Insights

If we’re saying that everyone benefits from a good coach (and we are), how do you pick the right one? There are coaches who specialise in leadership, others in personal performance and some who will super-charge your team c

Since I joined Octopus about a year and a half ago, I’m often asked: “How did you get into venture capital?” and “How did you get in without any banking or consulting experience?” I answer that the big reason I got

A quick story. Four years ago, I was a founder of a B2B software company that sold accounting software to small and medium sized retail businesses in India. We were building the Xero/Quickbooks for India. When we went out t

One good thing the past decade has brought is a shift in mental health awareness.  Mental health is now out and proud, and we are all talking about how it impacts all aspects of life, especially the workplace. But is it time

Aileen Ryan tells an anecdote that makes her colleagues at UltraSoC laugh. This Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Operating Officer and regular participant in marathons and endurance triathlons, has a 3 year old son. One day, at

Since I joined Octopus about a year and a half ago, I’m often asked: “How did you get into venture capital?” and “How did you get in without any banking or consulting experience?” I answer that the big reason I got

Whilst there is recently much focus on Unicorns (Venture backed businesses worth more than $1bn), the reality is that more financially moderate exits can be equally - and on some levels more - rewarding, for us as Venture Cap

As an academic-turned-investor I feel I have a somewhat unique perspective on teams in spinouts and deep tech startups. I joined Octopus Ventures as my first job after working in academia and it took me a good two years to le

Whatever name you give your tech startup, it should definitely contain the letter ‘X’. That was one of the more obscure lessons a young Amir Nejadmalayeri picked up on his journey from Tehran to Cambridge, UK - via Canada

Octopus Venture Partner Pete Daffern has been a CEO three times over, and overseen US and EMEA operations for a handful of multi-billion dollar companies. In Parts 1 and 2, Pete outlined the key principles of his ‘Tech CEO

If we’re saying that everyone benefits from a good coach (and we are), how do you pick the right one? There are coaches who specialise in leadership, others in personal performance and some who will super-charge your team c

Pete Daffern has been a CEO three times over, and overseen US and EMEA operations for a handful of multi-billion dollar companies. Here Pete lists the Top 5 pitfalls he sees most CEOs stumble upon at some point in their journ

A men’s health startup issued a member-get-member referral promotion recently. Despite the serious addressing of issues like erectile dysfunction and hair loss by the company, its promotion was forwarded by many of its audi

Frank Massam, PhD and Professor Conrad Lichtenstein, PhD are co-founders of Nemesis Bioscience. This biopharmaceutical company is developing DNA therapeutics to make existing antibiotics work again to prevent the spread of re

Get the all clear from the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and you’re pretty much good to go with your new healthtech product. Getting to that point however is a huge challenge. So what can we learn from t

Aside from the payments sector, the credit and lending space has produced more unicorns than any other in fintech. While WeWork has shown the fragility of private market valuations, I still think this is a good enough benchma

The ultimate pioneer, the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave us the web thirty years ago- for free. But his original vision for the Web is now at risk. His new company, inrupt, intends to fix that.  Si

Let’s face it, most people are terrible with money. Not just when it comes to monthly budgeting or resisting the temptation of that unplanned shopping spree, but also when it comes to the more fundamental things in life �

“Alexa”….  We’re sure she has a lot to answer for in the minds of parents everywhere, but Amazon’s virtual assistant AI is a very real example of the proliferation of speech recognition technologies in our daily li

Aileen Ryan tells an anecdote that makes her colleagues at UltraSoC laugh. This Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Operating Officer and regular participant in marathons and endurance triathlons, has a 3 year old son. One day, at

While entrepreneurs and investors are well versed in the Lean Startup model for developing tech companies, the relevance of this approach to business building diminishes in the realm of deep tech. The reasons for this are var