Startup4ten

Don't create a glass ceiling for your business! #entrepreneur #education #startup #scaleup #sme

Why Metacognition and Conscious Reasoning are the neglected skills in entrepreneurs. These skills have been scientifically proven to be the drivers behind our problem-solving abilities. Metacognition is often described as High-Level Thinking, or the ability to Think about Thinking, and it is critical in helping us to process and shape our decisions. It helps you to know what you know and understand what you don’t. It helps you to understand your successes and your failures, so you can make better decisions next time. Conscious Reasoning is the skill that helps us to analysis many competing elements in a logical way to find the TRUTH. Conscious Reasoning is a thoughtful process that helps to solve complex problems. It is the application of reason and logic to find the facts. It is critical that entrepreneurs are working on solving the right problem, and not the problem that unconscious thinking or bias says is the problem. You may think this is obvious but how many meetings have you attended that had multiple, differing opinions on the same topic. Who is right, who is part right, which bit…..Conflicting opinions create problems in strategy and direction and it is our metacognitive and conscious reasoning skills that allow us to filter through the BS to home in on the facts. When we have the facts, the odds of us developing a solution is much higher. When we do not have all the facts or the whole truth, then how do we look behind the opinions and data to ask the right questions that will fill in the gaps! This is metacognitive and conscious reasoning skills at play. They occur naturally in everyone, but at many different levels. However, they can also be learned, which is why they are referred to as the neglected skills. Who remembers a lesson at school, university, or work training, that was based on training people how to think? Consequently, the default position for us all is we apply the skill level that we have, without realising there is more in us. If we have natural high levels of metacognition and conscious reasoning skills, we can solve enough problems to keep moving forward as a business. However, if we have low levels and are poor and unstructured in analysing competing information, then our problem-solving is stifled. This is one of the reasons why 77% of businesses get stuck and why only 23% of invested businesses fulfil their potential. It is something for the investment community to think about 😊 But if you do not recognise a problem, you cannot fix it. If you do not understand a problem, you cannot solve it. This happens at multiple levels and so we go into a cycle where our thinking is stuck and businesses stall. It is all too predictable, which is why we have the consistency of data that we do. Rationally, if we want to improve on these odds, then we need to focus on developing the skills that can make the difference to an entrepreneurs performance, the neglected skills. #entrepreneur #education #skills #scaleup

Why "Business R&D" is just as important as "Product R&D". #SME #Startup #scaleup #entrepreneur #growth

I listened to the interview between Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb and Steven Bartlett again recently. There are so many things you can take from that conversation but one that made me smile was Brian Chesky's comment about time. He said people (entrepreneurs and investors) overestimate what can be achieved in a year and under estimate what can be achieved in ten. This is so true yet entrepreneurs are often surprised and frustrated at how little progress they have made in that first year or two of business. They also believe that everyone else is succeeding when they are not. I want to put this into a different context because it shows how unrealistic early stage expectations can be. If you went to university to study for an honours degree in any topic, it is a 4 year learning journey, 5 if you do a Masters. Yet people start a business from scratch, and then expect it to work quickly. The fact is that the vast majority of entrepreneurs have had little to no ground training that represents what the real business world will be like and reality comes as a shock. Being part of a 3 -6 month start-up program is not the same as 4-5 years of discovery on any topic, so why are we surprised when things do not go to plan. What the stats tell us is that 56% of new ventures fail within the first 5 years and only 23% of invested businesses at Seed stage, actually grow and scale post investment. These stats prove how hard the entrepreneurial journey is, because very few university courses will have a Degree pass mark of just 44% and an Honours pass rate as low as 23%. My advice to new ventures and young entrepreneurs is heed what Brian Chesky is saying. Think of this as a learning period as much as it is a new business and plan for a long tough journey. Understand that every successful business has had to overcome multiple challenges to get where they are now and while some of that is intuitive, a large part of entrepreneurial development is about having a process. You try things that you think might work and you adapt from what you learn if they don't. If you have some success you double down on it and then set about sorting the next set of challenges. Entrepreneurs need to be realistic on the short term expectations because it takes time and action to develop a winning strategy. We put time and money into developing a new product or MVP yet we expect the strategy and execution to work almost immediately! That is unrealistic at all levels. The most successful entrepreneurs that I know are the ones that have been able to stay in the game long enough to find the formula that works for them. It requires time and problem solving at an elevated level, dealing with many open ended challenges, but they found a way. What the 23% scale-up data also illustrates is that this ability to problem solve your way to success is a skill that not all entrepreneurs have and most entrepreneurial programs do not teach. But that is another topic for another time.

