CAMBRIDGE, UK - Last night I was at the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs (CUE) Business Creation Competition 'Grand Launch'. The CUE competition is celebrating 10 years and its winners have been funded over GBP 33 Million (not that it's about funding volumes - remember guys... it's all about sales! a piece on that later.).
The panel from the evening had a group of past winners including one I'm now sharing desk-space with in our new office (Emmanuel of
MagicSolver).
Shamus Husheer - CEO of Cambridge Temperature Concepts was the most interesting panellist and he had a few gems:
The later you decide to become an entrepreneur and begin a start-up, the more assets you have gathered in life. The risk becomes much higher - investors will suddenly expect you to have these assets on the line if theirs are too.
Shamus also quoted
Jack Lang of Judge Business School as always applying this filter to every idea. Does it meet an...
Global Sustainable Unmet Market Need
Every word there is important.
Global - Is the market big enough? It's got to scale big to be big money.
Sustainable - Is the market here for a while? Selling something that is temporary, kills itself, or doesn't add real value is not good.
Unmet - Is this a blue or red ocean? Are there competitors in this market, who have already met the product need?
Market - There has to be a market for this. That means people have to be willing to pay money in exchange for it it. Great idea, no money, no market.
Need - People have to need it. No point in a product that solves an need that people don't have.
(I'm going to write about needs and wants later - it's another of my hot topics at the moment.)
On a note behind Cambridge University Entrepreneurs, the evening was as expected students dressed in suits calling each other 'their colleague'. Ahhh wonderful pomp.
As I attended as an unregistered guest, at the last minute - dressed in jeans, rugby shirt, and fleece top - I still managed to circle the room and meet some fantastic people. I even managed to spill a glass of red wine down the back of the legs of one of the
Cambridge Angels, bonus.
Cambridge really does have a lot of business and technical and talent. Unlike anything I've every seen, there are lots of PhD, MBA, and Master students offering their abilities to get interesting project work both paid and unpaid.
-Robin.
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