Start Up Challenges

Whilst I share much of what I learned from my own business experiences, the reality is I learn as much if not more from other founders and business owners that I meet. The energy of a founder (especially a startup founder) is infectious as well as all consuming: the passion, the exhilaration and the courage it takes to risk – not just one’s financial stability – but reputation, career, and lifestyle.

I have said it before (many times) and in my book Ready to Soar – the entrepreneurial journey is not for everyone. In fact, for some, if your goal is solely financial success, perhaps a safe and secure job would deliver that far more effectively than throwing it all in for a ‘dream’.

One cannot help but completely admire the steps that each of the founders below have taken. Whether they ‘succeed’ or not – one thing they do know is they have determined their own future, they gave it a ‘crack’…

In the spirit of entrepreneurship, below is a short profile of a few startups – just in case you see an opportunity to either be a customer or supporter. All of us need a hand in business; someone to believe in us. (This is what we do as part of the community – amplify and connect business owners – so do join.naomisimson.com if you have not already).

Their common ground lies in their ingenuity, their vision, their use of technology and data… however, the pitches that came across the best, were the ones that had the audience understand the problem, and bring us into their world.

SimpleKYC – Eric Frost

In the Fintech space, it automates the onboarding of commercial customers.

Hyper Anna – Natalie Nguyen

A data science application that is driven by plain language speech. Imagine being able to simply ask your systems questions – such as, what was my like for like, year on year growth? Rather than using analysts to write algorithms to find this out.

Kazemi – Patrick Hone

“Customer Experience is THE new marketing” – Understanding and tracking customer interaction points has become critical to any businesses brand experience. This technology is a ‘journey builder’, enabling clients to map out and refine the customer experience across every customer touch point.

AgriWebb – Justin Webb

Justin has set about revolutionising the production of food – 90% of agricultural production is currently dependent on paper-based systems, or, at best, excel. This tablet-based application helps farmers make the decision about stock management, to use data to drive decisions… incredibly impressive (and a great introduction video).

IntelligenceCo (formerly Jemsoft) – Jordan Green

Jordan likes to learn about true media interactions. For instance, at a football game, a sponsor’s logo will appear in various locations – but how many of these logos actually appear in TV broadcast and what is the value of that to sponsors – really very interesting

FlareHR – Daniel Cohen & Jan Pacas

Both founders, successful leaders in previous roles, had found the toughest part of growing their previous businesses was in the management of people – they have come together to build a suite of tools to support the employee experience.

Skilld – Gen George (pictured)

From her success with One Shift, Gen has focussed her next endeavour on the challenges of small hospitality businesses… finding great people quickly. The app appeared completely intuitive and seemed to learn from an employer’s previous interactions with it. Already with thousands of users, this is set to be an absolute winner.