I know that the Futurebook article on start-ups was a few weeks back, but it has provoked much debate in the whitefox work hub in Euston. It certainly made us think about some of the other start-ups we know (if we’re still allowed to call ourselves a start-up after two years) and the differences between those who have been successful and those who haven’t.

It might seem like a generalisation, but entrepreneurs on the outside of publishing looking in seem to have a single-minded obsession with raising money on the basis of a silver bullet: a big, transformative, simple, scaleable idea that changes the game. Amazon is an example. But there’s an alternative: creating something that makes money by solving problems. For some, including us, it has taken years to work out what exactly what our business is. This has lead to some unexpected and exciting commercial opportunities which we hadn’t seen when we set out. We thought we had it all sussed. We created our business plan. We marketed our services. We bought and read The Lean Start-Up. But only when we started trading and saying yes to everything did we understand the potential scope.  So I guess what we feel we’ve learned is that just because Amazon has disrupted the whole eco-system doesn’t mean you know what customers really want until you actually start doing stuff. And that winning doesn’t happen by pitching to VCs or angel investors with cash flow forecasts but out in the market place itself.

Launch and learn indeed.