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Tesla Referral

I was asked recently for a referral code as one of my Facebook friends was buying a Model X.

I thought it was worth sharing just in case you want to buy a Tesla yourself!

http://ts.la/kevin5071

Tesla Referral was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Jeff Bezos Annual Shareholder Letter

If you look at the progress of Amazon as a company between 1997 and 2017 when the latest shareholder letter was published it is quite remarkable.

I have said this before but if you want to see a great example of very long term thinking – read these letters. Amazon as a business has very good cash flows it just decides to invest these in the future. You really can’t fault that as a manager or shareholder.

Jeff Bezos Annual Shareholder Letter was originally published on Kevin Dorren

If at first you don't succeed.....

I am constantly reminded how hard startups are. Your job as a founder is to knuckle down and try and figure out all the hard things that others can’t.

I experience this every time we launch a brand at MoveFresh. We are always over optimistic about how easy it will be to enter a new market or segment and the reality is that once you launch you get hit by all the things you didn’t know. There are a couple of things you can do – KBO (Keep Buggering On) or pivot and try something else or a new marketing channels.

Founders (Including me) are very tempted to give up or try something new – what I am learning to do is to keep going and refining the proposition. Online marketing gives you a great way to test multiple offers, audiences, target markets and landing pages – use this to test your proposition. If you get an offer or product to work in one marketing channel you have a great testbed to try other channels.

Lots of founders who I meet prefer to try something new, but the same problems will be encountered in other segments, so learning to KBO is one of the best traits in a founding team that you can find!

If at first you don’t succeed….. was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Incubate or Not to Incubate

There has been a lot of social media pressure over the last few days on the success/impact reporting of entrepreneurial spark in job and business creation.

I thought it was worth spending 5 minutes giving my view on the stats. Firstly – starting a business is hard – our economy does require more business startup and failure (we have to accept failure along with starting up). It isn’t simply about ideas – it is about access to help, mentoring, equity finance, offices, childcare, support networks and a bunch of other things.

One thing is that we are much better at this in Scotland than we used to be – we have fantastic role models, amazing support networks, government support, grant funding and much better acceptance of “give it a go”

But Scotland is a very very small country – so we do but against things we don’t like. I always talk about sharing a flat with strangers – its a difficult experience – but we will eventually work it out.

I feel the same way about all the initiatives – they can’t (economically) all succeed – but we should give them the same level of startup support.

Startup businesses and “scale ups” are bloody hard – lets just try and celebrate that we are all giving it a go – and accept that 10% success would be an amazing result!

Incubate or Not to Incubate was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Startups are hard - cash doesn't solve the problems!

I meet with lots of founders of startups pretty much everyday. The ones that are successful realise that starting a company isn’t about glamour or fun its a seriously difficult thing to so.

I have been involved (either as a founder or investor) in a bunch of startups, there are always highs and a lot of lows. The one thing that is universal is the struggle and difficulty from taking an idea from a discussion in a coffee shop or pub to a self sustaining business that doesn’t require your constant supervision.

A huge amount of entrepreneurs think that funding is the solution to becoming a successful business, but most successful businesses don’t need a vast amount of funding if they have a successful strategy.

Spending time on the strategy and discussing the obstacles around this strategy is much better than working on a funding document and deferring the strategic discussion until there is money in the bank.

Technology has become massively easier over the last decade and building a product or service for the web has virtually no cost apart from time. Trends talk about “product/market fit” as having a product that customers are willing to use and pay money for.

So as a founder – don’t think that raising money is the best use of your time, bootstrapping your business until you have good product market fit is a much better use of your time resource. It has the advantage of keeping the equity pie complete. If you really have no choice than to raise money leave this as late as possible. Focus on the product!

Startups are hard – cash doesn’t solve the problems! was originally published on Kevin Dorren

My love of Countdown Timers

There is nothing that I love more than creating a sense of urgency

Countdown timers in emails are very effective at this, and MotionMail has a very nice PAYG countdown timer.

