The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Encouraging entrepreneurs
Grasping the nettle is what business startups are all about. Whether you are Google or the local corner shop – every business starts with a concept and someone with the bottle or brains (hopefully both) to run with it.
It can be scary – especially if you have dependents at home who rely on you to put a roof over their heads – but taking the leap into business can also be exciting, illuminating and freeing.
Make a success of it and you can find yourself labelled an entrepreneur – whether you like it or not.
Leah Hutcheon, who gave an insightful talk at Dundee Business Week last week, doesn’t mind the term but she doesn’t particularly identify with it either.
Through a redundancy situation after the magazine she edited folded at the height of the recession, she had time on her hands. She could have fallen into a fit of despair but instead she took the unexpected opportunity afforded to her and decided to be her own boss.
She didn’t see herself as the next Elon Musk or Bill Gates, but she had an idea and the pressing need to make a living.
The concept grew from Leah’s frustration at not being able to book a hair appointment out-of-hours.
From those humble beginnings, Appointedd, an online booking system targeted at SMEs and growing business, was born.
Her answer was a new cloud-hosted platform that allowed firms to allocate time slots for appointments automatically – whether there was someone available to take a call or not.
No doubt to Leah’s surprise and delight, Appointedd went down a storm and the company has gone on to complete two fundraising rounds and bag some serious clients – one of which alone is expected to deliver revenues of $20m over the next couple of years.
Cally Russell is less reticent about the entrepreneur tag around his neck.
Also back in Dundee to pound the start-up drum, Cally is unashamed about his passion for business and talking up his success as founder of Mallzee, the so-called Tinder for Retail.
In fact, so excited was he to spread the word, Cally brushed off a car accident less than 24 hours prior to deliver a keynote address to aspiring entrepreneurs at Dundee University, his alma mater.
Like Leah, he didn’t set out on his entrepreneurial journey the second he left uni.
He worked as a PR-man for a period before the idea for Mallzee struck and he took the plunge.
It is a journey that has had many highs – Cally was named in Forbes 30 under 30 to-watch list, while Mallzee has enjoyed strong growth and attracted the investment it needs to continue its impressive development.
Predictably there have also been lows – there were tough days when money was tight and there was the time a copycat tried to mimic the business idea behind his shopping app.
But Cally has emerged stronger for the experience and it is clear it is a rollercoaster that continues to excite him.
Sadly, there are far too few people like Leah and Cally in this country.
Too many talented young people with smart ideas just follow the conveyor belt into the world of work and stay there.
There’s very little deviation and that is something that needs to change.
Scotland needs risk takers that can disrupt and energise the economy.
And we need to provide them with the environment in which to flourish.
But, just as importantly, we need to provide an environment where failure can be seen as a temporary blip and not a permanent black mark.
Because that’s what a real entrepreneurial society, like America’s tech valley, looks like.
We need to provide an environment where failure canbe seen as a temporary blip and not a permanent black mark