Hello Steemit
So, after looking through the platform and reading a few introductory posts for inspiration I have finally decided to come forward and attempt my first post.
For a long time, I have wanted to start my own blog and content. It was my brother @Chitty an avid and experienced Steemian that introduced me to this wonderful platform and its community. However, the topic has been an elusive one. It was only a few months ago when I started mentoring a new Entrepreneurial course at Cambridge University that the big eureka moment came! Start-up and business advise :)
What will you find in my posts?
Business jargon
These will be topics where I get to pass down some of the knowledge I gained while at my MBA in Cambridge. We will discuss thins like business model canvas, cashflow forecasting, the dreaded hockey sticks and many more topics.
Current topics
Here I will discuss some current trends and topics that have been on the news lately, from a prominent business or start-up
Pint of business
Here is where I will need your help! I would like to do a piece where I get to see your ideas or issues and provide any help I can to the best of my abilities. Much like I would do in my home town over pint of cold beer.
Other topics
I would also love to hear your ideas of what would be interested and you would like me to ramble about.
A little about me?
Educator
From a young age, I have always loved to pass my knowledge and help other people move forward. Not surprisingly then I have had a series of tutor and mentor roles through the years. Most of those roles were around engineering but in the past years they have been focused around start-ups and business advise. I currently mentor at Judge Business School in Cambridge University and have a series of advisory roles for a few other start-ups (and generally anyone that buys me a beer!)
Entrepreneur
It more or less started when I moved to England to pursue an MBA from Cambridge University. I knew since I was about 10 years old that I wanted my own business, and the MBA was in my head a way of getting the skills to pursue that dream (or if I failed a good excuse when I walked with my tail between my legs into my next potential employer).
At Cambridge, I met my partner and business accomplice and we set up www.smartbell.io a business to provide farmers technology to help in their management of livestock. It has been an emotional roller-coaster and an incredible experience, with new amazing challenges every day. Definitely one of the best experiences of my life.
Technologist
Well so what do I do? I am Chief Operation Officer in the company, which in a small company basically means Chief Get Sh*t Done. This could be coding one day, building hardware the next day, making an investor pitch the next one and handling cows in one of our pilot farms the following day.
The main attraction of the job for me was to get involved in distributed architectures and process control (in my case the buzz word is IoT).
Failure
So Steemit is not my first experience of blockchain, I have been involved in crypto and mining for a few years now. But definitely, Paycoin was my biggest failure in more than one regard. I did everything that one is not supposed to do, overcommitted, did not diversify, and was over hopeful which led to me losing about $40,000 in 2014. The lessons I learned were super valuable and now help me in all my other enterprises and hopefully I can pass these lessons down to you. So, for all of you out there that have been stung or feel like you have a dark shadow cast over you, my message is do not let that discourage you! it was probably one of the most valuable experiences you had and the only failed entrepreneur is one that stops trying!
General Geek
I guess I could probably be generally classified as a geek. In other hobbies I am an avid table-top gamer, board games fan, movie enthusiast, painting fanatic and crappy guitar player.
Until next time, thanks for reading.
