Investors are the lifeblood of many new businesses. They provide the capital and the financial impetus to get things started and hopefully provide the lynch pin for the creation of a successful company. There are plenty of places nowadays to find individuals and organisations who could be interested in your idea. It’s one of the reasons why so many startups are getting off the ground, perhaps more so than in the past.

But many modern investors are looking for something beyond the initial concept or a good business plan.

They want to invest in a business startup that believes in being green.

The rise of the socially responsible investor is a fairly new phenomenon and it is beginning to have a real impact. That doesn’t mean your business needs to have a climate changing product. It does mean, however, that your company intends to do all that it can to run in a green and sustainable way.

If you are planning a startup, marketing your carbon friendly attitude could mean more investors flocking to your digital door and willing to sign up.

The Impact on Startups

Not having a green agenda may harm the amount and quality of investors you can attract. While your idea could well be a good one, if your potential backers are looking for that little bit more than a great idea, there’s a possibility of losing out to a similar startup that does have those green credentials.

There’s plenty of competition for investors both online and in the real world, so ensuring that sustainability is a key issue actually works better – and it’s not going to harm your relationship with backers who don’t see it as a priority either.

How to Go Green and Attract Ethical Investors

More and more businesses are starting to see financial, social and environmental sustainability as the core features of their operation. According to Chris Hines at The Wave in Bristol:

“There is a real opportunity for commercial companies to adopt a new model of doing business that reduces environmental impacts and maximises social and environmental benefits, at the same time as helping them to be more successful financially and attract investors.”

Step 1: Do Your Research

What does it actually mean to be a green business nowadays? There is plenty of information out there about how to make your startup sustainable, from switching to LED bulbs in the office to creating eco-friendly spaces that show how you are willing to invest in the health and wellbeing of your staff and customers. If you’re new to green, doing your research is important. That means knowing how to run a low carbon office and reduce your impact on the environment. It also includes what kind of suppliers and manufacturers you want your product associated with.

Step 2: Build Green into Your Business Plan

It’s no use having this as an add-on or afterthought. If you want to attract the right investors and build your credibility, you need to create your business with the notion of environmental sustainability at the forefront. Yes, you need to put in place a good business plan and have costed everything, planned for growth and wowed your potential investor with your product or service. But the green stuff needs to run through all of this and it’s much easier to achieve if you build it into your business plan from the start.

Step 3: Build it into your Brand

The best place to market your green credentials is to make sure that your brand revolves around it. Many companies nowadays push their low carbon attitude as part of their marketing, often devoting a whole page on their website to how they deliver on their commitments. That might include having policies in place for how you run the office, the type of vehicles you opt for in your sales fleet, who you buy your electricity from and companies that you do business with.

Creating a Green Product

Of course, you might want to go the whole hog and create a green product that is going to benefit the world. All the above still applies but you have the added advantage that you can also get access to a fast-growing market of people who want to source green products and that makes you more viable to certain investors who want to see this kind of change.

Maintaining Your Green Credentials

Being sustainable and thinking about the planet is not something you can choose to do as and when you feel like it. You need to be enthusiastic about it and willing to make the changes that are beneficial to the environment and those around you. In other words, you have to set the example.

It’s easier to be green than many people think. If you are planning a startup and looking around for investors, it’s time to consider how green your attitude is and the discover the benefits of creating your business plan around the core premise of long term sustainability.

Big data has become increasingly important, particularly for big companies who are looking to collect as much of it as possible and have the resources to sort and develop it profitably. Data collecting and selling has subsequently become a business opportunity and there are now sites that act as brokers for all sorts of information. And for savvy SMEs with a little bit of know-how, selling data could be a way to bring in valuable additional revenue.

We’re not talking about selling off your customers’ email addresses and other personal information here. It’s the details about their online interactions that are becoming more and more important to big corporations and other organisations. It allows businesses to analyse trends, drill down into customer behaviour and produce the kinds of products and marketing strategies that lead to more sales.

What is Big Data?

As a collective species we produce huge amounts of data every second. We do it when we buy a particular product, post on social media, share a particular image, click on a link to a website, watch a programme online, reply to an email or put our demographic details into an online registration form.

Each little packet of data on its own isn’t much use but combined it produces a detailed vision of the world that businesses can use to target more effectively and improve their revenue through sales and click throughs. This is big data and, according to IBM, we produce 2.5 quintillion bytes every day.

To put it into better context, 90% of the data we have available was actually only produced in the last two years. This data comes from everywhere and almost all businesses, organisations, institutions and individuals produce it.

How Do You Collect It?

