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Tag: entrepreneurship

  • Entrepreneur Sabina Ranger on founding her new beauty business BELLA

    Sabina Ranger

     

    Beauty has always been an area of interest for me. During my parents’ journey together, I would watch the transformative effect, both aesthetically and emotionally, when my mother would apply her make up and the confidence it would give her to pull through on the most difficult of days. Ending every regime with a flick of mascara (now our hero product), she would set off as an empowered woman ready to conquer her day ahead.

    Thus, from an early age I realised that beauty is incredibly powerful. Once we feel our best the world is limitless, no matter what our circumstances are. This, coupled with my understanding of how to produce quality products, is what gave birth to BELLA, which features vegan, cruelty-free and clean focused products made to empower you, solve beauty problems and outperform what is on the market.

    Quality products have always fascinated me. I grew up in a family business that specialised in producing high quality consumer products that would outperform those available on the market.

    For example, a leading air freshener had 0.5% fragrance in it and was not long lasting, but it was being sold at a premium price. My father created one with double the scent and different technology to make his longer lasting so that customers could use less to gain more, and at a price that is right.

    I watched the business grow from a £2 operation in a shed in Hayes to a world class company winning an unprecedented five Queen’s Awards for International Trade and exporting to over 130 countries, and it was all because of the quality of its products and the reputation that proceeded them.

    Product quality and innovation has always been in my DNA, so a career centred around this was a natural path for me to follow. After spending 5 years developing products in the business, creating brands, and getting these onto the shelves of retailers, I was inspired to venture into an area of passion; beauty. There I was able to innovate and make an impact by solving a problem that I and 97% of women face, which is pain, discomfort, and inconvenience when wearing false eyelashes. After 3 years of development, WANDERLASH mascara was born, and I officially entered the beauty industry.

    When I founded BELLA, I wanted to create a platform for positive change through my journey. I think it is really important to always give back, so it was never just about starting a business for me. We all have mental health & need to look after it and each other. As many as one in two, or officially one in four people are suffering from a mental health challenge of some kind. I feel that beauty is a powerful industry which touches almost everybody and can really help reduce the stigma & shine a light on mental health.

    My formal education took place at LSE, which taught me how to think outside of the box, work under pressure and critically evaluate situations. It is a very inspiring place where you are surrounded by many budding entrepreneurs with revolutionary ideas along with a track record of many great people who have made history – it is hard not to want to follow suit in some way. I also undertook many internships, and they all taught their own lessons, but I think the most important learning was how to work with different people and adjust to different personality types. The importance of feeling part of a team, all striving towards a common goal and how to multitask many different work streams are crucial lessons.

    It is also important to realise that I was not alone on my journey, nor am I alone now. I think mentorship is invaluable, having someone to guide you through life is powerful and life changing. What took them years or even decades to learn, they can share with you over a coffee. I am grateful to have a few mentors whom I can meet with regularly & learn from, on different areas of the business but also about life in general. If I could give some advice to my younger self, I would tell her to have more confidence and not look for anyone else’s validation for happiness or success. I wish that I had realised the importance of learning to love myself more without worrying if I was ‘good enough’ based on other people’s behaviour.

  • Entrepreneurs abandon years-long careers, start businesses

    Patrick Crowder

     

    New entrepreneurs are choosing to start their own businesses after careers lasting over ten years, and the businesses they start are often in an entirely different sector. The research from GoDaddy suggests that people are making the switch for increased flexibility and follow their dreams.

    The survey of 1,000 business owners found that 70% of them started businesses in an entirely different industry than their previous career.

    Julie Daly spent 20 years at an oil company before deciding to start her own interior design business, Verano Interiors. She says the pandemic gave her the opportunity to reflect and choose a new path.

    “After working in an oil company for 20 years, lockdown allowed me to re-evaluate my life and I realised I couldn’t see myself doing it for another 20 years, so I decided to change direction entirely. I enrolled myself onto The Professional Interior Design course at the College of Interior Design and I’ve recently graduated with a diploma,” Daly says.

    Daly is not alone in her pandemic-driven change. 17% of people surveyed say that the pandemic caused them to reflect and make the shift, while 10% say that they started their own businesses because they had been made redundant during Covid. Starting a new business without prior experience can be a major challenge, but Daly is rising to the occasion.

    “I’m completely new to the business world so I’ve been spending hours learning, going to webinars, reading books, and studying,” Daly says, “As a business owner you’ve got to understand everything from marketing to finances, so it’s been a massive learning curve for me but I’m enjoying the challenge.”

