7 Measures for Business Cyber Resilience

There are ever increasing threats to business in cyberspace. DDOS, Ransomware and Phishing to name but a few. There are some proactive steps you can take as a business to help mitigate against these threats:

1.    System Hygiene

Everything starts with a proactive and managed approach to keeping computer systems clean and secure. Having software monitoring desktop machines for intrusions, making sure that all routers and firewalls are configured correctly and running the latest operating systems, ensuring that staff do not plug unknown devices into their machines etc.  All of these activities if treated as routine maintenance tasks will stop the basic low level issues from becoming major ones. It’s a small investment in time and money that has a disproportionate effect on keeping your business safe, and like insurance of any type, you’ll be glad you had this approach in the long run.

2.    Planning

Plans are fundamentally useless, as soon as something goes wrong its typical that the incident does not compare with the plan, but, the planning process itself is a vital weapon. If the senior management team understands how to react to a cyber-attack and has a number of documented options available in advance, it can act quickly to stop a problem from escalating. The senior team needs to contemplate all forms of possible attack and create a response for each flavour of incident. Those responses should be made available to the staff and reviewed at regular intervals.  Training key staff members on how to respond to an attack is vital.

3.    Risk Profiling

Not all cyber-attacks are created equal. It’s a positive position to be in if a company can recognise patterns of attack and what may have already happened and what comes next. This allows a far greater capability to create a bespoke defence to different problems and know when to act and where to look. Different company digital assets may require vastly different approaches to keeping them secure, most cyber-attacks will not be beaten by a one-size-fits-all approach. Create different risk profiles for different attacks and have a fit for purpose response.

4.    Metrics

During a cyber-attack its most unlikely that you’re going to have the option to work in high levels of detail. Its more fundamental that you act quickly than act precisely. Focus on being able to be agile with your responses using rough figures and estimates rather than precise numbers. It means that your attacker is forced to do the same making the likelihood that the attack will stop and it avoids your response grinding to a halt because of analysis paralysis. Run simulations, record numbers and create ranges that you can recognise and define what response is appropriate.

 5.    Risk Mitigation

Your company needs to spend time and money to mitigate the risk of a cyber-attack. Some of these seem common sense and yet a lot of companies still fail to ensure these are in place:

Training: Make sure all your staff understand their role in cyber security and actively engage with them in discussions around how the company’s protective stance can be enhanced.

Certification & Compliance: Even if your company is not software or tech focused, make sure that you go through the ISO9001 and ISO27001 certification. Stick to the rules and regularly retest yourself. These standards are there to help you defend your company and its information security.

Policy & Procedure: Write specific processes and policies for the company to use that enable new habits within the staff to form. Bring Your Own Device policies, rules on portable hard drives, policies on accessing external systems and physical security mantras will all help mitigate risks.

6.    Cyber Insurance

In the modern era it would be remiss for companies that hold personal information or sensitive data to not have cyber insurance. These policies cover the loss of data or information from IT systems or networks. The average cost of a cyber-security breach is £600k - £1.15Million so typically carrying £2.5Million of cover seems a minimum policy amount. There is some good guidance on cyber-insurance cover available from the Association of British Insurers here.

7.  Go!

Press the go button and put everything into place. It’s often that plans around cyber-security are left unimplemented because of the “it can’t happen to us” syndrome. If you’ve gone to the extent of the planning, then the implementation should be easy and straight forward. Don’t be the victim of a cyber-attack for the sake taking the last steps of implementing your cyber-security strategy!

The 7 Deadly Sins of Software Development

Here is a rundown of the main issues with a suggestion or two on how to limit their impact:

1. Poor Technology Choices

From the outside this can often seem an odd statement. How do you know you’re making the right choice when there are so many to choose from? Many software projects are created in the wrong technology set and either just put up with it or pivot into a different tech mid project – making all previous work largely redundant. The correlating effect of making the wrong choice in the early stages can be huge.