Businesses are willing to buy data but you have to collect it first and it has to be useful. If your business is dealing with a decent number of customers and you have a good CRM system, then you are already collecting the data you need. That could be anything as simple as where customers come into your site, when they buy, what they buy, how old they are, what sex they are and whether they come back. If you have the right software installed, then you can harvest all this data and make it available to third parties for a price.

Again, it’s worth pointing out here that we’re talking about anonymous data rather than important stuff like names and email addresses. Once this data has been collected it can then be sold to global networks that buy data. You do this by using a data broker who will be able to make sense of the data and knows how to package it. Essentially, you can collect data from your website or something like a mobile app and create what is called a passive revenue stream.

How Much Can You Make?

Data monetisation is on the increase and according to statistics around 30% of businesses will be taking it up this year to add to their revenue stream. Obviously, much will depend on the level of traffic you have and the kind of data that you collect. For many companies it provides a way to earn extra money without putting in ads and, in some cases, can significantly increase monthly revenues.

You might think that as an SME it isn’t worth collecting data but you’d be surprised how much you can make. And, as your business grows, you could be earning a healthy secondary revenue without doing much at all.

But are there any downsides?

There is currently little in the way of meaningful oversight for anonymous data collection and buying and selling it to third parties. As the industry grows, you can expect more to come in. There are already rumblings in countries like the USA and the UK and, if you are going down this route, it will pay to keep an eye on the legislation. Much of this is prompted by the notion that personal data is being sold off, which is not true.

The future could well see most businesses including data mining in their normal, everyday operating processes and selling it through brokers. It’s certainly something that SMEs need to look at more seriously from now on.

Although the year is not yet over, 2016 has been a great year for the startup scene. The top 100 start-ups have raised combined funding of over £200 million, and 32% of these were by female founders or co-founders, representing a shift away from a male dominated industry. Below, in no particular order, we look at top UK startup achievements of 2016.

Eve

One startup that has smashed its goals is Eve. They aim to manufacture and deliver super comfy mattresses without the need for pushy middlemen. So confident in their product, they offer 100-great sleeps or a money back guarantee.

Established only a year ago in January 2015, they have since raised over £3.5 million in funding and have grown their team to a whopping 35 people in 2016.

Deliveroo

You’ve most likely heard of Deliveroo, the London startup established in 2012. Well, since then they have received over £138 million in venture capitalist funding and now deliver to over 60 international cities.

While they haven’t released exact specifics on figures, they claim that they have been enjoying 25% month-on-month growth in 2016.

Transferwise

Transferwise, a FinTech startup founded in 2011, has been disrupting the banks ever since it started operating. They support more than 300 different types of currency and have had over £3 billion transferred using their service.

Well, they’ve now raised a further $26 million in funding in 2016, placing them at a valuation of $1.1 billion.

ASOS

Another London-based startup, ASOS has gone from strength to strength since its establishment all the way back in 2000. Although it’s no longer classified as a startup, it shows the potential and success that UK-based startups can achieve.

They now have an annual revenue that exceeds £1.1billion, and in 2016 they saw an 18% increase in profits thanks to overseas sales.

Frog Bikes

Frog Bikes, established in 2013, has seen plenty of achievement over the last few years. Already awarded Export Business of the Year at the 2015 Startup Awards, achieved success by opening manufacturing plants in the UK despite the Brexit vote, wanting to keep production as close to home as possible. Frog Bikes now enjoys shipping to over 28 countries in the world.

Secret Escapes

Secret Escapes, a UK-based startup founded in 2010, now has over 19 million registered members. They enjoyed a successful 2015, securing £60 million in funding, and have now pushed on with those achievements in 2016.

Secret Escapes has now expanded into Asia, with new offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia. They have now also opened additional markets throughout Europe, with locations in the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Italy.

Carwow

Carwow, founded in 2014 by three co-founders, was setup to help potential car buyers easily find and purchase a car without the need for haggling or middlemen. They have had a hugely successful 2016, with £1 billion in car sales completed, as well as celebrating one million users and a headcount going from 14 to 55.

Clearabee

Clearabee, a nationwide rubbish and junk removal service, was founded in 2012 and launched with only £500. They have already achieved incredible success by growing their team to 100 since being founded, and in 2014 achieved a turnover of £4.1 million. They will continue to smash this success in 2016, with turnovers of around £7 million.

HECK

HECK, a sausage, burger, and meatball business, is a startup that was founded in 2013 and launched in 2014. They take an “honest” approach to business and have gained attraction from all major UK retailers such as Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s.

They had great success from when they were founded to mid-2015, with revenues of £5.7 million, and are now estimated to turnover a whopping £12 million in 2016.

