entrepreneurship

Can you have a partnership of entrepreneurs?

By brendan at 13 December, 2011, 9:16 pm

A group of Scandinavian entrepreneurs caught my eye this year, so when I was in London the other week, I decided to look them up. They had a local office above a shop in the fashionable shopping district around the Bond Street tube station and were a fascinating group, who seem to have built a [...]

revenue model innovation for service firms

By brendan at 22 August, 2011, 3:57 pm

I have been buying and selling services for around 20 years, and during most of that period, have only ever seen two pricing models. Fixed rate or Hourly rate. Each with a couple of tweaks that are normally of benefit to the supplier, not the purchaser. Fixed Price – is normally used when the service [...]

The reality of online retail in Australia

By brendan at 3 August, 2011, 9:46 am

Not good enough! I read today that Myer intends to do away with shipping and handling costs for its online store, to stop the leak to internet shopping. Apparently “Commonwealth Bank estimates that Australian consumers spent $9.5 billion online last year, with $4.2 billion going to overseas online retailers and the remaining $5.3 billion paid [...]

Don’t grade students

By brendan at 27 July, 2011, 9:19 am

Can business schools stop giving people marks from A-F or 0-100 please. Just give them pass or fail, so they are prepared for real life. One of the things I completely abhor, is business students fresh out of school with grandiose plans but poor execution combined with a loser attitude. The mindset seems to be [...]

the money plan

By brendan at 29 June, 2011, 4:16 pm

I had breakfast the other morning with Scott Kilmartin of Haul. I like talking to Scott about the retail market because he has both heaps of experience, and quality insight. Scott felt that the small independent retailer was absolutely on the wane at the moment and on June 30th a lot of accountants would be [...]

Localisation

By brendan at 9 June, 2011, 12:24 pm

Twenty one years ago, when I left Perth, I planned to return in two years because that was where my home was. Despite not being born there, I had become an adult in Perth and it was where all my “forever friends” are. You know, the ones you don’t have to speak to for years, [...]

What type of entrepreneur are you anyway?

By brendan at 11 May, 2011, 3:24 pm

I spoke at the Startup Weekend last Friday night on building valuable networks, but got asked by three people before the event – “who is the target audience of the Churchill Club?”. The simple answer is entrepreneurs, but the real answer is unsurprisingly, a little bit more complex, so I normally talk about the [...]

Revenue Model Innovation

By brendan at 2 April, 2011, 6:17 pm

Over a decade ago, I made the acquaintance of CIO of a major Bank, and asked him to become involved in my small IT services business which was growing like a rocket; 0-$2M revenue in year one. He declined, and said that “he didn’t find our business model scalable”. After the rejection I thought “how [...]

Outsourcing Offshore

By brendan at 28 March, 2011, 7:53 am

Finding worthy topics to discuss was the highest priority when I started the Churchill Club 5 years ago, so I sought advice from a number of quite senior people on what they thought were issues that mattered to the technology start-up community. And like most advice in the world, it turned out to be horribly [...]

Event Report – Outsource Offshore 10-Mar-11

By brendan at 15 March, 2011, 9:50 pm

From the Churchill Club event of 1oth March 2011 With Pete Williams – Founder, Preneur Marketing Alex Levashov – Principal, Altima Interactive Linh Hoang – Owner, Red & Black Solutions Notes by Brendan Lewis What are we talking about here? In simple terms, outsourcing offshore means you can: Build an validate web based business quickly [...]