Are you a tech innovator or an aspiring digital entrepreneur with a vision of starting your own business venture?
If you’re looking to create and grow a new startup, we have advice and insights below from a few successful UK digital entrepreneurs who know what it takes to create the next big thing and make it work.
First up we have advice from Chris Muktar, co-founder of WikiJob, the world’s largest community driven graduate forum. WikiJob was founded in 2007 and is now the largest graduate careers site in the UK.
What made you decide to start your business?
Freedom and independence. Having worked in a corporate environment, the attraction of being your own boss and succeeding entirely on merit was very attractive.
Did you experience any difficulties when setting up your business?
Setting up any business is difficult. We’ve had many issues along the way, from winning our first clients to hiring the right people, learning how to manage staff and build a service that’s valuable.
What’s the best thing about running a digital business?
Digital is still in its infancy. It’s possible now for a couple of guys with laptops to build something competitive in a very short space of time. The innovation is exciting. Furthermore, it’s possible to scale a business up quickly – the Internet makes it easier to reach customers than ever before.
What advice do you have for others looking to set up a digital business?
Get started straight away, control your costs, think about who your customers are and the best channels to reach them, and never, ever give up.
Next we have insights from our own Tim Dickinson, founder and editor TechFruit as well as the rapidly expanding Descrier news and culture magazine.
What made you decide to start your business?
The newspaper industry is in flux, and while some digital-first and user-generated-content publications like the Huffington Post had found success, I thought there were people who would be more interested in taking these tools and making something that is more focused on global news than celebrities and doesn’t try to take away blogger independence.
Did you experience any difficulties when setting up your business?
My legal background came in handy when forming the corporation, but it is all relatively straightforward with plenty of help available online. HMRC could really do with modernising how we submit our accounts and taxes though – it’s unbelievably slow, cumbersome, and painful for all businesses.
What’s the best thing about running a digital business?
The lack of physical boundaries means that we can look anywhere in the world to find the talent we need – whether that is bloggers and activists to cover the situation in their city, finding editors, coding new functions for the site, or building our apps. The digital talent pool is global, and all of us can work from anywhere in the world without any major obstacles.
What advice do you have for others looking to set up a digital business?
Stop talking and launch something. A lot of people talk of wanting to run a digital business, but never take the plunge – but you’ll never know if that idea will have worked or not unless you give it a go.
Next we have insights from Ciaron Dunne, co-founder of Broadband Genie, which offers reviews and price comparison data for all the leading UK broadband providers. Ciaron started the venture in 2004, making it one of the longest running broadband comparison sites, and the business has since from strength to strength.
What made you decide to start your business?
We set up Broadband Genie back in 2004 when broadband was just becoming a “thing”. Most people were still on dial-up Internet connections, and there was an obvious opportunity to help people learn about and compare broadband. We put a huge amount of work into content and education because that was what was needed at the time.
Did you experience any difficulties when setting up your business?
The main difficulty was choosing the right people to work with, both at a senior and staff level. In a startup business you need people who are good strategically, who are multi-disciplined and who, most importantly, will stop talking and actually take steps, try things, and get the work done. We had a few team iterations before we hit the formula which has worked for us.
What’s the best thing about running a digital business?
That one’s easy: you get to make it up as you go along. I’m sure that’s true for non-digital businesses too, but you just feel in e-commerce that success rests in your own hands rather than someone else’s.
What advice do you have for others looking to set up a digital business?
There are a thousand ways to set up a business, and I’m certainly no authority. The one thing that I think holds true is that you need to identify what you’re not good at and get other people involved to deliver that. Obviously in a digital business you need strong tech and design skills, so if you don’t have those (which I don’t!) then you need to get them in quick. Another general, but unbelievably important, lesson I’ve learnt is to be very clear about what type of person you employ (never employ people just because they tick the boxes): if you’re not excited about a potential team member then move on.
We hope that these insights have inspired you to follow your dreams of becoming a successful digital entrepreneur!
Photograph by Leo Hidalgo