Perkbox

Perkbox, only founded in January 2015, have had a hugely successful 2016. They already have a large headcount of 95 employees and have a whopping projected turnover of £15 million for 2016.

This is alongside the fact that they have won numerous awards this year, such as the Flexible and Voluntary Benefits Provider of the Year.

Looking ahead to 2017

All in all, 2016 has been a brilliant year for the UK startup scene, with both new and already established startups smashing it in their own respective ways. We look forward to seeing what 2017 brings for the UK startup scene!

Fashion, as we know, makes up an ever-changing world of what’s “in” and what isn’t. Technology has been very much “in” over the last few years, and we are seeing more and more examples of pieces of wearable tech. We explore this merge of fashion and tech in greater detail below.

The rise of wearable tech

The merging of fashion and technology has come about due to the rise in the use of wearable tech, with items such as the Jawbone for measuring fitness or the Apple Watch to measure just about everything else in our lives.

These items weren’t just designed as geeky looking gadgets; they were designed to look fashionable and to fit in with the rest of our attire, almost as though they weren’t there at all. New pieces of tech that didn’t have fashion in mind seem to fail, such as the Google Glass, which have now had its sales halted.

Wearable tech has come about due to the age of connectivity that we are now living in. Smartphones revolutionised the way that we stay connected, and now smart watches make that life even easier. Now manufacturers want to go even further with this, with ideas and patents for smart watches.

We measure life in notifications, likes, and data. This means that we no longer just want to go for a run, we want to measure the data from that run when we’ve finished. While, of course, not giving up on our sense of fashion.

The rise of e-commerce in the fashion industry

Fashion is a traditional industry, but industries that stay traditional in this day and age typically fall behind the competition. Think Blockbuster closing after the rise of new technology services like Netflix.

Fashion, traditionally, meant going into high-street stores and shopping around, but the rise of e-commerce has been slowly killing this. For the first time ever, more people shopped online in 2015 than visited physical stores, and it is likely that things will only keep going this way.

While 85% of people still don’t fully trust shopping online, they still shop online due to the ease it brings to their lives. The fashion industry has had to find new ways to keep up with the change in online shopping, and so it is unlikely that you will find a high-street store with no online presence.

The merging of fashion and tech

As well as the increase of e-commerce and online shopping, the fashion industry is finding other innovative ways to merge their world with the world of tech. For example, some places are now using intelligent dressing rooms where customers can “try on” various items of clothing without having to actually physically put the clothes on.

Other ways of merging the two industries together is through the use of virtual reality, the latest buzzword in the tech world. This takes e-commerce to the next level, and in some ways helps to restore the trust in online shopping people don’t have as they can see the things they are buying much more clearly in virtual reality.

Technology is now very much fashionable. It’s fashionable to own the latest smartphone or the newest gadget, even when items such as the iPhone 7 aren’t that different to the iPhone 6. It’s hard to say whether its technology that is now driving fashion or if it’s the other way round, but it’s safe to say that the two worlds have now very much merged, and manufacturers must keep this in mind when bringing a new product or item to the market.

Many of us look forward to the end of the calendar year as it’s a chance to relax, get some time off, and have a little party! But, it is worth remembering that Christmas is, primarily a religious festival, despite the huge commercial connotations it has taken on over recent years. So, below we look at how to handle Christmas culture each year, taking in to account various religions and cultures.

How to treat Christmas culture with sensitivity

Millions of people around the world either associate themselves with religions who don’t celebrate Christmas, such as Muslims or Hindus, or have no religious affiliation at all. As Christmas has become so widely associated with giving presents to each other or enjoying the traditional food on offer such as turkey, it is often forgotten that some will not partake in any of this.

As a Christian country in the UK, most of us celebrate Christmas. But it needs to be remembered that just as you have different skillsets and passions in the office, you too will most likely have different religions and cultures in your team.

So how can you treat the Christmas culture with sensitivity?

1. Take time to learn about other religious holidays and celebrations

Learn about the other religious holidays and celebrations within your team. Ask how they celebrate and enjoy these times, what exceptions and allowances you’ll need to make in the office and be sure the rest of the team is aware of this. This may mean things such as allowing employees days off from work for a certain holiday.

Be sure to mark your calendar with any other religious or cultural festivals that are celebrated within your office, as remembering this will go a long way in helping everyone to feel part of the same team.

2. Don’t have expectations when it comes to office parties

If you’re having a Christmas party with no focus on religion, then try to use it as an end-of-year team celebration. Much of the UK ‘Christmas culture’ revolves around eating large amounts of food, gift giving, crackers and drinking. This is still accessible to all cultures.