    The most common reason for starting a new business is the desire for flexibility, according to the survey. 41% say they want more flexibility, while 36% say that they are tired of working for someone else. 35% say that they are following a lifelong dream, and 30% say that their decision was driven by a desire to make more money than at their previous job.

    Maxine Jones has also joined the long list of people who have left their previous jobs for a new independent venture. As founder of Maxicise, she describes how she started her now-thriving online dance workout business.

    “At the age of 40, I quit my job and launched my own Zumba classes in the local community centre. I moved away from Zumba musically and morphed into MaxiciseTV, and in 2018 I started to livestream my classes online direct to my clients so that they could workout with me from the comfort of their own home,” Jones says, “My website was therefore crucial to my success. Clients use it to workout live with me once a week and on demand. I change over the workouts every week so that they don’t get bored, and I’ve introduced 20-, 30- and 40-minute bitesize sessions. The website is ‘all singing, all dancing’ literally.”

    This growing trend of entrepreneurship following the pandemic can be seen everywhere. Students are increasingly skipping university and jumping right into the working world. The rising cost of living has made many re-evaluate their life paths, and the pandemic gave them time to ponder the many opportunities which await them. If you are considering a new venture, don’t panic – you’re certainly not alone.

     

  • Lessons from a young entrepreneur: a conversation with Zack Fortag

    Patrick Crowder talks to the 21-year-old entrepreneur on how he got his start and what his future holds

     

    Zack Fortag never connected with the traditional education system. He left school at 16 to find his own way in life through entrepreneurial spirit. Now, at 21, he is both a business and charity owner. I spoke with him to find out how he’s made it happen.

    “I basically grew up in an entrepreneurial type of family and also an education type of family where some were teachers and some were business people. At around 13-14 years old I started to really dislike school,” Fortag says, “I was always very naughty at school, and I never really got on well with traditional education, so I basically decided to start two different businesses at school.”

    One of these businesses was the fairly classic game of selling candy to other students, but the other was much more innovative. The video game FIFA’s online currency, which can be used to buy items in-game, would often fluctuate in price. Fortag saw this opportunity and began selling FIFA coins to other students much in the same way that a stock is traded – buy low, sell high. Fortag says that it wasn’t until he began reading Alan Sugar that he began to branch out into different business ventures which eventually led to the creation of Ahead of Time Academy.

    “I did that until about 15 then started reading Alan Sugar’s book, and it basically told me about wholesale goods. I spent 500 pounds on a load of wholesale goods, things from your portable phone chargers, toilet roll, all sorts of different things. I’d wake up at four or 5am doing boot sales all day, and selling door to door at all the big houses. We’d say ‘this is for a school project’ when obviously it wasn’t, which I know is quite bad, but it was just a sales tactic,” Fortag says, “Once I had sold that out, I wanted to help different groups of young people in the education system, so I created a clothing brand called Ahead of Time Academy. We helped over 100 young people get into fashion-based opportunities, and I was the youngest designer to work with ASOS and Pure London Fashion Show.”

    Ahead of Time was a way for young people to help develop and sell their business and fashion ideas. Through partnerships with clothing and accessory companies, people whose ideas were not getting seen could be elevated to the big leagues at a young age. It ran for about two and a half years before Fortag had his next big idea; Cozmos hospitality.

    “When I was about 17 I wanted to move into the sport space, because I love sport, so I ran a hospitality company, which I still am involved in now. We work with agents all across the world providing sport and travel packages. Now we’ve got over 25 employees and over 500 agents working for us throughout the UK in America,” Fortag says.

    During Covid, Ahead of Time Academy led webinars teaching education materials not taught in school, such as entrepreneurship, mental health pathways, and employability. Now Fortag has started a new charity called the Inside Out Clothing Project, which is the UK’s first clothing brand run by ex-offenders. Fortag explains how Alan Sugar led to the connections necessary to make it happen.

    “While I was running Ahead of Time I got promoted by Alan Sugar, and through that I got interviews with Forbes, the BBC, and the Guardian. When I got interviewed by BBC, I met a reporter called Greg McKenzie. He was in care growing up, and we discussed ideas, and that’s how we created Inside Out,” Fortag says, “The idea was to get the most vulnerable groups of young people to launch their own businesses. It had never been done before in the UK.”

