Matt Robinson
We'd be happy to talk to anyone launching or thinking of launching a start-up and will do anything we can to help either through advice or putting them in touch with people.
Groupay for societies, clubs and businesses
A great story for anyone looking to start a business. The guys at Groupay started their business before they even knew what their idea was. They have created an innovative online service that enables large clubs and societies to automate the collection of money. It just shows that you don't necessarily need an idea in order to start your escape; step into the unknown and persevere!
How I can help Esc members
We'd be happy to talk to anyone launching or thinking of launching a start-up and will do anything we can to help either through advice or putting them in touch with people.
Currently...
Along with two other ex-consultants I've recently launched http://www.groupay.co.uk" rel="nofollow">http://www.groupay.co.uk, an innovative online service that enables large clubs and societies and subscription-based businesses to automate the collection of money from their members/customers, saving them time and money and improving their cash-flows.
In any tech start-up there are three key roles: development, design and distribution. Whilst we all work across all three, we each lead on one of these. As a result, Tom has been focused on managing our team of technical interns and developing the back-end of our site. Hiroki has been working to get the user interface right in order to maximise page views and conversion.
I split my time between sales and marketing, and customer service; in short, acquiring and retaining users. On that note, if you're interested check out our site at http://www.groupay.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">www.groupay.co.uk and sign up while you're there!
Before I escaped...
Prior to launching Groupay we were all management consultants working at McKinsey & Co and OC&C. We each worked across a number of industries providing strategic advice to large companies. We spent 2 years in consultancy following uni before deciding to leave to follow our dream of starting our own business.
My moment of truth...
I think we've always wanted to run our own businesses. For example, I ran a company whilst I was at school which funded much of my time at uni. Similarly, Tom founded and Hiroki was involved in, a previous start-up whilst they were at uni, which was later acquired by a Canadian media company.
Hiroki and I joined McKinsey with the intention of spending 2 years there before starting our own business, so in that sense there was no moment of truth.
For me, the real moment of truth came shortly after we had started working together and I realised that this was exactly what I wanted to be doing. I think we spend so much of our lives working nowadays that it's ever more crucial that that is the case and would encourage anyone else who has a dream to follow it or if they don't, to find one!
Planning for it...
Poorly! We came at things a little bit backwards. Most people have an idea and spend forever waiting for the right time to pursue it; whereas we knew that we wanted to start a business, we just didn't know what, so we spent a lot of time before we started trying to come up with something that was sufficiently interesting and we were well-placed to do.
Practically consultancy was a fantastic place to have spent the last couple of years in that we were able to learn a number of useful skills, build a strong network of contacts and save some capital. So far we have funded Groupay ourselves based on our savings from consulting as well as a couple of temporary freelance consulting projects which are well paid and available to anyone who leaves a major consultancy.
The worst and best bits...
The best and worst thing about doing a start-up is that your mood becomes inextricably linked with that of your business. At an early stage in particular, everything is so fragile that if you have a good meeting or a promising lead you're on top of the world; but conversely if you have one bad meeting or someone tells you your product sucks it hits you so much harder than when you're working for a big corporate and ultimately can go home at the end of the day.
Best advice...
The best advice I have been given is that except for in very special circumstances you should share your idea with as many people as possible. The input and insight you'll get far outweighs the (non-) risk of someone stealing your idea. No NDAs!
The advice I would give is don't dwell on an idea. If you have a business idea and you think you're on to something, do two things:
- Test it with your target audience
- Come up with a rough sizing
If you still think you're onto something pull together an absolute minimum first version and go from there. Don't be one of these guys who has an idea and spends years telling everyone about it but never does anything. An idea, in and of itself, is worthless; it's all about the execution.
The thing I wish I had known before I made the leap sounds exceedingly simple but really isn't. It's the fact that in a start-up if you don't do it, it won't get done. In a large organisation it's easy to put off the really important/difficult stuff or leave it to someone else, whereas in a start-up, if you do that you'll die.
One of our co-founders, Tom, is incredible at this; you're chatting to him about needing to do X, Y or Z, you look away for a second and when you look back he's on the phone to whoever it is you need to talk to.