Squirrel's Startup Notes

I meet regularly with interesting startups, chiefly in London, and offer them advice based on my experience in the startup world over the last fourteen years. I always say the advice is worth what they pay for it (which is nothing - the coffee is on me!) but they seem to keep coming back, so it must be useful for something. Recently I decided to keep notes on the startups I see and to follow up with them on how the advice turns out for them, and the results are below. Enjoy - and do email me to discuss any of the ideas below or to arrange a visit sometime soon.

2014

• Baskettt - 23 January 2014. Retail grocery. Learning from early customers, making founders full-time, developing sales skills.
• Dactic - 3 February 2014. Education and recruitment. Early customers, choosing business location, sole founder, too-early automation.
• Scriggler - 12 May 2014. Writers, content marketing. Getting repeatable revenue, pricing.
• CohesiveIO - 29 May 2014. High-tech web apps. Minimum viable product, learning from early customers, choosing business location.
• Frugl - 3 June 2014. Mobile app for events. Iterating to a business model, raising early funds, choosing development methods.
• Royal Flush - 9 June 2014. Clothing club. Validating business model, cofounder vs employee, low-tech customer development.
• Poq Studio - 12 June 2014. Apps for fashion brands. Scaling business model, franchising, internationalisation, pivoting.
• Saleservant - 20 June 2014. Fashion content marketing. Testing a pivot, learning from early customers, choosing development methods.
• Anonymous Data Startup - 24 June 2014. Volume data processing. Open source vs consultancy for customer development. Acquiring customers when you don't have a track record.
• Effektif - 6 August 2014. Customer development.
• Anonymous E-Commerce Startup - 14 August 2014. Attracting developers, building low-tech before scale.