start-up
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We saved £300,000 a year. Every year. That’s not a pitch. It’s a real outcome from a UK cybersecurity start-up that finally tapped into the R&D tax relief scheme. If you’re a founder building anything remotely technical, there’s a strong chance you’re leaving money on the table. The UK government disbursed £7.5 billion in R&D…
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The industry chessboard is being rearranged at speed. In the past 24 months alone we’ve seen: All three moves share a single motive: buyers have no patience for stitching point tools. The future belongs to platforms that do the joining-up for them. What This Means for Founders, Marketers and CISOs Shift Practical Implication Your Move…
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When Sophos wanted to acquire DNSSense just when I joined, it wasn’t just betting on DNS security, it was hedging against the spiralling costs of in-house threat intelligence development. For early stage cyber founders, that calculus is now unavoidable: build a bespoke threat intel operation or buy your way into maturity? The Build Case: When…
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Building a Learning Budget When Cash Is Tight
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2 min read
When budgets shrink, the first thing to get cut is often the learning spend. No more courses. No more conference tickets. Forget upskilling—just ship the sprint. I’ve seen it happen at pre-seed startups and post-Series B scale-ups alike. Survival mode kicks in, and learning becomes a “nice to have.” But here’s the kicker: the teams…
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Businesses don’t collapse because they lack ambition. They collapse because the right questions can’t be answered fast by customers, investors, regulators, or even your own team. By month 12, the chaos must become codified. Whether you’re selling into enterprises, raising capital, or just trying to keep internal alignment, documentation is leverage. It wins trust, accelerates…
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I admit. I may have lost many six-figure deals because the marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) weren’t sales-ready. Our CRM showed 300 “hot” leads – but only 8% converted to sales-qualified leads (SQLs). The culprit? A lead-scoring model that prioritised form-fills over buying intent signals like G2 competitor comparisons or compliance checks. It wasn’t that marketing wasn’t…
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Most datasheets are designed for sales, not investors. They’re either full of jargon, overloaded with features, or worse – styled like marketing collateral with no substance. But when investors ask for a datasheet, they’re not asking for a prettier pitch deck. They want signal. Fast. What does this product do? Who is it for? How…
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We were chasing a six-figure deal in the enterprise space. A well-known client. The sale felt like a marathon—demo, security review, procurement, legal.. And then came the kicker: net-60 plus end-of-month payment terms, biannually. By the time the cash landed, it was often a full year after the first discovery call. Meanwhile, payroll, cloud bills,…
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Most partner enablement webinars die in the first 10 minutes. Too much jargon. Too little relevance. Decks full of features, zero selling tips. The partner nods politely, closes the Zoom tab, and never thinks about you again. But done right, these sessions can do more than check a training box—they can generate real pipeline. The…
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When Stripe integrated SOC 2 compliance into its developer onboarding in 2015, it cut sales cycles by 17 days. That’s the hidden maths of regulatory alignment – done right, it’s not a cost centre but a growth lever. Why This Matters Now The SEC’s new cybersecurity disclosure rules mean compliance failures now trigger investor lawsuits,…