All development teams have a preferred technology to work with. The question should be what is best for the project, not what is best for the team. If the project needs don’t match with the team then they are the wrong team, it’s not about getting the team to change to adopt something for the sake of working on the project, that has some inevitable conclusions when the team can’t complete the project on time, on spec or at all. The developer must always do the right thing for the client and if that means not working on a project because of a tech mismatch then that is the correct decision.

New generations of software developers will come in with new languages and approaches. New = risk. If the project is safety critical or has a regulated nature then Ada – despite being 25 years old – is the right choice, not the latest fashionable language that’s breaking ground. The mobile space is a lot more fluid and fast pace in terms of change, but should be seen in the same light, sometimes the last gen languages are still the right choice over the next gen.

2. Agile is the answer to everything – NOT!

Development methodologies come in all shapes and sizes but ultimately no matter what you think of them, you need one. They’re not a magic bullet that will solve all your problems but they do limit the size and shape of issues.

Waterfall – the established wisdom for many companies still remains a viable option. Agile, the young pretender to Waterfall’s crown has become a middle management battle cry, despite many using it not really understanding the concept never mind the associated problems with it.

Under scrutiny Agile still makes most sense when used as part of cloud based application development. The need to rapidly and frequently update applications makes this a sensible approach. Waterfall favours slower release cycles on products that have a larger qualitative code requirement (FinTech, MedTech, Banking, Safety Critical)
Any choice you make is not going to remove the productivity issues that most software teams face but it will keep the development cycle within a monitorable and measurable environment that management can understand and assess.

3. Inadequate and Under-Resourced Testing!

If your development team is running short sprints, then the testing and deployment process is pivotal to having an efficient workflow. The testing should ensure product quality and avoid broken code making it to the live environment but it must be uber-efficient to not slow or disrupt the successful completion of the sprint.

Automated testing processes, commonly referred to as Continuous Integration (“CI”) is the best solution for allowing the team to test rapidly and deploy when code successfully passes. Designing and implementing CI into the work flow is a specialist task and is expensive at the outset, sometimes making it hard for smaller development teams to justify the cost.

The return on the investment into CI should be huge. Development teams should be able to make quick updates and changes and deploy them into the live environment with the surety that the code has high integrity. What this does mean is that developers need to take a higher level of personal responsibility to create and maintain the automated tests – even if the team includes a dedicated DevOps developer. CI does not remove the need for test engineers but it should allow a smaller number of people to cover a larger code base more efficiently.

4. No Long Term Product Road-map

Many businesses with a software component often start off with the notion that the software has a path and can be added to, amended and expanded. This intention often gets lost, forgotten about or is the first thing to be cut when times are tight financially. Software dates like everything else and all the company is deferring the cost to a later date, it doesn’t go away.

As the company grows and the user base within the software increases then it’s often a case that strategies at the crazy end of the spectrum are opted for. Every customer having their own version of the software is a common outcome of under-investment at the right times, making maintenance and updates insanely complex and time consuming.

A 12 to 24 month product road-map that is well thought out and funded at the right level will always ensure that both the development team and the customers are aware of the point in time when new features and updates are coming on-stream and can therefore plan accordingly. Anything other than this means the company and the customer are acting tactically not strategically – firefighting today’s issue rather than planning delivery further ahead.

5. Weak Project Management / No Product Owner

Getting a software project to market relies on a symbiotic relationship between the product owner and the project manager.

The product owner must understand the customer and their requirements. The project manager must understand both the development team in terms of skills and the technology in terms of capability. The two must then come together to produce a rational and reasonable set of tasks and timescales that allow the product take shape with the right functionality and in the right timescales.

The common mistakes include the Product Owner attempting to be the project manager and attempting to guide the team without having the required understanding of the issues. The other common mistake is no product owner at all, the Project Manager is then left to try and create software that has the user’s best interests embedded into the product without really knowing who the customer is in the first place.

