Michael Bayler is an innovation strategist and futurist who knows what happens next in marketing, branding, media and technology. He impressed Florian so much at a Sun Startups event that he invited him to speak at Royal Holloway on January 21st.

For a preview of Mike in action, take a peek at this video from Sun.

Hermione Way, Founder of Techfluff.tv and tech blogger for The Telegraph, is one of the best connected women in the entrepreneurship scene. She’s put together an excellent article listing all the key contacts you will need to get started as an entrepreneur. It includes key websites, contacts and twitter accounts. Hermione will be presenting at Start It! on the 3rd December. It’s likely to be a roadblock. More details on our website soon!

We all use Twitter extensively at Royal Holloway Entrepreneurs. It’s important in many ways – to keep up with the latest news, to keep in touch with colleagues, and to find the solutions to problems at short notice. But it is pretty confusing to get started!

If you want to start using Twitter, set up an account first and then ‘follow’ our members. For an introduction aimed at beginners and hints and tips for advanced users, read this post by Guy Kawasaki.

Tall tree and the eye, by Anish Kapoor

I went to see Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy of Arts today. It blew me away – an amazing exhibition. It was great to see people interacting with the pieces – moving closer, then further away; swinging their heads from left to right to see how the artwork changed with the change in their perspective.

These interactions reminded me of something I read recently in Guy Kawasaki’s brilliant book ‘The Art of the Start‘. Guy talks about telescope phases, when entrepreneurs think up the next big thing to change the world, their heads full of dreams. In microscope phases, there is a focus on detail and a return to fundamentals. Perhaps the major banks are in microscope phases right now. According to Guy, you need both microscopes and telescopes to achieve success.

At the exhibition, some people wondered around, looking at the art from a distance to appreciate the immense scale. Some people walked up closely to each exhibit, looking closely at the texture of the material. Others did both; they moved closer then further away, taking in the totality of the work.

Perhaps it is this third group who really gained the most from the day. I noticed my tendency to look at the bigness of things, appreciate the scale; remembering Guy’s words, I made sure to look at each work more closely. I ended up spending several hours there, never feeling bored, and I’m sure I will return again.

Do you need one to one advice about a business idea? Do you already have a business and need help running it? Is there something you are not sure about?

Come to our drop-in advice surgery, Business Clinic, and receive individual guidance from an experienced adviser. Business Clinic runs every Tuesday from 10am-11am in the Careers Centre, Horton Building. You can book a slot by telephoning Careers on 01784 443073, from 9.30am onwards on the day you wish to come, or just turn up.

If you cannot attend Business Clinic because you have a lecture, you may book an appointment at another time by emailing clinic@royalhollowayentrepreneurs.com .

“Almost all the companies that I’ve invested in that have failed, or that I see fail, have business models, great products, have pretty good teams but they have no users.

Getting users, getting distribution, getting attention, becoming viral – that’s the single most difficult thing on the internet to do. And just about every product fails because they don’t have any users.

Entrepreneurs tend not to focus on that. There are very few companies that have been able to get to tens of mills of users that have failed, other than for being sued or some other reason like that.

The other thing is that the people who would pay you for things, like carriers or big companies, typically don’t want to talk to you until you have tens of millions of users. If you have a thousand users and you go to British Telecom and say ‘I want to come up with a business model with you guys’, they’re not going to sit at the table with you.

So the focus on user growth initially may sound like an internet bubble-era way of thinking about things; but if you think about statistically what’s successful and what’s not, that is usually the succsessful thing, to focus on the virality and the user growth; and once you have that, what you look at is ‘who are we benefiting?’”

Joi Ito, Chief Executive of Creative Commons, in this interview in the Guardian

One thing is for sure – if you are starting a business, you will need friends, soul mates or partners. Life gets pretty lonely otherwise. But not all friends are partners, and not all partners are good for you (I think we’ve all been there…). Read this guide to the ten worst partners, written by Scott Gerber, to find out who is bad for your business.

Jack Lenox and I both headed to see Doug Richard (from BBC TV’s Dragons’ Den) talk for more than 8 hours yesterday, at his School for Startups at the British Library. He’s an incredible performer. I’ve never seen anybody able to hold a crowd for so long – all the while coming up with insightful solutions to their problems. Hopefully we’ll try to get some video of him up on the site soon.

Everywoman, the online resource for women in business and female entrepreneurs, has included a useful search engine of business networks across the UK. The networks allow entrepreneurial women to meet other like-minded business women through seminars, workshops, networking events or regular lunches. These networking groups are en excellent opportunity to learn from others’ experiences in business and to build new contacts.

The networks are distributed across the UK with the South East having thirty networks listed at present.

Despite the decline in popularity of myspace, social networks can still provide a brilliant business opportunity. Facebook continues to grow rapidly and has a great advertising model, and our very own Jack Lenox’s eNovella, a social network and publishing outlet for aspiring creative writers, demonstrates that you can take a great yet simple idea, combine it with a dash of business acumen and a sprinkling of web skills, and create something special. If you are looking to build your own social network, you might want to start by reading these slides, which tell you in detail how to generate ’social traction’ – ie., attracting and engaging end users.