Insights from another student entrepreneur…

Published: Monday, 23 February 2009

Kieran O’Neill started up holylemon.com, a sight that shows funny videos, funny movies and funny videoclips when he was 14, and sold it for US$1.25 million while studying at the University of Bath, during his exam period. He was 19 at the time. Now 21, he’s working on PlayFire and PlayStation Universe, while finishing off his degree. He spoke at Imperial College recently, and dispensed the following advice:

 

(1) If you’re starting a technical company, have at least one technical co-founder. Have someone great.

(2) Raising capital from equity is the most expensive source of funding. It’s way better to bootstrap or borrow.

(3) Finding the right co-founders is essential to the business.

(4) Figure out what your key business metrics are, and measure obsessively.

(5) Get onto the feedback loop as soon as possible. I.e., launch as soon as possible.

About Me

Marita ChengForbes named me a world's top 50 woman in tech & 30 Under 30. I founded Robogals and Aipoly and was Young Australian of the Year 2012. Currently working on robotics company Aubot. I'm the youngest Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and I give speeches around the world.

I tweet @maritacheng and I'm on Facebook.

Subscribe

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Random Articles

  • Losing focus

    From an organisational point of view, it's better to focus on doing a small number of things right, than a large number of things wrong. In...

  • 2Mar Robotics Blog

    Hello! It's been ages since I blogged here. More recently, I've been blogging at the 2Mar Robotics Blog.

  • Networking effectively

    I meet people all the time. In the past it was at entrepreneurship networking events when I was starting up Nudge.  Then, it was at engineering...

  • Remembering Bob Paterson

    I flew from Cairns FNQ to Melbourne (a 3.5-hour flight!) for university. I didn’t have enough money to go to university. But I had faith in myself,...

  • Brains vs focus & time

    Andy Warhol had an IQ of 86, Richard Branson has an IQ of 92, Muhammed Ali has an IQ of 78, and David Ogilvy had an IQ of 96.  They are all below the...

  • Another context

    If you're over your university studies. If you're not looking forward to taking a week out of your life and attending a conference. If you don't...

  • Plates

    "If you have too much on your plate, get a bigger plate." I first heard this when I was doing a leadership course in London in 2009.  Everyone in the...

  • Robot repairs

    Robot troubleshooting on the fly in Sydney.

  • Be a fool

    When you learn something for the first time, everything is new to you. So you explore, you try different things, you fall down, you fail, you fail, and...

  • Life Purpose Event

    From July 2020 - March 2022, I worked really, really hard on achieving a big goal and having a huge impact on the world. By March 2022, when we’d...