I went back home to Burnley last week for a friend’s birthday. It was a delight to be back. Everything was just so   Burnley , surrounded by the local accents and vocabulary, the hills rolling and lovely, the pies absurdly delicious. If Brittany is very French, this corner of Lancashire, windswept and misty on the hills, warm and alive in the pub, is forever England for me. Burnley is a top destination for beer. We have 35 pubs and an average price of £2.50 a pint. We have tw

I’ve been fortunate to have enjoyed four successful exits from my startup and small business ventures in the last eight years. Each was a ‘right time, right place’ with one exit to a customer as an ‘acqui hire’, one a PE financial play and two to trade buyers - one in our sector and one looking to gain a foothold in our market with adjacent services. I learned a lot as a founder/investor in each, from a personal planning and emotional perspective. With a number of my current

The festival of Saint Valentine's came upon us once again at the weekend, having its origins as a liturgical celebration of an early Christian saint named Valentinus. A popular hagiographical account of Saint Valentine states that he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. According to legend, during his imprisonment, he healed the daughter of his jailer, Asterius, and that before his execution he wrote her a letter signed ‘Your Valent

The Six Nations starts tonight with Ireland facing France. Rugby Union is the game they play in heaven, yet a painstaking study of Old and New Testament is unlikely to reward the reader with any reference to St Peter, or Archangel Gabriel scrummaging hard. So, let me explain some of the history, rules, and etiquette of the game, and the lessons there are from the ultimate team sport for startup teams.   There are two rugby codes. Rugby League is a 13-a-side game, in which lar

Stanley Donwood has been the visual architect for   Radiohead   since 1994. He and Thom Yorke share one of the most famous creative partnerships in modern music history, mirroring the collaboration of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground in the 1960s, who blended pop art and avant-garde rock. They met as art students at the University of Exeter, where Donwood famously described Yorke as   mouthy   and Yorke recalled him as a   fire-breathing hippy . They have collaborated o

In a world filled with cynicism, rocked daily by news creating uncertainty, to find the energy and self-belief to spark oneself with positivity is not a matter of denying reality, it is a matter of discovering a parallel reality where perseverance builds hope of a better, brighter future. The mindset of a startup founder has to be like this, open to possibilities, believing in their ability to create a success from their endeavours whatever the prevailing tailwinds. A month i

As George Bernard Shaw wrote There is no love sincerer than the love of food , and with the emergence of celebrity chefs with personal brands and social media influencers, anyone can have an opinion on food, but not everyone can be an authority. Michelin will always have its critics, but discerning diners continue to seek it out as the defacto voice and guide of quality eateries. It began with a guide to French roads. In 1900 brothers André and Édouard Michelin, wanted to pro

Manchester was, and continues to be, the home of great free-traders and free-thinkers. It has a stunning C19th architectural heritage and today is a proud C21st European city of technology, science and education, with a heritage of popular musical culture with global influence – or the Hallé Orchestra, if that gets your toes tapping more.   Manchester was the site of the world’s first railway station, where scientists first split the atom, the home of the first stored-program

What makes a founder an effective startup leader? My starting point is that founders should aspire to be empathetic leaders, a subtle, personal approach to leadership, not the populist bravado or hustling style. Set empathy as a cultural value, the behaviours that create psychological safety instill togetherness. The best leaders listen, and show sensitivity to feelings and needs. Founders willing to set their ego aside, show their own vulnerability and are humble, authentic

The art of bootstrapping is more than a financial strategy for startups, it’s a founder mindset that puts resourcefulness, creativity, and resilience alongside a shoestring budget, testing the ability to build and grow. Bootstrappers take an idea without the backing of anyone else, and having little or no starting capital, do it for themselves.   It takes single-mindedness to achieve success this way, but many of the successful companies we see today had humble beginnings as

As an eager young seventeen-year-old flicking through the   A to Z   Big Book of Careers   in the Career’s Service office at school, I didn’t get beyond ‘A’ -   Astronaut  and   Architect   caught my eye, but Mrs Johnson redirected me to   Accountant   and   Actuary   and my trajectory for a life in numbers and not space or building design was set. However, I kept a keen interest in architecture and there were many buildings in Manchester to admire - Central Library, Victoria

It’s eighteen years since Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, unveiled the cryptocurrency. The crypto industry has gone from an object of mockery in mainstream finance to being broadly accepted by regulators, banks and asset managers. In October bitcoin’s market value peaked at $2.5trn. Into November, and price volatility returned; bitcoin dropped from an all-time high of $126k  to <$70k. For a speculative asset which produces no income and relies solely on sentiment fo

Strictly Come Dancing   is now in its twenty-third series on the BBC. It’s my guilty pleasure on a Saturday night, although I watch it more for the pithy and caustic comments from the judges – Craig Revel Horwood and Anton Du Beke are my favourites - with their direct and unsympathetic feedback  than the outrageously flirty, athletic dancing. Everyone knows the format: a guest and a professional dancer pair up to dance. The judges score each performance out of ten. After all

Kanchha Sherpa, the last surviving member of the Hillary Everest expedition died recently, aged 93. When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top of Everest on May 29, 1953, Kanchha, then 19, was at the camp below. They picked him because he could manage without supplementary oxygen, to climb to 27,000 feet. Sherpas had to carry on their backs all the gear the mountaineers needed for their last lap. At the South Summit he put up the tent in which Hillary and Tenzing

We are now over 100 years on from the events of April 25, 1915, a day forever recognised in British Military history for one of the most courageous actions ever performed by the British armed forces, which took place at a beach close to Cape Helles on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. The gallantry displayed that day led to the ‘Six Before Breakfast’ awards of Victoria Crosses in recognition of the bravery shown by the 1st Battalion, the Lancashire Fusiliers. In early 1915,

The other three Hobbits turned and looked at him. Frodo hugged Merry and Pippin and said his goodbyes. And then Sam . Sam, I must go, I was a ring bearer, you will never truly know what it did to me. Now, it’s Friday, and time for a chippy tea.  The closing words in the greatest saga ever, written by JRR Tolkien,   The Lord of the Rings . OK, they’re my additional words about Friday night chippy tea, but I’m sure Tolkien was partial, aren’t we all? As soon as you step into th

Pizza Hut was once a go-to budget restaurant to tuck into its all-you-can eat buffet, unlimited salad bar, and lashings of self-serve ice-cream, but the changing market dynamics for eating out and the pizza market has seen fewer diners ‘hitting the Hut’ and it is closing half its UK restaurants after going into administration for the second time this year. Pizza Hut's all-you-can-eat model has become expensive. Depending on your order, Pizza Hut and Domino's prices are simila

The world is loud. Social media campaigns, podcasts full of opinions, radio phone-ins and hosts deliberately triggering arguments, a storm of noise that never ends. And then there’s Gary Neville. All pull at your attention, demand your energy, and dare you to stay calm. Most people are ruled by this storm. Their emotions shift with every new event. They react before they think. They let the world set their rhythm. Enjoy the silence? I wish. The distracting sounds all around u

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read - Groucho Marx. Ian Brookes FRSA Enjoying the...

Oh, the guilty pleasure of takeaway food. From mobile kebab vans outside concert venues, to Peruvian street food stalls In Manchester –...