6. Teams split across multiple locations

This is the great white elephant of software development. Outsourcing became a thing for software development in the late 1990’s and despite the huge increase in productivity, work flow and communication tools it still remains a major risk to any software development project.

In an Agile project management approach the daily stand-up is complicated by multiple locations and time zones and therefore loses its basis purpose. In many instances testing and development are not in the same location and that can increase the time it takes to examine and identify issues ahead of agreeing the fix – at which point this goes around the circle again.

Creating different projects in different offices and managing them centrally is less of an issue. Developing the same project in multiple locations and expecting an efficient delivery is unlikely.

7. Environmental Costs

There is a lot written about what the best environment for software development teams to exist in, its very subjective and circumstantial. It’s often written that open plan offices are very disruptive and that developers do better productivity wise when they are in small rooms with just 2-3 people in each. Whilst the concentration levels might be more consistent you also need to consider the company culture and the wellbeing of the staff.

Like most things in life it’s about balance. If the staff can work to reasonable standards in an open plan environment I (personally) still think that is better than the cubicle farm approach. Some developers definitely need the calm and quiet and some can work fine in the hustle and bustle of an open plan space. It’s something that needs consultation with the staff and for an open platform for discussion so that staff needing quiet can get it and others that need stimulation and human contact can also thrive.

Don’t under-estimate the effect of a poor work environment if the development team is struggling to deliver consistently or has communication issues.

The problem with crowd-funding ...

When Kickstarter launched in 2009 I was sceptical. I'm still sceptical in 2016. Whilst I thought the concept of crowd-funding was an interesting open door for a lot of new projects, I also saw the downside - the potential for a lot of people to take money and not deliver. 

The market for crowd-funding has bloomed and there are now 30+ sites you can browse for projects and products to back. I've put money into two gaming projects (as that's my background) but more to see what the process was rather than I was desperate to back these specific games. Neither of them have made it to market, reinforcing my scepticism.

Projects that fail to find backing

If your project isn't good enough it just won't get traction and therefore wont get funded. There is no mystery here. The public is more educated than ever and project that isn't worthy of attention will not draw the cash. In the early days a slick marketing campaign could help a less than interesting project get its funding, but those days are long gone.

Projects that find funding

These projects/ideas fall into 3 main categories in my mind:

- Marginal
These are projects that just scrape past the post. There was probably a concerted effort by the founders and some pre-awareness, but they just made the target

- Mainstream
These are projects that make their target in less than 60% of the available time and end with 150%-200% of the target. The product is probably a reasonable idea but typically the amount invested in these is on the low side - so the risk level is average.

- Mega
These are well marketed and slickly put together. The bulk of the funding was pre-arranged before the campaign went live and the over-performance in crowdfunding probably means that they could and should have gone through another funding route.

Here are my top-6 things to consider:

#1 Founders

One of the bigger issues is the background of the founders of the projects seeking funding. There is no way that the crowd funding sites can sanity check the people behind the projects so it really needs to come down to the individual to take a closer look. Its the case that some of the people looking for crowd funding don't have the background and track record that would make funders hand over cash outside of the crowd funding sites. Its one of the areas where the sites could do a lot more/better to protect the users. The projects I have backed - I knew the founders and was happy to fund their projects - but this is not typically the case.

#2 Tracking

Lets assume that you've backed a project that is interesting and that the founders are capable of delivering the idea. Project management of the delivery is often completely anonymous. Getting the semi-regular update emails is OK, but if like me you have a technical background, you want a bit more insight into the delivery, the problems, the solutions etc. Even if you're not technical then a more granular insight on the delivery schedule would be more inclusive.

#3 Trust

Thinking about the above, if you don't know the founders and you can't get a good oversight on how the project is progressing then how can you build trust? You cant, plain and simple. So without transparency and trust between the funders and the founders then why are we surprised that there is a disquiet with many crowd funded projects?