I listened to the interview between Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb and Steven Bartlett again recently. There are so many things you can take from that conversation but one that made me smile was Brian Chesky's comment about time. He said people (entrepreneurs and investors) overestimate what can be achieved in a year and under estimate what can be achieved in ten. This is so true yet entrepreneurs are often surprised and frustrated at how little progress they have made in that first year or two of business. They also believe that everyone else is succeeding when they are not. I want to put this into a different context because it shows how unrealistic early stage expectations can be. If you went to university to study for an honours degree in any topic, it is a 4 year learning journey, 5 if you do a Masters. Yet people start a business from scratch, and then expect it to work quickly. The fact is that the vast majority of entrepreneurs have had little to no ground training that represents what the real business world will be like and reality comes as a shock. Being part of a 3 -6 month start-up program is not the same as 4-5 years of discovery on any topic, so why are we surprised when things do not go to plan. What the stats tell us is that 56% of new ventures fail within the first 5 years and only 23% of invested businesses at Seed stage, actually grow and scale post investment. These stats prove how hard the entrepreneurial journey is, because very few university courses will have a Degree pass mark of just 44% and an Honours pass rate as low as 23%. My advice to new ventures and young entrepreneurs is heed what Brian Chesky is saying. Think of this as a learning period as much as it is a new business and plan for a long tough journey. Understand that every successful business has had to overcome multiple challenges to get where they are now and while some of that is intuitive, a large part of entrepreneurial development is about having a process. You try things that you think might work and you adapt from what you learn if they don't. If you have some success you double down on it and then set about sorting the next set of challenges. Entrepreneurs need to be realistic on the short term expectations because it takes time and action to develop a winning strategy. We put time and money into developing a new product or MVP yet we expect the strategy and execution to work almost immediately! That is unrealistic at all levels. The most successful entrepreneurs that I know are the ones that have been able to stay in the game long enough to find the formula that works for them. It requires time and problem solving at an elevated level, dealing with many open ended challenges, but they found a way. What the 23% scale-up data also illustrates is that this ability to problem solve your way to success is a skill that not all entrepreneurs have and most entrepreneurial programs do not teach. But that is another topic for another time.

Being able to grow and scale a new venture, from the ground up is very hard. It involves a blend of skills, decisions, resources and actions. Getting this blend right is a big challenge, which is why we have such low scale up rates even after investment has been received. Sourse Beauhurst If you are a young entrepreneur, this free on-line workshop on 16th January from the Startup4ten team will give you an insight into why that is. You will be given 3 basic challenges to do during the workshop that on the face of it are easy but when you put the challenges into a business context it is anything but. It is a bit of fun to start the new year but highlights a range of problems that are often unseen and can be the silent killers of progress. If you want to bring a couple of team members to join you in the challenges then they are also welcome as it will trigger useful debate within the team post workshop.

“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got” Henry Ford I recently referenced a report by Beauhurst about the fact that only I in 5 Seed invested businesses, scaled post investment. This data was backed up by investor sources, who verified the stats and the fact that 80% of investments made no return on capital. It is why Seed investment is so hard to come by, because picking the winners is so hard. I was recently at the Scottish EDGE finals watching a client pitch their business. I am pleased to say they were one of the big winners, but what I noticed was how few investors were in attendance. This is potentially the cream of young businesses emerging from within Scotland. Despite this many of these businesses will still struggle to find Seed investors non the less. This raises the question about our overall entrepreneurial education process, because if we are doing such a good job, in developing these entrepreneurs, then the scale up odds should be reversed. What would the wider investment, business and economic outcomes be, if 4 out of 5 businesses were growing instead of just 1 in 5? To make that happen something needs to change in the way we develop entrepreneurs. We need to begin the learning process earlier for a start, something that we are seeking to do more of in the future, with our partners EduSpark, Svitlo Education and our first education ambassador, Richard Human. But we also need to recognise that the current entrepreneurial education models are missing something. This is not my opinion; it is what the data is telling us. When you consistently have stats that are that consistent, that 4 out of 5 invested businesses still can’t make the jump, even after they get the investment they craved, then it tells you something is missing. We can either accept that and do something about it, or we can ignore it and see what happens in time, but just keep Henry Ford’s comments in mind. We have a lot of creative entrepreneurs, and investors do not generally put money into bad ideas, or teams, so the question we need to answer is why do 60% of Seed investments consistently stagnate, and 20% fail after investment? What are the challenges they cannot solve and why is that, when most invested businesses are also part of an Accelerator or Spin-Out community? It cannot all be down to a lack of “product market fit”. There are reasons why 1 in 5 invested businesses make it, and 4 out of 5 don’t, and the evidence suggests that it is entrepreneurial skills based. Who can adapt their thinking and delivery, based on the different challenges that they face. Logic dictates that if we have more Seed invested businesses achieving growth, the odds are we will have more scale-up businesses going on to the next level. But if we do not train more entrepreneurs on how to problem solve their way through the Seed phase, once the money comes in, then Henry Ford’s prediction will come true.

