Keeping your day job while starting a business has its advantages. Aside from the steady income and free coffee, reliable full-time work helps you flesh out your résumé and portfolio and extend your professional network.

Even better, working for someone else gives you a front-row view of the best (and worst) ways to run a company, from managing time and money to handling customers and employees.

We asked some successful entrepreneurs who founded companies while holding down a 9-to-5 to share the lessons they learned.

1. First, prove your concept.

Holding down a day job means having only so many waking hours to devote to your side venture. That's why validating that your idea will work — and that people will pay for it — should be priority No. 1, says Shara Senderoff, co-founder and CEO of Career Sushi, an online marketplace that connects young professionals with employers.

Senderoff was fortunate that her former employer, a Hollywood TV and film production company, agreed in 2011 to fund and incubate her startup in-house. But because she didn't need to bootstrap, she mistakenly spent more time than she should have on Career Sushi's branding, web design and minute platform details, proof of concept be damned.

"I probably spent six months doing that," says the Los Angeles-based entrepreneur, whose site now serves 15,000 employers and 150,000 job seekers. "In retrospect, that was a wasted six months." Of course, the typical startup can't afford such indulgences, lest they run out of cash before going live. Lesson learned, says Senderoff: "Don't try to build a Porsche when you just need to build the wire-frame and test whether the car will ever drive."

2. Let the big goals shape your calendar.

Wrangling your schedule won't necessarily be easier after you leave your 9-to-5. Between the shoestring budget, lean staff and avalanche of action items, deciding which tasks to tackle each day at your startup can get overwhelming.

For Allyson Downey, co-founder and CEO of baby-product review platform weeSpring, working at an educational nonprofit provided valuable training in organizing and prioritizing.

To stay the course, Downey relies on a chart on her desk, a carryover from her previous job, showing the day's top goals. "I have a column called ‘user growth,' a column called ‘revenue growth' and a column called ‘development,'" says Downey, who is based in New York. To prevent herself from "going down the rabbit hole of fixing little things and building new features," the development column is half the size of the other two, she says.

This means that less-pressing tasks like updating weeSpring's About Us page take a back seat. "That has been on my to-do list for two years, and it probably will continue being on my to-do list for another two years because I need to keep my head down and focus on the stuff that's going to move the company forward," Downey explains.

3. Document processes.

Before Guy Baroan began running his Elmwood Park, N.J.-based IT firm, Baroan Technologies, full time, he spent several years managing an indoor amusement park. The facility employed 80 teenagers and hosted about 135 children's birthday parties per week.

"There had to be a specific method for the hostesses to go in and run the birthday parties," Baroan explains. Employees needed a process road map — from the timing of the cake presentation to the sale of game tokens — to keep parties running smoothly and guest meltdowns to a minimum.

Baroan was a one-man show when he left his job in 1997 to focus on Baroan Technologies. Determined to hand off some of his workload as soon as possible, he took a page from the amusement park operations and began documenting all his business practices — everything from scheduling appointments and making service calls to training workers.

"The best way to delegate is to create processes and systems," says Baroan, who now employs 18 people and brings in $3 million in annual revenue. "Then you have a consistent method where, no matter who's doing a task, it's going to be done the same way."

4. Catch problems early.

Before devoting herself to her business full time in 2012, Katie Stack spent a decade working in the costume departments of regional theaters. Often it wasn't until the final fitting that a designer would decide on a different color or fabric for a costume and want a replacement. Between overtime and last-minute shipping costs, "suddenly the cost of that new garment was around six times what the original cost of the garment was," says Stack, who now runs Stitch & Rivet, a design studio and retail boutique in Washington, D.C.

In selling her own handmade totes, handbags and belts, Stack ensures that the quality of the materials she orders from vendors is up to snuff before making each product. Because if she isn't happy with a particular fabric or zipper, her wholesale customers might not be either.

Stack's advice: "If you need to change what you're doing, change it in the prototype stage instead of in the final stage, when you're up a creek and can't really backtrack."

5. Plan for financial fluctuations.

Heidi Andermack became intimately familiar with the fluctuations of small-business cash flow during the seven years she managed her husband's custom font company. So when she co-founded Chowgirls Killer Catering in 2004 in Minneapolis, she and partner Amy Lynn Brown set some fiscal ground rules: Limit the amount of personal credit used to float the company during lean times; avoid draining their retirement funds; seek out a bank loan as soon as they qualified.

They also relied on their business's peaks — summer wedding season and year-end holidays — to sustain the valleys. "Learning those patterns of your business is really important," Andermack says. "You can expect slimmer times."

You also can expect cost overruns, adds Stack, who began padding Stitch & Rivet's budgets for worst-case scenarios during her theater days. "Always have a contingency budget," she says, noting that she allots 15-20% more money than she thinks she needs for website overhauls, trade shows, printed materials and product development. "If you don't use it, that's great. But chances are you're going to need it."

6. Invest in employees.

Making workers feel valued has always been a primary concern for Chowgirls' Brown, who was paid handsomely by the multinational media company that employed her for nine years before she turned her full attention to catering. "Being treated and compensated well and receiving great benefits taught me how important that is for staff loyalty," she says.

Chowgirls, which makes more than $2 million in annual revenue, offers its full-time staffers competitive pay and generous benefits, including four weeks of paid parental leave, three weeks of paid vacation (after three years on staff), free massages, and grocery discounts. "We have a really high retention level," Brown says.

7. Treat customers like gold.

When Baroan started his company in the late '90s, "IT people thought they were gods," he says. But he had no desire to build a team of smug techies who would be too arrogant to treat customers with respect. Instead, he cribbed the service philosophy of his former employer, the amusement park: "We had a major focus on treating everyone like a guest in your home rather than just somebody off the street that you're doing a favor."

For his IT crew, this means showing up on time, addressing customers by name, answering questions, and checking whether customers need anything else before wrapping up jobs.

