10 tips to make your university spinout scalable with a small budget
You have begun your new life as a university spin-out. You are full of enthusiasm and are eager to make your mark on the world. You get moving and then the questions start to raise themselves. Who can you turn to for advice? When you start for the first time you can’t prepare for every eventuality, but you can learn from others.
We have started several businesses since exiting corporate life in 2006 and wanted to share some basic time and money saving tips to help others succeed.
1 – Protect your brand
When you have chosen a company name and registered the company you will need to have a logo and brand designed, most people get that. You will probably then create a holding page website for your brand but don’t forget to claim the social media real estate. It can cost as little as £500 to have an expert register and brand the top 10 social media platforms for you. When you become successful you will be delighted you have control and opportunists can’t hold you to ransom.
2 – Retain your equity
Don’t give away your equity in the business at the beginning, you will regret it. We have seen too many spinouts fail because the founders lose their passion as they only have 5% ownership left and spend all day reporting to financiers. Don’t lose control or you will lose passion.
3 – Select the right computers
Don’t trot off to John Lewis or PC World and buy laptops with WIN11 Home operating systems, you are starting a business so get business laptops with WIN11 Business Pro. With a home operating system you are going to fail cyber security audits in the future as it’s a slimmed down version without the integration and protection features. Conversion is possible but costly compared to getting it right from the beginning.
Through your operating system your laptop data can be encrypted, if its IP related make sure its well protected.
4 – Select the right software
Spend wisely at the beginning and make your life efficient and secure. Use M365 Business Premium as your base and don’t go down the Google free route unless you plan to stay there, conversion is a costly process. Talk to an expert about cyber protections they don’t cost a lot, don’t rely on the trial anti-virus tools that come with the laptop.
Your accountant will recommend the accounting software suitable for your business or ask our Greenlight Computers team for advice.
Don’t retain unique data on your computer, ensure the master copy is stored centrally in Sharepoint or One Drive, laptops do get misplaced or stolen.
Finally, ensure any application you use has MFA (Multi factor authentication).
5 – Built your audience early (pre-start)
Even before you start the business use LinkedIn to build yourself a community of contacts in your potential clients and partners. A good mindset is to establish 1,000 key contacts before you start the process of spinning out. Its free to do and will save a fortune downstream, it also helps your confidence about taking the big leap.
These contacts will become your supporters when you start to market your product or service for real and reduce the investment of time and money you need to get to profitability.
6 – Get a landline number.
It is easy and cheap to secure a landline number for your business and it can be diverted to a mobile. It acts as an important trust signal on a website, few people will call a number on a site if it’s a mobile. This also applies to Google search performance, important down track.
7 – Think about your Sales process early
Sit down and think about some key questions:
- Who is your target market?
- Why is your product/service going to help them?
- Who is the competition?
- Who will do the selling?
- How will they generate the leads?
Many start ups run out of money perfecting the product and then start a sales process that can take 12 months to kick in. Have a plan and start building a list of potential clients and messages.
8 – Listen and learn
When you start a business there are hundreds of sources of free advice, colleagues willing to help, networking events to attend etc. You will find that some of your risk averse colleagues will want you to fail, to reaffirm they are safer where they are, dismiss these voices and focus on those who want you to succeed.
Have a healthy coffee budget, its amazing how people are willing to help if you buy them a coffee.
9 – Plan your team carefully
You may start on your own or as a team from the outset but adding to that at the right time, with the right skills is key.
Your leadership needs to ensure everyone shares a common vision and is committed to the success of the spinout venture.
10 – Business plan
Keep your business plan fresh at least every month, it will be essential if you need investment, but it also acts as a useful way to keep yourself and your team on track.
Greenlight Computers has been working with University spinouts and startups since 2006, helping with all aspects of IT support, cyber security, telecoms and digital marketing. Some have gone on to great things, others have failed but most have benefited from our advice along the way.
