Hi, I'm Joe and I'm the COO of The Bot Platform and I work with corporates on innovation strategies and also help the startup ecosystem where I can.
What I'm doing right now
My main work is with The Bot Platform as COO. I occasionally advise on how large organisations can innovate, what might work best for them. I have previously worked with Lloyds Banking Group, Hasbro, Aviva, Unilever, Soho House & Yahoo and Reckitt Benckiser.
Current Positions:
COO The Bot Platform | Founder Touchpaper.org | Member of the Raspberry Pi Foundation | Tech Nation Tier 1 Visa Scheme Advisory Partner
Previous Position:
Co-Founder/Director at 3beards/Unicorn Hunt (acquired 2017)
A bit more background...
I excelled at school (academically at least), then dropped out of college. I started work in the finance department of an oil company (Tramp Group Ltd) where I trained to be an accountant. I qualified in 2002 and moved on when the company was acquired. After that I had a couple of jobs as Financial Controller, for a motor racing group and then at Touch Clarity, which was my first experience of a tech startup. This was where my startup life began. I'd always been the entrepreneurial, self starting type, but working with a great bunch of innovative tech types really inspired me. We were acquired in 2007 by Omniture (now owned by Adobe) and I left to go to another startup. However, this one was so badly run/structured, I quit after only 4 weeks and went back into oil as a CFO.
The CFO role was great, we rapidly expanded the company (up to $2.5bn turnover) but after a few years the politics of being part of a listed company started to get to me and that entrepreneurial itch really needed to be scratched. I left in 2012 and struck out into the wilds of East London to see how the tech scene had changed since my first foray in 2006/7.
I went to a huge variety of meetups, including London Business Angels, London New Finance and of course, Silicon Drinkabout. I got to know Ben, Bryce and Mike (the organisers of Silicon Drinkabout) over the coming months and the rest is history! At the same time I also met and started to work with Martha on ToBeSeen.
I spent nearly 3 years working day to day at 3beards, before handing the reins over to the team we had put together. You can read more about that here and the end of 3beards here. We sold the last part of the company, our tech job board Unicorn Hunt in 2017 to Tiny, the owners of Dribbble, MetaLab and Crew amongst others.
Over the summer of 2015 I spent a short time as Head of Entrepreneur Relations at Tech City UK, but ultimately decided a portfolio of roles and projects best suits the way I work. I continue to support the London startup community, contributing my thoughts and actions wherever I can help and add value. I have previously judged for Mass Challenge, Innotribe and judged at Unilever's ReHack event. I also do ad-hoc mentoring with various people and companies I meet.
In June 2017 I launched Touchpaper.org - a not for profit on a mission to make it much easier for startups and corporates to work together. I spent 18 months researching and working with the Touchpaper Founding Members (Google, Capgemini, Grant Thornton, Bristows, Nesta, Tech City UK, Multiple and Digital Catapult) and we released a free toolkit on how to make these collaboration run a little smoother than they usually do.
At this time, I also started working at The Bot Platform, who specialise in Facebook Messenger and Workplace by Facebook bots. The technology is great, and the concept of bots and how humans interact with them is a fascinating topic - the future is certainly going to be very interesting!
New to startups? Don't know where to start? Here's some tips...
Events
Not only can you meet a lot of people at events, but you can learn a lot too.
From the simplest networking events such as Silicon Drinkabout, which is just about getting together with like minded people, to more content-led events like Hacker News, events are an invaluable way of expanding your network, getting to know how the ecosystem works and learning towards whatever role you're hoping to play.
You can also attend Hackathons, these are weekend long working events that aim to hack together a business (Minimum Viable Product - MVP) or a solution to a certain brief. I started at Startup Weekend and if you're interested, I suggest you do too!
Reading - Stay up to date
Get your finger on the pulse and keep it there.
Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, Techcrunch, The Next Web, Tech.eu any number of blogs, the list could go on and on. Things can change quickly and if it relates to what you're doing, then you'll need to know about it as soon as possible.
If you need some inspiration on who to follow on Twitter, take your pick from this handy list, or indeed this one, or this one.
Reading - Medium.com
Medium is a successful blogging platform, popular amongst tech people
I read a fair amount on medium.com, there's a lot of good tech people on there and the site itself is lovely and sends you suggested things to read, based on a recommendation system and also who you follow.
