OK, so you have a great idea. It’s happens to us all at some point or other.
Sometimes they might even make a good business case.
Traditionally, getting even the most basic idea off the ground can be relatively expensive. However, in the digital environment, it should be relatively cheap to get your idea off the ground. It likely that you won’t need an expensive office, cars, stock or God forbid, other staff.
Digital startups should be cheap until they go ‘live’ and start trying to acquire users. In the US, there is an atmosphere of throwing enough mud until something sticks. Investors and mentors are happy to put a small amount of cash into a large number of startups, knowing that one of them will make it big and pay out, covering the rest. So, why isn’t this the case in the UK?
I recently listened to a talk by nReduce founders Joe Mellin and Josh Schwartzman in Manchester. They were talking about ehir nReduce site and mentioned that US investors were scouring the UK for opportunities and I just wondered why UK investors aren’t scouring the UK for opportunities.
I have an idea. It’s nothing revolutionary and I’m not being all secretive about it; it’s a virtual project manager application for Web designers / developers. However, I need to get it to a demonstrable state and that means creating some basic HTML prototypes and a simple proof-of-concept to go with the paper wireframes. The cost? Well £10k should cover it.
However, where the heck do you take this? In the UK, most traditional lenders want 100% guarantees, usually personally guaranteed Director loans or loans against assets. In the UK, we simply don’t appear to have lenders who get the startup thing. This is a real shame. Do we really need to go to the US? Well, let’s have a look at what’s happening in my town, Manchester. There are plenty of startup groups and activities such as the Bootstrap Business Club Show & Tell Night at Madlab, Techcelerate on Portland Street and more media (as opposed to purely tech) focused events like mediathursday, Northern Digital and Northern Soho
