BUSS1 Revision Quiz - Sources of Finance for a Startup
Here is an updated ten-question revision quiz on sources of finance for a startup. Each time the quiz loads you get 10 questions from the bank of BUSS1 questions available for this topic.
Quiz - Sources of Finance for a Startup
Innovative ice breakers to fill a market gap
A great news item from The Guardian here - students at Newcastle University have used personal observation and knowledge of the market to identify a business opportunity, and their expertise as PhD students to develop the product that the market needs. First they spotted the gap in the market - how to help shy people, spending a lonely evening in a bar, to chat up someone they like the look of. Then they put their minds to the task of finding a technological solution, and came up with smart beermats, which sense the presence of desirable nearby customers and project a selection of light messages – like a news ticker or teleprompter – across tables or bars.
The messages range from “Make mine a pint” to “Is your dad a thief? Because he stole the stars and put them in your eyes.” At present you cannot choose which message to send - they appear from a random sequence, which I cannot help feeling might limit their usefulness a little - however, the plan is to develop them further so that they can deliver ‘bespoke messages’ in future, which may be a good thing! The students say that the focus of their work is “to use technology to encourage interaction and relationships. We want these very public text messages to break the ice and make people laugh.”
The prototypes will be revealed at the university’s Culture Lab Jam 45 showcasing of student ideas. This feels like an idea that should be next seen on Dragons’ Den…..
Video case study - enterprise at the sharp end
Market trading. You’ve seen it on various tasks on The Apprentice. And the value of sales at the UK’s 1,000+ outdoor markets is estimated at over £3.6bn. So perhaps it is not surprise that increasing numbers of people are looking to make their first step into enterprise by setting up a stall in a local market. The problem is that running a viable market stall is no easy task. The typical customer at a local market is feeling the pinch and you also need to develop some sharp entrepreneurial skills to make the stall a success.
This excellent three minute video from Jenny Hill of BBC Breakfast takes us behind the scenes at a market in the Midlands to meet some of the experienced traders. Can a new training scheme help budding entrepreneurs make their fledgling businesses a success?
Teen-Trepreneur: The board game for business studies
The girls in the office have just reminded me that we only have about 50 copies of Teen-Trepreneur, the superb board game for business students, left in stock. We’ll be getting some more after Christmas, but if you fancy getting one (or more) as the departmental Christmas pressie, then you’ll need to move quickly!
In Teen-Trepreneur students choose to run one of six businesses in the game and are given the challenge of leading it to business success! Each business is different in terms of its opening value and start-up capital; each entrepreneur has a personality and business background that will also affect the chances of success.
The objective for students is to be the first to achieve £5,000 profit. They’ll only do that if they take risks and manage sales and costs effectively. Students can run a luxurious hotel or an everyday market stall. They can even invest in the businesses run by other players! So let the entrepreneurial challenge begin.
Teen-Trepreneur costs £25 (+VAT) per box and can be ordered online here or by using this printable form: TeenTrepreneur.pdf
EntrepreneurLIVE! 2010 - Follow Up With Our Speakers
We had a fantastic time hosting our first EntrepreneurLIVE event at London Westfield and Lowry Salford Quays this week. We were packed out at Manchester and at Westfield we had to use an overflow screen, such was the demand for places to listen to our great speaker line-up.
We’ve had several requests to provide follow-up contact details for the entrepreneurs speakers at the event. Probably the best way to do this is via Twitter - all our guests are active and supportive of contacts via Twitter, so here are their details!
Shaa Wasmund
Adam King
Rachel Bridge
Emma Walker
Grillstream (Jeff Moore)
Magic Whiteboard (Neil Westwood)
King & Allen - the Video
Adam King - one half of the terrific entrepreneurial duo King & Allen - delivered three fantastic presentations at our EntrepreneurLive 2010 events at Westfield and Salford Quays this week. And here is a short Reuters video which features Adam himself explaining the King & Allen business model…
read more...»An Awfully Good start up story
Stories about chocolate always go down well. Peter Day interviewed a Singapore lawyer-turned-business-woman whose idea to open a chocolate cake shop has found success. Her mission was to find “a simple dark chocolate cake that I can just eat whenever I want to and not feel sick.” - which seems perfectly reasonable to me, but she couldn’t find the right product, so decided to make it herself.
read more...»Start-ups - a surge in new businesses post recession
Some interesting stats here which point to a surge in entrepreneurial activity in the UK as the economy slowly emerges from recession.
204,361 new businesses opened in the first half of 2010 according to The Yoodoo Green Shoots of Recovery Report. That is an impressive number and is some 50% higher than the first half of 2008 when the credit crunch and resulting recession really started to bite.
The longer-term picture of start-up growth is also encouraging. According to Companies House, the total number of firms in the UK has increased by 41% in the last five years. The number of small business entrepreneurs in the UK has risen by 117% in the same period. Many of the new start-ups are the result of changed circumstances - e.g. where people find themselves unemployed.
