LLet’s face it. Sooner or later you are going to have to start selling, but first you have to learn to handle rejection. After all, every "no" takes you one step closer to "yes". And you will have to pluck up the courage to ask for the sale in the first place. B2B Sales for new ventures If you want a successful business you had best face up to the fact that you will have to sell. Don't worry. Sales is a time-honoured tradition. And it’s well known as a skill that can be learnt. To get you in the right frame of mind we have put together some handy introductory guidance ..read more

HHave you been thinking about starting your own business for a while? What’s holding you back? Perhaps you feel it’s not the ‘right time’, or you’re not sure if going it alone is the path for you. Could this be the year you finally take the plunge ..read more

DDonald Trump’s Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross suggested that other states should exploit the opportunity created by Brexit business uncertainty to wrestle business away from the UK. Ross suggested to Cypriot financiers that they should take advantage during the “period of confusion”. It is therefore the responsibility of UK government and business leaders to thwart this desire to wrestle business away from our shores and to regalvanise support for UK startups ..read more

Picking a fight with your boss is one way to ensure that your next appraisal is going to be hell. We suggest an easier path that will allow you to part with dignity. Start your own business! Before you take the plunge and start ranting at your boss please read on ..read more

AAs CEO of Think Startup (a not-for-profit that provides free advice to African Entrepreneurs), I have spent the last year and a bit thinking about and engaging with startups in Africa, as well as African entrepreneurs. Here are a few insights I thought would be useful to share. African Startups Matter African Startups matter to African development in the same way that Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) mattered during the period of Western development and industrialization, and still matter. The idea of capitalism, the real beauty of it is that every society contains at every time, an untapp ..read more

TThe aspiring entrepreneur wanting to start a business needs to be well-informed. The problem is, as we know from the recent presidential election in the USA and the Brexit campaign in the UK, rogue news abounds. Knowing what’s what in an age of fake news... The internet is an amazing resource but comes with its own challenges- chief among which is that there is no editorial standard or filter to weed out the bogus from the real ..read more

TTo succeed as a enterprise start up you need to innovate, disrupt markets & solve problems in radical new ways. Or perhaps it would be a whole lot easier and just as profitable to take an existing business model and simply improve on it? Is it easier to learn from the experience and mistakes of others than trying to disrupt a market? Can one just "do it better" to give oneself the competitive edge ..read more

UUnicorns abound. In recent years, we’ve seen tech giants buying up successful startups and with them some of the intellectual property that could provide competition to these giant enterprises in the future. While the fascination with unicorns (startups valued at over $1 billion) continues, are they necessarily good news for the world of new enterprise ..read more

WWhen we started putting Learngrowth together the Brexit vote hadn’t yet happened. Since 1980 the number of small businesses in the UK has risen from 700000, to 5.4 million businesses by 2016- creating more than 15 000 000 jobs So what does the future hold for startups in the UK now that we have chosen to leave the EU ..read more