Entrepreneurship & Execution

David Langer, Co-Founder & CEO of GroupSpaces speaks at Oxford Brookes Business Society, Oct 08.

Produced by Henry Mori, Executive Director, Global Soken Research & Ex-VP, Imperial Entrepreneurs.

30 Hot UK Web Companies

Cute video produced by the guys at AppAppeal:

Featuring GroupSpaces and many of our friends from WebMission 2008.

The European Ecosystem is Entering Puberty

I just read Mike Butcher’s post entitled What is the future for tech VCs in Europe? and thought I’d share a few of my predictions of what I believe is likely to happen in Europe over the next few years; hopefully the predictions will serve to explain my rather crude choice of blog post title.

1. European entrepreneurs will become more sophisticated.

• The annual Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford conference which has been running since 2000 started being copied in Cambridge and London last year — and more people’s lives will change as a result. Having met several of the most successful entrepreneurs and investors from the Valley at the events in 2006 and 2007, I have some insight into the power it is having. A couple of friends of mine whose lifes have changed as a result are:

  Bob Goodson
  Bob met Max Levchin for the first time in 2004 and was headhunted to move to Silicon Valley 3 months later in order to become employee #1 at Yelp. Having helped take Yelp through to taking on $16M venture capital funding and over 4M monthly uniques, Bob recently left to found YouNoodle with Kirill Makharinsky, who was also headhunted by Levchin as an Oxford student. 

  Kulveer Taggar
  Kulveer met Evan Williams for the first time in 2005 and was soon persuaded to quit his job at Deutsche Bank and go full-time on BOSO in March 2006. After getting selected for Y Combinator in 2007, transferring what he’d learnt to Auctomatic and teaming up with Irish hacker Patrick Collison, subsequently raising investment from Chris Sacca and Paul Buchheit, his company was acquired by Live Current Media for $5M last month.

  Kulveer and Bob have now become role models for the younger generation of entrepreneurs – up and coming entrepreneurs such as Aly Chesney (Babuki), AJ Asver (Project Bluespark) and also Andy and I (GroupSpaces) have easily accessible people we can go to for advice and introductions. The foundations for a rich ecosystem are being laid.

• European founders will start reading and applying Venture Hacks. This is a blog/resource come recommendation service founded in March 2007 by serial entrepreneurs Babak Nivi and Naval Ravikant. I recently asked Babak what his motivation for starting Venture Hacks and he said:
  

  “First-time entrepreneurs usually negotiate sub-optimal deals that leave millions of dollars on the table. Or worse, they negotiate awful deals and screw themselves. Startups have one chance to raise money right. You can fix almost any mistake in a startup—but you can’t fix your deal. If you hire the wrong employee, you can fire him—but you can’t fire your investors.We try to level the playing field with knowledge, so entrepreneurs can do this critical job right. In the words of Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is Power.””

I went on to ask Babak what the most common mistake young entrepreneurs make with VCs was. His response was: 

“Entrepreneurs focus on valuation when they should be focusing on controlling the company through board control and limited protective provisions. Valuation is temporary, control is forever. For example, the valuation of your company is irrelevant if the board terminates you and you lose your unvested stock. The easiest way to maintain control of a startup is to create good alternatives while you’re raising money. If you’re not willing to walk away from a deal, you won’t get a good deal. Great alternatives make it easy to walk away.Create alternatives by focusing on fund-raising: pitch and negotiate with all of your prospective investors at once. This may seem obvious but entrepreneurs often meet investors one-after-another, instead of all-at-once.

Focusing on fund-raising creates the scarcity and social proof that close deals. Focus also yields a quick yes or no from investors so entrepreneurs can avoid perpetually raising capital.”

• European entrepreneurs will make stronger connections with and learn from their Valley counterparts. The knowledge and network of the ‘Y Combinator Mafia’ (as Sumon Sadhu has called them) will start propagating throughout the UK and beyond. Out of the 80 startups funded to date, 8 have been from the UK, which include friends of mine at Snaptalent, Auctomatic, Songkick and Clickpass.
• GroupSpaces was recently selected for WebMission which means we’re flying out to San Franisco next Friday. We’ve got an action-packed schedule lined up including the Web 2.0 Expo, presentations to VCs and the Press, and Startup School, for which Andy and I have also been selected. We’ll come back with increased social and intellectual capital, as will the other 19 WebMission companies, and this can only benefit the UK and Europe.