    Now that Inside Out’s eight-week run has come to a close, I asked Fortag about his plans for the future. He answers with quiet, casual confidence.

    “Next we’re hopefully going to be moving into another business soon – we’ve just reached 500 agents worldwide working for us which is obviously a massive achievement, probably one of the biggest deals in UK hospitality this year. On the charity side, we’ll just keep progressing. I’ve got some interesting projects coming up.”

  • Nick Wheeler: “It’s a perfectly acceptable thing to be an entrepreneur today”

    Nick Wheeler

    I was born in Ludlow in 1965, and my mother died when I was five. So my little brother was five years younger than me. I also had a brother who was five years older than me, and a sister seven years older than me. Though I was one of four, it was almost like being an only child.

    My father threw himself into his work when my mother died so I was pretty independent. From an early age, I’d do what I wanted. My father would drop me at school in the morning, and then I’d get the bus back. I think there’s a high correlation between people who lost a parent early on and those who become entrepreneurs: it’s self-reliance and self-belief. You just have to get on with it.

    I always hated being told what to do which wasn’t great at school. One of my claims to fame is that I managed to get through the whole of Eton without calling anyone sir – that was a pretty good effort in the 1970s. In those days, you had to be subservient. That probably made me quite obnoxious but it did make me independent.

    I always knew I wanted to have my own business. My father was a bit of a closet entrepreneur. He did engineering at university and then went to work for a consultancy group called TI Consulting. He moved to Shropshire because his grandmother died and left him a house. He was about 32. Ludlow is a lovely place but not the place where you’re going to forge a great career or an entrepreneurial opportunity.

    He got a job there working in an agricultural machinery business called FW McConnell. It must have been 1963, and about six months after he got the job the man who owned the business got gored by a bull and killed, so my father was made managing director. He grew the business and did a management buyout of another division of the company that owned that business. He owned most of the shares and off he went. He reversed it into a shell company. After the stock market crisis in 1987 the share price never recovered.

    I used to go to the business every Saturday morning and open the post with him. I’d also pack stuff on the factory floor and do funny little jobs. Every so often there’d be a cheque in the post and he’d get so excited and we’d do a little dance together around the desk. It was like magic: they’d bring in cheap steel and turn it into hedge cutters. You got paid more for the hedge-cutter than you did for the steel.

    There’s a similar alchemy with shirts. I like doing things I understand: I’d not be a good Bill Gates or a Larry Page, dealing in algorithms. It isn’t tangible enough for me. It had to be physical – like a piece of agricultural machinery or a shirt.

    The world is so well set up; there is such a networking of funding opportunities and support. It’s a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to be an entrepreneur today. When my father was growing up nobody started their own businesses.

    I started Charles Tyrwhitt in 1986 and before that I had other businesses. I did a photography business, a Christmas tree business and a shoe business. I was trying to make money doing something I loved. 36 years on and that ethos is still very important. It’s making people feel good, and producing clothes which are great quality, and which people enjoy buying and wearing.

    A business is a living entity. For me, I want the customers, the workers and the suppliers to love the business.

    Fashion remains in the family. My daughter bought herself a sewing machine, and she taught herself pattern-cutting and sells them on Depop. In the early days of Charles Tyrwhitt, my wife, Chrissie Rucker, who founded The White Company, used to offer advice. It was great being in the same sort of industry but a different market.

    I’m a non-exec of the White Company – she doesn’t really have time to take a similar role with Charles Tyrwhitt. She gives me a hard time and says our clothing is too formal – and she’s probably right. Actually, we’ve begun to make our clothing less formal in the last few years.

    Nick Wheeler is the founder of Charles Tyrwhitt

  • Andrew Cooper interview: Lessons from an entrepreneur

    Andrew Cooper interview: Lessons from an entrepreneur

    Patrick Crowder

    Actor, model, and entrepreneur Andrew Cooper has started a range of businesses, involving fitness, cold-pressed juice, and even pet shop in Notting Hill. Now, he’s taking what he’s learned in the industry and putting it into a new men’s grooming brand called The Fellowship. We talked to Andrew to find out how he’s done it all.

    Andrew got his start in modelling, before he started his first business. He remembers how it happened almost by chance.

    “I originally came to London to be a singer, and while doing that I ended up falling into the fashion world,” Cooper explains. “I got stopped in the centre of London and asked to join an agency.”