There is also evidence that start-ups are becoming more resilient to weak economic conditions. Perhaps start-ups are planning their business model more effectively? Perhaps they are structuring their businesses more flexibly and efficiently? According to a comment from the Yoodoo surbey:
““The old adage that the majority of new businesses go bankrupt in their first year of trading is simply no longer true. The report confirms that the recession has created a new generation of kitchen table entrepreneurs who are setting up companies based on leaner business models, enabling them to adapt to realities of the new economy.”
Sectors of the Economy - Online is Worth £100bn
Britain is turning into a nation of online shopkeepers and shoppers - according to the first major analysis of the online economy in a survey commissioned by Google. This brief video by the excellent Rory Cellan-Jones highlights the growth of one online business - UK Tights - as a good example of the entrepreneurial spirit which is driving growth by so many UK firms. The Google study suggests that the UK’s online industries now contribute more to the economy than either the construction industry or transport. The researchers also found that the country’s internet economy employs a quarter of a million people.
Hilary Devey - Profile of an Inspirational Entrepreneur
A fantastic profile of Hilary Devey in the Guardian today. I highly recommend you read it - and print it out for your students. It would be terrific to see if we can persuade Hilary to speak at a tutor2u teacher or student day - she really is an inspiration. I particularly love her comments about investment bankers - grey suits without any personality or drive (a view totally vindicated by the many hours I had to spend in their company in my former life).
Will Chase (Tyrrells) on The Bottom Line
Essential listening for all serious business students and teachers. This week’s The Bottom Line features one of my favourite entrepreneurs - Will Chase.
In this week’s programme, Evan and his panel of guests discuss the importance of raw materials - and how the price of commodities affects their companies. The panel also discusses emotion. Evan asks his guests how ‘touchy feely’ they are, as they consider whether business is a place for emotion and sentimentality.
Evan is joined in the studio by William Chase, farmer and entrepreneur; Miles Roberts, chief executive of FTSE250 packaging company DS Smith; Colin Melvin, chief executive of Hermes Equity Ownership Services.
Listen to The Bottom Line here
Will King on how to grow a business
The New Business website has this excellent interview with Will King in which he reflects on some of the lessons from growing his King of Shaves business. Will is a good friend of Tutor2u and his fantastic enthusiasm for business and breaking the stranglehold of the corporate giants in the market always makes for a great case study for students. Here is the interview and here is a link to a SMARTA video.
Start-up businesses all the rage
An interesting short BBC article that reports that the number of new businesses set up in the UK during the first six months of 2010 was the highest amount in more than a decade. This was a 51% rise on the first six months of 2008, when the UK first went into recession.
read more...»How to start a toy shop
Here’s a new resource which you might find helpful to support a lesson activity on starting a business. Ask your students what factors they would need to consider when opening up a new toy shop. What personal characteristics would they need to be successful? How would they handle the competition? Where would they source merchandise from? What would be a good location? How important is also running a website alongside the shop?
As a teacher, the answers to these and many other questions are contained in this excellent start-up guide from Smarta. There’s a good video interview on the day in the life of a toy shop owner too.
Insights from an Entrepreneur - Laura Tenison (JoJo Maman Bebe)
Laura Tenison has joined us at tutor2u teacher conferences twice in recent years and she really is an inspiration. To meet Laura and to listen about her amazing story of building JoJo Maman Bebe is highly recommended if you get the chance. In the meantime, here is a terrific video interview with Laura produced by Smarta…
read more...»Insights from an Entrepreneur - Fraser Doherty (SuperJam)
A terrific interview with Fraser Doherty here. Fraser has become well known not just for his superb Superjam product, but also for his community activities (the tea parties being one example) and his enthusiasm for meeting teachers and students as a guest visitor to schools. The video is well worth showing as part of AQA (GCSE Unit 1 & BUSS1) and Edexcel (GCSE Unit 1).
read more...»Insights from an Entrepreneur - Will King (CEO King of Shaves)
A great video interview here from Smarta - this time with a good friend of tutor2u - Will King (CEO of King of Shaves). You may have heard Will give a superb presentation at tutor2u’s Economics teacher conference in 2009. King of Shaves is a terrific growth story and Will has quickly become one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs in the UK. The video is broken up into several sections making it ideal material for units like AQA BUSS1 and Edexcel GCSE Unit 1. Business studies gold dust!
read more...»My Visit to Smarta.com
Something a little different for me today. A chance to visit the team behind smarta.com - a terrific online resource for business teachers and students, which is actually designed to support entrepreneurs and small businesses.
read more...»Business structure in the UK - the rise of micro companies
Here’s a term that ought to find itself into the next editions of the traditional business studies textbooks - micro-companies. Of course, it won’t (maybe in 2020) but it should. Because in the last five years there has been an increase of over 250,000 in their number in Britain.
read more...»The End of “Make Your Mark with a Tenner”? Perhaps Not!
