Get Legal Wise: The Startup Basics In Setting Up Your Business

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There's this expectation in the world of startups that you're just supposed to know what you're doing. Running the business, finding the talent, getting investment, sourcing loyal customers, and of course, tackling the legal mind field like a boss. But in reality – and the very reason we have co-founders to pick up on those skills we just don't have – we're not going to be pros at everything.

That's exactly why we've teamed up with our good friends at Lewis Silkin to answer some of those tricky business, investment and legal questions we all want to know the answer to, but might be afraid to ask.

Check out our first instalment below, where we delve into setting up your business as a corporation, equity battles, options and employment contracts.

If you've got further questions you'd like us to find the answers to, drop us an email at info@collider.io and we'll see what we can do!

Luke Hakes | How To Become A Successful Angel Investor

Luke Hakes, Investment Director at Octopus Ventures, joined us recently to share his seed to exit story on a number of their investments. As all of our investment currently comes from individual angel investors, community is even more important to us, which is exactly why we put on a surprise or two for our angels, connecting the best with the best in the ecosystem.

Here are our main takeaways from Luke himself.

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https://twitter.com/ColliderGB/status/877226097762545671

It’s all about people

We all know that – but what should you look for? Luke talked about finding what he called the ‘honey badgers’. They’re founders that are attracting the best and brightest talent from other businesses to build and shape theirs.

It’s all about the timing

Alongside people, it’s all about timing. Market timing, expansion, trends – these all require a timely arrival at the table, or you risk derailing the business entirely. Keep an ear to the ground and press go when the time is right.

It’s not just the product

We’ve all heard stories of incredible technology-based exits, but the market is shifting. Teams are being filled out by acquirers, so something new is needed. With little low hanging fruit left, and AI all the rage right now, Luke’s advice was to find companies with a vertically integrated stack, rather than investing in just one part of it.

Leverage

Investors are going to sweat their startups – that’s a given – but they can also provide incredible leverage, especially in follow on rounds and ultimately exit. Leveraging your board at these key points can really help create market tension, and ultimately value, in any process.

Collider Loves: CoSchedule Social Scheduling App Review

If we told you content is king (or queen), you'd quaff with laughter at the use of such a cliche. But, what if we said we've found a pretty nifty content solution perfect for every day use for startups and small teams? Yep, that's peaked your interest.

We know some awesome social analytics programmes, referrals, user generated content and campaign solutions - I mean, check out our past five cohorts... but we wanted to test the market when it came to writing, planning and scheduling. That's where we found coschedule.

As you may know, we not only invest in early stage startups through our accelerator programme, but also have our Scaleup Network, which means we’re constantly on the lookout for companies of all ages.

That means we’re checking the market day-in-day-out, which is how we stumbled across CoSchedule, and realised it could really save a lot of time for our marketing team.

Creating

Coschedule combines your planning, writing and scheduling all in one place, meaning you can say goodbye to spreadsheets and old school flat plans, and hello to marketing ease.

Its ability to create and track campaigns is really what stood out for us – whether that’s email, social, video or even just notes, you can colour code your calendar and use specific set ups for any kind of marketing.

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Organising

Within its simple calendar interface, you can plan campaigns, track to-do lists, assign jobs to team members and view all of your up and coming content in one place. Integrating seamlessly with Wordpress, you'll also see all of your blog posts.

But really… that integration is awesome. It means you can access CoSchedule either by their website login, or through the back end of your site, keeping everything neat and tidy.

And it’s worth digging a little further into their solution for working with teams: the to-do lists are a dream for anyone who loves a good tick to get through the day, and with team names next to each requirement, there’s no way you’ll lose track of your busy marketing schedule.

CoSchedule_Calendar

Scheduling

Whilst Coschedule is no better than other social scheduling platforms in terms of integration and analytics, it's super handy for tracking social campaigns.

You can schedule social posts in advance to any main social network from the calendar interface, but also from each blog post itself, which makes it much easier to track the distribution of information.

