Peter Briffet - YPlan - GROWING A MULTI-MILLION POUND BUSINESS

Growing a $$$m Business

YPlan June 2014

2

A retrospectiveGrew LivingSocial UK/IE from a business with one employee (me) and zero revenue to a £100m consumer technology business with over 300 UK/IE employees (4,000 globally)

Built and sold a company to Microsoft and produced the best quarterly post acquisition metrics in Microsoft history

Sold a financial services company to Thomson Reuters

Sold books door to door in the US, started companies that sold Champagne into China and fingerprint readers into Europe

I have no absolutely no patience, I have failed 100 times & I talk too fast

YPlan June 2014

The Start Up Rules

3

YPlan June 2014

Have a clear vision

4

YPlan June 2014

• A product or engineering roadmap• A marketing campaign• An external slogan (it can be, but doesn’t have to)• An operational scaling blueprint

Vision, however, binds everything together by being the Northern Star – the end destination, a clear point of arrival for the entire company…

a vision is not…5

YPlan June 2014

The Start Up Dance 6

YPlan June 2014

It helps to know where you are7

YPlan June 2014

8

Know what you need to own

YPlan June 2014

How marketplaces naturally develop

Step 1: Novelty of proposition

Step 2: Exhaustiveness of supply

Step 3: Personalisation and relevancy

9

YPlan June 2014

Suppliers Customers

YPlan June 2014

11Work out what’s important

YPlan June 2014

12Every stage has marketing

challenges

YPlan June 2014

13Make Organic growth your strength

YPlan June 2014

Going viral

YPlan June 2014

Small boats can run rings around big boats

15

YPlan June 2014

Be clever with data….but know not all life’s answers can be found on a spreadsheet

16

YPlan June 2014

Knower Feeler Thinker

How Consumers Buy

YPlan June 2014

18

KnowerFeeler

Thinker

YPlan June 2014

19Facts of startup life

Be bold. Make decisionsDon’t focus on the exit Learn your magic number Maintain your core propositionBe careful with data Spend you money wiselyNever, never say you know everything

This is the best time to

be an Entrepreneur

in Britain

20