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Business and not governments will provide the solutions to solve the climate change problem.
Climate KIC
As Irish partner of Climate-KIC, Europe’s leading cleantech programme, we run an IDEAS competition (or pre-accelerator) called Climate Launchpad.
Climate Launchpad
ClimateLaunchpad is Europe’s largest climate change business idea competition. It aims to unlock Europe’s cleantech potential and accelerate innovations that address climate change. To be able to do that, it must find Europe’s best sustainability ideas. This competition creates a stage for those ideas.
The programme
In 2015, 800 ideas spanning 28 European countries were put through the ClimateLaunchpad programme. The programme consists of a 2-day boot-camp followed by 6 mentoring sessions to develop an idea towards reality.
The class of 2015
From Ireland, 8 teams participated in ClimateLaunchpad 2015. They included Agri Grow Lights; Amarna Energy Solutions Limited; Boltz Secret Seeds; Climate Friendly Design; Marker Biofuel; Smartearth; Unibloc; and WasteNOT. Of these eight, three were chosen to represent Ireland at the European Finals [Agri-Grow Lights, Boltz Secret Seeds and WasteNot], which were held in Amsterdam, September 2015. WasteNot managed to get to the last 20.
Become part of the class of 2016
Building on our ClimateLaunchpad Ireland 2015 success, we will start our next programme in early 2016, giving you access to the largest accelerator in the world, covering 28 European countries. The final will take place in October in Tallin, Estiona. This year, we want to win.
If you have an idea
If you have an idea, or are an early stage start up that has climate impact (and most start ups should ), we would like to talk to you. This could mean that you are an early start-up, SME, researcher, student, public organisation, consultancy, engineering company or a combination of these. It does not need to be high tech, but it does need to have a positive impact on the climate. Anything goes.
Register now
To register your interest please e-mail ron.immink@sustainablenation.ie and we will be in touch by return. We hope to start our first programme in early February.
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Let’s face it, corporate jobs have a lot to offer. There’s job security, the promise of internal promotion and not to mention the robust benefits. And while many find that holding down a corporate job has it’s advantages, others opt to leave a cushy corporate for the uncertainty of the startup high.
Others may decide to leave their corporate jobs in order to join a startup. Those who do typically have many reasons for doing so but in general, many do so in pursuit of the same goals. Such goals may include the desire to fully utilize all of their talents completely, the opportunity to enter a new field and develop effective leadership skills, or the chance to potentially greatly increase their personal net worth.
A career shift of any kind can be the ideal way for any person to explore their previously underused talents. For instance, they can bring their expertise to the table and offer tips for SaaS companies and startups. Someone who truly loves to cook may want to join a startup that is centered around providing people with access to high quality meals.
A business person who likes to use technology such as a conference call may want to work with a new company that is built around providing their customers with access to such networks. The ideal fit between a startup and a person can truly help that person be happy both at work and during their leisure time. Many startups allow their employees and top executives more freedom to pursue goals in nontraditional ways than are often found in corporate culture. This kind of freedom can be highly appealing to those who may be tiring of corporate routines.
Another aspect of entering a startup at the ground floor that many potential employees find quite exciting is looking at an old field from a new angle. Someone at a standard corporation may feel constrained by pre-existing procedures or that workplace relationships have gone stale. They may also feel that they have hit a career plateau with their old company and may not be considered for important promotions anymore.
Joining a startup can help them shake off any preconceptions that others may have of their work as well help provide the employee with a new shot at promotion and new responsibilities that are suited for their talents, background and prior training. A fresh start can be highly appealing even when it means the employee may need to change jobs or relocate somewhere else.
Leaving a pleasant corporate job can also mean the chance to earn more money. Many companies may not offer the kind of compensation that an employee would prefer. While a startup poses certain risks that may not do well in the long run, those who have worked for a long time in the standard corporate world may have been able to build up a significant nest egg that enables them to easily weather any potential downturns in the new startups including potential layoffs. The new company may offer them significantly better compensation including a higher overall salary, a finer benefits package and the chance to earn even more money should the company eventually plan to go public.
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Looking for effective ways to pay bills on time, improve your cash flow, and fund your business’ growth?
With banks tightening the extension of credit for small businesses these days, several financing options seem to be unviable.
In such a situation, invoice factoring may be the right choice for your business. It is being regarded one of the most genuine alternatives to conventional bank funding option by several businesses.
Plus, it has a number of benefits.
Invoice factoring lets you stabilize your cash flow by converting outstanding invoices due in 30, 60 or even 90 days into immediate working capital.
Still not sure if invoice factoring is a trustworthy means of business financing?
In that case, here are five prominent benefits of invoice factoring that will help you understand why it may be right for you.
