June 30th marks our fifth Startup Grind Edinburgh event. Our guest this month will be Michael Welch, CEO & Founder of Blackcircles.com.
Michael has won numerous awards over the years including Shell Livewire Entrepreneur of the year, HSBC Start-up Stars, Ernest & Young Young Entrepreneur of the year, BT Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year, just to mention a few.
It promises to be another insightful and inspiring event. If you have not yet reserved your ticket, kindly do so here.
As I reflect on the previous four events, I can’t help but smile when I think of how far Startup Grind Edinburgh has come in such a short space of time. After each of the four events, I have received emails and personal messages of thanks. The common thread is how they (the attendee) have been left feeling inspired and re-energised as they continue their own personal entrepreneurial journey.
Each of our guests has shared many pearls of wisdom. Some of the nuggets include:
Gareth Williams (Skyscanner, February 2014) with his brilliant one liner of “your mother uses Skyscanner!” and how frequency of use and stickiness is important for a business model.
Ed Molyneux (FreeAgent, March 2014) who shared why you should focus on solving problems that are painful, the more severe the pain the more attractive your solution will be!
Colin Hewitt (Float, April 2014) who suggested finding quiet time weekly to digest and reflect on your business to help prepare yourself for some of the inevitable challenges entrepreneurs face.
Lesley Eccles (FanDuel, May 2014) who gave their (the FanDuel co-founders) personal experience of recognising when you need to pivot and that rapidly testing your theories / ideas is important. Persevere until you find something that works.
Along the way I have personally had the pleasure of getting to know many of the attendees of Startup Grind Edinburgh and look forward to building on those friendships. Yes my dear friends, the start-up ecosystem is certainly alive and flourishing and I invite you to be a part of it in whatever way you can. Whether it is attending the TechMeetup or Informatic Ventures events or visiting CodeBase, TechCube, Alba Innovation Centre or eSpark and absorbing the start-up atmosphere.
Product Forge 2014 brought to you by Insight Arcade
If you prefer to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in or perhaps want to see if you are cut out for the roller coaster journey that is entrepreneurship, then you may be interested in attending the Product Forge event this weekend (6th June – 8th June 2014) at Assembly Roxy. The weekend event forms part of the overall Crossover Edinburgh event which begins with a conference on Thursday, 5th June at Holyrood Gait.
The Product Forge part of Crossover Edinburgh is a weekend long event of design, development and innovation. Attendees meet up on the Friday (6th) night and come up with ideas to develop over the weekend.
Attendees then vote for the top 10 ideas to prototype and validate, create teams and work on the prototypes and validation over Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday leading up to presentations and judging on Sunday evening.
The cost of the event is just £45 and includes your food and drink over the course of the weekend!
Further information is available here.
Immersive weekend events like Product Forge give you a small glimpse of what it is like to be a start-up. Everything from ideation, team selection & collaboration, product market fit & validation and of course, perfecting the pitch!
Here’s to the continued flourishing of our start-up ecosystem.