As more European startups immerse themselves in Silicon Valley, our networks and collective knowledge will grow and grow; like lots of neurons firing around a big brain meeting each other at an increasing number of synapses. Via a combination trial and error, face-to-face contact and reading the right blogs, Europeans entrepreneurs will evolve.

2. European Investors’ balls will drop. They’ll become more like Valley Investors.

• In my (limited) experience, speaking to, but mostly hearing/reading about European VCs, they only seem to want to invest in proven concepts. Whether that means a product that already has traction, or an entrepreneur that’s already done it once before, they are pussies when it comes to taking risk. On the West Coast entrepreneurs get funded at concept stage on a regular basis. Loopt raised over $5M from NEA and Sequoia very early on, Xobni raised $4.2M from a dream team of investors pre-launch, and there are countless other less high profile investments at a similar level.
• Why are they pussies? My belief is that it’s down to a lack of confidence and/or experience. Just like a good cook, many Silicon Valley VCs know what combinations of ingredients will make a nice dish; sure, they might need to taste the dish as they cook it, adjusting things along the way, but they’re confident that in the end, it will turn out right. European VCs, on the other hand, just haven’t built up enough experience, or don’t trust their own judgment enough. Index and TAG seem to be the most confident investing at an earlier stage, driven in part by Seedcamp co-founder Saul Klein, which ironically brings me onto my next point.
• Seedcamp will become more like Y Combinator.
  It seems that Y Combinator picks founders and focus on product. However, it seems that Seedcamp picks business ideas and focused on business –- the first time. Having listened to an inspirational 1 hour masterclass by Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston at Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford in November 2007, and also read Founders at Work, I see 2 changes necessary for Seedcamp if they want a ‘Seedcamp Mafia’ to form:

1. Interview the teams face-to-face and focus more on whether the founders are ridiculously hungry, smart, determined nutcases who can and will do everything it takes to succeed.
2. Beat teams up more on their product/idea. 3 of the 4 partners of Y Combinator are product guys. Many of the people attending the weekly dinners are also product guys. Seedcamp’s team and program seem to have too much focus on investment and marketing, and too few good hackers/product guys ensuring teams make things people want.

3. English people will stop being so ‘English’.

By this I mean people will be more open.

If you meet someone who could really do with meeting this other guy you know, well hell, you’ll make an introduction even though you weren’t asked.

If you’re wrestling with a good idea, you won’t get out an NDA with everyone you meet, you’ll trust in the wisdom and good nature of people and share your idea -– for every 1 person that will try to copy you, there are probably another 9999 that will want to help. One of my best buddies AJ Asver has been sharing his journey since day 1 of his new venture, codenamed Project Bluespark, I’m sure he would vouch for the good it’s doing him.

And anyway, you can’t really give away most ideas in a sentence, because they’re dependent on all the experiences and related ideas the founders have –- and no-one can steal that stuff.

The other big drivers I see for openness revolve around groups and events:

• OpenCoffee has been started, again by Saul Klein, to embody these principles of sharing and networking, and if it continues to attract the right people, people will keep evolving.
• Zenopy, a members-only network of young entrepreneurs founded by Sumon Sadhu meets about once per month in London. It too is encouraging a more candid, sharing culture. The current list of members are all on the road to achieving big things, and they acknowledge what a fantastic resource they are for each other. Next month, I’ll be attending my first Zenopy Meeting, and it’s an exciting prospect.
• Oxford Entrepreneurs (OE), Imperial Entrepreneurs (IE) and increasingly more university entrepreneurship societies are providing a platform for experience to be passed down to the younger generations. OE’s now up to 6 funded startups since its inception in 2003; and already this year, I’ve travelled down from Oxford to see Paul Graham, Brent Hoberman, Sutha Kamal, Kieran O’Neill and Steph Bouchet speak at IE in London.

