Cambridge University Entrepreneurs’ 5K challenge; 5 Feb 11

Shen Wei, CUE president, JDJ and Suzanne Oliver, HLBBShaw

I attended, and participated in, the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs (CUE; www.cue.org.uk) ‘Entrepreneurs’ 5K challenge’ training event today. It was attended by about 70 very keen (it was Saturday afternoon) and clearly smart budding entrepreneurs from Cambridge University and I was one of 5 speakers. My topic was ‘routes to market’ and I had a brief which posed 3 questions which were a challenge to address in just 30 minutes.

Speaker number 1 was Emmanuel Carraud, co-founder and CEO of MagicSolver, a Cambridge start-up which creates and promotes new iPhone applications. Click here for Magic Solver’s web-site. Emmanuel won previous CUE challenges and spoke on ‘how to write a winning business plan’.

I was speaker number 2 and my presentation, ‘routes to market’,  is now on SlideShare. Click here to view. My messages were, perhaps predictably:

• decide how far out into the ‘real’ world and how far down the value chain you want to go;
• recognise that you need marketing from day 1; and
• choose the sales, supply and service channels according to the needs of your business.

Number 3 was Darrin Disley,Executive Chairman of Horizon Discovery Services and  ’serial entrepreneur’, who spoke about ‘making the perfect pitch’. His key message was that pitches are not about doing deals but creating interest; he emphasised ‘being clear, concise, compelling and consistent’.

Peter Hiscocks was speaker number 4. Peter is a fellow in entrepreneurship and innovation management at the Judge Business School and holds several other position including being a director at River Capital Partners, a seed fund. He spoke on ‘finance and investments’ and described the various sources of finance and when they are appropriate for companies looking for funding. One of Peter’s key points was for start-ups to have clear business models whereby companies products and/or services could be ‘monetised’.

Finally Suzanne Oliver of HLLBShaw spoke on ‘commercialising technology’. I’ve blogged about Suzanne before (click here) and she’s very good at explaining why IP is important and, in particular, companies should take an active approach to patenting.