Danny King (17 July 2013)

On 17 July 2013, students of University of Buckingham’s BSc Business Enterprise were lucky to have the CEO of one of UK’s successful start-ups to come and talk to us about his entrepreneurial background and journey. Accredible was founded in 2013 in the UK and they raised their seed round from high-profile venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Their main aim is to create a means of accrediting knowledge outside formal education.

Danny’s journey began from his interest in the Web which led him to take up a computer degree at Durham University. At university, with fellow students, they founded the Entrepreneurs Durham, which is a society for entrepreneurs in the university to come together and share ideas. It was during this period he met Alan Heppenstall, who was also interested in education technology and they decided to jointly found Accredible.

He explained a start up to be “A company which decided to grow fast” (Paul Graham) or “A company that is confused about what their product is, who their customers are and how to make money” (Dave McClure). He believes for a start-up to be successful, there a various inputs involved. These are research, building the brand, getting feedback, iterating, raising money and lastly, scaling and hiring. To him, these factors will lead to a successful start-up. He however also believes that being an entrepreneur is not an easy task as it involves a great deal of passion and vision.  However there are greater rewards and freedom.

 (based on an article by Michael Asare-Badu)