Culture

A couple of weeks ago Seedcorn launched this year's all-island Ireland Seedcorn competition for startups and early stage startups. Big bucks of a prize fund worth €280,000 will be divided up between 9 winning start-ups and so we thought it wise to interview one of last years regional winners - Albert Quigley Founder of Gnarly Adventure, an online inspiration engine for activiti...
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Debbie Serota is a Partner & experienced commercial law solicitor at Darlingtons Solicitors and writes for Startacus on the importance of understanding your contracts.  Unfortunately, contracts are often misunderstood and therefore misinterpreted. This can then lead to mistakes being made which can cause complications and loss. In order to avoid such complications, it is important to ens...
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Let’s face it. Every market sector has had a tough time of it in recent years and the food industry is no exception. Therefore any business which aims to help an entire industry not only survive but to thrive too, ought to be supported - something that is exactly what our latest Startup of the Week is trying to do.FoodTrade is in essence a search engine for food businesses. Whether you&rsquo...
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The pop-up phenomenon seems to be here to stay - whether it’s a pop-up shop giving an independent creative the chance at running their own retail outlet or the pop-up gallery where artists and artisans alike can showcase their wares - and that’s surely no bad thing. The whole notion of providing a place for people to be enterprising and creative is pretty close to our hearts here at St...
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Last week Entrepreneurial Spark Start-Up Craig McDonald Co-Founder of StorkUp started a 3 part series on building a high growth web start-up. In the first post he highlighted building an awesome deck, prototyping and grabbing yourself some beta users as three key pointers. Here's part 1. This week Craig starts with a typical issue for many starters - getting a technical person on board. Over to C...
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Reputation Management for New Small Businesses - Lucy Harper shares some top tips on how to manage your business reputation when also managing the day to day duties of a small business.When you’re in the throes of getting your new startup off the ground, one of the last things you’re likely to be concerned about is managing your business’s reputation. After all, you’re work...
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If you’re an app developer, making your mark on the world and getting your app noticed isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do, so it’s always good to hear about initiatives and projects that are helping app developers do just that. The latest of these has just been launched by those stalwarts of the telecoms world, Nokia.Their recently launched Asha Developer Competition is lo...
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Crunch, formed in the Summer of 2007, provides online accounting services and software to freelancers, contractors and small businesses and has quickly established itself as a leading player in the online Accountancy market in the UK. We chatted to Darren Fell, Founder and Managing Director of Crunch on the business itself, the problems it aims to solve and the typical issues that freelancers fac...
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"My struggle with starting a business whilst battling agoraphobia." An inspirational guest article by Hayley Woodham of Poodles and Pompadours. "When I lost my job as a hotel receptionist in 2009, I thought my life was over. I had no income, no savings and no way of paying my rent in the middle of a recession. I was far away from home, and ended up isolating myself, which in turn, slowly led to m...
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One of the biggest struggles for Tech Startups is finding the talent and skill sets needed to strengthen and grow their existing teams. Whilst the recession still means that ‘generalist’ candidates are unfortunately pretty much ten-a-penny, the IT sector doesn’t have it so easy, and often still struggles to find suitably qualified and experienced IT employees. Trying to remedy t...
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David Williamson works for Coles Solicitors. He is an experienced writer and mostly writes on legal career topics. Here he uses the boardgame "The Game of Life" as a metaphor for the legal struggles you can face when starting a business. "Starting your own business often means you're young, creative, and bursting with ideas. It doesn't mean you have a law degree. And the legal system can be scary...
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Here at Startacus we love nothing more than hearing about people and projects doing their bit to keep their local high streets alive and well. So when we heard about the Cash Mob Challenge being organised by the ace folks over at #wewillgather , we just had to do our bit to spread the word. The Cash Mob phenomenon, for want of a better word, started in the US just a couple of years ago and h...
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