Expert Accelerators

Words Richard Dunnett

Special report TAKING TIME OUT TO GROW Could the day-to-day demands of your business be preventing you from seeing the bigger picture? Meet the entrepreneurs spending short, intensive periods away from the daily grind in order to future-proof their company

very leader knows that having a carefully planned strategy to take Louise Chunn your enterprise to the next stage Theformer editor ( GoodHousekeeping ,Psychologies, InStyle )made a career from Eis vital. On paper it sounds obvious, yet communicating with her readers, but the Blackbox tech accelerator in Silicon Valley taught one of the biggest problems faced by the overworked, information-overloaded the entrepreneur that her new venture wasn’t conversing with its target audience entrepreneur accelerating a fast-growing company is deciding when to take the n late 2013 Louise Chunn (main leap from working in the business to picture and left) launched working on the business. IWelldoing.org, a website dedicated Faced with this dilemma, there is a to connecting those seeking help from growing trend among entrepreneurs to counsellors and therapists. Based at her take the plunge and prise themselves home, Chunn admits she didn’t away from their day-to-day comfort truly consider hers a digital business until zone to work on developing themselves she joined Google’s Founders Over 50 and their company. programme and began working one day a Over the next four pages, Director week from the tech giant’s café at Campus speaks to former magazine editor and London, Shoreditch. Welldoing.org founder Louise Chunn, “Working out of an office in your who spent two weeks on an intensive home feels very different to the digital residential accelerator programme start-up world [of Campus London],” says in Silicon Valley, and Nathaniel Peat, Chunn who was encouraged by Sarah co-founder of renewable energy firm Drinkwater, head of Campus London, to Gennex, who was picked to spend a enter a competition to spend two weeks week with Sir and other Welldoing.org at the Blackbox residential accelerator entrepreneurs on Necker Island. @Welldoing_Org course, sponsored by Google for Their stories are contrasting – Chunn Entrepreneurs, in Palo Alto, California. endured her business model being ripped After several gruelling entrance rounds, apart and thrust under a microscope, Chunn was the only Brit chosen among while Peat’s was an outward-looking the 19-strong group of founders. project aimed at brainstorming better The intensive programme included leadership – yet both returned to workshops, classes in pitching, their businesses having grown both presentations and meetings with professionally and personally. mentors and venture capitalists – with While not every business leader just one hour a day given over to keeping will have the opportunity to travel to the business ticking over – but it was Necker Island or Silicon Valley, many the relationship Chunn built with her could discover the benefits that taking fellow founders that has stuck. “You themselves away from the business – for are surrounded by knowledge and however short a time, or distance – can experience. They are quizzing you all have on their future success… of the time about what you’re doing,

