“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” –Albert Einstein This Friday we’ve decided to showcase a conversation with Yoni Binstock, a young entrepreneur and member of our Innovatrs community. This American from Cleveland, Ohio has been working on an an innovative [...]

Joining innovatrs has some great advantages for startups, entrepreneurs and innovative souls. Not least of these is the 7-stage, 49-phase, innovate framework which takes our extensive experience and knowledge to create one of the most practical startup frameworks you can imagine. So today I thought I’d give a little sneak preview into one of the [...]

It would be remiss of us not to mention the Linkedin IPO here at innovatrs. After all, it’s not just a staggering value, it’s not just opening up the ‘new bubble’ debate, but it is, let’s be truthful, the moment of which most entrepreneurs dream when they start tinkering with that piece of code in [...]

We don’t like spouting well-worn clichés here at Innovatrs. But sometimes, it’s just so difficult to avoid, especially if they’re fundamentally true to a point you’re trying to make. What we’re talking about here is winning. If you listened to your adult mentors as you were growing up, you probably heard that winning wasn’t the [...]

It used to be that if you wanted to develop a high growth company you sprinted to raise capital first and build a business second. As a result VC’s sprung up like weeds. You raised as much as possible as quickly as possible – grew at warp speed and then hung on for the ride. [...]

Give an ear to what the successful founder turned VC, Naval Ravikant has to say about entrepreneurship and investing. Straight talk about what it takes to be successful and what an investor is really looking for when making the big decision. Thanks Gigaom for a great interview.

“You had me at hello…” So went the famous line from Zellweger to Cruise in ‘Jerry MaGuire’. “You had me at positioning…” Or not – is the reality with investors. Particularly early stage investors. Your company’s strap line and one paragraph descriptor is the most important weapon you’ll ever have. Get it right. If you [...]

Startup entrepreneurs need angel investors more than ever before. Not just for the advice and guidance that they can increasingly find online and at college – but for your money! Don’t get us wrong, your advice and guidance is really nice – but writing a cheque is even more important right now. The banks have [...]

The blur Group blog has just written a great article, mentioning Innovatrs, on ‘Start-ups Starving for Investment; A Western Crisis’. We quote: ‘The western world is still in crisis. Following the financial tsunami of 2008/9 the West faces another emergency. As the dust settles on the economic meltdown it is becoming clear that not only [...]

Fundraising for your startup in 2010 is going to be a challenge. Not as bad as 2009 – but not a lot better. Here are some tips to help you get through the maze: 10. Wear a hard hat. 9. Have at least $£100,000 in annual revenues or the best free model since, er Twitter. [...]

There are a ton of phony angel investors out there just waiting to waste your time. They’ll use the veneer of being an angel investor to try and win your business as an ‘introducer’ or worse. They’ll promise to help you raise money, make intro’s blah de blah in exchange for 5% of your company [...]

The last year has been tough for startups. Very tough. Investors are not investing and customers are hard to find. We all need cash – but where to find it: investors or customers? Is it chicken or egg? Unfortunately not. For nearly all startups the answer is simple - CUSTOMERS come first. Unless you need a [...]

We recently wrote a lengthy article on how to raise money for startups. The process of fundraising. But what about the when? 11 years ago I launched an incubator so we set about defining and developing a process for building a venture. We figured that it was hard enough building one business at a time – [...]

I’ve been reading a bunch of interesting articles on how investment dollars are flowing back to startups and on how to raise money. It got me thinking. I can remember when I was running my second startup, called CMI, which was a digital publishing company when digital meant floppy discs. We needed to raise money [...]

Raising money from angel investors or VC’s is a stressful and complicated process – particularly in this climate. It needs to be done at the right time and in the right way. Try and raise money too early or without the right tools or docs and you’re guaranteed to crash and burn. And raising money [...]

For all start-ups getting alternative financing has become increasingly important in these credit junked days. Banks are up their credit committee butts, investors gun shy and friends and family investors increasingly tapped out. So we plan to show you a series of alternatives. Here’s an off the wall starter for 10 – or is it [...]

A while ago I was told by one of my mentors that they key to any successful fundraising is finding, marketing to and closing ‘the lead’. It’s good advice. Just look at the maths. Leaders probably account for less than 1% of the population. That means the other 99% are followers. And followers follow a [...]

The Glasshouse event in London last night ‘Show Me the Money’ was well attended with some interesting VC’s speaking including London’s latest – PRO Partners. It seems that Spotify and Playfish are the VC’s favorite ventures right now – proving that they still hunt in packs/follow each other like sheep. They repeated that venture investments [...]

TechCrunch recently put out a list of the top 100 ‘networked’ venture capitalists – following some interesting research. They defined ‘networked’ by the number of co-investors that they had in deals and rated firms by the number of exits they had achieved. The top 10 lists most of the usual suspects. Which got me thinking [...]

I was spoilt. Two companies ago I was introduced to Bill Draper III – a legend in Silicon Valley and reputedly the West Coasts king of early stage venture capital. He invested in the company I ran at the time and sat on its board. He was a legend for a good reason – he [...]