"People judge you by what they can relate to," Baroan says. His customers may not know much about network configuration data, but they know when someone is courteous and reliable. Baroan credits these traits with earning his company referrals and repeat customers over the years. "That's how the business grew," he says.

Cutting corners is not in Kevin Jordan's DNA. His six years as a commercial airline pilot instilled in him an unshakable discipline. Skip the required pre-flight inspection, and you could jeopardize lives.

Now owner of Redpoint Marketing Consultants, which he opened in 2012 in Farmville, Va., Jordan applies those same standards to each project he accepts, even those involving chores he'd rather avoid — and chores that his clients may not even know about. One such task: interviewing clients' customers for their take on the business. "Some of those things are a pain," he says. "It's hard to get people on the phone."

But for Jordan, having the discipline to go the distance when no one's watch-ing is part of the job. "Just like with the preflight inspection, the client may never realize that you did a lot of these things," he says. "But it will make a difference in the long run. And that's what distinguishes me from other people who do what I do."

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London has become a booming colossus for financial and fintech startups, with many of the $1 billion "unicorns" in the sector now in the British capital.

There are other pockets of Europe where financial startups also seem to thrive.

Many of these companies are working at the intersection of tech and finance. Some are aiming to market a product to everyone, some just to businesses, and some to the biggest banks and financial institutions.

What's common among all the companies is that they're actively making their own markets, fulfilling demand where there previously might have been none - especially since the financial crisis in 2008. But they're all offering something new, exciting, and financially promising.

18. eToro: Making trading more transparent

Etoro aims to bring "social trading" to a mass audience, and the Cyprus and London-based firm already boasts 4.5 million users.

The trading covers everything from currencies and stocks, to bitcoin. 

Among other features, it offers a "copy trading" option that allows you to allocate a portion of your funds to certain traders, and then simply mimic what they're doing — effectively taking some of the pressure off a retail investor. 

The company has raised $72.9 million (£48.06) in 7 funding rounds.

17. Metro Bank: The flagship challenger bank

There may be a few eyebrows raised at the idea of a fairly large bank being an innovative startup. But in the context of UK banking, Metro Bank is one of the most interesting forces in years.

The bank was set up over five years ago, based on the US Commerce Bank model, and already has hundreds of thousands of accounts in London and south east England. They're aiming for a flotation eventually, and chief executive Craig Donaldson has talked about being a FTSE 100 company in just four years.

They're focused on a service-provision model, putting an extremely high premium on the ease of opening and accessing an account, opening hours and customer care. With UK confidence in banks extremely low, that's been a winning strategy for Metro Bank so far. 

16. iZettle: Has a head start on Square in Europe

iZettle is one of Square's major competitors outside of the US. The Sweden-based service, which launched in 2011, markets low-fee mobile payments technology.

While Square had a year's head start on iZettle, the difference in card payments in the US and Europe gave iZettle an "in" before Square launched in Europe: card payments in the EU are almost all done by chip-and-pin; the US has yet to adopt the tech.

The firm has received $178.5 million (£117.82 million)  in five funding rounds, and launched in the Netherlands late last year.

Before Michael Borozdin left his job at Microsoft in 2006, he was an outstanding performer at the company.

He was in charge of some Windows-related projects, and said he received raises and promotions that gave him more responsibility.

But Borozdin left that position after working at the company for more than three years to try something new. He joined DocuSign, a service that lets you sign documents using your mobile device.

Although DocuSign now has more than 50 million users, it was a small company with only a few employees back in 2006.

"At that point in time it was a 25-person startup that rented part of a storage space," Borozdin said to Business Insider. "They literally rented part of the storage floor, with junk being in one part and DocuSign being in the other. We had an elevator that only worked about three quarters of the time."

That's drastically different than Microsoft, which had 71,000 employees in 2006 according to data published by Statista. Borozdin said he initially joined DocuSign because he had previously worked with Tom Gonser, the company's cofounder.

And he wanted the type of recognition and responsibility that comes with working for a smaller company.

"My name was never going to be on any of the outward-facing Microsoft [products]," he said. "I [didn't] want to be the guy in the back room, that doesn't seem like a fun way to spend the next 10 years."

The move from an established corporation to a small startup is a common one in the tech industry. Employees from companies such as Google, Apple, and Amazon among others sometimes leave to start their own companies or join a startup that aligns more with their interests.

Borozdin said the biggest cultural change he noticed was that things tend to move faster when you're part of a smaller company — a common observation among those who have made similar choices.

"I felt like in a big company, I had some innovative ideas and I felt like I spent months upon months discussing it with everybody," he said. "It was just one of those things that was really frustrating...[DocuSign] is a very action-oriented culture."

Another major difference is that at a startup, you end up performing a lot of tasks that aren't actually covered under your job description.

"When you join a company, and it's only 25 people, you do a little bit of everything," Borozdin said. "...At that point in time everybody did whatever it took, including our executives. [They] were involved with moving furniture when we moved from one office to the next. Our CTO was carrying the table." 

Regardless, Borozdin said it's important to spend time at larger companies like Microsoft at some point in your tech career. It's a great way to learn how to structure teams and projects — a set of skills that are definitely necessary when working for a startup. 

"I would advise young people to do some amount of working at a big company," he said. "They really put a lot of investment in you. You go to a smaller company, and at least you have the technique down. It's like you get coaching." 

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A new startup, Vive, gives women exactly what they want: unlimited blowouts — basically a super-thorough blow-dry for your hair— on demand.

Vive, which is currently in private beta in New York City, offers a subscription-based service centered on unlimited blowouts. That includes a wash and dry, but no haircuts or coloring.

Professional blowouts are intended to make your hair look as sleek and smooth as possible. You might get one before, say, your sorority's formal or your friend's wedding.

You can do it yourself at home, but it probably won't look as good and will take forever to do. Places like blowout startup Drybar charge $45 per blowout, though you can find salons in New York City that do it for closer to $25 a pop.

