This Wednesday we had the pleasure of listening to the sage (don’t let that youthful exterior fool you) advice of one of London’s most successful fundraisers and logisticians, Tom Allason. Tom is founder and CEO of Shutl, a web service that connects retailers with local same-day courier companies, enabling the rapid delivery of online purchases in as little as 90 minutes. Before Shutl, Tom was also founder and CEO of eCourier, the online courier company whose purple vans are instantly recognisable around London.
It seems to be that an entrepreneur will dedicate her/his life to continuously improving upon the previous model, never resting on their laurels for long enough to get cold feet. From his own progression through the rocky heights of several successful start-ups Tom states that there are many ways and means to ensure that each new venture need not be exposed to the same potential pitfalls time and again. Here is a brief, but hopefully not too reductive, pieces of advice:
- – Go as far as you can on your own buck to keep larger control and therefore, percentage share. Many start-ups loose their sheen to the founder when they begin to loose a sense of ownership.
– Who you connect to and surround yourself with is as important as how good your product/service is. Consider who within the investment landscape would be in line with your ideas and target them from the beginning. Ask people you admire to be part of your advisory board. There are many experienced people out there who are very willing to act in an advisory capacity to younger counterparts. Not only can they provide an excellent source of critique for ideas but they will be able to connect you to others within their network that can help.
– Get your product/service out there as much as possible in the early stages to help attract further investment.
– Invest time and effort in the details of the termsheet when going for venture capital funds. If you’d like to learn more about this very important bit of paper we run a workshop as part of this series – because we’re good like that!
Many thanks to Tom who was, as always, a constant source of inspiration.
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