Baroness Martha Lane Fox CBE founded lastminute.com, an online travel and leisure retailer, in 1998 with her friend Brent Hoberman, and sold the company in 2005 for £577 million.
In 2013 she became the youngest woman to sit in the House of Lords and was awarded a CBE for her services to enterprise. She set up doteveryone.org, a London-based think tank to create a fairer and more inclusive internet for all.
Martha is an inspirational female role model, a woman I admire greatly for her business acumen, her humility, her ability to cope with adversity and her huge success in all areas of life. We met in London to discuss ways in which the UK could improve the funding landscape for female startups.
During our meeting, I asked Martha for her advice on various aspects of business and took away the following key notes:
1. Always hire people on a rigorous interview process because hirees based on gut instinct never last and can be very disruptive, if they haven’t filtered through the culture fit of your organisation.
2. It is important for women in business to give back to women in their community, no matter how small, to transform the digital world for females. Women need to empower not only each other but also girls to learn digital skills if we are to close the gender gap in tech for the upcoming generation of working age.
3. In order to be successful, you should have a sense of urgency to accomplish tasks. With every passing year, the world is moving at a faster pace and ideas become obsolete. We all need to act upon ideas and adapt them to new technologies in order for a business to survive and stay relevant.
4. Think big from day one and build for scale. We have a poverty of ambition in the UK compared to other nations, so we need to think big in order to realise global ambitions. If your goals don’t scare you, you’re not dreaming big enough and you’ll automatically fall into the sea of mediocrity, where most people live a half-hearted life ‘just getting by’.
5. It’s incredibly lonely as an entrepreneur, so find a co-founder or create a partnership when you start your business. Having the support of like-minded individuals who are also accountable for the success of the business, will get you through the many dark days of entrepreneurship.
6. Start ‘doing’ and start small but just START. Don’t spend thousands of pounds on prototypes or buying inventory. Create the product the cheapest possible way, test it, tweak it, then invest in it.
7. Lastly, character is hugely important. Be nice to people and err on the side of generosity when dealing with customers and suppliers. You may lose a few hundred pounds by giving your supplier a little more during the negotiation, but the partnership will be more fruitful in the long run. You reap what you sow.