1. More Time to Focus on Business-Building Strategies
Are late payments from your clients causing you a lot of trouble?
Invoice factoring can be your savior.
The invoice financier will look after your sales ledger, freeing up your time to manage your business. This implies that you won’t have to wait for customers’ payments so that you can make yours. With invoice factoring, you can pay bills, meet payroll, and remit taxes on time without worrying about late fees or damaged credit. Moreover, the invoice financiers will also take care of the excessive paperwork.
This way you’ll get ample amount of time to focus on other business-building endeavors such as sales, marketing, and client development. Further, you can plan about taking calculated financial risks as you’ll be able to figure out the exact amount of money that will hit your account well in time.
2. Quick Access to Money and Living a Debt-Free Life
Invoice factoring makes for an appealing means of financing because it is one of the quickest and easiest processes for acquiring funds. The initial setup averages 5-10 days from receipt of the factoring application and supporting documentation. Funds on approved invoices are provided to businesses within 24-48 hours in most cases.
Comparatively, banks take a lot longer to approve loans.
Moreover, as invoice factoring is not a loan, it doesn’t add to the liabilities on your balance sheet. This implies no monthly loan payments, and a clear balance sheet.
3. Receiving Payments on Time
The invoice financier will credit check potential customers, and this will enable your business to trade with better quality clients, eventually resulting in receiving payments on time. Moreover, the financier can help you negotiate better terms with your suppliers.
4. Choose Invoices as per Your Convenience
Long term contracts, minimums, or maximums – forget these concerns with invoice factoring. You can pick and choose invoices that you want to factor without having to worry about bizarre terms and conditions.
Also, the factoring fee is quite reasonable. The cost of factoring invoices has declined drastically over the years with advances of up to 95% of the invoice value available, and fees as low as 1.5% over base rate. The fees vary by industry, volume and number of invoices, advance rates, customer creditworthiness, and the time the customers take to pay.
Additionally, factoring companies don’t demand you to spend your funds in a specific manner, which is why you can buy equipment or assets the way you intend to.
5. Strong Financials Not a Requisite
If your business has hit a few bumps in the road and you’re worried that you won’t qualify for factoring services, keep your qualms aside.
You don’t need great credit, years of experience in business, or a long strong financial history to qualify for factoring services. The factoring company looks at the strength of your customers paying on the invoices, instead of focusing only on your credit score.
Moreover, unlike traditional bank loans, factoring doesn’t require you to risk your home or other property as collateral. Factoring companies mainly focus on the credit strength of your customers.
If you’re looking for services related to invoice factoring in San Diego, you can consider opting for Invoice Factoring San Diego.
Conclusion
Owing to the many benefits of invoice factoring, several companies are using this means to fund their businesses and increase profits. If structured thoughtfully, you can use factoring to boost your bottom line. There’s so much to it, from taking advantage of early payment discounts, and negotiating bulk discounts from suppliers, to increasing inventory for large orders. Moreover, applying for bank loans can be a real hassle. The aforementioned benefits make it clear that invoice factoring options are more flexible and less expensive than ever before and procuring cash is quicker through it. Not to forget, choosing this funding method will also go a long way in building a healthy relationship with your client.
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So you have prepared your presentation, your speech, your pitch and are happy with your content. How do you deliver it so that you make the maximum impact? Here are 6 tips to help you deliver superbly!
When you stand up to speak it is important to make a super impact from the get go. Before you open your mouth – your listeners are already sizing you up.
The first of our three S’s relates to standing up Straight – it’s a really simple but effective way to make you look and feel more confident. The second S is to Settle yourself, take time to settle yourself into position, move anything that may be in your way and become comfortable in your own space. The final S is to Smile – plenty of reasons for smiling! It makes you look happy and people like happy people. It also releases endorphins, which are a great antidote to nerves and signals to your audience that you are looking forward to speaking with them. Caveat – if you are delivering bad news, best leave out the smiling.
The fastest speaker in the world is Steve Woodmore from the UK who can speak at 637 words per minute (wpm). Needless to say this is not to be recommended when presenting! An average speed of 120 wpm is slow enough for your audience to understand your message. However, if you speak at the same rate all the time it is very b-o-r-i-n-g. For added impact, it’s a good idea to speed up occasionally and then slow right down.
The Sound Of Silence. Occasionally just stop speaking ….… this lets your mouth catch up with your brain and your listeners catch up with your message.
It is obvious – isn’t it! Yet, so many people talk with their hands clasped together, or even behind their back. Use your hands as you would if you were chatting to friends or family. Watch the gestures you use in your normal habitat and try to include them in your presentation. When you are practising your presentation out loud, look for opportunities to add gestures that match what you are saying. Interesting research recently by the Science of People on TED Talks, found that the more hand gestures in a TED talk, the more views that the talk received.