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about the set up and the structure of money, yet you’ve exceeded your lifeline of the business. I completely trusted them. Nathaniel Peat borrowing.” He contrasts his time on Necker There are a number of founders from the The co-founder of renewable energy company Gennex spent a week on Necker Island with his experience with banks, where, says course who I am still in contact with and learning about leadership with Sir Richard Branson Peat, he’s met “people at the top who really wouldn’t hesitate to call up. get our business but the middle managers “When I set up [Welldoing.org] I knew aving founded non-profit let them down because they don’t get trade so little about starting a business, equity organisation The Safety Box at the age finance. I can’t imagine the number of small and the way ownership was divided. One Hof 25, represented the UK at the G20 companies trying to get to that level because of the founders had trained as a doctor. Young Entrepreneurs Summit in 2010 and of inadequately trained individuals. Richard I’m in the health area and she gave me won numerous business awards, Nathaniel and Virgin realise the potential of a company. enormous amounts of information, Peat has made huge waves in the social That’s why there’s a need for gatherings of advice and encouragement, but also a enterprise space. Three years ago he teamed movers and shakers who see potential and hard-headed look at what I did.” up with fellow entrepreneur Dowa Ojarikre lend a helping hand because they understand Chunn was paired with a mentor from to launch Gennex, a renewable energy how your business disrupts.” IBM who tore apart a questionnaire on company that also teaches young people He has turned his greatest lesson from Welldoing.org that connects visitors to from disadvantaged backgrounds to build Necker into a positive. While shipping to her site with the most appropriate local and install solar products. The pair connected Kenya he has faced bureaucratic issues with therapist for their condition. through the Pioneers peer- customs officials and police and even had “He told me my questionnaire to-peer network and were able to take the to rebuff requests for bribes. “On Necker I ‘looked like something you’d be given business after a year into Kenya thanks to a learnt that all entrepreneurs have struggled, in hospital’. I went pale. Our USP is £10,000 government-backed loan from Virgin whether it’s losing a home, their family or the matching questionnaire! But, he gennex.info StartUp. It is now registered in four countries. teetering on bankruptcy. Last August I flew explained, any form should feel like a @nathanielpeat As Peat’s involvement with the Virgin to Mombasa to plead with officials to stamp conversation. And he was right. Nathaniel Peat is a member of IoD London group continued, he was invited to pitch paperwork to release my products from “I had been thinking a little too much to win one of two all-expenses-paid places a cargo ship. Clients were threatening to about what was going to be delivered at Virgin Unite’s Leadership Gathering on destroy us – they thought we were fraudsters. to us as data but it doesn’t really matter Necker Island last May. “The idea behind the The products were released an hour before I because the front end of it has to be gathering is that when leaders get together was due to fly home. I look at those obstacles appealing, so that people will be happy they can change the world,” explains Peat. and realise it means I’m getting somewhere. to give you the information. I was “The aim was to look at disrupting the space “And when large clients ask questions like slightly horrified that I hadn’t thought around climate change, gender inequality, ‘who’s behind you’ and as a small company of it myself. I think I was trying to make rural electrification and education. We ticked there’s often no one behind you, I find that it appear more ‘medical’. But if you’re every single one of those boxes.” when you have a slide of Richard Branson looking for help from a therapist or Over a packed week, Peat met with 20 wearing your T-shirt, it does help.” counsellor, you aren’t thinking medical, world movers and philanthropists including you’re thinking, ‘Are you going to help Branson and his children Holly and Sam, For help with professional development and to connect with me.’ The voice [of the questionnaire] had Virgin Unite chief executive Jean Oelwang, fellow entrepreneurs visit iod.com to sound more caring. So we changed it.” former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo The accelerator also opened Chunn’s and author Simon Sinek. “There were some iod.com/membership/the-99 eyes to US-based venture capitalists very high-net-worth individuals there. These campuslondon.com and says that this contrasts with her are direct connections that I could never virgin.com/unite experience back in the UK. “Venture have got before. Richard connected me to blackbox.vc capitalists here [in the UK] tend to be an organisation that would be entering into people investing other people’s money. In Rwanda with renewables – this has opened Palo Alto and San Francisco they are hard- doors there. Much of the focus was on how headed founders who have made a big we can lead in a better way that is inclusive exit. They are deciding where to invest. of staff – this idea of a disruptive company They are into the game of risk and super- being a big company and a force for good. It’s relaxed – I didn’t see a suit or tie. There’s a understanding the oneness in a company as whole aura of rebellious super wealth.” There’s a need opposed to looking at it like a business.” Chunn acknowledges that she would Peat’s visit came at a crucial moment – probably need to open a US office to for gatherings what he terms the ‘pioneer gap’. “It’s that secure funding from US-based venture of movers and period when you’re beyond start-up, you’re capitalists but for now this isn’t on her in the valley whereby you’ve got clients agenda. “But [of Welldoing.org] one VC shakers who and products and it’s proven what you can said, ‘it’s a scalable business, it could be see potential do. You need trade finance [to get enough very big’. I quote that everywhere. To be products made to fill the demand] but picked for Blackbox gave me a big boost and lend a investors don’t want to lend you money both personally and professionally.” helping hand” because you’re not asking for enough

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