My love of Countdown Timers was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Unicorpses - who cares?

There is much talk about valuation and the “Death of the Unicorn”. It just proves to me one thing, I am getting old!

I lived and preached the value of the new frontier in the late 90’s, many people scoffed at the “Tech Bubble” of the dotcom era. We then turned our attention to bankers, bashed them and now we are bashing the next wave of technology companies.

Valuation at any point in time is just a reference to what a group of investors think the potential cash flow of a business will be in the future. It can be modelled in a number of ways and we can agree or disagree (by investing or passing) on the number.

Technology investing is not for the faint hearted, if you want something with less risk (and reward) then think about another sector, perhaps something that you know lots about. I don’t know much about anything but I have seen lots of technology and I do really love the “New New Thing”.

So I choose to invest in technology, if I knew more about property I might invest in that, but my public and private investments are very heavily skewed to technology, mainly because it is something I think I know something about.

I am also a realist, things that go up must also come down and historic valuation metrics are no indication of future ones. It takes time for most people to catch up and I continue to see astounding valuations for businesses that have little revenue, let alone future cash flows. This, as my mother used to say – “Will end in tears”. It might not be this year or next, but it will at some point.

I have a philosophy of investing with at least a decade as my view point. I have never managed to “flip” an investment and generally prefer to invest early rather than later. It isn’t a great philosophy if you are a fund manager, but as a private investor I can stick to my investment diet and not worry about what others think.

Realistically the only thing I am learning from all the press about Unicorns (or death of) is that I am really getting old. (Kevin Dorren, Age 47)

Unicorpses – who cares? was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Elon Musk, he is Iron Man!

This interview with Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors shows how deeply he thinks about the tech projects he kicked off.

Tesla was the laughing stock of the motor industry for a number of years, but has become the leader in electric transportation. More importantly it has kick started Apple and a number of other companies into the space.

Watch this video and see what you think…!

Elon Musk, he is Iron Man! was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Crowdfunding for Debt

I have been following the crowdfunding market very closely over the last 12-18 months.

One area that has fascinated me is the use of crowdfunding for debt products. Interest rates at 0.5% don’t really support the income requirements of lots of individuals in the UK. Crowdfunding (which I accept is more risky than bank deposits) is an interesting area for consumers who feel that they are willing to take a little more risk.

The size of business and the serviceability have been a big issue over the last 12 months, but we are seeing more mainstream businesses adopting crowdfunding for their needs. This is a classic example of disruption of financial services (traditionally people and infrastructure heavy) to marketplace models.

Although not for everyone we managed to complete a £1.5m debt finance with LendingCrowd recently that helped fund a management buyout. We were attracted by the ability to introduce funders that would normally have to provide the whole part of the debt to the deal.

You can read more about this at The Scotsman.

There is an excellent video about the future of crowdlending by Samir Desai

Crowdfunding for Debt was originally published on Kevin Dorren

It's my money!

Sometimes you enter a market and existing competitors don’t like it.

Unfortunately for them it is a free market economy that we live in and I can spend my hard earned money on whatever I want!

There are lots of areas that I don’t invest in and OK, like everyone we don’t get everything right on day one, but if we focus on our customers, deliver a great service and product then we will succeed.

If the market doesn’t like our products then we won’t, but without listening to customers and getting feedback we will never know what is wrong and go on to fix it.

Product-Market Fit is something that is very important to us, but it generally doesn’t start with getting everything right. It starts by understanding what is wrong (using measurement, not gut feeling) and fixing it!

I can look at companies, investments or competitors that fail to listen to the customer, most successful ones do listen.

So I am listening, but unless you are a customer please don’t tell me how to do things. If you want to take up the challenge and make a difference to a market we operate in apply for a job.

