Results tagged “Diary of a Start Up” from The Business7 Blog

My nails dramatically decreased in size during the month of July. I nervously nibbled as I awaited the first production units arriving from China, desperate for Safetray to play its own part in the largest arts festival in the world - a showcase in front of an international audience within my beloved hometown during Edinburgh's multiple festivals.

Leading up to the arrival I had been fed worrying snippets of information regarding the progress with the mould tool. The initial photographs were kept from me - Fearsomengine quite rightly deciding that a snapshot image of a mangled piece of plastic might be more upsetting than informative - and so it was a relief indeed to finally see (a fortnight ago) a physical embodiment of the Safetray looking actually rather handsome.

I have so far only spoken of the business side of our project to date. As with many start-ups on the brink of trading, much of the deals we are currently working on are complex and commercially sensitive, thus preventing me from revealing a great amount of what we are doing. As a consequence, I thought I might take a moment this week to talk of the impact that starting up a company has had on my personal life.

I am in the lucky position to have extremely supportive friends and family but I would be lying if I said it was anything less than a logistical nightmare to coordinate the care of my children whilst whizzing up and down the UK for the various meetings that have been necessary over the past few weeks.

I grew up in a household with a permanently revolving front door. It was a bit like living in the transit lounge of Heathrow Airport, with visitors from New Zealand, Romania, India, France, Canada and many others, breaking bread at our family's kitchen table.

This diversity of social interaction provided me with a patchwork quilt of influence and aspiration. It taught me the importance of tapping into to the knowledge and experience of others in order to broaden my horizons and deepen my understanding of how the world works.

It is a lesson that I have applied throughout my career but never more so than since embarking upon the Safetray project. This week I thought it might be useful to provide an overview of some of the people who have been played a big part in guiding me through the Safetray journey so far.

I have often wondered, when reading articles about such occurrences as housewives inventing devices for monitoring domestic energy consumption, how it is that somebody with absolutely no background in design or engineering can simply come up with an idea, have it manufactured and then bring it to market with lucrative rewards to follow.

Over the next few months I will be writing this diary to explain the ways in which I became that 'somebody' and to outline some of the pains and gains I experience along the way.

Perhaps at this point I should introduce myself. My name is Alison Grieve, a 32 year old single mother of twin boys living in Edinburgh.

After ten years of clocking up sales and marketing experience in Manchester, Australia and London, working for companies such as the QS Network and Lexis Nexis, I returned home to have my boys in 2004.