I’m going to finish this post by naming and thanking a few people who I see to be the real catalysts for the paradigm shift which is taking place:

Some European investors who ‘get it’
Danny Rimer, Saul Klein, Niklas Zennstrom, Mattias Ljungman, Paul Fisher, Martin Varvasky, Alex Hoye.

Some young European entrepreneurs who ‘get it’
Jamie Murray Wells, Michael Smith, Sumon Sadhu, Kieran O’Neill, Loic Le Meur (OK, Seesmic is now Loic’s 5th startup, but he definitely gets it and he’s making waves with Le Web 3 amongst other things).

I’m sure there are many others who passionately believe, as I do, that Silicon Valley is more of a state of mind than a place, and you too are the agents of change — the next 5 years are going to be defining for Europe.

[The Gateway IV — extended version] Decision Time

On many, many occasions during a degree, you contemplate what will come next. Some people are completely set on moving on to get a PhD in Theoretical Physics, while others have decided that McKinsey is by far and away the best place they could start their career in business.

However, most people aren’t fortunate enough to have this level of certainty. For an intelligent, talented student like you, furnished with a diverse range of skills and experiences, about to receive a good degree, how on earth do you choose from the thousands of career options available?

First up, let’s simplify the problem. Let’s assume you are ambitious and you want to enter the business world in some capacity. Also, let’s assume you don’t want to work in a medium-sized, mediocre, low-growth company. You want a little bit more. You want to make money or you want to make meaning or both.

We can now divide the available options into 4 categories:

1. Join a Large Corporate (Investment Bank, Consultancy, Law Firm, Professional Services etc.)

2. Go into Investment Management (Private Equity, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds, Pension Funds etc.)

3. Start your own Company (or continue with your existing company if you recently started one)

4. Join a Start-up Company

The first thing to say is that there is no right answer. Each person has slightly different needs, priorities and values. To help understand what might be the best option for you, let’s weigh up the pros and cons:

1. Join a Large Corporate
This is the easiest option to take.

Pros: You get a good name on your CV, good training, your friends and family will be immediately proud of your new job, you get a good work-life balance (except in IBD!), you have relatively good job security and you receive a high starting salary.

Cons: It’s unlikely you’ll get public credit for your work, your personal development is likely to be quite niche and narrow (management consultancy is broadest), long-term financial upside is often low (relative to starting and selling your own successful company), your role often has little or no impact on the wider world, you’ll have to deal with internal politics, established organisational structure, and your department is always likely to get bent out of shape a little.

2. Go into Investment Management
This one is tough to do straight out of university. Elite Investment Managers may only recruit 2-3 new analysts each year and they often prefer applicants with 2+ years relevant experience.

Pros: High kudos – there’s no doubt these places are hot, you get a very good work-life balance (normally < 60hrs/week work), direct exposure to top people (both within the company and meeting clients), a relatively high starting salary, reasonable job security and high long-term financial upside (if you reach fund manager).

Cons: Training is on-the-job (albeit with some useful professional qualifications), your impact on investee companies can be significant although your pre-occupation with leverage and a target IRR (internal rate of return or “yield”) can conflict uncomfortably with their non-financial objectives, and personal development is again relatively niche and narrow.

3. Start your own Company
The scariest option – not for the faint-hearted.

Pros: Incredibly steep personal development – you have to learn and adopt new roles very fast, you can personally have direct impact on the world, it’s definitely best for getting public credit, it’s your idea so you’ll be super-passionate about coming into work every day, you have no boss, there’s no politics as everyone is equal to start with, you only have to work with people you like and there is huge financial upside if you nail it – you could become rich and famous.

Cons: no brand name for the CV, no training or guidance – you have to work out everything yourself from first principles, terrible work-life balance – the start-up will be your life, you risk public humiliation if it fails and you have no initial salary.

4. Join a Start-up Company
In contrast to jumping into starting a company yourself, this can act as an intermediary bridge.

Pros: Good for personal development – you’re likely to get stuck into lots of different areas, little politics (if it’s still a small team), salary is stable (especially if the company is VC funded), long-term financial upside is potentially high if you joined early enough to receive a significant (1%+) equity share.

Cons: Unlikely to be a brand name for your CV, no formal training, work-life balance isn’t great – there’s a lot of work still to do, less public credit than if you were a founder and long-term financial upside is still much lower than the founders.

