The Startup Magazine Q&A session with Bizoogo founder Erez Nounou

Bizoogo

This week we had the pleasure of interviewing Erez Nouno from Bizoogo.

Bizoogo is a Startup Co-founder platform that connects UK entrepreneurs together to swap, share, collaborate on, and recruit for, new businesses.
We’re building a community where members search for, connect and collaborate with the people or the ideas they need to start the businesses they want, sharing the technical and financial needs and anxieties that hold most people back. That means aspiring entrepreneurs can find and work with the professionals they need to develop their ideas, and techies, across all industries, get access to challenging start up opportunities they believe in. To stay up to date and find out what’s new with features, people or opportunities, you can follow on twitter, or on facebook.

1) Who is bizoogo aimed at?
The site is aimed at anyone with startup ambitions. We need a range of ideas, skills and experience for it to work, so we’re calling on everyone, across all industries and areas of expertise, to join in, post and challenge ideas, connect, engage, and collaborate together to develop new businesses. It doesn’t matter what your background or experience is, we hope there’s an opportunity for everyone and where there isn’t one straight away, hanging out in a dynamic community of ambitious entrepreneurs should be a great source of information and inspiration.

We’ve already got over 50 opportunities listed and 500 registered members, so there’s already lots of activity to get involved in, and it’s free.

2) Where did the idea for bizoogo come from?
The idea came about as a solution to my own startup dilemma of having an idea but not having the technical skills or the industry know-how to develop it. Starting up can be expensive and before proof of concept, risky! It seemed like a good idea to have a go-to, where you know from the start there’s a bunch of people from a range of industries and areas of expertise available and interested in working together, either to eliminate bad ideas early or to validate and develop good ones. That would give us all a cost-effective opportunity to start new businesses and to build better resourced teams.

At the moment the UK has what’s been described as a “massive ambition gap” where over 44% of the population want to start a business but don’t, and the main reasons are a lack of ideas or skills, fear of failure, or not having the funds. Bizoogo is an opportunity for people to collaborate together on projects that not only lets them bridge a skills-gap but also allows them to share out the responsibilities and risks with a co-founder.

3) How long has bizoogo been in the making, and who is the team behind bizoogo?
We started building the site about a year ago and launched at the end of March, bootstrapping it to date – the team is made up of myself, Valtid Caushi and Nick Miller, a mix of business and technical experience. I actually collaborated with these guys to build the idea, so from experience the model works and we’re seeing it working on the site too, which is awesome!

4) What has been your biggest challenge so far at bizoogo?
Pre-development, it was finding the right people to work with which we’re now trying to solve with bizoogo. To start, you really don’t know where to look, who to ask or trust and there’s generally a lot of trial-and-error. I think it’s a problem which knocks back a lot of people with business ideas because going beyond your own network is a real stab in the dark. Hopefully bizoogo becomes the go-to community and your first point of call; a mix of different skills, experience and ideas, but with the joint aim of creating and being a part of something new.
Since launching, we’re now dealing with trying to market the platform through all the online ‘noise’ but thanks to sites like yourselves, we’ve been lucky to get featured here and there…and grateful for it too!

5) In the coming year, what would you like to achieve with bizoogo?
We’re looking to create an end-to-end startup ecosystem where ideas are conceived, developed, grown and funded into profitable businesses.
We want the platform to grow into a creative, dynamic and ambitious community packed full of ideas and professionals looking to get involved across the industries.
We’re introducing a Jobs page for young and growing start-ups to list recruitment opportunities to the community talent pool, as well as access to funding via our partners, making sure we’re able to help any business from idea through to sustainability.

6) If you could give one piece of advice to someone thinking about starting a business, what would it be?
It’s all in the team! Ideas are cheap, execution is expensive, so finding the right people will always be your biggest challenge. Most people don’t realise that it takes a really long time for start ups to get going, so having a team to ride the waves, bounce around ideas, share the costs and stress, respond to feedback and iterate your product so that you’re always ahead of the curve will be the surest guarantee of making something that lasts.