I was 24 when my life changed forever. It was the Saturday before Christmas, and my mum, 56 at the time, was diagnosed with early onset dementia. In truth, I’d known something was off for a while, but that doesn’t prepare you for when your worst fears become reality.

At smol we are driven and inspired by an ethos of revolution; bringing our eco-friendly laundry capsules and dishwash tablets to consumers who have barely seen innovation within these household cleaning sectors for decades.

It’s that time of year again – the start of a new term, students returning to schools and universities. But 2020 is not an ordinary year and – mid-COVID – it hasn’t just been students experiencing mixed emotions about a return to their desks.

As everyone knows, it is common for landlords to take a rent deposit from their tenants to protect the landlord against the tenant not paying the rent or defaulting under its repairing/decorating/reinstatement obligations at the end of its lease.

At Skin Analytics, we are driven by our mission to help more people survive skin cancer. We are doing this by using innovative AI to enable globally sustainable skin cancer pathways that deliver better patient outcomes. We have a vision of a future where no one dies from skin cancer and this is at the core of what drives every person within the company.

The UK has long held an international reputation for it’s science and technology sector. More recently the UK Government has further recognised the need to and the importance of increasing investment in this area as outlined in its Industrial Strategy. Looking to and learning from other leading world economies who have invested heavily in science and tech such as the US, China and Israel, the Government has made bold commitments to increasing spending on R&D to 2.4% of GDP laying out it’s Roadmap for UK R&D and the potential for an ARPA-style approach to funding innovation, similar to that of DARPA in the US. These measures clearly illustrate the level of confidence in the role that the science and tech sector can play in the UK’s economic recovery.

There are always reasons why you feel like you aren’t at the right life stage to start your own business: too young – not enough experience, embedded in an existing career – too much to lose if you fail and perhaps the hardest to overcome is feeling too old – like the opportunity has passed you by. Truth be told, there is never a perfect moment, it is always hard and that’s exactly the way it’s meant to be. Almost like a process of natural selection for commerce, just as there is in nature.

Wagestream was conceived on one simple premise – if you could let workers decide and control when they get paid their earned wages; could you put them in a much stronger financial position by preventing them getting into debt between pay cycles and having to suffer the debt-stress that impacts millions of UK households?

Photo c/o Jamen Percy

High Growth Handbook (scaling startups from 10 – 1000 people). By Elad Gil.

Loved this book, particularly liked the bit on Product Development Management and Product Marketing. Most of us have been hiring the wrong types of marketing people. The branding piece is so small, hire it out and the growth marketing most marketers have no experience of but it’s what you need so hire that in and make sure they have plenty experience of that!

1. Would you describe Covid 19 as a catastrophe or an opportunity?

It’s fair to say it’s been a bit of both! At Habito, we were fortunate that we already had a business that was 100% online. It’s how we built it, five years ago. Although we had a culture of working from the office, all staff were already set up to work remotely if they needed to so the transition was seamless. Plus, with highstreet brokers closed, our business was in the best position to make the most of consumers turning online for their goods and services during lockdown.