I was delighted to hear from clients Mohsin Laginaf and Alyssa Reid the Co-Founders of IO Fibrewater that they were one of the big winners at the Scottish EDGE awards ceremony last week. The funding they will receive, will help them introduce more customers to their award winning drink, as they prepare to launch their bottled water into Asda and other retailers. IO Fibrewater is a blend of science and nature and stimulates good gut health, simply by drinking their prebiotic water. Congratulations to you both, it is well deserved recognition for the work you have done to create an affordable product, with proven health benefits that everyone can enjoy.

Startup4ten® are delighted to welcome Richard Human to our coaching and mentoring network. Richard will take on an education, ambassador and CPD role for us, as we look to bring our entrepreneurial and business skills training into schools and classrooms. Richard has an MBA in Educational Leadership and is an Associate Member of the EMCC, the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. He has both UK and International education experience and is a former school Senior Leader. Our Inventive Step® program takes what we have learned as entrepreneurs and business leaders over decades and puts it into a framework that can be learned and used by students. The program is then facilitated by teachers who will be using our coaching IP and knowhow as the foundation and framework for the lessons. Richard is a gifted teacher and educator himself, and he understands both the school and class environment, and this will help schools to shape their delivery. He has also experienced first-hand, in our Pilot with Svitlo Education, how easy it is to apply our coaching IP into a class environment, without a prior background in business. What also marks the course as a valuable teaching asset, is the high level of engagement and interactive learning it creates with students. Richard’s experience both with the program itself and his own background in education, make him an ideal ambassador for us and we look forward to working with him and the schools he will be supporting, alongside our platform partner EduSpark. There is a consensus among many educators that the current system needs to change. The problem is what do you change and how do you implement this, when education is structured in the current way. However, every long journey starts with a single first step and by giving schools access to our coaching IP, we are giving them the means to take that step. They do not need to invent anything new, they just need to implement and use what we have built and we know works. The entrepreneurial environment and business world will affect every single student on the planet, no matter the geography, and in a fast-changing job market, pupils will need to be adaptable. When you start to develop entrepreneurial and business skills it cascades, and other life skills follow. It is one of the reasons why this type of learning is so powerful, because entrepreneurial thinking drives problem-solving, strategic, and creative thinking, teamwork, empathy, collaboration, logic, analytics, numeracy, to name a few. It also develops both mental resilience and confidence as pupils begin to challenge themselves, to learn, stumble and achieve, outside of their comfort zone. Welcome Richard to the team.  #educación #entrepreneurship #business #school #skillsdevelopment

Some new data on the investment world from Beauhurst hit my inbox last week and as always it is interesting reading. As expected, most deal sectors are down in both numbers and values, apart from the Growth and Venture stages, which is not a good sign for the wider economy. A sobering figure for entrepreneurs looking for early stage investment is the 29% drop in Seed investment on the same time last year. It is the chicken and egg situation where we need more businesses in the venture and growth phase, but how do they get there if the early Seed investor appetite is not there to help you. Nationally we are creating an enormous amount of business opportunities with significant growth potential throughout the start-up ecosystems. However, if they cannot find the right investors, then how do they turn that intellectual capital and knowhow into value! However, I can understand investor reticence in early stage ventures when only 1 in 5 businesses that take on external investment, deliver on their potential. Too often their money is stuck in businesses that are not performing and for an investor a stuck investment can be worse than a failed investment where EIS and SEIS tax relief will kick in. However, this is where there is a big opportunity for the investment community because if we can get more of these stuck businesses moving in an upward direction, then that that creates different options. So how do we do this? Ventures get stuck for lots of different reasons but most problems can be solved if you really understand what the problem is. A lack of "product market fit" may apply to some businesses and that is a hard one to get past, but this will not be the reason why 80% of invested businesses do not progress as expected. We recently started work with a young, award winning business, that in my view has a huge amount of potential. However, by their own admission they were struggling on how to move it forward and they asked us to help. What we had to explain to them was that to move forward you need to know what is holding you back. You need a method of looking at the business, your opportunity and your landscape to give you those answers. This is not always easy, because everyone has their own ideas and opinions, so you need a robust process that allows you to do this logically and intentionally. When you properly understand your problems and challenges then smart people can usually start fixing things, which is what is happening with this business. This is where the elevated entrepreneurial thinking happens, not specifically in the idea and opportunity segment but across the whole gambit of idea, opportunity, strategy and execution. Many investors focus on the data for answers but the answer to problems is not in the data. The data tells you what your current outcomes are, not what your problems are, or how you will fix them and getting to these answers is both a process and a journey of discovery. https://lnkd.in/eDzsz3Qk