So, do include plenty of gestures but a word of caution – do not “act” out your presentation with carefully crafted gestures. People will spot immediately if you are trying to be someone you are not.
If you look at one person and talk to them for a few seconds, it is going to make you feel less intimidated. Talking to one person is a lot more comfortable for most people, than talking to a big group. Look at their eyebrows if you find looking into their eyes too intimidating.
Having great eye contact makes your listeners feel important (which they absolutely are) and also makes you go into a more conversational tone.
We have over 80 muscles in our face and boy are we great at using them when watching a great match on the TV, describing a delicious meal or even talking about a hilarious incident.
Why is it then, that when we get up to speak we leave our facial gestures in our seats? Using your face makes you feel more ‘normal’ – because that is what we do in normal conversation.
So the next time you get on your feet, do try to use at least some of the tips above. You never know, they could help you to deliver a super presentation!
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Starting out in business can be an exciting but terrifying time – you’ll need to take calculated risks but not ones that could put your personal assets at risk if the worst should happen. Setting up a limited liability company (LLC) could be the way forward.
There are many advantages to setting up a limited liability company, here are some of the main ones:
If this sounds like a good fit for your business, you’ll want to know how to set up as an LLC. Here’s how to do just that in two simple steps…
With this all sorted, it’s advisable to appoint a qualified accountant or solicitor who understands the intricacies of HMRC and PAYE to look after the books and the payroll. Once that’s in place, it’s over to you to make a success of things. Good luck!
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Jim Duffy is founder and CEO of E-Spark. Soon to be opening in Belfast too. You can still apply for a place here.
Building teams
We’ve heard it all before, “Investors want a great team,” “Investors will back the team ahead of the idea,” “Investors want to ensure that if someone falls under a bus, then the other members of the team can still rock on!”
So, why do so many early stage entrepreneurs still not have a team or consider a team important? – Don’t tell me it’s because you don’t have any cash.
There are a huge number of great people out there, lining up to join start-ups and scale-ups, knowing that the wages will be paltry and the chances of not making it are high, so I don’t think this is the issue. The issue is that early stage entrepreneurs don’t know how to on-board great talent and keep them on board as the proposition develops, the company takes shape and all the plates are being spun 24 hours a day.
Essentially, entrepreneurs like to do a lot on their own. When we get started, that’s usually all we have – one woman and her dog. However, the passion and vision for what we do then attracts others to our camp. If the attraction is strong enough, then they will come and want to stay – regardless of initial remuneration. But, how do ‘work alone’ entrepreneurs ensure they on-board people and develop them into the business?
Here is the problem…
Imagine a start-up is like a roundabout – you know, the kind that we played on when we were young. This roundabout is spinning fast, so fast in fact that the best place to be is the middle. It’s safe in the middle, because there, the entrepreneur knows the pain point, how she is going to solve it, the intuition for who will buy the product, how she believes the business model will work and all the hours of thinking, cogitation, debate and ideation around the market etc. A place of safety for the entrepreneur, but peril and danger for anyone else trying to get in and get on.
At the edges of this roundabout, the world is a different place. It is spinning so fast that just looking at it is terrifying. Then there is the judgement needed to work out how and when to grab hold. It’s a balancing act to leap onto the roundabout at the right time and not get hurt as it throws you off. Then, if you do get a firm hold, the centrifugal force is trying to spin you off, as the entrepreneur in the middle is moving so fast. Eventually, you may pull yourself in toward the centre and get to grips with the start-up and what is going on in the entrepreneur’s head. But, for some reason, it takes you what feels like an eternity to get into the middle with the entrepreneur, which is where you can start to really make an impact.
This is what it can be like for a new team member jumping on board a start-up, and perhaps why so many entrepreneurs fail to attract and keep good talent early on. So, it’s up to you as entrepreneurial leaders to make the jump on board less dangerous, while still challenging. If an entrepreneur keeps spinning off talent then no proper team can form and the business will not get going to its full potential.
Entrepreneurs – think this one through. It’s a mind-set and a skillset we have to develop… and it’s what investors are looking for in the medium- to long-term. That aside, if you don’t support and encourage people on your team, then they don’t know what going on inside your head and it makes it difficult for them to help you achieve your vision.
The world record for the men’s 400 metres is 43.18 seconds, as held by Michael Johnson.
Astonishingly, the world record for the men’s 400 metres relay is 36.84 seconds.
Kind of says it all…!
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Working with Ulster Bank is a pleasure. We get paid to be helpful to small businesses, we are housed in Dogpatchlab and we get to work on some cool projects.