It's also good to write on too, I currently use it to blog occasionally, you can see my scribblings here.
Reading - Texts
As well as keeping up to date, there's a huge amount of wisdom between the pages of a large number of books.
I don't read anywhere as much as I'd like to, but here are a few recommended reads that I have got around to, or will do very soon:
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
Startup Communities - Brad Feld
ReWork - Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
The 4-Hour Work Week - Tim Ferris
Hackers & Painters - Paul Graham
The Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick
Things a little Bird told me - Biz Stone
Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston
Creativity, Inc - Ed Catmull
Reading - Newsletters
What's better than sources of information? Digests that come to you.
There are a lot of newsletters that you can subscribe to for daily, weekly or monthly digests of the news and upcoming events.
A personal favourite of mine is Martin Bryant's daily newsletter, Big Revolution.
There's also: Tech.eu (weekly) and CrunchBase (Daily).
Wherever I lay my laptop, that's my home...
(Co-working and office spaces)
Do Your Homework...
There's a great number of co-working spaces and organisations that will offer you a working environment. They all have a different set of features and clients, so make sure to pick the one that's right for you.
If you're looking to get your own office, take a look on hubblehq.com
There are lots of different type of memberships offered:
Drop in = limited time per month, usually between 4 - 8 days
Hot desking = unlimited time, different desk each day
Resident desk = unlimited time, permanent desk
Studio = unlimited time, separate room
Prices range from free (Google Campus only), to many thousands per month for your own office space!
The co-working market has exploded in recent years and prices have increased quite a lot. You can expect to pay around £300-400 per desk per month on average. There are a few cheaper and a few more that are a lot more expensive.
(Old Street)
(Multiple Locations)
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(Shoreditch)
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(Farringdon)
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Here's a bunch of things I find useful
I do a lot of varied things currently, so here are some of the tools and resources I use.
Events, tailored reading lists, newsletters, all location specific and curated just for you (and anyone else in your location).
Look up "The World's most comprehensive dataset of startup activity". I don't need to say more than that really.
Easy to use real-time web analytics, I use this more than once a day, every day. Excellent for keeping tabs on traffic, where it's coming from and how successful your social media efforts have been.
"The best new products, daily" And some not-so-best ones, but Product Hunt is a great place to find interesting new products and ideas. Now part of Angel List.
Get information on businesses, directors and shareholders for free, plus credit reports and other services (not free). A genuine game changer for anyone that used to order company reports/account.
Even more resources!
Here's a bunch of other stuff that I think is pretty useful too!
General
Some observations from Sam Altman - Interesting stuff from the President of YCombinator.
List of investors and how to approach - Nice guide and resource from Techstars
Be more productive - Some good tips on getting more done
Startup are hard - it's really not for everyone!
Startup tips from the dog guy - Great insights from Ted Rheingold
Startup Toolkit - From Tech City UK
A great big list of startup ideas - from Y Combinator
Venture Hacks - General startups tips from Angel List
Things that aren't progress - Great post on focussing on the things that matter
Social Media & Marketing stuff
Export twitter lists and followers (for free)
Copywriting tips - It's not about you!
The Ultimate Customer Acquisition Guide
Prototyping Tools
Marvel app - Mobile and web
Flinto - Mobile app
Press coverage
submit.co - Hundreds of publications, what they cover and how to contact them.
Recruitmemt
Compete against the best for talent - How Coursera does it.
Unicorn Hunt - the 3beards former job board (acquired in 2017) brings you direct access to the community, no recruiters to be seen!
Onboarding guide - Give your new employees the best landing.
