How to turn Chickens into Pigs with Objectives and Key Results (OKR)
Discover 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
As 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
Innovate 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
The only failed experiment is one that you don’t learn from.
How to use your business model to find your perfect target market
If 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
Don’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
Validating 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
Only 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
You’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!
Can you calculate your annual profit using just internet searches?
If you want to get there, I wouldn’t start from here
The innovation startup road less travelled: What to do before you know what you’re doing
You are a question. What is the answer?
An 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
A 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
When 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
Scientific 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
If 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
Create 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
What 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
If 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?
It 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?
Before 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
How clarity, credibility and co-operation will get investors to listen to your startup idea and take you seriously.
3 JavaScript Tools for Collaborative Editing
A short discussion of 3 JavaScript frameworks that can be used for collaborative editing using Operational Transformations
Dynamic Server-Side Clustering for Large Datasets
Recent 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
Take a Node.js application designed to exercise Docker Swarm and run it in a multi-host Docker environment.
A Brief Introduction to Functional Programming
A brief introduction to Functional Programming. Start your journey towards easy to read, reliable code.
Javascript Garbage Collection
A 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
Use 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
Most 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
How to create a 4-node Raspberry Pi cluster, initialise it and load docker onto it.
Using Neo4j with Seneca: Part II
How 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?
My 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
Details 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?
Why I chose Seneca.js as the framework of choice for developing Minimum Viable Products in Node.js using microservices.
Microservices: Who needs them?
Discover 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.
It 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.