Features

11 years ago, I left University. A few years later, someone mentioned a site that they had started using called Facebook. I had, up until this point, dabbled with Friends Reunited, a site where unsurprisingly, you tried to reunite with old friends. It was okay, but once you got past the reuniting part, there was little point to the site, apart from to, I suppose, keep saying hello! My new friend,...
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The work of incubators and accelerator programmes and their impact on startup businesses is well documented. However there is now a new player in the game - the “portfolio startup”. One such of these is Dublin’s recently launched Scale Front. Scale Front aims to be a company that builds startups from scratch. Founded by two serial entrepreneurs, Sean Blanchfield and Brian M...
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If you’ve got an idea for an online retail business that you’ve been thinking about setting up, then a recently launched competition by the eCommerce platform Shopify should be right up your street. The Build-A-Business initiative is quite simply not to be missed.... What do you have to do? Basically you come up with a product to sell, open your online store through Shopify and then ...
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One of the greatest things about having your own business is the ability to do what you want (as long as it’s productive!). And here at Startacus, we’re no different, and music is the one thing we couldn’t live without. Music can be inspirational, memorable and can get the creative juices flowing. Finding that Jeff Buckley CD from 1994 can feel like finding a £20 note in t...
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Bridgeen Gillespie is a freelance writer and illustrator with a passion for fabric and embroidery designs.  In short she is someone who has 'been there, done that and bought the t-shirt'.  Now she takes a few moments to share some of her blogging expeirence with us! As an independent publisher, I’ve long been an advocate of blogging. For over 10 years I’ve maintained various ...
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Perhaps at the time this was an invention not unusual because of its' design, but because this great idea was conceived, designed and tested by a Woman - the indignity! Or so it was at the time to some... The story goes that Margaret E Khight, an inventor from an early age, (we are talking the mid 19th Century by the way) was working in a Paper Bag plant in Massachusetts. Frustrated that items pl...
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As part of Pinkspiration, the majority of my work is in the Construction Industry which I really enjoy. As there are only 1% of women in manual trades, it can sometimes be challenging. Having worked in the industry for many years, I really enjoy the diversity and people I meet on site working on different construction projects. At the moment we are working on a new programme called Design Factor (...
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Starting a business entails a certain amount of risk. That’s something entrepreneurs take for granted, one can never be certain any undertaking will reach a successful conclusion. For most enterprising spirits, that gamble itself is part of the reward. That said, there are questions entrepreneurs can ask themselves that will give them an early understanding of how well their enterprise is l...
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Hasraf Haz Dulull has spent years at various visual effects facilities and studios internationally working on various big blockbuster feature films, award winning Commercials and Television and Broadcast series. He has been employed as a Visual Effects Artist and later moved up to Visual Effects Supervisor which resulted in him being nominated for several Visual Effects Society (VES) awards. Hasra...
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Silicon Valley may once have been the only location that was synonymous with technology and small innovative startups but there can be no denying that in the last number of years, it has started to have some competition. Both government led initiatives and organic grassroots clusters have emerged which have shifted the axis somewhat on the heart of digital innovation. One leading example of this i...
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All those months ago, when Startacus was but an idea, we used to do all our writing and planning and meetings in one or other of our local coffee shops. Which shop we chose depended on a few things really; with the quality of the coffee, the reliability of the wi-fi and of course the friendliness of the staff being way up there on our list. And generally we weren’t alone, there would be plen...
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Buying pixels might not seem so revolutionary now, but back in 2005, Alex Tew a student from Wiltshire started a website called Million Dollar HomePage which within 5 months have netted Alex, a rather cool....1 Million Dollars. Alex had decided in 2005 that he wanted to go to University, but he was keen to avoid the post graduation financial burden that comes with study. It is reported that Alex ...
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