Which makes it all the more incredible that Vive offers its services for only $99 per month. It pays for itself after about 3 appointments, though you're encouraged to include an $8 to $10 tip as well — so what you're really getting for $99 a month is $10 blowouts.

Think of Vive like the ClassPass for blowouts: An all-you-can-eat service that lets you get your hair done as often as you want. (Of course, "as often as you want" comes with limits — it's probably not great for your hair to be blow-dried at high temperatures every day).

ClassPass is a breakout, $400 million New York startup that's earned a reported $60 million run rate by bundling up small-business fitness services. ClassPass works with a number of fitness classes to create a $125-per-month gym-membership-like deals, allowing customers to studio hop.

Vive is a first of many likely ClassPass spinoffs, which will try to benefit from bundling tons of local offerings together.

Vive went through Y Combinator this year, presenting at Demo Day in August. "Y Cominator really helped us make a lot of operational updates to our model," founder and CEO Alanna Gregory told Business Insider. "Most of the audience [at Demo Day] came away knowing what a blowout is. I feel like I run a blowout-awareness campaign."

Gregory says that since its launch in April, Vive has completed 10,000 blowout appointments. 50% of appointments on Vive are booked in 12 hours prior to the time of the appointment, so it's good for times when you want to get an appointment last minute.

What it's like to use

I've been using Vive for the past five weeks. I have unruly, curly hair, and it's too much work to blow it out myself or straighten it five days a week. So I signed up for Vive's wait list this summer, and, about a month later, I got an email letting me know I was accepted into Vive's beta program.

My biggest complaint about Vive is that it's only available via browser or mobile browser. There's no app yet, though the company says it's launching one soon.

That said, the website is easy to navigate, and the startup makes it easy to set up an appointment.

Here's what it looks like when you book your appointment.

You get a confirmation email and a text message when you book your appointment, and then once more when your appointment is confirmed. (I've had appointments booked within two minutes, and others booked as long as 15 minutes after making my appointment. Either way, it's pretty much on demand.) You can book an appointment for that day, or a week in advance.

The service itself is no different than going to a salon and having an appointment if you weren't signed up with Vive. You go, tell them your name, get your blowout, and leave a tip at the end. You don't pay because the cost of the service is included in your monthly $99.

Having to leave a tip is the only annoying part of the Vive experience.

One of the best things about Uber is that you don't have to leave a tip — it makes your black-car ride experience seamless and eliminates a huge pain point. When you're paying $10 for each blowout on top of the monthly $99 cost, it can add up, especially if you're trying to get your money's worth out of the monthly cost. I don't typically carry cash on me either, so having to stop by an ATM in the morning on my way to my blowout is kind of a pain.

I've been averaging one to two blowouts a week, and, in total, I've had roughly 10 blowouts through Vive (Anything more than that would probably not be good for my hair). But blowouts last for several days, so if you get a blowout on a Tuesday and again on Friday, you're pretty much set for the week, and don't have to worry too much about doing your own hair.

In this way, my behavior has completely shifted. Instead of waking up an hour early to wash, dry, and straighten my hair, I can head to the salon and check a bunch of my emails and actually get some work done, and get my hair done at the same time.

Vive is great for salon discovery — I've found a couple great salons a block away from Business Insider's office that I never would have visited without Vive.

That said, there's no way to request a salon. You're at the mercy of Vive's algorithms, which place you at a salon that has open availability at the time you've requested your appointment.

Is Vive worth it? If you can shell out $99 a month, along with the cost of tips for each blowout, then yes — it's a service well worth the money. I don't plan on canceling my membership anytime soon.

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Octopus Ventures is launching a new $140 million (£92 million) fund called Octopus Opportunities. 

The London-based VC firm, which usually invests in early stage startups, will use the new fund to keep backing the companies in its portfolio as they develop. It will also start making later stage investments in other successful European businesses. 

Investments will range from £250,000 to £25 million. 

Octopus took part in Shopa's $11 million (£7.2 million) Series A round in February before the shopping app shut down last month, and has also backed companies like Zoopla and YPlan. Its portfolio contains quite a few fintech companies too, including money transfer firm Currency Fair and bitcoin analytics and storage startup Elliptic. 

Octopus Opportunities has already made its first investment. The fund teamed up with Google Ventures to lead a $60 million (£39.4 million) Series C round in Secret Escapes, a British travel deals website that bills itself as "the worst-kept secret in luxury travel." 

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TransferWise, the London fintech startup valued at close to $1 billion (£660 million), quietly changed CEO in September.

Co-founder Taavet Hinrikus has taken over from fellow founder Kristo Käärmann as the boss of the international money transfer business.

Business Insider spotted the change on TransferWise's current "About" page.

Hinrikus is listed as CEO, while Käärmann's title is "Executive Founder":

But an archived version of the same page from September 10 shows Käärmann as CEO, while Hinrikus is credited as "Founder, Executive Chairman":

Business Insider contacted TransferWise for comment on its CEO change. It told us that there had been operational changes, but downplayed any serious consequences from the move:

A couple of months ago the founders changed their roles slightly. We're growing fast and we constantly look across the company to see how we can enable our teams to have the biggest impact. That goes for the founders too. We try different things to figure out what works best and gives us the fastest speed and the best outcome. It's a change in how the founders work together - but nothing has changed in the way that we execute towards the vision.

It looks like TransferWise's cofounders aren't 100% sure about who is the CEO, either. Both currently list their job title as CEO in their Twitter bio:

4-year-old TransferWise is one London's most exciting startups. The company was valued at $1 billion (£660 million) earlier this year after attracting a $58 million (£38 million) investment round led by Silicon Valley venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz.

TransferWise lets people send money internationally online and uses a peer-to-peer marketplace to cut down on fees. Customers sending money one way are matched with consumers sending cash in the other direction. 

Each customer then gets cash paid out of a pot in their native country, saving the actual transfer and hence cutting out fees. TransferWise then moves its money around in bulk to save money.

