Author Archives: Silicon Roundabout

Whether we are delivery speculative or bespoke office space, the by-words on all tenants lips are ‘flexibility’ and ‘adaptability’. The inability to predict requirements more than a few years ahead – for good or bad – is generally the driver.

Software companies increasingly talk about being “AI first” but separating hype from reality is a challenge. Which AI-first startups are actually scaling? At Dawn we still consider AI/ML to be nascent and best understood as a tool to make existing …

“When starting a new business there are a lot of voices, especially in the B2B space, that will tell you that the product needs to be incredibly refined to attract enterprise clients.

“In terms of getting people through the door I think social media a critical part of any business. There are a lot of different approaches to social media and businesses that offer these services, but I like to keep mine …

Technically, no, although, it’s fair to argue that the chances of success will increase with one or both under your belt.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty for businesses around what will happen with Brexit. The challenge for many will be to make sure they’re set up in an agile way, so they can respond to what we’re seeing happen economically. 

What have you learned in 2018 and what are your predictions for tech in 2019, be it in the fields of Medicine, Energy, Data, Business or Government? 2018 has been all about backing ‘belief’ in every area of tech. Ambition …

My co founder Tim Boughton and I took the very risky decision not to raise any money until we’d proven the product market fit. This meant living off savings for two years to avoid selling a significant percentage of the …

How does influencing a business from the inside (Birchbox) differ from the outside (Beringea)? The experience of building a successful ecommerce business has been critical to my success as an investor – not only did it bring a lot of …