#4 Realism

Do your homework. Make some enquiries into how the project should be put together and then judge whether the founders have a realistic time frame or funding amount to turn the project into reality. Even if your understanding is basic it should be enough to broadly assess the projects credentials. If it doesn't look realistic, it probably isn't.

#5 Copyright

So many crowd funded projects run into copyright issues. They unknowingly infringe on someone else's IP and end up getting bogged down with due process. Google around and see just how many other products are similar before committing. The more you can find the more wary you should be. Its part of the taking-your-time and do-your-homework approach you need before crowd funding.

#6 Compliance & Accounting

There are different schools on thought over if crowd funded amounts are Capital or Revenue. Look at the location that the founders state as the home of the project and then look at the rules relating to that location. If the project is likely to loose funds through an overly aggressive tax regime then its also likely to run out of money, or that's what history would suggest.

Closing Summary

In the end its a case of buyer beware. If you just don't take the time to go through some simple due diligence checking then every now and then your not going to get anything for your money. It's not hard these days to get some baseline information that can  give you a better sense of who is involved and what the potential issues might be in delivery - you just need to spend the time.

A Crypto Future for Good

Crypto-Currency

Recently the BBC featured this article about a new bit-coin derived service that rewards walkers with a virtual currency for each 5 miles they walk. Bit-coins are not new, but this is the first genuine attempt to connect crypto-currency to a genuine real world cause. With obesity on the rise and the follow-on problems with diabetes, this kind of initiative is welcome.

My own personal interest in crypto-currency (CC) goes back a couple of years. I've managed to mine a few bit-coins, have delved into the block-chain to see how they are created, watched the valuation of each coin fluctuate wildly and completely failed to find anything that I really wanted that I could use the bit-coins for. 

I have throughout all this been telling anyone who would listen that CC's as a concept have the potential to change everything. Particularly for people with little or no specific skills base or those people that work in sectors that are historically low paid (healthcare etc.) 

Imagine scenarios where putting rubbish in a bin creates revenue? A Nike Fuelband style device on your wrist communicates with a recycle bin to reward you for depositing rubbish. Now suppose that multiple deposits in a time-frame amplifies the reward. As soon as rubbish has a value you'll never see litter in the street again, or anywhere else for that matter - I've said that for years.

There are a lot of social and societal issues that could be tackled in the same way - with CC's rewarding low/no skilled input into society, providing a revenue opportunity for the person and lessoning the welfare/local authority bill in the process. 

So what's the problem?

There are a few issues with CC's at the moment. 

- Stability
The current CC's suffer from a stabilising influence like the Bank of England does for Sterling. Our money is protected from volatile movements by the Bank of England's moderation of the market. Bit-coins have never had this and therefore are subject to wild swings in value.

- Security
CC's need to be deposited into a virtual wallet system. I've never seen my bit-coins, they don't exist physically, I know they exist because I can see them in my bit-coin wallet. The wallet system is not 100% flawless and its still possible for wallets to be hacked or stolen completely. They also rely on passwords and if you lose or forget your password there is no system to recover it, its lost for good.

- Market
At the moment most of the mainstream business environment doesn't want to deal with CC's, mainly for the two reasons above but also because they don't have the skills and tools internally to deal with CC transactions. Its changing slowly and some of the banks are heavily investing in the people and tech they need to manage CC's. However, its still not possible to pay your phone bill with a CC transaction - which is a major limitation.

- Trust
For anyone wanting to get involved with CC's there are still trust issues for something that you can't hold in your hand. Users need to know that they are going to receive what they have earned, when they earned it and that they can spend it the way they want to. There still needs to be some formality developed for CC users - CC generators need to be regulated and managed (maybe by the FSA?)so there is some faith with the users that they are involved with something that's going to function correctly.