TransferWise announced in June that it is now transferring £500 million ($762 million) a month and has transferred over £3 billion ($4.5 billion) since launch.

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London tech startups have received a record amount of money from investors so far this year, according to figures being touted by London mayor Boris Johnson’s promotional agency London & Partners. 

Startups in the capital were given over £1 billion between January and today. This is more than three quarters of the £1.4 billion that has been invested into the UK tech sector over the same time period, said London & Partners. 

London’s ecommerce startups have been particularly successful in securing funding over the last three months. 

Fast food delivery service Deliveroo raised £46 million, online furniture retailer MADE.com raised £39 million, travel offer site Secret Escapes raised £39, and community-based student loan provider Prodigy Finance raised £12 million. 

Between them, the four companies took 50% of all London VC investments in the last quarter. 

Eileen Burbidge, partner at Passion Capital and the Mayor of London’s tech ambassador for the city, said: “We are now starting to see more later-stage investments which support the scaling of more London tech businesses.

“Today’s figures and the fact that London is home to more software developers than anywhere else in the world validate the fact that London’s tech sector is maturing and is one of the world's leading tech hubs.”

The figures suggest the overall UK digital economy is going from strength-to-strength as UK tech companies raised £1.3 billion in the whole of 2015 and less than £100 million in 2010.

Cities like Cambridge, Manchester and Bristol complain that London steals the limelight when it comes to tech, and the London & Partners data suggests there is a huge divide between the capital and the rest of the country, with investors favouring the products and platforms that are being built by developers in hubs like Shoreditch.

But there are3,228 tech firms for ever square kilometre within Shoreditch's EC1V postcode so it's not surprising that some of them are appealing to investors. 

As you might expect, London & Partners has a habit of banging the London tech drum with these press releases, which are issued at least once a quarter.

But London's funding rounds and IPOs are still dwarfed by what’s happening in Silicon Valley, where Uber has raised over £5 billion at a valuation in excess of £33 billion, despite being just six-years-old. 

It’s also no secret that the UK is yet to produce a company on anywhere near the same scale as Google, Apple or Facebook.

Startup founders and venture capitalists in the UK claim this is largely down to the fact that UK companies aren’t able to raise the same amount of capital.

There are several well-known venture capital companies in London now — including Index Ventures, Balderton Capital, and Accel Partners — but Alistair Mitchell, the British cofounder behind enterprise collaboration firm Huddle, maintains that there is more venture capital money on Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto than there is in the whole of the London. 

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Clue, the Berlin-based startup behind an increasingly popular period and fertility tracking application, this morning announced that it has raised $7 million in Series A funding from well-known American VC firm Union Square Ventures (whose partner Fred Wilson is very bullish on the European startup market) and Mosaic Ventures. Clue CEO and co-founder Ida Tin - who we've interviewed in the past - published a blog post about the raise as well.

The app, which is available in 10 languages, basically calculates and predicts users’ periods, fertile windows and PMS, and informs them when they are the most or least likely to get pregnant. Clue has attracted more than two million active users in over 180 countries.

The Series A investment brings Clue’s total funding to $10 million and also includes existing investors such as Brigitte Mohn (Bertelsmann), Atlantic Internet, Groupe Arnault and Joanne Wilson.

The company says it will use the cash to "launch new product features, hire new key people, substantially accelerate growth and develop in new markets". Clue also plans to pursue partnerships with universities with the goal of advancing scientific research in the field of reproductive health.

Very happy to announce that we’ve raised $7 million in Series A funding from @usv& @mosaic_vchttp://t.co/nnOJWhkMjK

— Clue (@clue) October 9, 2015

“@usv& @Mosaic_VC share our vision of empowering people to be in charge of their reproductive lives.” -@idatin

— Clue (@clue) October 9, 2015

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The number of private tech companies valued at $1 billion or more has surged so much this year that on average 1.3 so-called unicorn companies have been created every week in 2015, according to data from CB Insights. 

But now it looks like winter is coming to Silicon Valley.

Fortune's Dan Primack went to San Francisco this week and met with a number of people involved with unicorn companies with ballooning valuations. 

He says the mentality of people in Silicon Valley is starting to change, and people are getting scared.

"As in the past, they are nearly unanimous in sentiment," he writes. "The difference now is that their sentiment is fear."

Primack writes:

The past several years of raising too much, too high, too soon has run smack into a much more conservative investor ethos. Later-stage tech startups can still raise growth equity — and still lots of it — but not necessarily at the terms they were receiving just two months ago.

“This shift is only five or six weeks old, so most companies haven’t felt it yet,” a senior tech banker explains. “But I know of many companies who raised money at $1 billion valuations last year that are now being told that, to raise money now, they need to take around $700 million or $800 million. Probably with some serious structure that protects investors, like ratchets, on top of it.” 

It should be noted that Primack is one of the best reporters on private equity and venture capital. He's really plugged in, and he's not an alarmist. 

There's been a growing sense that the Fed could soon raise interest rates, which would impact startup investing. More importantly: Successful VC-backed tech sector IPOs have been few and far between. Just this week, flash-storage provider Pure Storage went public, but began trading below its $17 IPO price, and closed the day at $16.01.

The public markets are more harsh than private markets. This means private investors need to reset their expectations, which is leading to downward valuation pressure.

It certainly seems like this is the beginning of the downturn in the private tech sector that VCs like Benchmark's Bill Gurley have been warning about for a year now.

Read Primack's full story here.

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Usually when people talk about a tech bubble and the startups that could be in trouble in a downturn, they are wary to name names.

But Danielle Morrill is the CEO and cofounder of Mattermark, which tracks all sorts of data about private companies.  

In a post on Mattermark's website on Friday, Mattermark CEO Danielle Morrill had a warning for startups that she suggests we call "zombie unicorns"— VC-backed startups with gross margins unlike traditional software companies. Startups that will have a really hard time raising more money in the event of a panic or an economic downturn.

