Doug Richard Interview

Doug Richard is an entrepreneur and investor who specialises in technology transfer, commercialisation and business incubation. Richard appeared as an investor on the first two series of Dragons' Den. He is the Founder and Vice-Chairman of the Cambridge Angels, and Chairman of the Conservative Party Small Business Task Force. Between 1996 and 2000, Doug was President and CEO of US publicly-quoted software company Micrografx. Prior to that, he also founded and subsequently sold two other companies: Visual Software and ITAL Computers. He now runs The School for Start Ups, an enterprise dedicated to helping people start better and more profitable businesses.

In this video, Doug Richard outlines the current situation for entrepreneurialism in the UK and the transformation that is currently occurring in the business world. According to Richard, the pace in which a business can be set up is rapidly increasing and, through a divorce of the ego and effective budgeting, an ‘ultra-light business start up’ can be created. The structure of pricing is another area that Doug tackles with – criticising the current common model and offering his alternative to developing a price. Find out why overworking is overrated and how ‘intelligent laziness’ can lead to optimised efficiency. This video will also give you an idea of what the School for Start Ups does, and how it helps small hungry business people achieve their goal.

The famous entrepreneur also touches on his 2008 study entitled "The Richard Report", which looked into the British government's support for small businesses. He concluded that the UK's business support network is, in his words, 'abysmal'.