Starting your own successful company requires answering a problem no-one realises they had, endless commitment and (in most cases) some cold hard cash. But aside from the basics, what else do you need in your arsenal when launching a new concept into the world?
To help you turn yourself into the next Zuckerberg, we asked eight entrepreneurs to reveal their business tool kit essentials.
1. A well-stocked bookshelf
Inspired by an inability to find the perfect T-shirt, CEO Niels Thoné founded a company to address the issues of fit and shape that many men face when shopping for this wardrobe essential. Enter Morph, an online menswear brand that bases sizing on your body type without leaving the house.
"Learning from the business greats is essential, and it's a valuable tool to apply their learnings to your strategy.
"Some great books that helped me to streamline my thinking were Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters, The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss and The Lean Startup by Eric Ries."
2. Free software
Henry Oakes' second venture is proptech (that's property technology, FYI) startup Track - he sold his first company in 2016 after raising over £20m in venture capital. From advising on the best time to sell your home to making better decisions about your mortgage, Track is the smart assistant for your property finances that launches later this year.
"There are so many tools you can use to progress without a high cost. Everybody should teach themselves Google AdWords to set up, run and optimise a campaign - you’ll learn tons about your business whilst being forced to distill your proposition to it’s absolute core. Wix is my favourite fast website builder, and Invision is a free software I use a lot to create mockups of apps quickly and easily.
"Finally, you can save a lot of money on early-stage legal fees by doing the legwork yourself. Just take the time to learn about some of the fundamental agreements like Shareholders’ Agreements. SeedLegals is a great website to get you started."
3. Dogged determination
Jas Bagniewski co-founded eve Sleep with his cousin Kuba Wieczorek and friend James Fryer in 2014, introducing an easier, quicker and cheaper way to purchase sleep products to the market without compromising customer satisfaction. Now established across Europe, eve believes that everybody deserves a quality start to the day that doesn’t cost the earth.
"The most important thing for our business was perfecting the product, and for that we needed dogged determination. I definitely had that in my co-founder, James Fryer, who was instrumental in developing the best possible mattress, still at an accessible price.
"You can create a great brand; hire excellent people, but if your product isn’t good enough, the sales won’t come. That’s more crucial than ever when you have a customer promise like ours, where you can return our mattress for free if you don’t like it after up to 100 days."
4. LinkedIn and management apps
Jack Tang co-founded Urban Massage in 2014, along with CTO Giles Williams. Realising that while you could order food, taxis and books to your exact location within minutes, there was nothing on offer in the massage industry. Urban Massage now offers affordable and convenient at-home massage treatments for people living hectic, urban lifestyles.
"The first and most important tool when starting my business was LinkedIn. I’ve used it throughout to find great people to join the team. My iPhone was my second biggest tool, where I used apps like Asana to manage our workflow and personal apps like Headspace to keep me on the straight and narrow."
5. Market research
Vitae London founder and Virgin Start Up alumni, William Adoasi, had always wanted to design high-quality watches that didn’t break the bank, but the USP of this business is its social conscience.
After visiting Port Elizabeth to volunteer with South African NPO House of Wells in 2010, the Vitae London founders were inspired to help transform the lives of youth in Africa. Now, every Vitae watch purchased from their classic range supplies a child with school uniform, a school bag and shoes, and William is a UK Ambassador for entrepreneurship with Richard Branson.
"For me, the most important thing is to understand what has made your competitors successful as early as possible. Once you understand how they have scaled you can adapt the best from them and add it into your strategy."
6. Valuable corporate partnerships
After working for Tom Ford for 19 years and becoming increasingly frustrated with the quality of flowers she was buying, Whitney Bromberg Hawkings decided to shake up the industry and found FLOWERBX. The online flower delivery service sources fresh flowers and delivers them straight to your door from the grower and boasts clientele including Jimmy Choo and Dior.
"We teamed up with Mercedes who helped us customise our bespoke, temperature controlled Sprinter vans which made all of the difference in the last mile and enabled us to deliver the freshest flowers to all of London’s top addresses. It’s really important to collaborate with a brand that matches your ethos. The rich Mercedes heritage pairs very obviously with the quality and design that have come to represent FLOWERBX."
7. Agility
Byron Bedford is the Managing Director of ProEconomy, a water purification company that controls disease-causing waterborne bacteria. Having developed the Orca system, Byron oversaw the installation at sites across the UK and Europe, including Windsor Castle, Great Ormond Street Hospital and the European Space Agency.
"If you’re a small company competing alongside larger businesses, one advantage from the very beginning is the ability to make rapid decisions and adapt instantly, without all the layers of approval.
"I try to keep the ‘Times Ten’ rule in the back of my mind, which means that your product or service needs be ten times better than the existing products or services. I’m constantly evolving the business and developing our product in order to stay in the game."
8. Complementary skill sets
Ning Li is the founder of Made.com, the leading e-commerce brand for furniture and homeware so nice they'll make it on to your Instagram feed. With 350 members of staff and multiple awards to their name, Made.com is one of the fastest growing companies in the interiors industry.
"Hire or collaborate with the right people who have crucial expertise that you don’t have. Made.com has a rather complex supply chain and a sophisticated technical infrastructure, and it’s impossible for a founder to know every aspect of this business. I was lucky to have co-founders with complementary knowledge and networks to me, and together we’ve hired a world class team."
This content has been brought to you in association with the Mercedes-Benz X-Class. First of a new kind. For those born to lead not to follow. Find out more here.