"Now," Morrill says, "with the rise of massive private rounds from late stage private equity and crossover investors, founders something new to worry about: Did you miss the unicorn window?"

Morrill went on to name names of startups she thinks could be in trouble:

"These are the companies who are spending $1 to make $0.20, with the hope that customer acquisition will pay off down the road (Draft Kings, Fan Duel). These are the companies who have to re-acquire their customer every time they want a repeat purchase (Kabam). These are the companies with unit economics that just don’t make sense (WeWork)."

When investors started predicting the death of unicorn startups earlier this year, Morrill went data diving. 

"VCs love to say this stuff, but they never actually say who [the dead unicorns are]," Morrill told Business Insider earlier this year. "So I was thinking: how would you figure out which companies were really in danger? We have some really interesting data that we track that can give you some sense of how they're doing."

Mattermark examines the number of employees a company has, how much money a company has raised, a website's estimated number of monthly unique visitors, app downloads, and more. Investors use Mattermark to keep tabs on startups. It collects data from a number of sources, including but not limited to: AngelList, Alexa.com rankings, app store rankings, anonymous sources, and social media.

The number of private tech companies valued at $1 billion or more has surged so much this year that on average 1.3 so-called unicorn companies have been created every week in 2015,according to data from CB Insights. But that could all be changing now.

A report from Fortune's Dan Primack, who went to San Francisco this week, suggests that the mentality of people in Silicon Valley is starting to change, and people are getting scared. 

"As in the past, they are nearly unanimous in sentiment," he wrote. "The difference now is that their sentiment is fear."

At a SXSW keynote earlier this year, Benchmark Capital's Bill Gurley warned that Silicon Valley's optimism could eventually lead to the demise of some of these unicorn companies. 

"I do think you'll see some dead unicorns this year," he said.

One week later, Sequoia partner Michael Moritz chimed in and stated, "There are a considerable number of unicorns that will become extinct."

You can read Morrill's full post here>>.

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The UK government is allocating £4 million to video game startups over the next four years in a bid to help companies build a new generation of video games in the UK.

The Video Games Prototype Fund from the Department for Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) is designed to help video game companies get their concepts “off the drawing board and into production”.

Grants of up to £25,000 will be offered to early stage video game companies from now until 2019. These grants are designed to help new and young gaming companies create working prototypes. A limited number of £50,000 grants will be given to video game companies looking to go beyond the prototype stage.

The government claims that the video gaming industry is one of the UK’s biggest success stories and it used the launch of the new fund to highlight the nation's previous successes in the field. 

Early releases in the "Grand Theft Auto" series, for example, were largely created by a team of programmers at Rockstar North in Scotland, while the "Tomb Raider" series was originally developed by London-headquartered Eidos Interactive. 

The government said it wants to ensure that the UK continues to create games like "Runescape,""Monument Valley," and "Candy Crush."

Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy Ed Vaizey said: “Britain’s video games punch well above their weight internationally and we need to build on this and invest in the strength of our creativity.

“This fund will give small businesses, startups and individuals the support they need to better attract private investment and go on to create the blockbusters of tomorrow.”

A report published last September found there were 1,908 video gaming companies in the UK. It also identified 12 gaming hubs. They include: Brighton, Cambridge, Cardiff, Dundee, Edinburgh, Guildford and Aldershot, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Oxford, Sheffield and Rotherham, and Warwick and Stratford–upon–Avon.

According to the DCMS, the UK’s video games industry currently generates more than £4.5 million a day for the UK economy and directly employs more than 19,000 people.

Ian Livingstone CBE, fantasy author and video games entrepreneur said: “The UK has a long history of developing world-class video games. From Elite and Populous to Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto to Runescape and Moshi Monsters to Monument Valley and Plunder Pirates, UK games have made a significant cultural and economic global impact. This fund will encourage and incentivise new talent to carry on that important legacy.”

The fund will be managed by the UK Games Talent and Finance Community Interest Company and will explore joint initiatives with organisations such as Digital Catapult, BAFTA, Ukie, Tiga, Creative England, Creative Scotland and BFI.

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A French startup called Doctolib has raised €18 million (£13 million) for its platform that aims to make it easier for doctors to schedule appointments with patients and vice versa.

The Series B funding round, led by the London team of venture capital firm Accel Partners, brings total investment in the company up to €23 million (£17 million).

Founded in October 2013 by Stanislas Niox-Chateau, Ivan Schneider and Jessy Bernal, Doctolib’s cloud-based booking software is designed to help doctors manage bookings, find new patients, and reduce no-shows. It also allows users to browse doctors, see their real time availability, book an appointment, and manage their bookings.

The company's subscription-based platform is being touted at everyone from individual physicians right up to large hospitals. The company claims that its software can ultimately improve healthcare access for 500 million inhabitants across Europe.

Niox-Chateau said: "It’s been exciting for us to see the appetite for our product in France over the last 18 months. This investment will help us continue to capitalise on our strong growth as we take our solution to new countries across Europe."

Accel partner Philippe Botteri will join the Doctolib board.

"They have managed to develop a superior product loved by doctors and their impressive growth is a testament of their operation strength and unique culture. They are helping doctors join the digital and cloud revolution."

Doctolib has also raised money from several French entrepreneurs including Bertrand Jelensperger, Antoine Freysz, Olivier Occelli, Maxime Forgeot, Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, and Pierre Krings.

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Salesforce is planning to spend $100 million (£65 million) on European enterprise startups over the next five years as it looks to cash in on the success of the continent’s best young technology companies.

The cloud software giant, spearheaded by billionaire businessman and philanthropist Marc Benioff, announced that it will invest the money through its Salesforce Ventures business.

John Somorjai, head of Salesforce Ventures, said: "There is so much incredible innovation happening in Europe today and we want to empower the next generation of enterprise cloud startups in the region. Our $100 million commitment strengthens our mission to help startups grow and give back to their communities."

