Championing Startup businesses – Startups Magazine

As we all know all businesses have struggled in one way or another during Covid. We spoke with a magazine that specifically champions startup businesses, something which is incredibly important during these difficult times.

We spoke with Startups Magazine, who are a print and online publication dedicated to championing technology-based startups and providing them also with the information, advice, guidance and tips that they need in their entrepreneurial journey. Startups Magazine covers everything that you may need help on or some guidance with on your startup journey. Each issue has a different focus with features that aim to provide startups and founders with information on areas such as funding, workspaces, co-founders, branding, marketing, company culture and many more!

How have you helped and supported startups throughout covid-19?

Throughout COVID we realise some of the people most affected will be startups, SMEs and founders, who may not have the financial or physical support that other companies have to make surviving easy. Therefore, at Startups Magazine we wanted to share a lot of content that gave helpful advice and real-life solutions of what startups and small businesses may need to do to survive.

We also wanted to share the stories of some of the startups that adapted and pivoted their business model, not only to survive – but also to help in any way they could. Therefore, we created the Cereal Entrepreneur podcast in which the first two series focused entirely on startups that during the COVID crisis, had to pivot and adapt and turned their businesses around to doing something completely different to help others.

One example was Blue Heart Hero, an open source platform for 3D printable solutions to upper limb prosthetics as products, who at the start of lockdown used their 3D printers to start printing PPE and distributing these to hospitals in the US.

We also started a series of webinars, again with the aim of providing some helpful advice and guidance throughout these tough times; the first one being based on creating a positive company culture virtually, and looking at how to adapt to working virtually and from home. We also covered funding, the health sector and what it has been through, plus many more which are available to watch back.

Our latest webinar took place just last week, and we focused on creating an exit strategy for lockdown so businesses can look at the next steps, in order to hit the ground running and thrive post-lockdown. We had Mark Wright, the founder of CLIMBCON and recent winner of The Apprentice share his experiences and expertise to help businesses plan for what is next. Although life isn’t anywhere near ‘normal’ yet, and arguably there will be a ‘new normal’, things are starting to move again, so we wanted to provide some more help.

What is some of the work you do to help startup businesses?

Our aim is to help startups get their name and story out there to help them grow and find what they need next on their journey, so as well as publishing nearly 15 issues, which have covered over 100 different startups, we have also recently introduced the Hustle Awards – an annual event that we had planned to start this year, but of course had to take virtual for 2020, in which we highlight some amazing talent and incredible startups and founders in the tech industry.

We found that we come across so many amazing businesses, founders and teams that we wanted to do something special to celebrate them, so The Hustle Awards were created in recognition of this across a number of categories, and highlight these self-starters with their stories of inspiration and motivation.

We have just had confirmation from our judges of who our winners are, so we will be announcing these throughout the month of July – so keep your eyes peeled!

How has Startups Magazine been getting on throughout the pandemic?

It has been a strange time, as it has been for everyone, and of course we had to adapt ourselves. We all started working from home, but are back in the office full-time while observing social distancing! The time during lockdown was very different to what we have been used to, but in some ways we were busier than ever, which I was totally amazed at and grateful for!

I think during the pandemic we wanted to do as much as possibly to help the startups that we have previously worked with, and others we had just met, so we started the new podcast and webinar series, which was obviously a lot of work, but judging on feedback very worthwhile, and we got to cover a number of startups who were doing amazing things out there in the current climate.

The most important thing was just carrying on and trying to help as many businesses in any way that we could, so we got some experts in different fields to work with us, and hopefully were able to provide some help in the right direction.