About
I’m an entrepreneur, consultant, and startup mentor. I’ve been working across Europe, most notably in the Balkans, for several years. My background in the music industry led me to starting a series of tech businesses in the merchandise sector. I’ve bootstrapped three businesses. The first one (a record label) had a UK Top Ten hit. I sold the second one. And the third is still ongoing (albeit without my day-to-day involvement).
At the moment my main interests are my businesses, AI-side hustles, the future of cities, startup validation techniques, and building communities. Most of my current work is working with startups and startup programmes.
Some things that are true:
Most startups and new products fail. And the number one reason cited for that failure is “No Market Need”. In other words, most startups are spending vast amounts of time, money, and energy building things that have almost no chance of success.
I’ve made a lot of the mistakes myself, and have failed many times.
I use my experience and contacts to massively minimise the likelihood of failure for my clients.
The last accelerator programme I ran received an anonymously reported Net Promoter Score of 100.
Some things that I believe:
Most startup support is poor. Especially outside of world-leading tech clusters.
The focus is very often on supporting the startup, not the founder.
As a result, poor ideas are usually artificially kept alive, when the founder could have moved on to a better or different problem to solve.
Startups thrive under challenge, especially when applied from a position of experience and kindness.
I work in three main ways:
One on one mentoring with founders / innovators
Delivering workshops to help them identify a *real* problem to solve.
Design and delivery of accelerators and incubators.