Somorjai told Venturebeat that he has seen a noticeable acceleration of startups and entrepreneurship in Europe over the last 18 months. He believes this is down to a number of factors including greater government support and general startup encouragement.

Ludovic Ulrich, head of startup relations at Salesforce, told Business Insider last month that Salesforce has been a "pretty active" investor in technology startups over the last five years. 

"Salesforce Ventures are investing more in post Series A and being on the Salesforce platform is a very good plus," he said at the company's annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco last month. "Usually we require companies to have a strong leading investor. It’s unusual that we would lead a round."

Salesforce has invested in more than 150 enterprise cloud startups since 2009. Several of the investments have been in Europe, including CartoDB, Cloud9 IDE, CloudSense, NewVoiceMedia, Qubit, Universal Avenue and YOUR SL.

Ruben Daniels, cofounder and CEO of Cloud9 IDE, said: "Salesforce Ventures provides not only the funding, network and introductions, but also the mentorship and framework to help companies understand how they can give back as they grow."

Other Silicon Valley technology giants like Google and Cisco have launched their own European startup investment funds.  

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Here East is a new space for startups and corporates that will open in East London next summer.

We wrote about it here, but now we want to show you just how incredible it looks.

The legacy of the Olympic Park is something that's important to the British people because they're the ones that helped to fund the £8.92 billion event that took place in summer 2012.

When Here East opens, it should be able to accommodate at least 5,500 people. The man spearheading the Here East development said he's optimistic the innovation hub will act as a melting pot for companies of all sizes.

This is the man leading the charge. His name is Gavin Poole and he spent over 15 years in the Royal Air Force (RAF).

The two main buildings that make up Here East were used by the media during the London 2012 Olympics. Between them, the buildings offer 1.2 million square feet of commercial space.

Here you can see Here East from the air as well as where it is located in relation to the rest of the Olympic Park.

The two main buildings that make up Here East were used by the media during the London 2012 Olympics.

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Bill Bobbitt was moving from Dallas to San Francisco and had to sell his furniture fast so he could start his job a week later.

Bobbitt arrived in the Bay Area only to repeat the process in reverse.

"I went to Ikea and pretty much bought the same room I had just sold in Dallas, and in the process lost several thousand dollars," Bobbitt said.

Bobbitt was so frustrated by the experience that he teamed up with his three cofounders — Jenny Morrill, Ryan Smith, and Shruti Shah — to create Move Loot, a startup that takes the annoyance out of Craigslist furniture buying and handles the selling for you.

Starting today, the 2-year-old company will start working with retailers, like antique stores, to handle their deliveries and online sales through a new platform called Trade.

A better way for the Craigslist-Ikea set

For anyone who has moved recently, or even just needed a new furniture piece, Craigslist and Ikea have become staples for furniture buying. The higher-end designer stores still often rely on foot traffic to come by and flop down on couches before making a purchase, which makes sense for people looking to shell out a lot of money on their living room.

Many people, though, fall into Bobbitt's category. They want nice furniture that isn't a pain to assemble and will last longer than particle board, but they also want it now. A three-month delivery window for a couch won't work if you don't want to sit on the floor for three months without one.

Move Loot started as a website geared toward these folks. The company's app allows furniture owners to take a pic of their items and upload them.

Move Loot, in return, quotes the seller a price, and if they agree to it, the startup will send movers to pick up the item, photograph it, and then deliver it to whomever ends up buying it.

While Move Loot used to split the money from each sale 50/50 with the seller, Move Loot recently changed so it now takes its share based on the cost incurred to them for the logistics of the sale and the rest goes to the seller. If a user is selling a $2,000 couch, they'll get a larger amount than someone selling a $200 couch because of the value — since it costs Move Loot the same price to transport it.

Compared to the hassle of setting a fair price on Craigslist, taking your own photos, and then negotiating how the couch will get to its new owner, it's pretty easy — although there's a higher standard of quality than the stained couches of Craigslist.

"One of the problems with Craigslist is that you could never tell if it was a stain or if that's a shadow or what's on the back of it," said Jenny Morrill, founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Move Loot. "One of the things we decided in the beginning was we wanted to set that trust level and show all the pictures clearly and make sure we're really showing the full piece."

Bring on the businesses

So far, Move Loot has grown by focusing on the individual seller. It has processed more than $1.5 million worth of furniture in New York alone and has more than 100,000 users, although it declines to discuss other numbers. To increase those numbers, and work toward making a profit, Move Loot is launching Trade.

The idea is to open Move Loot to retailers to sell while also giving buyers more options that they may not have found stumbling into their neighborhood store.

"What we're launching is a way for businesses to have access to selling their items online while keeping their inventory in store," said Morrill.

Trade by Move Loot lets businesses like antique stores or home-stagers set up an Etsy-style business page on the site. While Move Loot will still handle the delivery, the items are photographed and stay in the stores, unlike its normal process of moving it to a warehouse.

The payout will work the same, with Move Loot only taking its share for the logistics — around 30% — although that percentage will be smaller than it is for individual sellers, since the company doesn't have to store inventory from its retail partners.

At launch, the items won't be listed as coming from certain stores, but mixed in with the rest of Move Loot's inventory so buyers see more options available and with some pieces in new condition.

"We really want to stand out as a place that's affordable and fast to get stuff, but it's also tailored to your style. You can find pieces that are more unique than getting an entire living room from Ikea," Morrill said. "It's just having a lot of different options and not having to go to 10 different stores to find the pieces."

SEE ALSO: 16 Silicon Valley landmarks you must visit on your next trip

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Y Combinator, the successful Silicon Valley startup school, has raised a huge new fund in a bid to cash in on the success of growing private tech startups that are achieving crazy valuations.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the fund is worth $700 million (£514 million).

The late-stage fund will be overseen by Twitter's former chief operating officer, Ali Rowghani, and will be used to back companies long after they’ve graduated from Y Combinator’s famous accelerator programme.