Summary

I'm an advocate for the future of CC's. I don't think that bit-coins are the solution, but something based off the block-chain principle will emerge that starts the revolution. If you're interested in CC's and want to read more, here are a selection of links outlining both the argument against as well as for CC's.

Wall Street Journal
Nature.com
UK FinTech
Investopedia
City AM

Is the Bubble Ready to Burst?

A non-tech investor recently asked me if I thought the tech market was heading for a crash. "Yes" I replied without hesitation. 

The current tech market and environment has all the warning signs of a crash coming, its just a question of if we choose to get ready for it, or ignore it on the basis that there are still gains to be made right up to the moment it goes bang. It isn't the same as the dot.com burst of the late 90's but the same signs are there and a large part of the tech market seems happy to ignore what's on the horizon.

A combination of rapidly increasing share prices, market confidence that the companies will turn future profits, individual speculative activity in shares, and widely available venture capital has created an environment in which many investors were willing to overlook traditional metrics, such as P/E ratios, in favour of basing confidence on technological advancements.

So what am I basing my future prediction of a tech-bust on?

The current "Unicorns" need to go public to provide their investors with a return on that investment and keep confidence in the market. A small number could be sold but at a certain top-line valuation this is particularly difficult - there aren't that many buyers. The Unicorns are growing revenues very aggressively which is a positive but the question is more over their ability to generate a profit. They are raising new monies constantly and burning most of the money to maintain the growth curve. Ultimately they will need to show a path to baseline profitability with attractive margins to justify their valuation. Sceptical doesn't describe it with me, I'm sure that a lot will not end up being sustainable and its at that point that the confidence will collapse.

Many Unicorns - darlings of the stock market - and other privately held companies will be shutting their doors as they find it impossible to raise more cash with their bloated capital structure and their huge infrastructure costs. Any smaller or more nimble company that can actively cut costs to get at or near profitability will survive but many will not.

I still think that the best way to understand the current situation is to hark back to the last downturn. Mark Cuban (His Broadcast.com company sold for $5.7 billion several months before the dot-com bubble burst) recently said that there is no question whatsoever that we are in the midst of another one. The key piece of learning from the last one? There is no doubt that a lot of people will be devastated when it pops. 

“The biggest of all losers will be anyone who has borrowed money to invest in private companies,” he said. “You were stupid. You blew it. You lost. That simple.” - Mark Cuban

A Perfect Storm?

Absolutely. The start-up market is overheating.

Funding a tech start-ups has never been this easy! One of the prime causes has been because of mutual funds and hedge funds getting in on the action, altering not only the funding landscape for tech start-ups, but also the equation by which valuations are created and therefore expectations.

The concern is really around the valuations for businesses that are defying explanation and negating the established wisdom. Entrepreneurs and investors are deviating from more traditional valuation methods and performance metrics to more radical ones. Another cause quoted for increasing valuations is the trend of protections for late investors that cause valuations to inflate further. These conditions have put the market into a state of very inflated and artificial valuations.

The companies themselves are burning through cash like there is no tomorrow. Throwing money at every aspect of marketing, infrastructure and, in particular, salaries has become the accepted investment strategy for start-up growth - everyone wants a Unicorn. All this perpetuates the vicious cycle of raising more money and spending more money. For the amounts that some of these businesses have raised, there is extreme scepticism on actual profitability.

Where does this end?

As to if the unicorns are in some kind of tech-bubble - I'm not sure. There is so much money vested in their success its likely that more money will just find its way into their eco-system. I'm hesitant to say to-big-to-fail but close. Companies further down the scale are very likely to fail if confidence falls, new money will dry up or only go to the unicorns. Confidence is everything when it comes to investing.

In any gold rush the people who make the real money and the people who build the picks and shovels. A lot of the infrastructure providers have had a long stretch of capacity development through overspending by VC backed companies. They are the real winners.