    After he entered the fashion industry, Cooper was taking about 200 flights a year travelling the world. In his travels he became inspired by the different ideas and ways of doing things he saw abroad. This sparked his entrepreneurial side, which runs in the family.

    “That side of me has always been there,” Cooper continues. “My dad had a lot of businesses too, mostly around food. My Grandad was a butcher, and he took that business, turned it into frozen foods, and ended up selling it on to Campbells.”

    Cooper started his first business at the age of 21 when he opened up Mutz Nutz Pet Boutique in Notting Hill. He wanted to transform the pet shop from the typical dark, dusty atmosphere into a high-end, clean, modern business. He launched a line of all-natural grooming products for pets, and the business is still thriving today, 19 years later.

    The Fellowship came from Cooper’s personal experience using grooming products in the fashion industry.

    “Being in fashion and film, sitting in a chair putting makeup on and prepping your skin, you begin to understand what works and what doesn’t,” Cooper explains. “I was very specific in how I wanted it to look. I’ve seen many products that are greasy and can lead to bad skin.”

    He also noticed that most of the existing products were offshoots from larger brands marketed towards women, so Andrew wanted to make a line of high-performance beauty products aimed at men.

    “The immediate reception has been brilliant, way better than we thought it would be, because the product has been in development for quite a long time,” Andrew said.

    This is not the first time Andrew has worked with skin and hair care products. His first venture into the sector stemmed from another business of his.

    “I have a juice business called JuiceMan, and I was turning the pulp into various byproducts including body scrubs. That was six years ago. As I explored that with the apothecary that we work with, we started to look at other products as well.”

    Andrew takes inspiration for his businesses from trends around the world. He believes this approach is effective, but he also warns against assuming something that works in one country will work in another.

    “We look at markets like America – and for example New York and LA tend to be ahead. Any time I go to LA and hear something that people in the industry are talking about, I know that I can try that product and I know that we’ll get there in the UK.”

    Despite his success, he also recognises and learns from his mistakes. “I have to say I think I slightly got it wrong with my cold-pressed juice business, because I don’t think the climate and the way we can manufacture over here can compare to how they can do it in LA. But with the skincare for sure – we’re moving at quite a quick pace in the UK at the moment.”

    The Fellowship’s soft launch has been a major success – and that success took planning. One major decision to make when starting a business is deciding on how much stock to produce, and how to best utilise that initial investment. I ask Andrew how he makes that call.

    “I think it’s the hardest part. The problem is that you can’t just flip a switch and turn it around – typically there’s a six-week lead,” Cooper explains. “We were incredibly cautious about whether we’d sell out, so we overbought stock initially. I come from a juice business with a product that goes off in four days, and now we have 18 months, so I’m not too worried.”

    Cooper’s years of experience as a business owner and entrepreneur have given him the skills needed to succeed in new ventures like The Fellowship. We asked him to give some advice to up-and-coming entrepreneurs who are just starting their journeys.

    “I think you always have to love the market and the space, and you have to understand your niche. I like to always be passionate about the project,” Cooper says.

    That passion can sometimes come at a price. According to Cooper, many young entrepreneurs will start businesses which are not viable, and not realise until it’s too late.

    “Never start a business until everyone wants to put money in it. I see a lot of people who find funding to be the hardest part, but if you’re finding funding hard there’s a reason,” Cooper explains. “It’s too easy to start a business idealistically, and that can be the problem with passion.”

    According to Cooper, early warning signs that a business will not succeed come in the financials and business plan. If they are not clean-cut and easy for investors to get behind, a project can hit a roadblock. His closing advice involves setting a direction for the business and ensuring that your expectations are sound.

    “You have to figure out what you want to do,” Cooper says. “If you want to make money, there’s loads of money in coffee. There’s loads of money in pizza. The simple ideas are usually the easy ones – but if you want to bring something original to the market you’ve really got to make sure that your financials are realistic. If they are, people will buy into it.”

  • Opinion: Got a bright idea? Now’s the time for generation entrepreneur

    Opinion: Got a bright idea? Now’s the time for generation entrepreneur

    By Finito World

    The American novelist John Updike once wrote: ‘When you’re young you prepare yourself for a world which is gone by the time you get there.’ The life we dreamed of growing up, turns out to be not so much unobtainable as irrelevant: the world is always moving too fast, and it’s our job not to let it outmanoeuvre us. 

