Inspirational Startup Story

Earlier this week I attended the Startups Live event in London. Unfortunately the event did desend in to a Microsoft sales pitch at one point but the highlight of the evening was a light-hearted, motivational talk from Micheal Smith, one of the founders of firebox.com, a highly successful UK based Gadget & Boys Toys ecommerce website.

The Firebox founders both left college to pursue corporate careers but it wasn’t long before they came to the realisation that working in a corporate environment wasn’t for them. They loved gadgets and knew there was money to be made online.

Off they went to knock on the banks doors for startup funding, only to be knocked back time after time. (I’m sure the banks regret their reticence now) Stuck with no startup capital they made the brave choice to volunteer for medical experiments!

10 Experimental Injections later…

They spent their time in hospital fleshing out their business plans and spent their “earnings” totaling £800/$1600 setting up the website and developing a prototype for their own invention, a chess drinking game.

They are now a multi-million dollar ecommerce success story.

Now I’m not suggesting that every entrepreneur go to the extremes of volunteering for medical experiments to fund their startup but this story is a great example of an entrepreneur going to great lengths to realise their entrepreneurial dreams.

Fortunately to use the Edge Venture pitching system we don’t require you test any drugs.