Y Combinator’s three-month crash course — run out of a building situated around the corner from Google's headquarters in Mountain View — gives companies like Airbnb, Stripe and Dropbox help on their way to success.

Companies that make it through the Y Combinator programme typically get $120,000 (£77,600) in return for 7% equity. But now Y Combinator may decide to make further investments in these companies as they mature.

Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, explained in a blog post that the fund will only be used to back companies in the Y Combinator portfolio, possibly taking a seat on their board in the process.

"YC will fund its 1,000th company this year, and many of these companies are now scaling their organisations, revenue, and operations," he wrote. “Though years removed from our program, these founders continue to come to YC for advice and support, and we would like to do more to help them.”

Altman's comments come just days after he said startup founders are currently being spoiled by investors.

The "YC Continuity Fund" will allow Y Combinator to go head-to-head with other investors that are looking to piggyback on the success of companies like Uber and Airbnb, which have achieved valuations of $50 billion (£36 billion) and $24 billion (£17 billion) respectively.

"As we all know, good companies are staying private longer, and the market for private growth capital has grown considerably," Rowghani wrote in a blog post. "These later stage rounds tend to be larger, shared rounds rather than winner-take-all."

According to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, the funds' investors include Stanford University and Willett Advisors LLC, the firm managing Michael Bloomberg’s investments.

Y Combinator didn't specify the time period that the fund will be invested over. 

Rowghani added:  "Over the last 15 years, I’ve worked at two iconic companies, Pixar and Twitter, and helped them manage rapid growth and scale. I joined YC as a part-time partner last November precisely to help maturing companies in the YC portfolio with these same challenges.

"I didn’t realise at the time how truly distinctive YC  is. There’s no other organisation in the world that has the kind of founder network and loyalty that YC possesses.  Having observed the last two YC batches closely, there’s no doubt in my mind that YC dramatically increases the probability of success for every one of its companies...not just the probability of raising Series A capital, but also the probability of building great long-lasting companies." 

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Flipagram, the mobile storytelling app that has attracted some of the biggest names in venture capital, has laid off more than 20% of its staff in a restructuring, Business Insider has learned.

The ax fell October 1 when 17 employees were told they were being let go, a former employee who attended the meeting said.

Flipagram is a mobile app that lets users stitch together photos, videos, and music into short 30-second stories. The social network took off with more than 120 million users and more than 300 million videos.

"It looked to us like a monster," investor and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins said in a Bloomberg interview. "On the order of an Instagram." Sequoia Ventures founder Mike Moritz is also on the board.

The company had 33 million monthly active users in 2014, CEO Farhad Mohit told Business Insider in July, but there are no new numbers from the company for 2015.

User growth had stalled, but it didn't sound as if it were a make-or-break situation, a former employee said. A source inside the company called its initial growth "unsustainable" but in a vein similar to Facebook and Twitter's early days as well.

Meanwhile, the company had hired too fast (and is still hiring), but it hadn't increased its efficiency alongside its headcount, according to an inside source.

Part of Flipagram's appeal is being able to match hit music to your videos and photos. The startup worked hard to obtain licensing deals from music giants including Universal, Sony, and Warner so its users could legally add the music as a backdrop to their photos. It incurred large legal fees as a result, but sources close to the company said it accounted for only a fraction of the venture capital raised.

In July, Flipagram announced a $70 million funding round from prominent investors, including Moritz and Doerr, and the pair joined the board together. The most recent time they did that, they were on the board of Google.

That round, however, actually took place in February 2014. Flipagram still has money in the bank, according to a person familiar with the company.

A company representative told us:

Flipagram has grown at a pace very few companies have experienced. At this pace, we continuously need to evaluate our organizational structure and processes. We recently reorganized to give greater responsibility to leaner engineering, product, and design teams, so we could be more nimble and iterate faster. That said, we care for all who were affected and are working to ensure a smooth transition for them. Meanwhile, Flipagram continues to hire world-class talent to support our growth.

SEE ALSO: Flipagram raises $70 million to beat Snapchat and Instagram by harnessing the power of music

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Tech City UK, a government-funded organisation that aims to support UK startups, has announced that it wants to make it easier for skilled tech workers outside the European Union (EU) to come and work in the UK through a new initiative known as the Tech Nation Visa Scheme.

The government-funded quango was granted the power to endorse visas for up to 200 skilled tech workers outside the EU in April 2014. 

But Tech City UK has been under pressure to improve its immigration record after a freedom of information request revealed that it only gave out seven of the possible 200 visas in the year leading up to April 2015. Tech City UK said this was partly because it had a high bar but it's also because the visa was poorly marketed, with only 10 people applying for the so-called “Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa” in an entire year.

Tech City UK wrote in a blog post that it is changing the visa scheme on November 12 so startups can access the talent they need to in order to grow their companies.

“The new Tech Nation Visa Scheme will prove to be a vital tool for companies that want to secure the high caliber people they need to quickly scale their product and service operations,” said Tech City UK CEO Gerard Grech in the blog post.

The most significant change to the visa is arguably that it can now be applied for by up to five people at a time. This means that well-funded companies like TransferWise and Shazam will be able to poach entire teams from rival firms in hubs like Silicon Valley and Bangalore.

One of the current issues with the “exceptional talent” visa is that it’s only available to a relatively narrow pool of people with a proven track record. In a bid to address this issue, Tech City UK said it now plans to start considering applications from individuals that show “exceptional promise”.

Through the Tech Nation Visa Scheme, the quango also said it will offer support to UK companies that are scaling up quickly by offering them a fast-track route. The support for scale-ups comes after the Google-backed Scale-Up Institute called for dedicated immigration visas for such companies. 

Tech City UK is also further expanding its focus to the North of England, where there are 170,000 people working in the technology sector, according to the Tech Nation report.