Some people may simply not wish to take part and celebrate a Christmas party, and accept that this isn’t a problem! Many people choose to celebrate in their own way, and Christmas parties aren’t for everyone.

Why is a form of Christmas culture good?

A form of Christmas culture is a great way of getting your employees away from work and bonding in a way that a typical office day simply won’t allow. It helps to bring a new atmosphere and sense of togetherness between those that work together, ultimately improving communication and productivity for the upcoming year.

However, taking into account what we have previously said regarding the wide range of different cultures, framing your end of year “Christmas party” as an end of year “happy holidays” party could be a good idea. Although a seemingly small change, it can go a long way in staying politically correct and helping all religions and cultures to feel included.

It is likely that your end of year party will have a Christmas theme, but keep it respectful of other religions, focusing more on the fun and giving aspect rather than the religious story behind it!

While it is likely that this is how most businesses will handle it, there are numerous controversies circulating the world at the moment regarding religion, and even what you may feel is an insignificant issue can be deeply politically and religiously incorrect.

When taking time to learn about other religious holidays and celebrations, take the time to speak to members of your team to ask how they would feel about certain features and what they would like to see at an end of year party. Get this right, and it can go a long way in cementing a great company culture in your team. And, of course, don’t forget correct etiquette of how to handle yourself at a Christmas party!

Financial technology, also known as FinTech, forms a new revolution within the financial sector that aims to use technology in order to improve the industry and make it more efficient. FinTech companies generally comprise of disruptive startups that are challenging the way that things are currently run, attempting to give more back to the customers who use the services. But will they be able to challenge the status-quo and overtake big banks?

How do FinTech companies work?

FinTech companies have been brought about because of the increase in innovation and technology that we are witnessing in the modern world. They use technology as their means of making the financial world easier for the everyday user, making use of the power of smartphones, apps, and the huge level of connectivity that we now have.

Banks, to a degree are FinTech companies, with their own dedicated mobile banking apps, but some of these are typically seen as nothing more than after-thoughts, and regularly pick up negative reviews and complaints.

Other mobile banking apps, such as Revolut, are dedicated apps and have no physical branches or stores, meaning they can focus solely on their financial technology experience. This allows for a streamlined and easy experience that makes for a much better app from giants such as Barclays or Santander.

But they attempt to go further than the other mobile banking apps, such as with £500 free international withdrawals each month and access to the very best exchange rates on the market, allowing them to offer better rates than other established credit cards.

This is alongside other fast-growing FinTech startups which appear to be overtaking big banks such as Transferwise, which allows for hugely cheaper international money transfers than big banks; typically eight times cheaper.

Essentially, the one thing that all of these FinTech startups have in common is that they are attempting to take power away from those who have, until now, been left previously untouched. They are doing similar things that Uber has done to the taxi world, or Airbnb has done to the rental world; making things easier and more cost-effective for the consumer.

But will FinTech be able to overtake the big banks?

There has been a huge distrust in banks since the 2008 crisis, and this will take many, many more years to die down. This has, in part, been the reason for such a large increase in FinTech companies.

There can be no denying that FinTech companies are going to have a profound effect on big banks. The latter is tied down with stringent regulations, top-line growth, and slow economic recovery. This is alongside the fact that FinTech startups will continue to drive prices down and eat away at big bank’s profit margins.

Big banks do still record yearly profits of around $1 trillion, and it is likely that this won’t drop dramatically anytime soon. But with roughly 12,000 FinTech start-ups on the market and counting, big banks will need to adapt or risk falling behind the competition. So yes, if big banks don’t adapt and modernise, it is likely that one day we will see FinTech overtake them.

Can FinTech and big banks work together?

Big banks and FinTech are not two separate industries; they are part of the same thing. We are already beginning to see banks adapt to the new wave of technology, such as Apple Pay being built on top of existing banking systems.

Big banks know that they are having to recover lost ground and build trust back up in their organisations. The fact that Apple Pay is built on their systems shows that they have a huge interior engine that drives much of the financial industry. However, it is the exterior where they are lacking, the actual customer-facing side, that FinTech is nailing.

The banking and finance industry have become dinosaurs amongst its evolutionised FinTech counterparts and they are struggling to catch up. However, many have said that they are willing to help and fund FinTech if it can be integrated in their businesses.

Big banks have the dominance, the power, the money, and the establishment to adapt and change to the ever-developing market around it. If they do this, it’s likely that they will maintain their ultimate dominance, albeit with some loss to FinTech startups. Failure to do this, however, will let us witness FinTech overtaking big banks.