Many of these pros sound great. How do I choose?

Do internships. Internships not only provide you with an education and insight into a prospective industry, but during one, you also get paid well and have a lot of fun (particularly in London).

Internships also help you work out what you don’t like. This helps you home in on what you actually do want to do.

For example, I interned in Investment Management with Lehman Brothers in the summer of my first year, did the Discover course with McKinsey in the easter of my second year, and then interned in Exotic Derivatives Trading with JPMorgan in the summer of my second year.

I had a lot of fun with each company and ended up realising that what I really wanted to do with my career choice was optimise for maximum impact, responsibility and personal development. This led me to entrepreneurship, and continuing establishing my business, GroupSpaces, as the obvious path to choose.

Kulveer Taggar, ex-President of Oxford Entrepreneurs society and Co-founder of Boso.com and Auctomatic.com took a slightly different path having spent 6 months at an Investment Bank after graduating:

“I actually did both, the graduate job before leaving to do entrepreneurship. In my case, I quickly realised I’d have more immediate control over my future by doing my own thing rather than working in an Investment Bank. I valued working with dynamic people and in situations where I was out of my comfort zone. Also, I very practically believed that entrepreneurship would get me to financial independence quicker than a graduate job.”

Now you could probably work out most of the pros and cons mentioned above for yourself – they’re freely available from many books, websites or people who’ve formerly walked down those paths. In fact, most people will have all of this information at their disposal by the time they make their initial career choice.

Why, therefore, is everyone not happy with their job? Why do some people regret their chosen career paths?

It’s because they didn’t think things through enough, they didn’t play the tape forward, they bought into some of the popular misconceptions people have today:

“But I thought…

• …starting a company is too risky.”
  Is it? How much risk are you actually taking? When you graduate from fresh out of university, you’re young and broke. So you try starting a company for a couple of years and it doesn’t work out. You’re still young and broke. What are you actually risking? It’s only the opportunity cost of not getting a job.And anyway, having interviewed with many employers and worked as a professional Careers Coach myself, I know that experience of starting and running a business is valued highly by employers. The amount a candidate will have learned is now well understood – irrespective of success or failure.

  Not only this, but if your start-up fails, you’ll have learned many lessons from the mistakes you made first time round and you’re more likely to succeed if you try to start another company.

  Lastly, it’s important to understand the relationship between risk and opportunity. Mark Andreesen (Founder, Netscape, Opsware and Ning) puts it well in his “Guide to Career Planning”:

  “Without taking risk, you can’t exploit any opportunities. You can live a quiet and reasonably happy life, but you are unlikely to create something new, and you are unlikely to make your mark on the world.”

• …I need to get some experience before starting a company.”Charlie Osmond, Co-Founder & MD, FreshMinds very nearly bought into this misconception:
  

  “During my final year at University, I happened to notice Richard Branson having dinner in a restaurant. I had just been offered a consultancy job and was trying to decide between starting my own business and becoming a consult. Who better to ask for advice than Sir Richard.

  I ventured up to his table and he asked me to sit down. Having explained my dilemma he said “you should definitely take the consulting role. It’s a great way to learn”. I was rather surprised that he advocated the corporate route considering that he’d gone straight into entrepreneurship himself. In the end I chose to ignore his advice and start my own business on graduation rather than go into consulting.

  It’s turned out to be a great decision and one that I have never regretted. However, eight years on, with a better perspective on my choice, when I am asked what I’d recommend, I often repeat the advice I was given despite having gone against it myself.”

  It’s important to bear in mind your risk appetite as you get older – taking the leap of faith doesn’t get any easier. A certain level of ignorance, naivity and blind optimism can actually be a good thing for start-up founders. It can keep you going in the face of the inevitable doubt you will face from people.

  Along with FreshMinds – Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo! countless other successful companies were set up by first time entrepreneurs with no serious work experience.

• …a big company will pay me more money.”
  Yes – it will in the short term. You get a nice, large salary. However, you don’t get equity beyond a few token employee stock options. You don’t get access to a potentially massive financial upside in the future.

  How much money do you need straight out of university? Many people care much more about the money they’ll have to support their family and live when they have the time to enjoy the money. If this is the case, then surely long-term financial upside should be what you are looking for?

