I guess I’d say, don’t worry about being utterly obsessed with what you do, it never did me too much harm.

If you aren’t, I’d say think very, very carefully about whether you really want make the product you are thinking of making or you just want to “be” an entrepreneur. Think about the effect it is almost certainly going to have on your friends and immediate family. You will be broke, probably for quite a long time! It’s only likely to pay off if you really love what you do. If you are not waking up at 5am every day, with nothing else on your mind than to work on it, maybe it’s not for you.

Starting a new business is an exciting prospect for any entrepreneur. Whilst the current economic climate may be considered by some to be too inhospitable, making a new commercial investment a daunting task, there is, in fact, never a ‘right time’ to start a business. Rather, those who focus on making the best start that they can are the ones that are most likely to win through and become a success.

With the appropriate legal structure in place, financial resources confirmed and a comprehensive business plan ready for implementation, the new business owner is on the brink of a new adventure.

Pick the right people

Recruiting the best employees for the job is at the core of any successful business, and investing in the most suitable people can reap tremendous rewards. A confident person with positive attitudes towards the new enterprise will help it to flourish and to grow.

Some new employers initially use freelance members of staff whom they pay on a contract basis, rather than full-time employees where the employer has a tax liability. An advantage of using contract staff is that if they are not up to the job there is no commitment to retain them. Additionally, freelancers can be really useful for specific roles in a new organisation, such as accounting, marketing or IT.

Ways to hire

Thorough research into the necessary skills and expertise the new organisation requires will result in a good recruitment strategy, including a clear staffing structure, and well-defined employee roles and responsibilities. Job descriptions and person specifications will enable qualifications to be tracked alongside potential employees’ perspectives on the workplace, their trustworthiness and their level of commitment.

Many businesses use an introductory application form to select a shortlist of applicants, who are then interviewed. Increasingly, larger scale businesses are working through recruitment agencies and also using techniques such as handwriting analysis and psychometric testing. This is because finding the right employees is crucial to the success of a business.

Location, location, location

Where to set up the new business will depend on what area of work or industry is applicable. Some entrepreneurs run fledgling businesses from a home office; others need a shop front whilst even smaller scale manufacturing requires modest factory premises. The most important consideration overall is that the building is fit for purpose and affordable.

A virtual presence

In addition to physical premises, these days all businesses need a virtual home too. As consumers change their shopping habits, so all types of commercial organisations, social enterprises and charities are moving online and creating websites in order to engage in marketing, public relations, networking with suppliers and other businesses, and selling.

The smart entrepreneur will make sure the business has researched suitable broadband deals, so that the speed of the internet connection and its capacity will be sufficient for the volume of online work anticipated. For example, will the marketing strategy use paid search advertising and social media? Will customers want to be able to buy directly from the business website?

Taking a 360-degree view from the very start will ensure that a new business is equipped with the personnel, resources and tools to make a successful, and sustainable, start.

I recently had the opportunity of speaking with Richard Alberg, founder of MyWorkSearch – A company he set up in 2009 after selling his former company, PSL to Kenexa in 2006.

MyWorkSearch is described as a practical new way to help jobseekers find the right job – fast.

In the full interview below, Richard talks about his early experience running PSL, selling to Kenexa and how the idea for MyWorkSearch came about.

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

I was not entrepreneurial as a child. However I always had a strong desire to do things my way and an aversion to being told what to do. Once I started work it did not take me too long to want to run my own business. I worked for others for about two years and then set up my own company.

Tell me about some of your experiences running PSL and some of the key things that you learnt from that experience? You also sold that company right?

Many of my early business endeavours were opportunistic. A chance conversation or observation would lead to a venture and this is how PSL started. I got interested in psychometric testing and formed a company to distribute a product. The company developed from there through a series of steps that were a consequence of minor successes and failures. For example quite early on I recognised that although we had a very high gross margin we really struggled to sell enough to exceed our fixed overhead. I therefore found a slightly larger competitor whose product range only marginally overlapped with ours. We agreed to merge operations and through doubling turnover whilst halving the combined fixed costs transformed what were two barely profitable companies into one very lucrative enterprise.

Another realisation was the importance of having our own very distinct products. Having a ‘me too’ product simply meant we had to sell on price whereas a differentiated offering set us apart. The risk, of course, is that we get it wrong and the market rejects our solution. From time to time this happened. However when we got it right we could make profitable sales whilst also developing our reputation for innovation. We also found it easier to attract media interest and win blue chip clients.

