Over the past couple of weeks I’ve seen the word FinTech appear all over the place. In my inbox, on Twitter and in a couple of articles. Forgive me if I’m massively behind the curve on this. After voluminous research I have discovered that FinTech is quite a big deal (and getting more so). And [...]
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We’re currently hard at work building out Escape Profiles so that we can match peoples’ pasts and their future aspirations with new opportunities, organisations, people and useful content. As a result we’ve got our heads in the database, reviewing who our members are and what they are looking for. There’s a lot more to come [...]
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This is a non-sales-pitch for this week’s Startup MBA, which starts on Friday and runs over two weekends. It’s NOT too late to sign up, since we still have a couple of places left. If you’re interested in learning more, email me (soon!) for more details at adele@escapethecity.org. You know how when you hate something, you [...]
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Editor’s Note: This is our last blog post before the Easter break. See you next week… comment at the bottom if you’ve got a specific subject you’d like us to write about. Have a good one. Rob Escape the City is full of passionate professionals planning their next moves. One of the best ways people [...]
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Below is an extract from Chapter 4 (The Money Question) in our new book - The Escape Manifesto (a revolutionary handbook for the frustrated professionals of the world). The book is being published by Wiley shortly after Easter – watch this space for your chance to buy it in bookstores and Amazons near you…). So… The [...]
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Editor’s Note: Al needs little introduction as we’ve written about him plenty of times here over the years. He has also spoken – to great acclaim – at each of our big, annual shandangos. He kindly gave us permission to share his thoughts here about his big escape many moons ago over to him… http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/moods-future-joys-epilogue/ [...]
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One of the first things you do when you start planning to do something dramatically different with your life is you read about people who have successfully done what you aspire to do. If you’re building an online startup you’ll read all about the overnight successes in Silicon Valley and New York. You’ll lap up [...]
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Escape the City is full of passionate people planning their next move. One of the best ways people can make big transitions is by getting help from like-minded folk who are prepared to lend a hand and some advice. Browse the questions below – click someone’s name if you can help them out (afraid you [...]
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Our first ever Esc Adventure is starting in a dusty little town in northern Botswana called Maun in just over 30 days. A small group of hardy escapees is going to spend a week walking and camping (glamping!) their way through the Okavango Delta – just as it floods. Getting up close to big game [...]
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Stephen Ridley escaped Investment Banking to be a musician. 24 hours after quitting his job, he rolled an upright piano into the middle of one of London’s busiest streets and started playing. After 1 month he had been offered 9 management deals, and started recording his first album, Butterfly In A Hurricane, now on iTunes. [...]
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“It’s all about coming up with crazily simple business ideas.” This is what I sent to a friend last week after reading about a startup called YourGrind. My friend is in that exciting and terrifying phase before escaping his job and before knowing which of his many ideas he should pursue. He feels like he’s [...]
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[This is the talk that I gave at TEDX LSE on Saturday. I was one of 15 speakers. The theme of the conference was 'Rethink Your Definition'] I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a story that explains why I’m standing on this stage in front of you. It’s a story about fear. About [...]
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This blog has been through quite a few incarnations since our first post on 20th August 2009. To start with, since we didn’t have a website, the blog was Escape the City. We used it to explore the ideas that were driving our concept, to share uncorporate opportunities, and to arrange our first meetups in the [...]
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David Gates is a consultant at Rapid Innovation Group, where he specialises in supporting early stage technology companies through their go to market challenges. He is also a mentor to young entrepreneurs, a charity trustee and road runner. David runs the Entrepreneur in Residence programme at RIG. He is speaking at our Startup 101 course on Saturday 9th [...]
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Pat Larsen is a former Navy helicopter pilot and investment banker. Now a freelancer (www.getintoivy.com) and writer (www.patricklarsen.com) that travels with his growing family. 2009. I wanted to build a service for VC/Angel investors and Startups. I wanted it to be about video content delivery (“Please Give me Money”) and about a semantic search algorithm (“Who [...]
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Esc member Jen (@jlowthrop) runs a new service in Islington to help people use their free time better (see more here), writes a travel blog (see here) and spends her days dreaming of turning her passions into her business. She writes about her experience of her recent workshop here. If you’d like to join us for tomorrow’s workshop, there [...]
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Searching for funding for your startup isn’t an easy task: it often pays to have someone who knows the ropes, showing you how to read the map of the available options. In the past, we’ve run events with our funding-expert friend Paul Grant before, which you can read more about here. He’s holding an event on March [...]
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Jessica Tayenjam is a consultant at Rapid Innovation Group, where she helps high potential, technology-enabled companies mitigate market risk and create scalable growth. She is one of the speakers at our Startup 101 course on Saturday 9th March (tickets still available – download the free preview book here). Here, she shares her thoughts on the [...]
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Simon Dunn is a Multichannel Retailer who has spent the last 15 years working for Sainsburys and Tesco and who recently escaped to set up his own e-commerce business. www.meetup.com/iStartup/ is a new community of people who are in the early stage of the starting their business, where members meet to discuss ideas and share their professional expertise [...]
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Escape member Carlo talks about what he’s learned about PR from working with Adzuna, a tech start-up that gathers job ads from around the web and displays them on one website. When he collaborated in the launch, there was a great list of interested journos, a strategy to reach these according to their influence, a [...]
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