Vinod Patel, director at myGadgetsandGames, explains why the business should win the Startup of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
They say necessity is the mother of all innovations. This is true in our case. Having founded myGadgetsandGames with just a 40p investment and subsequently ploughing in our student loans and cash ISAs, we had nothing left to continue on our growth trajectory.
Being a startup meant no financial institutions would take us seriously, except the government-backed Start Up Loans company from whom we received £18,000. We knew this would be quickly absorbed and so continued in search for additional finance. Not wanting to ease off on the throttle, I decided to cut prices to increase cash flow, lock in profit and then make use of this profit once again.
Also, convincing Amazon to disburse our sales receipt daily as opposed to fortnightly further improved cashflow. Cash is king and it certainly helped in maintaining growth. Yet, finance was still preventing us from achieving our true potential. Then after another brainstorming session, it came to me. Why don’t we ask our China supplier to give us a credit limit? It was a long shot but “he who dares”, right? We spent two days strategising and fine-tuning our proposal, before nervously Skyping it to our supplier. After an excruciating wait we got the funniest reply: “I have lot’s of money...” and as you can imagine it was like winning the lottery. It was much-needed finance and in time for peak Christmas season.
Our endeavours to acquire essential finance has resulted in a 650% sales boost and a new growth trajectory.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