This is especially brilliant for using recall – if you’re wanting to re-share your posts but still want it to look organic, this tool makes it look easy. Gone are the risks of re-sharing the same piece too often, sharing too many articles in one day, or maybe even not enough.

CoSchedule_Social-Campaign

Tracking

And you can see some analytics, so you can work out what's really working. This is especially great for re-sharing your previous articles, and testing which day and time works best. No need for more than one tab – it’s all in one place! What's more to love?

CoSchedule_Top-Content-Report

Want to know more? watch the video below:

https://vimeo.com/166544659

The Mad World of MadTech: May Roundup

There's never a dull day in startup land, with May going down as a month of PROGRESS. We've seen impressive positions in rankings, our recent 2017 grads growing and achieving great challenges, thrown our own event for some of the UK's leading brands and of course, enjoyed a surprise or two...

 1. Good-Loop’s ethical ads displaying on The Londonist

Nothing can stop these guys who seem to be on quite the roll, and of course, we couldn't be prouder! Our recent grad, who was also winner of the Collider 2017 Demo Day, have secured several exciting achievements recently.

This time, Good-Loop's ethical ads are now live on The Londonist! You should really go check it out, especially given you'll be giving a donation to charity.

 2. Rate8 are stomping!

But that’s not all from our recent grads this month, as Avi, founder of Rate8 from this year's cohort, was selected as a Founder of the Future by Founders Forum.

Huge congrats to you Avi!

 3. Seenit to double team by 2018

The Seenit family keeps growing and growing… to the extent that next year, they'll be twice the size they are now!

As we're sure you've seen yourself, this team are really nailing it, and much comes down to Founder and CEO Emily's attitude, who understands the importance of having an inspired, motivated and engaged team, which is, needless to say, a key factor for success.

You can read more here.

4. Seenit and Pixoneye stopped Startups 100 list

Collider alumni in Startups 100

Seenit and Pixoneye have both been awarded deserved positions in the longest-running index of the best new businesses.

Huge congrats to both teams!

5. Brand Event was a not-to-be-missed one

https://twitter.com/ColliderGB/status/867083402029256704

It was a pleasure to be surrounded of some incredible brands in our Big Brand Event last week – we kept this intimate, with the ultimate goal of discovering the similarities between totally different brands (and their methods) when it comes down to innovation.

A huge thanks to dunnhumby, Diageo and BT for joining us in the panel, along with Iain from CampaignAmp, another of our 2014 alumni, who gave a brilliant startup view.

6. Beem shows off new logo!

Collider alumni Beem

Alumni Beem have a new logo and we love it! This fancy prism works as a perfect metaphor for the team as it represents their business idea and what their day-to-day looks like.

Such a nice symbol and even better story from Co-Founder Lee, riiiiight here.

Best Things We've Heard All Week | MadTech Roundu

Last week was a week of random facts, and our top MadTech news will provide just that. Here are the best things we heard all week.

1. Self-driving cars could flip the auto insurance industry on its head

We caught up with our good friends from LV who produced this little nugget of information.

It's thought there will be a huge shift of responsibility from driver to car manufacturer, as well as a general price decrease.

And that got us thinking – where will insurers now focus to grow their market, and, more importantly, how will they advertise better to build a share of sectors like health which are seen as a big opportunity?

2. The Next Web was awesome

And the incredible LivingLens got through to the final of their scaleup pitch event. Congrats!

We actually joined our partners, Startup Amsterdam, at their stall this time and were really impressed with the quality of startups we met. Don't forget, we're still accepting applications for our first Amsterdam cohort!

https://twitter.com/Livinglenstv/status/865278436381773826

3. The Europa's nominees featured some of our key community

That's right, Richard Fearn and Gabbi Cahane – we're looking at you!

If you want to vote, you can do so here.

4. A slice of proof that we've got to do more

Yep, we weren't best pleased with this update, but with this bad news can come positivity if we all try. What were your thoughts?