Reporting
What to include in monthly reporting to investors - Handy hints from Jason Calacanis
Supdate - A free monthly reporting tool from the founder of Kashflow, Duane Jackson (now acquired by Crowdcube)
Equity & Fundraising
I occasionally speak at events
Occasionally I'm asked to speak at events, I don't generally do large crowds,
I much prefer small groups! Here's a few that I've done:
Oct 2013 - Pioneers Festival, Vienna, Austria - How to build startup communities (Panel)
Feb 2014 - Mash Agency, London, UK - Art of Disruption
Apr 2014 - Shoreditch House, London, UK - Tech City and Silicon Roundabout
Jun 2014 - Start It Smart, Sofia, Bulgaria - How to grow into a good entrepreneur
Aug 2014 - Shoreditch House, London, UK - Bootstrapped Brand Building
Sep 2014 - Havas Media, London, UK - Tech City 101
Oct 2014 - Air New Zealand, London and Los Angeles - LonLax Series
Nov 2014 - Shoreditch House, London, UK - Soho House Hackathon showcase
Nov 2014 - Havas Madia Labs/Facebook, London, UK - The Future, now (workshop)
Apr 2015 - Starcom MediaVest/Queen Mary University - Arts & Technology Masterclass (on Tech City)
May 2015 - Digita|k Conference, Sofia, Bulgaria - Startup Communities (Panel)
May 2015 - Stylus Trends Day, London, UK - Tech Trends
Jul 2015 - Mash Agency, London, UK - Where do big ideas come from?
Jul 2015 - Tech City UK, London, UK - Corporates & Startups (Tech Immersion Programme)
Sep 2016 - Digital Catapult, London, UK - Hacked off with Hackathons (Roundtable)
Oct 2016 - Google Campus Startup Job Fair - Panel on the London startup ecosystem
Feb 2017 - Rainmaking Summit, London - "So you've done a hackathon - now what?"
Sep 2017 - Disruption Summit, London - 21st Century Business Models (Panel) & Disruptors (Moderating)
Nov 2017 - London Stock Exchange UK IP Commercialisation and VC Forum - (Panel)
Dec 2017 - Second Home Corporate Innovation Programme
Oct 2018 - CITF - Artificial intelligence: How are you preparing?
If you'd like me to speak at your event, please get in touch (details below)
If you're going to fail your startup, make sure you learn from it.
Here's a collection of brave individuals who have prepared a Startup Post Mortem, for you to learn from...
Blab was a livestreaming app which grew from a hackathon project to having 3.9 million users in less than 1 year. It is no longer running...
Wattage aimed to bring mass-customization to electronics. It was an online platform that is both a tool for creation, and a marketplace for buying.
Tab (previously Subscrib) was a web-based prepaid loyalty app that started in the basement of Campus London in late September 2012 by Shawn Zvinis, Christoph Sassenberg and Gary Luce.
99dresses was a virtual closet that allows users to trade fashion items with other users.
Dinnr was an ad-hoc, same day ingredient delivery service. Select a recipe on our website, and we deliver everything you need to cook that recipe at home, all the items pre-measured with printed instructions.
Microcosm was a community CMS as a platform and service, a Tumblr for forums. It allowed non-technical people to create and run a community site hat would comfortably scale from small groups of 50 people to very active communities of 50k people.
Kolos was an iPad steering wheel for driving games, hardware is particularly difficult to get right and this proved too difficult.
CB Insights also have a list that is updated fairly frequently.
If the above aren't enough, there's a whole load more here: Autopsy.io
I'll hopefully be adding more to this site. If there's anything you'd particularly like to see, just get in touch.
Say thank you and help a startup at the same time...
If you found this site useful and it saved you a bunch of time researching all the above yourself, then why not say thanks with a small donation. If and when it ever amounts to a three digit number of pounds, I'll put 100% of it back into startups via crowdfunding, I feel like that would a nice thing to do.
1st investment made! £100 into Poq Studio, made through Seedrs
2nd investment made! £100 into Commuter Club, made through Seedrs
Many thanks to everyone that has contributed!
© 2017 Joe Scarboro
Picture credits: Joe Scarboro.
Top - Close up of a mahogany wood turning project (work in progress).
Middle - Sunset over the Zambezi River, Zimbabwe.
Bottom - Clouds over Cape Town, South Africa.
As this is predominantly a informational website, I don't have formal legal T&Cs, if you have any queries please contact me at js@joescarboro.com. The most important thing here is to do thorough research on whatever you're doing, be that looking for office space, researching startups or using any of the tools I link to. I cannot be held responsible for any liabilities created through your actions though, that's on you :)
If you have any privacy concerns or wish me to delete any correspondence sent to me, please contact js@joescarboro.com