A popular student enterprise competition may have fallen victim to the government spending cuts. Enterprise UK, which overseas Global Enterprise Week, amongst other enterprise activities, has decided to ditch the Make Your Mark with a Tenner competition. More details here.
A broader debate is now emerging about the nature and role of enterprise education in the UK. Dragon Peter Jones has some pretty harsh and cutting things to say in the Telegraph
But is Tenner really dead? Has its demise been exaggerated? Oli Barrett contacted tutor2u today to explain that, although Enterprise UK has has to make cuts, and one of the changes being made is the winding down of the ‘Make Your Mark’ campaign, he is pleased to say that there is (currently) every desire to continue with Make Your Mark with a Tenner. Fingers crossed!
100 topical examples of business innovation
If you ever need to point students to some real-life examples of technological innovation in action, use this new list produced by the Guardian. Some great case studies here of how technology can be used to identify new value-added services for consumers & businesses, as well as challenge the existing business models of market leaders.
The underlying theme seems to be that technology is enabling these businesses to overcome barriers to entry in a market and quickly become quite disruptive to the established operators. Not all of these businesses will survive and thrive, but some (e.g. Spotify) are already household names and others may soon achieve that status.
Insights into the Ice Cream Market
A quick heads up about an upcoming radio programme on BBC Radio 4. The Food Programme at 12.30 pm on Sunday 12 September 2010 investigates the rapid growth of the premium ice cream market in the UK…
read more...»Meeting the entrepreneur behind Magic Whiteboard
I spoke at a conference on using social media in London last week and got the chance to see Neil Westwood, the entrepreneur behind Magic Whiteboard. Neil and his wife Laura were successful in gaining £100k of investment from Theo & Deborah, and they have a great story to tell about how the business has grown rapidly following the investment by the Dragons…
read more...»Why we should encourage our students to start a business at university
The Year 13s of summer 2010 are long gone (well - most of them). So what were your final words to them as they picked up their A Level results or said farewell at the Sixth Form prom? Perhaps it should have been “enjoy Uni, and make sure you start that business there…”
read more...»The Social Network - the Facebook Business Story
Coming to cinemas later this year - The Social Network - tells the story of Facebook and the challenges faced by Mark Zuckerberg along the way.
The trailer below gives you some idea about the style of the film. Looks like it could be helpful for teaching protection of intellectual property at the very least!
read more...»The most successful Dragons’ Den pitch so far?
There have been several notable moments in Dragons’ Den over the years, many of which have caught the eye of Business students and teachers. This one is exciting simply because of the amount of financial interest it has generated….
read more...»Lesson Worksheet - Enterprise & Entrepreneurs
This new lesson worksheet allows students to test their understanding of the role of the entrepreneur.
Download lesson worksheet on enterprise & entrepreneurs
Essential business reading for the summer!
Rachel Bridge (Enterprise Editor of the Sunday Times) has long been regarded as one of the UK’s best writers on business & enterprise. Her weekly columns (now sadly hidden behind Rupert’s paywall) provide detailed and realistic insights into the challenges and frustrations, as well as the upsides, of starting and growing a business.
However, Rachel’s new book - How to make a Million Before Lunch - has really raised the bar in terms of providing a blueprint for budding entrepreneurs. It is perhaps the most insightful and useful book yet written on how to start and build a business. It should be compulsory reading not only for entrepreneurs, but also for everyone concerned with teaching and studying business startups.
read more...»Entrepreneurs LIVE! 2010 - THE Enterprise Event for Students in 2010
I’m delighted to announce the initial details of our student enrichment event for Autumn 2010 - Entrepreneurs LIVE! 2010.
The event is being held at two of our favourite venues:
London Westfield (Vue Cinema) - Monday 15 November 2010
Salford Lowry Mall (Vue Cinema) - Ruesday 16 November 2010
Entrepreneurs LIVE! 2010 will be a fantastic student enrichment day for students taking part in Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010. It will also be invaluable for ALL BUSINESS STUDENTS who need to develop their underdstanding of how successful businesses are started and grown. The programme will provide your students with the insights, ideas and inspirations from some of the UK’s top entrepreneurs…and also give them the chance to compete for spot prizes by taking our business challenge quizzes and pitching business ideas to the audience.
I’m delighted that two of our speakers (for both London and Manchester) have already been confirmed….
read more...»New BBC Resource: Start Up Stories
This looks really promising. On 28 June 2010, the BBC website is launching a new video resource named Start Up Stories - interviews with ten successful entrepreneurs describing their experiences of setting up in business. Includes several US-based and online businesses too - which makes a welcome alternative.
