Birth of a Startup

In 2006, while dealing with a relationship breakup, I started a company in my living room. To keep myself sane during that lonely, stressful, exciting time, I started a blog. I called it Birth of a Startup, and I meticulously documented all the highs, lows, and (very many) mundane moments, over the first few years of building my first company.

The blog went dormant for a while, but I managed to rescue the posts and resurrect them in this new blog. I plan to continue adding to this section of my blog as I continue to birth new startups, and make all sorts of new mistakes along the way. Enjoy (and scroll down to 2006-2008 posts to have a solid giggle at how naive I was!).

28 Mar, 2008

When there is too much to do

Alicia Navarro2019-02-24T19:03:15+00:00March 28th, 2008|Birth of a Startup, Random musings|

My favourite saying at the moment is this: "I can either work myself to the bone, and not get everything done that I need to; or I can NOT work myself to the bone, and STILL not get everything done that I need to…. so there is little point in killing myself in the process."

27 Mar, 2008

Skimbit part of Web Mission 08

Alicia Navarro2019-02-24T19:04:14+00:00March 27th, 2008|Birth of a Startup|

Some more exciting news for Skimbit… Web Mission 08 is a competition for the top UK based start-ups to head over to Silicon Valley to promote our businesses and form strategic partnerships. Initially I didn’t think it was for Skimbit - to enter you had to indicate how ’socially sustainable’ your business was, and if

12 Mar, 2008

Using your 9-5 life to motivate your entrepreneur life

Alicia Navarro2019-02-24T19:02:14+00:00March 12th, 2008|Birth of a Startup, Random musings|

One of the reasons I knew many years ago that I had to become an entrepreneur, was that I wanted the ability to dictate the terms of my life. I hated HAVING to be at work at 9am, and feeling guilty and stressed if I was running late. I hated having people silently judge me

5 Mar, 2008

Miso-stained laptop replaced with Mac… “Finally!” many say

Alicia Navarro2019-02-24T19:05:52+00:00March 5th, 2008|Birth of a Startup, Ruminations|

As you may have read in a previous post, I recently had an incident with a wayward cup of miso soup, that decided to disastrously waterfall all over my IBM laptop. I should be grateful that due to some quick-thinking drying under a ladies room hairdryer, and a kind boyfriend who spent the next hour

19 Feb, 2008

Our facelift – Skimbit has a new homepage design

Alicia Navarro2019-02-12T09:30:11+00:00February 19th, 2008|Birth of a Startup, Ruminations|

If you haven’t already noticed (and shame on you if you haven’t!), we have finally updated our homepage to a new and funkier style. Our original homepage design was a legacy of our ultra-bootstrapping days, when I had to ply my designer friends with wine and meals so they would create a homepage design for

8 Feb, 2008

Gate-crashing ad:tech

Alicia Navarro2019-02-24T18:52:38+00:00February 8th, 2008|Birth of a Startup, Ruminations|

I was a bit cheeky last night. I gatecrashed ad:tech. I was meeting up with a few friends of mine who have SEO/SEM businesses, and they invited me to come along to a bar in the Hilton. I didn’t think anything of it, clearly they liked to drink in glamorous places. But as I approached

4 Feb, 2008

The hunt for funding

Alicia Navarro2019-02-24T19:00:49+00:00February 4th, 2008|Birth of a Startup|

The last few weeks have been crazily hectic. Most start-ups have a management team, so the responsibility of finding funding can be allocated to one person, whilst the rest of the team continue to run the business. No such luck with me, unfortunately, I am a one-woman funding/project management/product management/strategic partnerships/operations manager entity. And its

11 Jan, 2008

The joys and woes of seeking funding

Alicia Navarro2018-10-03T19:39:26+01:00January 11th, 2008|Birth of a Startup, Ruminations|

In the past week I have met with several potential investors for Skimbit, and presented my spiel. They were both really interesting and different experiences. I found it fascinating how different views and priorities could be amongst parties that all make their money in similar ways. One party thought I should keep the Skim-in-a-box white-label

11 Jan, 2008

The joys and woes of seeking funding

Alicia Navarro2018-09-28T17:35:58+01:00January 11th, 2008|Birth of a Startup, Ruminations|

3 Jan, 2008

Preparing financial projections: truth or fiction?

Alicia Navarro2019-02-12T09:31:36+00:00January 3rd, 2008|Birth of a Startup, Ruminations|

This could be a potentially risky post, considering the number of people who read this before meeting me for business discussions. But I am a big believer in honesty and openness as the key to my business success, so I will persevere on this front until it proves fatal. I am embarking on an investor