  What is more, money is just one currency. What about learning skills and developing a network? Do they have value? Did you think about them? What would you learn in that job you are considering? Who will you build relationships with? Even if you do ultimately want money, is it therefore better to choose the option which will give you more money now, or the option which furnishes you with the tools required to make a lot more money? For example, starting up a company will require you to learn financial, legal, sales, marketing, strategic, management and many other skills. Surely learning all these has serious value?

  In his “Guide to Career Planning”, Andreesen went on to say:

  “After graduating is when you should optimize for the rate at which you can develop skills and acquire experiences that will serve you well later. You should specifically take income risk in order to do that. Always take the job that will best develop your skills and give you valuable experiences, regardless of its salary.”

I’ll leave this debate with a closing quote from Charlie:

“Overall, there is no right route, whatever decision you make, the key is to learn from it and reassess your options. Don’t get stuck in a job and find you never take the risk of starting up. Equally, if you start something that’s going nowhere, make sure you fail fast and move on.”

You can view the original version of this article on page 8 of the most recent edition of The Gateway.

What’s Hot?

Last Thursday, I was invited by Tim Lambertstock to pitch GroupSpaces at an event entitled What’s Hot? held by Oxford’s branch of the British Computing Society at Oxford’s e-Research Centre that was looking for “A selection of Hot Technology ideas to change the world”. Along with GoNumber.com and a concept-stage idea for a communications gadget for tour groups, I had to talk for 5 minutes summarising GroupSpaces and then answer 5 minutes of questions from a panel including:

• Jan Hruska – Co-Founder & Director, Sophos
• Eileen Modral – Manager, Oxford Investment Opportunity Network
• Jeff Barr – Senior Web Services Evangelist, Amazon
• Adrian Walmsley – Oxford BCS Branch Webmaster

Having had a few months off being grilled since we were raising the angel investment I found it useful to polish my pitch and answer the usual questions about user acquisition, monetisation, team etc.

At the end of the evening, the audience had to vote on which idea they liked the most and I won by a small margin. This meant that I received the prize of £100 and duly purchased the first round of beers for everyone at the Lamb & Flag (St. Giles, Oxford) afterwards!

The other nice thing that came out of the evening was the opportunity to speak to lots of members of local groups around Oxford; it was very reassuring to hear that they all shared similar pain points to those I named in the pitch and they’ll hopefully start Beta testing our product once we extend the Beta outside the student market.

GroupSpaces Going on Web Mission

On Tuesday last week, after an application and judging process lasting several weeks, where TechCrunch UK, Doug Richard (Dragon’s Den), UK Trade Invest, Oli Barrett and Polecat all put their heads together to work out which of the many applicants could most realistically do meaningful business in the US, TechCrunch announced the 20 companies selected for Web Mission 08, and GroupSpaces was on the list (at the top)!

The judges also assessed the companies based on their business viability and the strength of their management team, and it’s going to be fantastic for Andy and my credibility now that we’ve successfully run this gauntlet.

Sponsors Heller Ehrman issued a statement saying:

“The sheer volume of applicants provides convincing evidence of the depth and breadth of emerging growth technology companies in the UK. The shortlist of companies selected demonstrates that the UK is able to produce credible web businesses.”

As the mouthwatering agenda takes shape, this is building up to be one of the most exciting weeks of my life, and it all starts on April 19th.

We’ll be staying at the Clift Hotel in Union Square, San Francisco, and the hotel is home to the Redwood Rooms, a plush bar we first visited with Kirill Makharinsky last year.

The week kicks off with cocktails sponsored by TechCrunch on the evening of Saturday 19th, followed by a few days hardcore networking with Valley start-ups and VCs. On Wednesday we’ll have the chance to attend the Web 2.0 Expo, and that evening we’ll be having drinks with Michael Birch at Bebo (or should that be AOL?). Thursday contains some PR, accounting and legal masterclasses then we’ll be flying back home on Friday.

Picking up on Michael though – he’s a fantastic example of what British entrepreneurs can achieve. Having graduated from Imperial College London with a Physics degree in 1991, he’s now just sold a $850M company. And when you think that Bear Stearns is selling for $236M, that ain’t bad.