RBS distinguished engineers
It also means an opportunity to meet some very cool people. This week Ulster Bank hosted a fire side chat in Dogpatch with the RBS distinguished engineers, a RBS skunk team that fly around the world solving problems, innovating, developing prototypes in spikes of less then a week. This week they were in Dublin.
The topics of discussion
The discussion points were around the future of fintech, bitcoin and blockchain. Convergence, faster banks, slower fintech, surviving digital, customer experience, trust actors, digital assets, the role of operating systems, compliance, regulators, Kenya and Ireland, bit torrent, Ripple, etc. A very rich vain of conversation and discussion.
I learned a lot
I learned that banks now move 30% of the UK economy (salaries) at the end every month in 10 seconds. That banks are the most regulated sector in the world. That fintech companies that want to scale will eventually have to deal with the same regulators, which is no picnic.
That in the middle ages stealing would get you killed, but forging would get you boiled in oil. That banking as a term is protected in Ireland and the UK and that I still can’t explain bitcoin to my mum (but I am getting there). I now also know that half of the bitcoin stock is hold by only a 1000 people and we don’t know who they are.
Innovation in Ireland
There was an interesting view on the innovation eco system in Ireland. It was compared to Kenya and that was meant as a compliment. Kenya was the birthing ground of Mpesa. We can do the same.
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Working with Ulster Bank is a pleasure. We get paid to be helpful to small businesses, we are housed in Dogpatchlab and we get to work on some cool projects.
RBS distinguished engineers
It also means an opportunity to meet some very cool people. This week Ulster Bank hosted a fire side chat in Dogpatch with the RBS distinguished engineers, a RBS skunk team that fly around the world solving problems, innovating, developing prototypes in spikes of less then a week. This week they were in Dublin.
The topics of discussion
The discussion points were around the future of fintech, bitcoin and blockchain. Convergence, faster banks, slower fintech, surviving digital, customer experience, trust actors, digital assets, the role of operating systems, compliance, regulators, Kenya and Ireland, bit torrent, Ripple, etc. A very rich vain of conversation and discussion.
I learned a lot
I learned that banks now move 30% of the UK economy (salaries) at the end every month in 10 seconds. That banks are the most regulated sector in the world. That fintech companies that want to scale will eventually have to deal with the same regulators, which is no picnic.
That in the middle ages stealing would get you killed, but forging would get you boiled in oil. That banking as a term is protected in Ireland and the UK and that I still can’t explain bitcoin to my mum (but I am getting there). I now also know that half of the bitcoin stock is hold by only a 1000 people and we don’t know who they are.
Innovation in Ireland
There was an interesting view on the innovation eco system in Ireland. It was compared to Kenya and that was meant as a compliment. Kenya was the birthing ground of Mpesa. We can do the same.
The post Fireside chat with RBS/Ulster Bank skunk team appeared first on Small Business Can.
What’s happening:
This January Ulster Bank, together with the Open Bank Project and Dogpatch Labs, will host the next edition of the Hack (Make!) the Bank series of global fintech hackathons in the newly redeveloped Dogpatch Labs Vaults at the heart of the Silicon Docks in Dublin.
Last year Ulster Bank was the first bank to host a hackathon in Ireland, with some tremendous feedback from all involved. If you missed the events you can check out the highlight video.
Robin Marshall, Ulster Bank CIO
“My overarching reflection on the two hackathons is one of encouragement at the amount of ideas we collectively have as to how we can make banking better for our customers… Everyone can contribute to and participate in a Hackathon, you don’t need to be an engineer, a designer or a marketeer, if you have an opinion and an imagination, you have all the tools you need.”
Alan Lockhart, RBS Principal Architect
“The challenge for RBS today is, how do we CHANGE the way we work, so that we encourage, adopt and embrace open innovation? In a hackathon there are no silos. Business, Designers and Coders, all of necessity, collaborate closely to produce a solution … Hackathons (are) an opportunity for our staff to dive in and experience agile working in a totally safe environment”
This edition promises to be even better than last years, with a fantastic new location, new challenges, and of course, great prizes!
How can I get involved?
Hackathons are open to all, you don’t need to be technically minded to participate. A hackathon is a team event, and each team needs a mix of skills if they want to succeed. If you have an idea you would like to pitch, if you enjoy working as part of a team, or if you have a good eye for presentations or designs then you’d make a welcome addition to any hack team.
Event Details
Date: Friday 29 January 18.00 – Sunday 31 January 18.00
Location: Dogpatch Labs, CHQ Building, Custom House Quay, Dublin Docklands, Dublin 1
Whether you are planning to attend the full event, or just popping in to see what the fuss is all about, you can register using the link here
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