Digital businesses in Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and Sunderland will be eligible to fast-track applications and they’ll also be given access to a visa support service.

Tech City UK described the relaxed immigration rules as an evolution of the current Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa. More details about the new criteria for the Tier 1 visa will be shared on 12 November, it said.

Tier 1 vs. Tier 2 

Startups and trade bodies have welcomed the changes to the Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa but they’re more concerned about the proposed changes for the Tier 2 General visa, which many UK tech companies also use. 

The Home Office has tasked the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), a group of independent economists, with exploring how to make it even harder for non-EU nationals to enter the UK under the Tier 2 visa.

Specifically, the MAC is looking at raising the salary threshold, restricting which roles are eligible, limiting the amount of time a role can be classed as in shortage, introducing a skills levy, and restricting the rights of dependents. 

The MAC is due to submit its report to the Home Office in mid-December.

Under the Tier 2 scheme, there are 20,700 visas available a year to employers who want to recruit a non-EU skilled worker.

Guy Levin, executive director of startup campaign group Coadec, (The Coalition for a Digital Economy) said: "It's important to remember that the Tier 1 route is tiny compared to Tier 2, which is under review at the moment and likely to be squeezed further. So while this is a positive step today, the bigger decision is yet to come.”

Charlotte Holloway, head of policy at industry body Tech UK, which represents over 850 UK technology firms, added: “The tech community will be pleased at this development, but wider questions remain on the government’s current proposals to reform the Tier 2 visa scheme for skilled workers on which many tech companies depend.”

Nick Hargreaves, cofounder of Cloud Employee said 200 foreign technology specialists are really just a “drop in the ocean” of what's needed.

Injecting life into Tech City

Tech City UK, launched by David Cameron and former Google executive Joanna Shields in 2010, has come under fire from the UK tech community. 

Successful British companies like Huddle have been enrolled on Tech City UK support schemes like Future Fifty and seen little benefit to their business. The company’s founder, Alastair Mitchell, told Business Insider last month that there is no longer any need for Tech City UK to exist.

But the organisation appointed prominent venture capitalist Eileen Burbidge as chair recently and she’s out to change the quango’s tarnished image.

"A balance we have to strike in the country, whether it’s facilitated through Tech City UK or other people, is that we continue to need highly skilled workers at the same time that we try and cultivate those skills domestically through the school system," Burbidge told Business Insider when she was appointed Tech City UK chair. 

"For the immediate future we absolutely need highly skilled talent, and it’s difficult because obviously there’s a larger political narrative which is about the stress on social services of an ever-growing population, but I think that what we can do are small measures, small things about making sure that we know where certain pockets exist for need or demand, and how to service that."

Burbidge has already introduced an entrepreneur advisory panel to help guide Tech City UK that includes JustEat CEO David Buttress, FanDuel cofounder Lesley Eccles, and TransferWise cofounder Taavet Hinrikus. 

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The tech bubble of the late '90s produced a number of flash-in-the-pan internet companies that raised millions — often in public offerings — only to flame out a year or two later.

There are surprising similarities between some of today's hottest tech companies and those dot-com predecessors.

Was the first generation too early? Or are today's companies heading for a similar fate?

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MyLackey.com sent someone to do your chores for you — like TaskRabbit.

If you want some help cleaning your apartment, getting groceries delivered, or if you're in need of a handyman, you can hire a helper from TaskRabbit to help you get it done. 

Founded in 1999 and funded by VC firms including WaldenVC, MyLackey.com was similar to the present-day iteration of TaskRabbit: you could hire someone to run your errands for you. Mylackey.com signed deals with local businesses to carry out the tasks. Sixteen months after launching, MyLackey.com shut down in October 2000. 

Before you listened to music on Spotify, you downloaded it on Napster.

Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing service that let users exchange MP3 files. However, since it hosted copyrighted music, Napster ran into legal troubles and eventually shut down and sold to software company Roxio in 2001. It seems companies like Spotify have learned from Napster — they work with record labels and artists to allow for legal music streaming.

Webvan and Kozmo offered instant delivery, similar to Amazon Fresh, Instacart, and other on-demand services today.

Both Webvan and Kozmo were dot-com era delivery startups. Webvan promised 30-minute grocery delivery, while Kozmo delivered Starbucks coffee, magazines, music, and more. Webvan was founded in 1999, raised $400 million from Softbank, Sequoia Capital, and Goldman Sachs, and went bankrupt two years later. Similarly, Kozmo launched in 1998, raising $280 million from Softbank, Flatiron Partners, Amazon, and Starbucks before eventually going out of business in 2001. Although Kozmo filed an IPO, it never went public. In a postmortem in April 2011, Forbes referred to Kozmo as "a bellwether for lunacy."

Instacart is 2015's answer to Webvan. You can use the service to get groceries delivered on-demand. Instacart has raised $275 million and is valued at $2 billion. Fresh Direct, another grocery delivery service, has raised $91 million. Both Amazon and Google have their own same-day grocery delivery services, too: Google Express and Amazon Prime Pantry.

When we think about company founders, especially in the tech industry, there's the enduring story of the college dropout.

Legendary founders like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg couldn't be contained by college — let alone grad school. But sometimes the foundational knowledge and connections acquired in business school can be useful for a founder.

And business schools are just much better at helping aspiring entrepreneurs. PitchBook tracked business-school graduates over the last five years and found which ones were churning out founders and companies, as well as raising capital.

Many of the top schools on the list are, unsurprisingly concentrated around hot tech scenes. This includes the more obvious Berkeley and Stanford, as well as other rising hubs like Tel Aviv.

Read on for the 25 best business schools for entrepreneurs.

25. University of Washington

Entrepreneurs: 40

Companies: 36

Capital Raised: $69 (in millions)

24. Cornell

Entrepreneurs: 41

Companies: 41

Capital Raised: $215 (in millions)

23. HEC Paris

Entrepreneurs: 42

Companies: 42

Capital Raised: $275 (in millions)

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