Hopefully Brent Hoberman and Michael will be just the first of a long line of highly successful British Internet entrepreneurs. Is the next one going on Web Mission?

The final list of 20 companies is (in the order TechCrunch listed them):

GroupSpaces – Web-based tools for groups

Tioti – A social network around TV

Exabre (TheFilter) – Advanced music recommendation

Coull – Interactive video platform

Zogix – Employee services platform

Byteplay (dotHomes) – Real estate search engine

Trampoline Systems – Enterprise software harnessing social behaviour

Hubdub – News prediction social network

WAYN – travel and lifestyle social networking community

TrustedPlaces – Venue recommendation network

Slicethepie – Enabling bands to raise money directly from their fans

Mydeo – Mainstream application for storing and sharing video

Skimbit – Research and share decisions

Huddle – Enterprise 2.0 collaboration

Rummble – Mobile social networking and recommendation

Zebtab – Desktop TV application

Silobreaker – Contextual and graphic search results

Kwiqq – Social Website builder

edocr – Making business documents interactive

ShortFuze – Online movie creation tools for social networks

We already know Douglas at Byteplay and we did some filming with Alicia from Skimbit at the BBC recently; however I’m really looking forward to meeting another 17 awesome companies next month.

Doug Richard said:

“some of these companies are as good as anything coming out of the Valley”

So as Mike Butcher entitled the post on TechCrunch.com – The British are Coming. America – watch out!

GroupSpaces receives Funding

Last week we publicly announced that GroupSpaces raised 6 figures of funding from a consortium of experienced Angel Investors including Avonmore Developments. From writing our Business Plan over July and August last year to closing the deal in January, the past 6 months have provided both an exciting journey and fantastic learning experience.

I thought it would be interesting to share our time-line throughout this process:

June: Final exams at Oxford University

___________________________________________________________________________

July: Move into office at Oxford Centre for Innovation, start work on Business Plan

___________________________________________________________________________

August: Travel to Silicon Valley, visit Google, Facebook and Bebo, develop strategy and finalise Business Plan

___________________________________________________________________________

September: Pitch at Oxford Early Investments business angel network. Graduate of the Year finals. Start meeting investors

___________________________________________________________________________

October: Meet lots more investors

___________________________________________________________________________

November: Sign termsheet. Commence due diligence

___________________________________________________________________________

December: More due diligence, lots of legal work. Less sleep

___________________________________________________________________________

January: Close. Champagne!

___________________________________________________________________________

February: Announce funding publicly. Silly photos for press

You can read some of the official press coverage here: Oxford Innovation, The Oxford Trust, Cherwell

[The Gateway III — extended version] Tricky Business

So you’re running a business; or at least working seriously on an idea you’ve had. It has the potential to change the world, render you free of financial worries forevermore, and you want to spend as much time as possible developing it. However, this annoying six-letter word called “degree” is still lurking over your head.

It’s a situation I was in during the 2nd and 3rd year of my degree and one which any budding student entrepreneur has to face. This week we’ll look at some techniques you can employ to make your seemingly unmanageable life not only manageable, but successful and fulfilling as well.

The first thing to establish is that you’ll need to be productive. In 2002, David Allen published a book entitled Getting Things Done (GTD) which has since sold over 500,000 copies and been published in 23 languages. Attracting a huge following in the blogosphere, many would name the book as the authority on the subject of productivity. At the core of Allen’s methodology is a 5-phase workflow process:

1. Collect
This involves capturing all existing data which needs to be processed – this might be in a physical inbox (your desk or bedroom floor), an e-mail inbox, a notebook, a mobile phone, or any other place you store information. The idea here is to get everything out of your head and into a collection device ready for processing, and Allen stipulates that all data stores need to be processed at least once per week.

2. Process
Here, the emphasis is on being structured. For example, in an inbox, one should start at the top, deal with one item at a time and never put anything back into ‘in’. If an item requires action, then:

• do it, or
• delegate it, or
• defer it.

And if an item does not require action, then:

• file it for reference, or
• throw it away, or
• incubate it for possible action later.