For many years I ran PSL simply trying to do better each month than we had the previous one. I had no real strategy or defined end goal. Survival followed by profit were our principle objectives. I joined a group of SME CEOs called TEC (now known as Vistage) and for the first time was exposed to strategy. I started to think through what we were creating and how we might achieve an exit. I also recognised our many failings as a business.

I decided my existing approach was flawed and that PSL had to either break out of mediocrity or fail. We bet the company on technology and we focused all our investment and efforts on building a world-class online assessment capability with similarly sophisticated psychometric test content. We had one major competitor that was far larger than us and had far more resources. We on the other hand were nimble and innovative and we played to these strengths. We were creative in how we promoted our achievements and we worked very hard to secure some lucrative and high profile wins. Our successes and reputation for innovation helped us attract some very talented people and this in turn led to more success.

There came a point when we had a solid UK business however both growth and our clients were requiring us to go international. I decided that this was a good time to consider a sale as our strong client base and excellent IP would be of interest to an overseas company looking to enter the UK, an organisation that could cross-sell into our clients or a business that could introduce our products to their clients. We would be especially attractive to a buyer with all three characteristics. We appointed advisors and after a marketing process had four offers and in November 2006 sold to Kenexa.

Tell me how the idea for MyWorkSearch came about?

I completed my earn-out at Kenexa and left in November 2008. Towards the end I was actively considering what I wanted to do next and started getting in touch and meeting with many of the people I had got to know over the years. At the same time the post Lehman global recession was making itself felt and unemployment was increasing. It struck me how much organisational effort was required for my networking activities and how what I was doing was just a fraction of what an effective jobseeker would need to do. It also struck me that most people are hopelessly unprepared for the jobs market and the help available to them was expensive and of inconsistent quality.

In conversation with a friend who runs a recruitment agency the idea of MyWorkSearch developed. Would it be possible to develop an online service that provides jobseekers with all the assistance they require to secure a new role? If so the entire economics of the career transition market would be changed as a 24/7 ‘all you can eat’ service could be made available at very low cost. I put together a small team and we set about building a basic workflow automation product combined with eLearning, tools and resources.

What is MyWorkSearch?

We started development on MyWorkSearch in February 2009 and it has come a long way since then. It is a software platform that takes a person on a journey into employment, providing the individual with all the resources that are helpful in obtaining work. These range from tools such as CV building to data such as the million plus UK vacancies sourced from thousands of job boards and career sites to high quality eLearning to assessment to activity management etc.

At the same time there is complete tracking and reporting, both for the individual jobseeker and the organisation that has enrolled this person in MyWorkSearch. A short video on MyWorkSearch can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRofEePW5co

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

Starting the business was easy. We did not have to raise funds and we could dive straight into product development. Getting the software built was relatively simple as I had good connections as well as experience. Developing the eLearning was more of a learning curve as I had not done this before. However asking around combined with Internet research allowed us to get going. The challenging economy made it easier to find people with the skills we needed and many suppliers were willing to offer their products and services at very competitive rates.

The difficulties started about six months later as we got closer to having a product that could be used and we started to sell and market. We had no reputation or track record and we were suggesting a very different solution from the prevailing human delivered career transition assistance model. The good news for us is that we had a relatively small cost-base and could just get out there and sell. And this is what we did. For employer sales we knocked on doors and used our contacts and we also established some reseller partnerships. For consumer sales we agreed affiliate relationships with a number of job boards.

Our initial approach was for all the team members to work from home. This forced us to adopt cloud computing for every aspect of our business, from Salesforce.com CRM to hosted Exchange, Sharepoint and accounting as well as VOIP telephony. Not only did this save costs in the early days it also allowed us to scale up quickly once we needed to expand.

The challenge with a home based team is communication. We really had to make the effort to talk and all those easy and accidental conversations that take place in an office were absent. Items were easily missed and coordination was that much harder.

How were you able to fund the business?

I was lucky in that my exit from PSL meant that I had the personal resources to fund MyWorkSearch. Self-funding removed the headache and delays of fund-raising however it also removed the third party business oversight that comes with a VC, a dynamic that can work very well.

Would you say the initial idea for the company, or that your business model has changed since 2009?

MyWorkSearch has changed hugely since we started. Our initial focus was selling to employers making staff redundant and also directly to jobseekers who wished to pay themselves for the service. We quickly discovered that selling to jobseekers was not for us. We did not have the b2c marketing skills or budgets necessary and in any even felt that there were reputational risks in selling to unemployed people. Notwithstanding our money-back offers and our belief that we are offering a crucial and valuable service, we did not want to be accused of taking advantage of people who might be financially stretched and desperate.

