Top entrepreneur James Murray Wells on the future face of enterprise

Founder www.glassesdirect.co.uk

“Business Angels”

I really think we need to influence more business angels to invest their personal capital in early-stage ideas. There are obvious ways to do this through tax breaks and other financial incentives, but I think more will be needed.

In California, it’s easy to find venture capitalists (VC’s) and Angels, in Britain it’s not. And while London may be ok, there are people with brilliant ideas in places like Bristol who are not involved in the London networks. Things are shifting though – there are now fewer gatekeepers between Angels and VC’s waiting to take a cut for the introduction, and this will help redress the perceptions of investors hiding behind mahogany desks. 

It would be wrong for Government to try and regulate this too much, and it’s been proven that they aren’t great at picking winners, but they could act as facilitators. In the same way Ebay acts as a platform and doesn’t claim any ownership of the activity within its walls, Government could help facilitate angel activity.

In particular I think that more networks are needed to facilitate the flow of ideas between potential investors and entrepreneurs. Let’s face it, which successful business person wouldn’t want to be associated with the next big idea? But we also need more transparency and accessibility to aid this. There is real potential to develop an open, or partially open, online database of potential investors, rather than keeping it all secret. This would help access to investors across the country and promote more entrepreneurial activity.

Social Media and technology

Glassesdirect started around the same time as Facebook, Bebo and Last.fm. Who’d have thought that, over four years, people would have become so comfortable with broad networking sites with mass appeal. People are now using broad networking sites to interact on a large scale. I think that within these sites, entrepreneurial opportunities are now available for niche sites to leverage specialist interests. The costs of starting up are lower than ever and anyone with an idea can make it happen. 

So, we should not worry so much about creating the next Google but utilise the opportunities for many people to do quite well. These are the businesses that will make an impact on national statistics. These are also the companies that may be dissuaded by perceptions of regulation and red-tape, not the leading edge entrepreneurs who will, let’s face it, find a way round things regardless!

Educating entrepreneurs

The reason that I did not start a business earlier than I did was not fear of failure – it was fear of not fitting in. We have to find a way to make entrepreneurship an acceptable habit. When I was starting up it was the support of my parents and teachers who made the difference. My parents were open and encouraged me to explore ideas. My teachers, within obvious constraints, were fairly supportive too. I think that we need enterprising environments to support entrepreneurs. I am massively impressed by business and enterprise schools and the exciting ways they place enterprise at the heart of all they do. I see no reason why in future all schools could not be enterprise schools.

Enterprise in the workplace

A final point is one from my view as an employer. Quite simply, people who work for me are expected to be innovative and enterprising. We do not spend time on innovation seminars or wearing different coloured hats. When people work here they’re expected to have ideas, develop them, be pro-active. This is not bolt-on activity for brownie points. In fact, I’d even consider a disciplinary for un-enterprising behaviour! I think that with the speed of business growth increasing, we will see more of this as a staple of job descriptions and employability skills. Enterprising attitudes and behaviours will perhaps emerge as the most important employability trait in the future face of enterprise.”

It’s only been three years since entrepreneur James Murray Wells (24) launched his ground-breaking business www.glassesdirect.co.uk  but in that time he has rewritten the rules and shaken the optical industry to its roots.

Conceived as an idea while he was at University, and launched in the front room of his parent’s house, Glassesdirect entered the market with the aim of providing cut price prescription glasses over the internet.

Because it was a new idea the optical industry said it wouldn’t work, but today Glassesdirect is the largest direct-seller of glasses in the world, selling a pair every seven minutes around the clock, with a multi million pound turnover, and the company is forecasting sales north of £10m by 2008. The company has also just completed a significant $6million investment deal through Venture Capitalists and the headquarters of the business have been visited by three international CEOs and Chairmen of global optical chains within the past year. Talks are underway for a worldwide brand rollout and the possibility of a glassesdirect.com USA operation is being mooted.