Pitch Perfect

I've just attended WebSummit 2015 in Dublin. Its one of the largest gatherings of start-ups, investors and business angels during the year. Attendance is typically in the 20k bracket and its a popular event with celebrities such as Bono from U2.

This years event included several live pitch stages where anyone could stand up and live pitch their start-up directly to a group of investors in front of an audience. One of the pitch stages was sponsored by Audi and I watched a number of start-ups pitch during the course of the event.

For a lot of the people using the pitch stage, it didn't end well. We saw a succession of young hopefuls go down in flames under the weight of badly thought of ideas, unworkable business models, rampant ego's and twisted understanding of how investment works.

Anyone who really understands how investment works wouldn't get up on one of the these stages because they understand the damage that a bad pitch or a bad investor reaction to a pitch can be.

Let me just quantify that slightly.

- A bad pitch is an unrealistic, non-commercial or niche idea that has no audience or is unlikely to monetise itself.

- A bad pitch reaction is when you pitch to the wrong people, investors come in flavours and you need to find the right audience for your pitch. Pitching to just anyone who identifies themselves as an investor will ultimately lead you to a bad pitch reaction.

So what makes a good pitch and what is the right scenario to pitch in?

Creating a quality pitch deck takes time and expertise. If you're a first time entrepreneur then get help. Accountants and lawyers are the first port of call and then subject matter experts can all help you get the right vernacular. The slides must be accurate and succinct and must cover all the right aspects that the potential investor will need to know to understand if this is an idea that appeals to them.

Simply:

1. Who are you / who are the team

2. What is idea / problem you're solving

3. What is the solution your developing 

4. What is the revenue model / who is the customer

5. What is the cost of developing the solution

6. What is the time-scales / time to market / 1st £ of revenue

7. What is the exit strategy / Time to exit

At the end of this the investor should be able to rule you in/out of their thinking. They either understand what you're saying, like it and want to continue or they don't get it and you both need to draw it to a close and move on to the next opportunity. 

Based on watching the Audi pitch stage at WebSummit, this is what you cant do:

- Tell the investor they're wrong when they play devils advocate
- Dismiss pertinent questions
- Speak negatively in response to a potentially negative point
- Not look directly at the investor whilst being challenged
- Clearly make things up on the spot to negate a question
- Be anything less than accepting about the advice your given

I watched a number of people pitching just fail to deal with the questions from the panel after their initial pitch 4 minutes went reasonably well. The questions are a pre-cursor to a formal period of due diligence and the investor can judge your proclivities, quirks, attitude and personality as part of that due diligence process. 

There are a few things I can recommend as part of the post-pitch questioning:

- Only use positive language - I am, I will, I can, I accept
- Avoid negative language - I guess, If we're lucky, Maybe
- Look at the person who is asking the question directly, not your feet
- If you don't know the answer, tell the investor you will contact them later with the correct information
- Ask questions back following an answer to a question. "The answer to the question is X, is that an answer that is acceptable or meets your investment requirements?"

Summary

There is a school of thought with pitching that "less is more", its something I agree with. Many pitches get way to technical and detailed. I think that 5-8 slides is enough with 1 minute per slide. You should then be engaging with the investor directly opposed to broadcasting to them. Use the discussion as a part 2 of the pitch. Its pretty impossible to secure the deal in the pitch but its very easy to lose the investors interest so the pitch and the audience must line up perfectly, the pitch itself must be meticulous and the delivery must be well rehearsed and optimal.

Good Time to be a Start-Up?

Personally I'm never convinced that there is a good or bad time to start your own business. Recessions are bad but often make for good start-up conditions (cheap rent, grants, loans, start-up incentives). Economic booms mean customer(s) spending in large amounts but the infrastructure costs can rise. Its a discussion that comes up frequently but I'm not swayed either way.