We therefore decided to focus on the employer market and we achieved some swift and significant wins. We then heard about Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) funding for services that support unemployed jobseekers. It was immediately obvious that MyWorkSearch was perfectly suited to this market. The amount paid per person was relatively low and this limited the human delivered services other suppliers could offer.

Not only could we provide our service for the sums paid, we could quickly scale to meet as much demand as existed and do so nationally. We quickly expanded, hiring a team of account managers to support Jobcentre Plus advisors and within a very short period of time became the largest supplier in the country for this DWP contract.

For 15 months our focus was on delivering this contract and further developing MyWorkSearch. We were convinced that there was an ongoing need for technology delivered jobseeker assistance and it became clear how much government funding existed to get people into work. It also became obvious that technology’s ability to track and report on activities (and inactivity) would be especially interesting to the government funded jobseeker market.

All of this encouraged us to reinvest in improving MyWorkSearch. We focused on the needs of the government-funded market and refined our product and proposition for this sector. From time to time we have put ourselves forward for business awards and we have been fortunate in winnings several. The Cabinet Office launched the Innovation Launch Pad to showcase the very best of what was available from SMEs for the public sector.

We entered this competition and were delighted to be one of the final nine chosen as “exemplars of the innovation and value that government can get from SMEs”. This led to additional public sector opportunities and our focus nowadays is very much in this area.

Our initial government contract ended in March 2011 as the previous administration’s programmes came to an end. The Coalition Government’s programmes and focus are in different areas and we have had a slow 2011 as we have adjusted our offering and then bid for work. The new few years should be busy as we deliver on the programmes that are now in place.

What would you say MyWorkSearch does differently from other online employment platforms out there?

The depth, breadth and usability of MyWorkSearch set it apart from the handful of other online services. Having helped many tens of thousands of jobseekers we also have the data to demonstrate that MyWorkSearch is effective at getting people into work. Indeed compared to others, MyWorkSearch users are 50% more likely to secure employment and at the 90-day mark are three times more likely to have found work. All of this puts us in a very strong market position. However we don’t take our leadership for granted and know that others will be coming after us.

How big is your team now?

There are 20 of us.

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

We have been willing to take a medium term view and invest significantly in our offering. There were other online solutions in the market that had quite simple capabilities and fed off the considerable demand created by the recession. However customers are now more informed and discerning and our substantial product development investments over the past three years means we are far better positioned to secure business.

Our initial premise that there would be substantial and growing demand for online jobseeker support has proven correct. Where we were wrong was in our route to market. Our willingness to explore commercial options and pivot as required have been essential.

What is your business model?

We sell subscriptions to use MyWorkSearch. Those who enrol people in our service pay either a per-person charge or a monthly charge for access to MyWorkSearch. We invest in product development but other than this have relatively low overheads and a very low marginal cost of delivery. Once we get beyond a minimum level of subscription revenue our business becomes increasingly profitable.

Is the business profitable?

We made significant profits in our first two years of operation. However we will make losses for our latest financial year as a result of maintaining product development for the many months between our major contract ending and new ones starting. We are now profitable again.

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

Selling PSL and achieving personal financial security . Being able to run a new business knowing my house is not on the line is a very liberating situation.

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

There is a short term need to get the business trading profitably and with cash as otherwise it will not survive. But once this is achieved have a strategic journey in mind. This need not be cast in stone and change is both possible and sometimes essential. However you will achieve success far faster if you know where you want to head.

Hire talent. You can achieve far more with good people around you and will be in a far better position to exit if a purchaser can see there is a strong team that will remain in the company.

Be merciless on costs. Making sales is hard and spending cash is easy. Make your money last.

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

I see technology driven jobseeker assistance as becoming the norm in the sectors we operate in. By the end of 2012 I want MyWorkSearch to be the default supplier. I think 2012 will be a very good year for us.

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

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.

I recently spoke to Ville Vesterinen about his latest startup Grey Area Labs. Ville Vesterinen is the Co-founder and CEO of the Location-based mobile company and prior to joining Grey Area Labs, Ville Co-founder ArcticStartup – dubbed as the Northern European TechCrunch and he is also a member of the Investment Council at Finnish Industry Investment Ltd.

This is what we talked about.

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

I have always been very entrepreneurial. I started my first company after high school. Back then snowboarding was my life and we started a retail outlet in the small town as I’m from in Southern Finland. I have also co-founded two media companies and I’m still involved with one of them, ArcticStartup which is like the Northern European TechCrunch.

