How to turn Chickens into Pigs with Objectives and Key Results (OKR)
January 01, 2022Discover how Ojbectives and Key Results can help you build ambitious businesses with empowered teams.
Blog
How to create an effective developer team on a start up budget
August 01, 2021As a start up you can’t afford experienced engineers so you hire recent graduates. Here are some tips for creating an effective development team from a dispa...
Are you ready for Innovate UK Smart Grant Funding? Find out here
July 01, 2021Innovate UK Smart Grants can give a real boost to start-ups, but with great power comes great responsibility. Are you properly prepared for your application ...
An attempt to build a successful consultancy from the wreckage of a failed start-up: Part 1
June 01, 2021The only failed experiment is one that you don’t learn from.
How to use your business model to find your perfect target market
May 01, 2021If you’re struggling to identify a target market for your new product or service that could be a warning that something important is missing from your busine...
Why you always have competitors, and how to assess them effectively
April 01, 2021Don’t fool yourself into thinking you have no competition. Find out who they are and learn from them how to make yourself stronger.
Why validating business customers is a challenge, and how to effectively master it
February 01, 2021Validating your start-up idea with business customers presents more challenges you might imagine. Find out how to identify and interview your key stakeholders.
Why and how to speak to potential customers to validate your idea
January 01, 2021Only your customers have the answers you need. The sooner you can speak to them, the better it will be. This post shows you why and how.
Will the world love your new idea? Here’s a way to find out
December 01, 2020You’ve had an idea and identified your niche. Now find out what your potential customers think by creating a landing page.
It’s a wrap!
November 01, 2020Can you calculate your annual profit using just internet searches?
If you want to get there, I wouldn’t start from here
October 01, 2020The innovation startup road less travelled: What to do before you know what you’re doing
You are a question. What is the answer?
September 01, 2020An innovative startup is the embodiment of a question. Do you know what question your startup is asking?
6-step guide to preparing a solid technical project - a founders checklist
August 01, 2020A non-technical founders guide to the accounts and artifacts you’ll have to create to bring your technical startup to life.
Walk a mile in your customers’ shoes
July 01, 2020When you’re trying to establish problem-solution fit it’s really important to think like a customer, not a product owner
Why writing things down can help you achieve your goals
June 01, 2020Scientific studies have shown that simply writing down your goals and dreams makes it significantly more likely that you will achieve them. And that’s not all.
Why testing business ideas is a powerful way of transforming uncertainty into knowledge
May 01, 2020If you’re not sure then test to find out. If you’re sure then test to show how right you are. You know what? Just test!
Service Design - How to use it as the Blueprint for Success
April 01, 2020Create a service design blueprint, understand your process and discover your unique value
Why a prototype is more helpful when validating a start-up than an MVP
March 01, 2020What you can and can’t expect from a product/service prototype, and why they are important
How to act like a child and unlock the hidden value of your business
February 03, 2020If your assumptions are too abstract you can’t test them. Use the Toyota ‘5-Whys’ strategy to make them digestible.
Why is the Value Proposition Statement useful?
December 01, 2019It can seem limiting, almost simplistic, but the Value Proposition Statement can be very useful in concentrating the mind and achieving clarity.
What is the Value Proposition for?
November 01, 2019Before we can build a solution we need to understand the problem. Then we can test how well our solution fits the problem.
How to make a potential investor see you are worth listening to
July 31, 2019How clarity, credibility and co-operation will get investors to listen to your startup idea and take you seriously.
3 JavaScript Tools for Collaborative Editing
October 09, 2018A short discussion of 3 JavaScript frameworks that can be used for collaborative editing using Operational Transformations
Dynamic Server-Side Clustering for Large Datasets
January 30, 2018Recent work for a startup leads to a method for compressing large amounts of location data (100K+ locations) server-side in order to reduce latency and incre...
Investigating Docker Swarm
April 26, 2017Take a Node.js application designed to exercise Docker Swarm and run it in a multi-host Docker environment.
A Brief Introduction to Functional Programming
February 13, 2017A brief introduction to Functional Programming. Start your journey towards easy to read, reliable code.
Javascript Garbage Collection
September 06, 2016A brief introduction to JavaScript garbage collection. All you need to know to have a better understanding of what’s happening under the covers.
HypriotOS: Get Swarm working on a Raspberry Pi Cluster
August 23, 2016Use HypriotOS to run Docker Swarm on your Raspberry Pi cluster. See how to resolve networking issues and update to the latest version of Docker.
Docker Swarm: 10 Stupid Questions
August 16, 2016Most articles about Docker Swarm assume you already know what it is and what it’s for. This is for those of you who are interested but unsure.
Building a 4-node Raspberry Pi Cluster
August 09, 2016How to create a 4-node Raspberry Pi cluster, initialise it and load docker onto it.
Using Neo4j with Seneca: Part II
August 02, 2016How to use the Neo4j Store plugin I built for the Seneca microservices framework. An example of use with the User plugin.
What is ‘Lean’ software development?
July 29, 2016My definition of what ‘lean’ and ‘agile’ software development actually is and how it contributes to a lean operations strategy.
Using Neo4j with Seneca: Part I
July 12, 2016Details of the store plugin I built to enable the Seneca microservices framework to use Neo4j, the graph database, as a persistence engine.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
July 05, 2016Why I chose Seneca.js as the framework of choice for developing Minimum Viable Products in Node.js using microservices.
Microservices: Who needs them?
June 28, 2016Discover the pros and cons of using Microservices in order to make an informed decision about their use. Be able to argue your case and persuade others.
You don’t need a Minimum Viable Product. Yet.
June 21, 2016It is tempting to think that all a startup needs is a minimum viable product to get going. You need to think about some other important questions first.