    Now and then, the world changes so markedly that a generation will enter the workplace amid a greater than usual sense of uncertainty. 2020 saw two major changes – in addition to the usual welter of mini-crises, some real and others media-driven. The pandemic shrank the economy by a quarter, causing untold anxiety to all, and confining us indoors. Meanwhile, the shocking murder of George Floyd on 25th May in Minneapolis sent many out onto the streets to protest racial inequality.  

    At times of societal upheaval, it is right that we look for attitudes and examples to console and instruct. It was Martin Luther King – in a line often quoted by former President Barack Obama – who referred to ‘the fierce urgency of now’.  

    In 2021, this is the only respectable form of ferocity. Young people now have an opportunity to learn things they would otherwise not have learned. They can also take the kind of risks which would previously have been unthinkable, and do so in an environment that will be sympathetic to failure, and especially admiring of success. 

    The mood is clear. Well-known businesses – from British Airways to Prêt-à-Manger – are making swingeing cuts to stuff. Training programmes at the traditional blue chip firms now seem in doubt, and where they are not in doubt it is sometimes difficult to imagine how they will be as fulfilling and as international as they once were. Why not use this as a moment to start out on your own? 

    This shift is already to some extent ratified by the Treasury. The Future Fund will see the government issue convertible loans between £125,000 and £5 million to innovative companies. It’s true that the conditions won’t make every young person a shoo-in for eligibility – especially the requirement to have raised £250,000 from third-party investors in the last five years – but this, together with the moves the government has made on the social mobility agenda, signals a change. This is a legislative environment that will increasingly benefit the entrepreneurial spirit. 

    This optimistic can-do approach should also animate our education sector. The virus halted our schooling, yes, but it has sped up our thinking about virtual learning. It has also made students, at home and abroad, question the value of university courses in ways which may ultimately help their careers – in addition to accelerating the national conversation around the curriculum, tutoring and apprenticeships.  

    And what about Black Lives Matter? There is no question that this has already made commercial and education institutions re-examine the story of minorities in this country. Corporations can no longer afford to be flat-footed on the question.  

    Soon after Floyd’s murder, the head of the City of London School Alan Bird wrote to parents to express himself shocked: ‘Events of the last two weeks have demanded that institutions…consider what they really mean.’ 

    Universities reacted similarly. Over at the University of Buckingham, Sir Anthony Seldon, the organisation’s outgoing Vice-Chancellor, issued a comparable bulletin: ‘We want to nurture an environment where every person has an opportunity to speak out about issues impacting them.’ 

    In neither instance was this mere talk. Bird explained that the school was consulting with its pupil-led Afro-Caribbean Society. He added that he had established a Diversity Group within the staff bodies, and was promoting BAME authors in library displays. Seldon meanwhile announced the appointment of two new Equity and Inclusion Officers.  

    These examples show that the murder of Floyd has created in those in power a laudable desire to help. This is to the good, but does it sit uneasily alongside what employers are now saying they want?  

    This, as is made clear from the findings of our inaugural employability survey on page 77, is resourcefulness, adaptability, flexibility and self-reliance. From those we surveyed there was little talk of diversity or the need for a more socially diverse workforce.  

    The next years will likely see a difficult dance between voices calling for equality and reform, and the weary complaints of cash-strapped business leaders who have less wiggle-room to assist than at any point since the Great Depression. It is this which has given an air of unreality to the Johnson government’s well-meaning talk of ‘guaranteed apprenticeships’. Some businesses will feel that their priorities are geared not towards reform but survival. 

    We can talk forever about the delicate line between the offer of assistance to minorities and the creation of unjust quota systems. Or we can become mired all over again in the traditional right-left debate about the importance of character versus the importance of citizenship, when clearly both are essential.  

    Instead, the real divide in education and business – and it’s a line found at the level of the employee and job-seeker too – is between the dynamic and the flat-footed.  

    This raises two questions of equal importance. Firstly, how do we create young people able to prosper within this new Covid-19 environment? Secondly, how do we make sure these young people are a fair reflection of the diversity of upbringings people experience in this country? In truth, these questions should never have been separated out.  

    Interestingly, the ideas which seem particularly attractive don’t fit easily into traditional political boxes.  

    From one-to-one tutoring, to the apprenticeships question, the issue of broadening our curriculum to include better representation for financial education, the arts and gardening (see our campaign on page 36), and the sudden importance of digital poverty, it isn’t clear where these ideas belong on the political spectrum.  