3. Organise
Organising involves keeping your to-do lists and calendar up-to-date – although Allen specifically recommends that the calendar be reserved for the hard landscape: things which absolutely have to be done by a particular deadline, or meetings and appointments which are fixed in time and place. To-do items should be reserved for their own separate list.

4. Review
To-do lists of action items and reminders will be of little use if not reviewed at least daily. Given the time, energy and resources available at that particular moment, decide what is the most important thing to be doing right now, and…

5. Do it

Here are some handy tips that will both make you more productive and enrich your life:

Tip #1: Use to-do lists and a calendar to GTD.

Following the success of Allen’s book, millions of people around the world are now applying his principles through to-do list and other online productivity applications. I personally favour Google Calendar and Remember The Milk (www.rememberthemilk.com) integrated with my Gmail account for my to-do lists.

Tip #2: Manage expectations of others and learn to say “no”.

The second key to achieving success in multiple areas of your life lies in appropriately managing the expectations of people. Your tutor wants this, your co-founder wants that, your customers are e-mailing you for something else, your investors are bugging you about this other thing and you still want to maintain healthy relationships with your friends and family. Managing expectations of others is something Rob Eyre (a 33-year old Software Developer & MBA and our first employee at GroupSpaces) often reminds me of when discussing strategic issues for my business.

Most people instinctively think about these issues – but seldom in a structured manner. One technique I find useful is illustrating all your important relationships in a mind-map. A little bit like what Facebook describe as the “social graph”, where each person is a node and each relationship is an edge; except with this mind-map, you only draw lines which have one end attached to yourself. Having done this, you should be able to work out where people have expectations of you and also where you feel it is important you meet these expectations. However, since you don’t have enough time to ‘do everything’, it makes sense to spend the time you do have focused on the people and activities you care about most.

You’ve probably heard the old adage “you’ve got to be cruel to be kind” and I believe that this is particularly appropriate here. You have to learn to say “no” sometimes and not take on certain commitments, else you’ll end up letting people down, damaging their trust in you and as a result damaging your relationships. If you’ve worked out which people you really value and ensure you meet your commitments to them, not only are you likely to be more successful, but you are also likely to feel more fulfilled in your relationships.

Tip #3: Don’t procrastinate; prioritise, break down tasks and delegate.

Thirdly, you can’t expect to run a business and obtain a good degree by spending time procrastinating. Whether it’s browsing Facebook, reading blogs or watching television we all procrastinate. Jan Sramek, a 2nd year student at LSE who got 10 A’s at A-level, currently runs two businesses, recently secured seed funding for a third and also works part-time in a hedge fund has a firm view on the topic:

“Never read something just for the sake of reading it, let alone ‘because everyone else is reading it’ – if you can’t see the payoff, trash it.”

There are many underlying causes people attribute to procrastination, but the bottom-line is that we are avoiding dealing with the emotions we are experiencing. It’s an escape.

2006 UK Graduate of the Year Kirill Makharinsky is one of the most productive people I know. Having presided at Oxford Entrepreneurs, founded Enternships.com and AmIWorthIt.com, played 3 university-level sports and still achieved a double first in Mathematics, he certainly isn’t one to procrastinate, and when you hear his strategy for meeting his commitments, you begin to understand why:

“Decide on the time you’ll need for each to achieve an outcome you’ll be happy with, plan your schedule out, and go for it. If the balance doesn’t work, change it up after a few weeks, and so on, until it does work. Prioritise like crazy. Get into a strict routine. Be smart in getting the help of others with your degree and your business. Get into a situation where people that you respect rely on you to make that balance work. Get regular advice from people who’ve done it before to make sure you’re doing it right.”

Also worth emphasising here is the importance of delegation. Use interns, colleagues, friends and family to help spread your workload. Just because you’re struggling to get to a task shouldn’t mean that it doesn’t get done. Break the task down into smaller components and delegate.

Tip #4: Utilise life hacks

You might have heard of the term “life hack”. The original definition of this term referred to computer programming tricks that filtered and processed data streams like e-mail and RSS feeds. Today, anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever and non-obvious way might be called a life hack. Here are some particularly powerful ones which I’ve come across in recent years:

• The 2-minute rule.
Also advocated by David Allen, this rule says that any task which needs performing and will take less than 2 minutes should be performed immediately.

