Entrepreneurs should ensure they have the right mix of people to push their business to new heights.
Start-ups are often one- or two-man bands. In the tech space, partnerships between people with great ideas and tech prowess聽are聽essential to getting a business off the ground.
However聽many companies fall when scaling up – or even at the start-up stage – as the founders struggle to ably commercialise their vision.
Nick Horrocks, a director at聽advisory firm GP Bullhound, is clear that firms should look to recruit experts in this area.
“Plenty of people that have ideas think that taking an idea and commercialising it means implementing it first, then commercialising it. Those are actually two very distinct skillsets,鈥� he explains.
鈥淲hen you have people who come up with brainy ideas you have to ask, are they able to implement those ideas and then are they able, from a business point of view, to commercialise them?鈥�
This is easier said than done, says Horrocks.
鈥淭here are a million and one routes to market and people mess up. They go through the wrong channels – for example, B2C rather than B2B – or they don鈥檛 partner with or recruit the right people.
鈥淭here鈥檚 an awful lot between the idea and its success that are the actions of the entrepreneur(s).鈥�
To avoid these mistakes, take advantage of the tech community that鈥檚 already there, he advises.
鈥淕o to events, meet people, pick their brains, speak to advisors and people who鈥檝e done it before. Nothing happens in isolation.鈥�
Horrocks calls this the 鈥榮oft infrastructure鈥�.
鈥淚t exists around places that are successful. It鈥檚 probably the same in Silicon Valley because people cluster together so there鈥檚 plenty of people to pick their brains,鈥� he says.
鈥淥ne coffee with someone who鈥檚 done something similar or knows the route to market or another contact is worth its weight in gold – worth a cup of coffee anyway!
鈥淵ou鈥檒l probably kiss a lot of frogs along the way but attend lots of events – they are set up to bring people like that together.鈥