Lets look at some of the reasons why now (October 2015) might not be a bad time for that tech start-up idea you've been mentally developing:

Culture

The culture-shift in society towards entrepreneurial activity means that there is more acceptance than ever about being your own boss, being a start-up and being a crazy entrepreneur type. There is no stigma or negativity in doing your own thing, conversely its become interesting and cool to be running on near-zero money and doing something risky. Society went from being risk-adverse to risk-rewarding in a very short period of time but its a shift for the better. 

Hardware

Between 1995 and 2015 the cost of hardware to power a world-wide web solution start-up has come down by a factor of 100. Long gone are the days of having to buy bespoke hardware solutions from companies like Sun or Oracle at ridiculous prices. Linux solutions will now run on cheap hardware making scale costs far more tolerable to the masses.

Infrastructure

You just don't need to build from scratch any more. Infrastructure has gone from something that you bought or licensed to being completely free of cost. Linux, Apache, MySQL are all examples of infrastructure that in years gone by the costs would have hung large over a start-up. Open Source as a mentality has taken away a massive barrier to getting going.

Time-scales

Business planning and development now takes days and weeks not weeks and years. In fact its possible to get a business live in a day but I would be sceptical of something born so quickly. As a new entrepreneur there are a plethora of boot-camps and hack days that will give you a rapid start over the course of a weekend and can lead your new business from nothing to something in a month or less. Historically this took years and was a huge barrier for a lot of would-be entrepreneurs.

Going Global

Globalisation has helped in a number of ways. The labour market is now anyone in the world that has the skills you need and understands what you're aiming for - not who you could find in your local environment and making do with what you could find.

Equally, your sales market is now also global in nature, if your product is digital then the whole world is your market size.

Both of these have negatives attached to them but in general I see both of them as being 90% positive in nature and helpful to a new start-up.

Mentors

One of the most positive things for new start-ups is the widespread availability of mentors. These are people who have lived the life your heading for, succeeded, failed and moved on to the next idea. There really is no substitute for experience and a good mentor will be able to help you avoid the common mistakes. You'll probably make a whole new set of new mistakes bespoke to the idea your developing, but you should be able to avoid the run-of-the-mill errors that can plague a new start-up.

Search Engines

30 years ago the world operated around sales and distribution agreements. You needed someone to do something in their locality that meant that potential customers got to see the thing you made and help them make a purchasing decision. Pre the Internet there just wasn't any option to reach customers directly in a cost-effective way.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is now everything when it comes to potential customers/users on-boarding to your new start-up venture. A good SEM strategy can bring millions of potential users/customers to your door and can do it on a cost basis that has never existed before. Get your SEM wrong and of course you won't get much for your money. Get it right and you could be heading from zero to hero in a fortnight. All the best tech businesses are the ones with the best SEM strategies.

Money

There are a lot more active angels investing now than ever before. The UK government has recognised this by actively bringing in tax incentives such as EIS, SEIS and Entrepreneurs Relief. This means the number of people writing £80k seed fund cheques to entrepreneurs has increased massively. For the budding entrepreneur it means a small army of people to talk to about the next funding round to get your business pumping - 15 years ago, even 10 years ago this didn't exist.

Bootstrapping

The tech sector is sensitive to its past. The dot.com era of the 90's left investors everywhere (with the exception of Warren Buffet) with a bitter taste in their mouths over unprecedented levels of investment amounting to very little. Its hard to look past boo.com, as an example. $160 Million of VC cash produced very little. Bootstrapping now means that tech companies have a verified method of getting to the first pound of revenue on very little cash. Investors accept this as valid and most tech start-ups can use this method as part of a structured business/investment plan.

Summary

If you're keep wondering if now is the right time then you're probably never going to commit and start. You can wait and see how the business landscape develops over time but as one factor changes positively I can guarantee that some other metric is changing negatively - its just the way things work. Many would-be entrepreneurs (commonly refereed to as Wantrepreneurs) fail to take the first few steps on the hope that something is going to fall in their lap that will make things safe for them - if this is you then you need to look elsewhere, start-up life isn't for you.