Tell me how the idea for Grey Area came about?

Grey Area was originally started by Mikko Hämäläinen, Andreas Karlsson and Teemu Tuulari. One summer day we got excited and decided that we want to build it out together. It was a pipedream of three guys who become four guys and who were really excited about the intersection of games and cities. We believed we could build something that would change the urban landscape and games forever. And we did, but are far from done.

What is Grey Area?

Grey Area is a game developer company based in Helsinki, Finland. We released Shadow Cities – a location based MMORPG for iPhone – globally in 2011. It has became a category defining game title. If you ask our fans, they will tell you there’s nothing like it.

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

The hardest part is always the starting. Taking that first step and going all in. You need to really believe in what you do and be passionate because everything will not go smooth and if you’re in it for the wrong reasons you will give up when you hit the first rough path along the way. And there will be a lot of those days.

How were you able to fund the business?

I still remember when Mikko posted to Jaiku (a Twitter like service back in the day) that he had quit his job and sold his car. The guys funded the early days from savings and minimal client work. When I jumped along we quickly raised €100,000 with which we launched the game in Finland. After that we raised €1.9 million to scale the company and launch globally.

Would you say the initial idea for the company, or that your business model has changed since 2010?

The big idea has not changed. We’re still out to crack the location based game play although the road to that has not been linear. If you have a strong and big enough vision, it does not matter even if everything won’t go as planned.

Your first game is called shadow cities? Tell us about that and how the whole idea came about?

We tinkered with different ideas, UI sketches and data sets for a long time before Shadow Cities was what it is today. It was a process of rather long iteration and getting feedback from our friends who played the game. We are super grateful for all those friends in Helsinki who played with us all those months.

How is it doing at the moment? Downloads?

We have a policy of not disclosing exact numbers, but we’re very happy with how Shadow Cities has succeeded.

I know its currently free for download at the moment, will you be adding any paid features to it?

Shadow Cities was build for iOS and at the time it was the only platform with in-app purchase capability. We build our business model around this free-to-play model and it has served us well. It will always be a free game with virtual goods for those who want to buy them.

How does someone who want to get their app discovered do? In other words, how do you succesfully launch your app? what are the procedures?

That’s the million dollar question. It really goes back to what you’re building. Shadow Cities brought so much innovation into the space that it was easier for us to build the marketing around that. Cross-marketing can be really powerful in the app space, but the best way to get discovered is building something that people really want and making it easy for them to tell their friends about it. Nothing beats a great game.

How big is your team now?

We’re currently a solid team of 17.

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

Hiring more skilled people than I am myself. By looking at the raw skill we have in the company and the high standards in hiring I don’t think I would ever get a job at the company if I would have to apply for it.

What is your business model?

Free to play mobile games.

Is the business profitable?

The business model works great. I think it’s the future for all mobile games if you want to build a significant business.

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

It has to be the launch of Shadow Cities in Finland when we were at the office at 5am watching server logs and trying to figure out how we could bring to server down for a minute when there were tons of players playing through the night. I still remember Mikko sending people push message saying ‘Please go to bed people. It’s late’

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

Refuse to give up no matter what. Persistence correlates most with success. Much more than intelligence, network or experience. If you’re still thinking what’s the best time to start a company in your career the answer is yesterday. The second best time is now. You learn so much regardless whether you will be successful or not. You can always go back to where you were, but starting your first company won’t come any easier when you get older.

What kind of things can we expect in the emerging mobile gaming industry in 2012?

There will be more quality games that will push the boundaries of what a mobile game is. The games will become social. Social like we have used to in the web services space. Games will also start to be more like services in that they change every day for the players and are always connected. Playr data will play a much bigger role than it does currently. It will become part of the experience, not just metrics to optimize.

What can we be expecting from you and Grey Area in 2012?

We are currently working on two new games, which will come out in early 2012. That said, we’re just warming up. 2012 will be the year that mobile gaming experiences will stop looking like a shrink down Facebook games and start looking like something designed for mobile handset. 2012 is also the year when location will be cracked. We plan on playing a key role in both of these developments.

Where do you want the company to be in five years

I’m way too impatient to think five years ahead. I don’t think those places are yet invented where we are going.

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!

The sports digital media space is definitely something to look out for this year and Teamer is making sure that they are the number one startup on everyone’s lips when it comes to the industry.

The company who raised €500k investment, a round led by Kernel Capital, The Bank of Ireland’s Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund in March 2010 will be hoping to increase their already growing 1.5 m members in 2012.