It’s my money! was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Fringe performance versus Startups

Tape Face: To all the shows that think that their posters on bollards is worth while advertising…. #trees #waste pic.twitter.com/vWhRIrK01y

— Tape Face (@TapeFaceBoy) August 10, 2015

We have had fun sponsoring Confessional by Tennessee Williams in the 2015 Fringe Festival.

It’s an interesting story of a show that nearly didn’t happen as the sponsors pulled out at the last minute, leaving a large financial gap for the theatre company. Through crowdfunding and our sponsorship we filled the gap, but it got me thinking about running a fringe show and running a startup.

If you have been to the Edinburgh Fringe you will realise the massive amount of theatre, comedy, poetry and art that is on over 4 weeks in Edinburgh. Since I live in Edinburgh you notice the sudden swelling of the population, the busy restaurants and general improved vibe.

It’s a great time to be in Edinburgh and I am sure most performers think this is what it is like all the time.

Anyway, running a fringe company and grabbing attention is really hard, you are fighting for every single bum on seat for your show and the competition is stiff.

There is a massive amount of flyering happens during the festival. I am not overly convinced that this form of marketing really works (especially if you look on the ground around Edinburgh).

Marketing is around making emotional engagement and although most actors can captivate their audience, doing this on a busy high street while competing for attention is particularly hard.

In addition social media and PR have become a big part of the festival, creating content and sharing this does help get the word out – but the twitter blitz of Edinburgh Fringe makes that hashtag #edfringe pretty useless.

So are we consider channels for marketing at Brewhive, we do think the same way a theatre company thinks – how are we going to stick out from the crowd of other startups in our space and do something different. A great little video above shows that each day you need to get up and start again!

Fringe performance versus Startups was originally published on Kevin Dorren

First pictures of Brewhive

So after exactly a year of planning we are launching Brewhive this week.

This is a pure play direct to consumer beer brand.

We have gained a lot of experience over the past decade in FMCG goods to consumers. We are excited about the opportunity and certainly the reaction we have from friends and family when talking about Brewhive has been very positive.

The core concept around Brewhive is still based on convenience and provenance. We let the hops do the talking rather than just letting them be a single line on the ingredient list.

Our core focus over the coming weeks is to gain approx 3,000 customers to test the proposition with. We want to gain feedback on what is good and bad about delivery, range, systems and pricing.

We have already lined up some interesting partnerships for later this year and plan to spend aggressively on customer recruitment and referral over the first 12 months of the brands life.

Interestingly we are avoiding subscriptions. Having tested Subscription v’s No Subscription we have seen a doubling of conversion rate without subscriptions. Products like Diet Chef lend themselves to subscription elements to keep you on track, but most consumers don’t like being tied in to subscriptions.

First pictures of Brewhive was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Brewhive update

So we launch early August (it has been a long journey and there were points we were going to give up!) but we are really pleased with the results.

We have a great launch range of beers

We have really spent time and effort to make sure the experience for our customers is fantastic.

We have done cardboard engineering beyond belief to ensure that the product gets to you in tip top condition

In addition we have made sure that our logistics operation is in place to deal with volume and speedy delivery (next day in most parts of the UK)

The journey to launch Brewhive has been quite a long one. We first spoke about it in July 2014 and it has taken over a year to get the brand and products to a stage that we are happy to launch.

To celebrate we have sponsored a fringe show Confessional by Tennessee Williams which runs from next week.

In an interesting bit of history my first job when leaving college was running 5 bars in the Assembly Rooms. Little did I know that many years later I would be launching a beer brand during the Edinburgh Fringe!

Brewhive update was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Edinburgh Scotland is now a tech hub!

The recent announcement that Fanduel has raised over $275m in investment brings new hope to technology startups in Scotland.

It has been a long time coming but a few “unicorns” are appearing with Skyscanner and Fanduel leading the way.

The great thing about this is that this tech revolution will inspire others to take the leap to startup themselves.