    That’s normally the sign of a good idea. It’s time to promote nuanced thinking since it is only this which promotes the resilience needed in young people to be of value to businesses. This call for nuance mustn’t be a reason for delay; it must sit alongside urgency.  

    But starting a business is a route open to anyone with a good idea, and the drive to implement it. Perhaps the most important lesson of all is that you don’t need to sit at home waiting for the response to that 200th job application; you can start a business yourself, and watch the applications roll in to you.  

  • The A-Z of launching a new business

    The A-Z of launching a new business

    Simon Hay and Joe Mathewson

    Sometimes businesses get started for the most every day reasons. In our case it was procrastination. We were both studying for our GCSEs and were happy to do anything other than revision. 

    It was 1999 and the internet was really taking off. We were frustrated that we couldn’t access any school work online. During study leave we’d need to cycle back and forth to school to pick up printouts, revision advice and tests. Our bedrooms were in complete chaos with paper and revision notes everywhere.

    There’s no denying we were techie teenagers. We surveyed the mess, applied our teenage ingenuity, and thought it would be fun to write some software that could make the situation better. 

    And that was much more interesting than actually doing some revision. We didn’t know it then, but seeing a problem and not being able to resist ‘scratching the itch’ is pretty common amongst entrepreneurs who found businesses. 

    At the same time, our Physics teacher who was an early evangelist for technology, ran a student competition to develop ideas for using the Internet to improve learning. We both entered, and he encouraged us to collaborate.   

    School success and encouragement

    We created the very first version of our platform with the Physics department. From there, pupil power really spread the word and soon teachers from other subjects were asking if they could use our software. By the time we started A levels our school was using it across all subjects and we were being called out of lessons to set things up and troubleshoot. 

    It was incredibly exciting to have made such a difference at our school, but we soon realised schools across the world faced similar challenges with technology. Encouraged by our initial success we approached other schools and by the time we left sixth form we had a handful of founding customers. 

    Taking the plunge from hobby to full time business

    However, we still didn’t see its full potential as a business.  We went to university, travelled, Joe became a semi pro DJ, and we took up jobs in the City.  I think our families maybe thought we would settle down. But all the time we were working on the trading floor we had a second job running Firefly.

    It was challenging as we’d be taking calls from schools in the middle of the day.

    These constraints forced us to produce a really strong product that was easy to use and reliable – and it reduced the calls.

    Looking back, it is clear that despite the City being exciting and fun, we really wanted to run our own business and have greater control. We secured our thirtieth school customer and thought “right let’s do this”. It was a hugely important moment. We were leaving well paid, enjoyable jobs to launch into the unknown. But we knew we had a product the market wanted.

    Since then, Firefly has grown rapidly. We’ve raised £10m in investment to support expansion into 40 countries and now have nearly 1.5m students, teachers and parents using the platform. It’s been hard work but the sense of purpose we have and fulfilment it gives us makes it worth it. 

    Advice to others 

    • Find a buddy– We constantly challenge each other, and develop and refine our thinking. We have known each other for 20 years. It’s the combination of ‘us together’, which makes the special sauce that is Firefly. 
    • Don’t drop everything straight away– We slowly incubated Firefly whilst we went to university and got jobs. Starting a business isn’t always about dropping everything immediately. We wouldn’t have been successful without the experience we got along the way. 
    • Tightly focus your tech product–  Think really hard about the right shape of your product – what should be in and out of scope. Early clients will want you to build features that won’t have widespread application, learn to say no nicely, but firmly.  
    • Ask for help – People are ready to help young entrepreneurs. We received lots of advice and people were really generous with their time. Just remember to say thank you! 
    • Don’t stand still– Continually look ahead to help ensure your product remains relevant. We are still doing this and recently launched our Parent Portalin response to what schools now need.

    The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated how innovation, courage and dogged hard work can make a difference to individuals, communities and the world. These are the qualities needed to launch business ideas. It’s a tough economic climate, but history shows that many of the strongest and longest-lasting companies have been started during downturns.

    As technology advances, the barriers to getting started are getting lower and lower, and there are also more successful UK tech start-ups to light the way. We are keenly aware that young people have been affected significantly by the pandemic. However, we know they are also going to be key to taking us forward. We really encourage any young person with a smart tech idea to give it a go. Scratch that itch and you might well have a roaring success on your hands.

    Simon Hay and Joe Mathewson are co-founders of Firefly Learning, an education technology company.

    https://fireflylearning.com/