I spoke to the company’s CEO, Niall McEvoy, who talks me through his background, how Teamer came about and their plans for 2012.

Could you quickly give us some background information about yourself?

Born, raised and educated in Dublin. After a brief flirtation with academia when I left school, I embarked on a career as a bookmaker (as in betting, not making books !). Great fun, learned a load about risk and margin ! Then changed direction completely to work for the Irish Govt. business development agency, helping companies to grow in international markets. This role took me to London, where I spent 8 years. After a few years back in HQ, I got the entrepreneurial itch, and Teamer was born in late 2008.

How did you get involved in entrepreneurship? Were you exposed to entrepreneurship as a child?

My father was an entrepreneur, leaving a very safe public sector job in his late 30’s to set up his own business (scary how history has a habit of repeating itself !). But actually, my main exposure to entrepreneurship cam during my time in Enterprise Ireland. This was a wide and varied business consulting role, which gave me exposure to companies ranging from start ups to those growing in international markets by acquisition.

So tell me about Teamer and how the idea came about?

Teamer was born in a pub ! Actually, it’s not my idea, but the idea of company co-founder Ken Moulton, who had been asked to run a hockey team, and quickly discovered that there wasn’t an integrated web/email/sms solution online. With my experience in working with high growth start ups, fundraising etc., Ken asked me to come on board as CEO, with him taking on the role of operations director. We were joined at founder stage by Ken’s brother Steve, a career web professional. 3 co founders of the business

What is Teamer and how does it work?

Teamer is sports social platform which provides any sports team with a private online team space to organise, interact and communicate. At its core, Teamer is fully integrated with the mobile sms network, and this combined with web, email, and mobile app provides a unique sports team organisational platform.

What is your business model?

Up to recently it has been solely advertising and sponsorship, but the model is evolving as we scale to include mobile apps, sms, and up-selling our users to value add functionality. We have some exciting new revenue streams in our business plan.

How did you initially attract users to Teamer, and how do you do it now?

We work very hard on user acquisition. We do all the usual stuff, search and social media etc, and we have an in-house user acquisition team, that focuses exclusively on a direct user acquisition strategy. We get a lot of viral growth within clubs and communities once we seed effectively. We are always experimenting with new user acquisition methods. We have some special sauce as well, but that would be telling !

What makes Teamer different from any service out there? What problem does it solve?

The problem is actually pretty straightforward, and that is that organising a sports team is a load of hassle. So starting with solving the team organisational headaches, and building around that, we identified that many teams would have a requirement for an integrated online solution, that solved organizational headaches and offered a private community environment for online team interaction.

What are the most crucial things you have done to grow your business?

User acquisition without doubt, because if you aren’t adding users/members, then you never get a chance to validate the business model, attract investment and take advantage of the market opportunity.

What was the most challenging part of starting the business?

It would be easy to say funding, but you can always make year 1 happen on a shoestring if you have the appetite for a tough year. The most challenging part is convincing yourself to get off the fence and do it. That’s the difference between having an idea and being an entrepreneur.

Would you say the business has changed from the first initial idea?

At a high level, very little. Anything that has changed, has been user driven. We listen to the user base all the time, are quite democratic about the prioritization of developments and enhancements. If our community asks for new features, we try to prioritise in favour of this stuff.

Who are your competitors?

Lots of people fishing in the grassroots sporting pond, some in the “club” space, less in the “team” space. Companies like E-Teamz, Teamsnap, Pitchero, Clubwebsite, all play in the grassroots sports vertical. We have seen plenty come and go over the last three years, but few with our sort of traction across multiple markets.

What were you doing before you founded Teamer?

Worked for Enterprise Ireland, the Irish Government Business Development Agency

How have you been able to fund the business?

We have been fortunate to attract strategic investment at a number of key stages in our growth, initially private friends and family type investment, then a small seed round from an Irish VC, and a private round in late 2010.

What can we be expecting from your company in 2012?

Grow our member base to 2.5m members, grow into new geographical markets, expanded platform functionality with a range of new features including an android app. Taking Teamer to the USA !

What three pieces of advice would you offer entrepreneurs starting out today?

- Start now, tomorrow is too late.
– Use every business contact you ever met to get free advice and professional help (you need a lot of freebies if you aren’t funded, and you’ll be amazed how much goodwill can be transformed into free help)
– Build a broad skilled mgt team. If you are a techie, no point in surrounding yourself with lots of techies, you need strong commercial influences to succeed (and vica versa)