I bought this book a while ago after a reference on a blog somewhere. I never got round to reading it but it was referred to during a course Julian and I were on at the University of Nottingham as part of the EMDA High Growth Program. I steeled myself for the read and it was entertaining and thought provoking in pretty much equal measure but I had to push myself through to the end of Part One. The key chapters for me came in the Part Two. 'Reconstruct Market Boundaries' and 'Get The Str... Read Full Story

As many of you will know, I've been pretty down on my experiences with Business Link. Well, this may be about to be consigned to history. As part of our acceptance on the EMDA High Growth programme, we had a business review which prompted Julian and I to consider some aspects of how we're running Esendex. It was suggested we speak to Business Link as the gateway to a host of services and, in truth a little grudglingly, we did. One meeting on and we're wiser to some relevan... Read Full Story

Running the web site for Beeston Cycling Club has been a real eye-opener as to the crap that stands in the way of legitimate use of the Internet. We run the site with a Wordpress blog at it's heart. Allowing our members to post and comment on rides, events and anything that takes their fancy, sadly it was thigh diameter last night, is key part of what makes our club different. Problem is the couple of us that administer the site have to deal with pages and pages of spam comments. ... Read Full Story

A healthy stats obsession is no bad thing when running a business. Measurement, metrics, feedback, refine is all part of the rhythm of improvement. The great thing about our stats is that they also give us a view on the economy in each of our markets. Our focus on business messaging and the size of our customer base means we see, first-hand, how busy an economy is. Our traffic reflects the pace of business. The number of grocery deliveries, new furniture purchases, broadband installations, ... Read Full Story

Last night we had the fourth Nott Tuesday event and from the feedback it was a success. However I've been left with the feeling that something wasn't quite right. The start-up pitch competition was a new format for the evening and we had some great judges and great companies pitching but the audience wasn't the usual crowd. As @alanodea said to me, he'd told Tadhg (a Nott Tuesday first timer) that this wasn't what it was usually like. My vision for Nott Tuesday was ... Read Full Story

I travelled through Changi airport in Singapore at the weekend and naturally tweeted about it. Next thing I know I get an email from twitter telling me that the Singapore Democrats were following me. What a load of mistargetted nonsense. I'm not a fan of auto-follows at the best of times but this has got to be up there as one of the worst. Read Full Story

The focus of Web 2.0 this year was the power of less. While there was definitely a feeling that nothing really new was happening in the industry, a couple of talks I attended focusing on optimisation of your business were probably the highlights of the event for me. Eric Ries (blog: Startup Lessons Learned) was almost evangelical in his talk: The Lean Startup. He espoused the virtues of measurement, feedback loops and iterative, agile development. All music to my ears and things we'... Read Full Story

One of the highlights of Web 2.0 was seeing Steve Souders presentation: Even Faster Web Sites. His book High Performance Web Sites, is a well thumbed tome at Esendex and YSlow is required add-on to Firefox on our developer's machines. Steve is an uber-geek. He has a passion for web-site performance like few others. He tirelessly investigates, tests, hypothesises, tests those hypotheses, and, importantly reports back to the rest of us. His passion, and most importantly, the fact tha... Read Full Story

I've just been at an establishment trying to buy something, doesn't matter which one, and had dreadful service. My immediate thought: I'll tweet about this, that'll show them What a load of passive-aggressive nonsense. Tweeting, blogging and the rest allow us to whinge about bad service without having to face up to the people we're whinging about. In fact they encourage it. I find myself standing there, working myself up into a disgruntled fury, safe in the knowle... Read Full Story

I had the pleasure last week of being invited to address the Nottingham University Student Venture Challenge awards. My talk 'Being an Entrepreneur' took a fairly candid whizz through my story from graduating Nottingham University in 1997 to the success I now enjoy leading Esendex. I included a few warts. My audience were just starting their entrepreneurlal journeys, hopefully some of my experiences and thoughts would be useful. The evening was the culmination of many months o... Read Full Story