I was lucky enough to be the first angel investor in Fanduel way back in early 2008 when it was called Hubdub (they then changed the focus to daily fantasy sports). What always impressed me was the team of Nigel, Lesley, Tom, Rob and Chris. They had a very good shared vision and a great working relationship with clear leadership from Nigel.

One of the first things that I love to invest in is good teams, and it was clear from every conversation in a coffee shop on Marchmont Road (which unfortunately isn’t there anymore!) that this was a great team.

Late 2007 and early 2008 was not a great time for tech investing. Most of the angels had l”left the building after nursing losses during the dotcom bust. Luckily I had a few great contacts to share the first angel round with in Ian Ritchie and Andy Allan who both were impressed by the team as much as me.

It is still early days for Fanduel and there is much to do in a much more competitive landscape than a few years ago (Yahoo and Pokerstars both are entering the space).

I am really hopeful that we will see more activity from other tech companies such as TVsquared (I am also an investor here), Mallzee and a bunch of other companies at Codebase. Good luck to them all

Edinburgh Scotland is now a tech hub! was originally published on Kevin Dorren

The Angel Investment Diet

I was lucky enough to be invited to join the table of Startup Grind Edinburgh at the EIE15 conference this week.

I talked to Phin quite a bit about investing and some of the selection criteria I use.

The most important tactic I have found for angel investment is “less is more”. I am sure this will not be popular with angel syndicates, crowdfunding site or gatekeepers but I certainly have found it to be a very important part of my investment strategy.

So a simple rule of investing in one company per annum has certainly been good for me. I mainly decided to do this as a way of me being able to cope as an angel investor. If you invest in a company the founding team do expect you to help – and being a full time executive means I have very little spare time. Investing in multiple startups at the same time is the same as starting multiple companies – a big no go to investors.

The reason investors spend time pulling together shareholder and employee agreements to restrict the number of things you do is the same strategy I use in angel investing.

So the next time you get a plan or meeting request across your desk, think if this was the only thing I could invest in for the next 12 months would I do it?

Just like dieting – less is more!

The Angel Investment Diet was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Brewbot is coming

I was lucky enough to be introduced to a great company by Sandy Mckinnon at Pentech Ventures called Brewbot.

I was instantly hooked and ordered a brewing robot straight away.

The concept is pretty simple, brewing from your iPhone. The reality is that brewing is a very technical process, much more complex than the beer kits that my local Boots used to sell in the 1970s. In fact, the level of tech and science in a brewing robot is quite immense.

Brewbot is designed for the amateur brewer and also the expert who really wants to experiment with brewing in one device. I liked to call it the “Nespresso machine for Beer”.

“Real brewers” will probably turn their nose up a little at Brewbot, just as Baristas don’t love Nespresso, but for me convenience is the key to any internet device like this. The access to information about usage is incredible and you should be able to run automatic replenishment of hops etc based on usage.

I am really looking forward to getting this device – it’s only a few months away – but I am excited already – I have bought some great books including Clone Brew which allows you to brew your favourite pint at home.

Brewbot is coming was originally published on Kevin Dorren

Growth Hacking

I spoke on Friday at a great event titled “Growth Hacking” in Belfast. Around 100 people crammed into a room to listen to a few speakers talking about managing growth.

It was mainly focused on SaaS and gaming, so I was there to talk about what Diet Chef did.

What was fascinating is that Growth Hacking as I can understand it is Direct Marketing in a new cloak. It’s about measuring and managing customer recruitment, retention and reactivation, something any catalogue or direct business has been doing for years (think Readers Digest!)

It got me thinking about measurement and including an ecosystem measurement metric with your “business mode”

This would be the best balance of New, Reactivated and Retained customers to achieve your business growth potential. If you don’t want to grow you can focus on retained customer more, but that can be quite a short term measure.

To stop people gaming things you need to measure these metrics in balance, but it was fascinating to see that the CRO of OMGPop (Draw Something) thought about marketing in a similar was to how we handle it at Diet Chef!

Growth Hacking was originally published on Kevin Dorren

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