• Carry an idea book.
I recently heard that one of Richard Branson’s secrets of success is a little black book which he carries around in his back pocket. Each time he comes up with an idea, he records it in the book, and he reviews his list a couple of times each day, crossing out the ideas that aren’t actually so good, and keeping the ones he really likes. At number 11 on The Times Rich List in 2007 with a personal fortune of £3.1 billion, there’s some evidence that this technique can pay off.

• Find a place for everything.
Whether it’s bills, receipts, loose change, laundry or random pieces of paper, if you have a place for it, the physical and mental clutter these things can create is removed.

• All nighters.
I’m a strong advocate of the power these can have, but also share Sramek’s firm opinion on where they fit:

”If you are tired at 10pm, don’t try to get over it – just get some sleep and get up early. Pulling all-nighters can be very productive, but equally a complete waste of time with productivity close to zero.”

Tip #5: Know when to quit.

Finally, it’s important to know when to quit; and there are two sides to this. If you’re business is flying, then you might need to drop out or at least defer finishing your degree. I’m sure Microsoft and Facebook wouldn’t be where they are today if Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerburg hadn’t dropped out of Harvard. On the other hand, if you’re business hasn’t quite had the success you were hoping and you’re degree is in serious need of a makeover then maybe it’s time to cut your losses and focus back on academic work.

Coming up next week: How do I choose between entrepreneurship and a graduate job?

You can view the original version of this article on page 10 of this week’s edition of The Gateway.

GroupSpaces apply for Web Mission 2008

Earlier this week, Andy and I submitted our application for Web Mission 2008.

The event will see 20 UK Web 2.0 companies travel to San Francisco to explore new opportunities for growth with key people in Silicon Valley. It will be showcasing innovative UK web talent, seek meaningful assistance for companies ready for expansion, and provide a platform for those involved to gain valuable media and business exposure.

Serial networker and entrepreneur Oli Barrett has joined forces with social impact facilitators Polecat to organise the event which runs from 19th-25th April.

The chosen companies will have their trip subsidised, and partners of the event include UK Trade & Investment, Doug Richard (Dragon’s Den and CEO of Library House), TechCrunch, HSBC and Make Your Mark. Also assisting with the event are Bob Goodson, Kirill Makharinsky and the guys at YouNoodle, Michael Birch (CEO, Bebo) and various other ex-pats who are now making a name for themselves in the Valley.

Having visited Silicon Valley last year, Andy and I have some idea of the value of these sort of experiences. Michael’s comments affirmed this:

“The Web Mission represents an amazing opportunity for the best of entrepreneurial UK talent to visit Silicon Valley, and learn for themselves the differences that make the US a breeding ground for innovation and more importantly successful execution of ideas.”

And I particularly like the point about execution. How many UK Web companies have successfully executed ideas on the global stage in recent years? LastMinute.com, Last.FM, Skype (not UK founders though). How many other technology-based Web companies? There are embarrassingly few. How about the US? Well, already this year we’ve seen MySQL exit to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion, Microsoft bid $44 billion for Yahoo! (albeit in vein so far), a TechCrunch source says that an acquisition of Bebo (built and executed in the US) for $1 billion is “definitely happening”…and we’re only just over half way through February!

With the right network of contacts – the right investors, partners and market specialists, there’s no reason why the UK can’t produce successes with much higher frequency. Web Mission is a firm step in the right direction.

We want GroupSpaces to be further evidence that it’s possible to build globally successful companies from the UK. We want to be part of this event.

Wish us luck!

Graphic Design Internship with GroupSpaces

Thinking of joining or founding a start-up? Want to get experience of working in a real start-up environment? Reckon you can design hot, sexy Web interfaces?

GroupSpaces are looking for a Graphic Designer to join us in our headquarters at the Oxford Centre for Innovation over the Easter Vacation (March/April). You’ll get to work directly with the founders (Andy Young and I) and your work will get seen and used by many of your friends and peers.

So, if you think you can make www.GroupSpaces.com look better, and are passionate about GroupSpaces and Web 2.0 in general, then we want to hear from you. Shoot me an e-mail at david@groupspaces.com for more info.